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Why exactly is the NRA so powerful?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TigerVols, Dec 3, 2015.

  1. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Yes, it's an overesimplification to show the point.

    I didn't say anything about the "states being unanimous in supporting an amendment." I'm not sure where that came from.

    I can't take seriously anyone who uses "founders' wisdom" to describe a scenario that they literally did not have remotely in mind when they wrote their Constitution with the express purpose of it governing their 13-colony coastal farming confederation.
     
  2. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    If each state is 65% in favor of supporting an amendment, then the states -- not the people, but the states -- are unanimous. If the average support of the people across the states is 65% -- say there are seven states at 95% and six states at 30% -- then your scenario's even more off-base.

    And I don't know why you're depicting the original 13 as this collection of like polities. They weren't similar at all.
     
  3. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Yeah, I didn't say anything resembling the math stuff, but *shrug*.

    Yes, I'm oversimplifying to demonstrate concept.
     
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    There was certainly a wisdom to the mechanism they set up for amending or changing the constitution. They wanted it to be difficult, but not impossible. Which makes perfect sense for the kind of republic we have. That mechanism still works exactly the way they seemed to have intended. As evidenced by when and how the constitution HAS been amended over the years.

    There are 27 amendments to the constitution. If the distribution of when those amendments were passed is any evidence, it's not less likely that a new amendment might happen now than it was in the 1790s. We made it until 1913 with only 15 amendments, 10 of which were the original bill of rights that came with the original package.

    In any case, getting back to the original topic, it's ridiculous to me that we even have to have a discussion about amending the constitution -- although, if that is what it takes to end the nonsensical perversion of the 2nd amendment, I guess that it is what it is going to take.

    But the 2nd amendment explicitly pertained to states being allowed to have "well regulated militias." It didn't establish some nonsensical human right guaranteeing individuals deadly weapons. The notion should be ridiculous to anyone who can reason. They established an initial bill of rights that established things like a right to a trial by jury, freedom of speech, prohibition of government establishment of a religion, a right to due process, protection against double jeopardy, right to counsel in a trial. ... ALL of those things are ideals about what makes a person truly free (not items or possessions). which everyone should be endowed with. It reads like a philosophy book from the age of enlightenment regarding liberty. "The right to own a gun" just doesn't fit in with those things. It's nonsensical.

    Also, all of the rights in the bill of rights that relate to life and liberty are rights guaranteed to every individual. The second amendment clearly was different in that it was worded as "the peoples' right," not as an individual right. They established each state's right to be able to raise an army to protect itself. ... which made sense in a fledgling country that was built with a suspicion of strong, centralized governments. How our current gun culture follows from that, is beyond me. We could outlaw firearms tomorrow, if there was the national will to do it, because it really isn't a constitutional issue.
     
  5. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    It's not a slam dunk (maybe it's 80-20), but the bulk of constitutional scholarship says you're wrong there.
     
  6. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I have no idea what tea leaves your "bulk" is reading. ... I just know some basic history. ... and what the actual amendment says. The amendment, is prefaced (begins) with these words: "A well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state. ..." And establishes the right to bear arms in "the people," not each individual. I'll stand by my assessment that the purpose of the amendment had nothing to do with an individual's "right" to own weapons, but about what that preface says: a guarantee that the people (as in society) could raise a militia to protect itself. Whatever "constitutional scholarship" you are talking about might as well be parsing the talmud.
     
  7. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Actually, that's not how it reads, but never mind.

    I'm just telling you that plenty of people with far more street cred (vis-a-vis the constitution) than you disagree with you.
     
    SpeedTchr likes this.
  8. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

    You might think I don't understand what the purpose of that was. And that is fine. But 1) That is verbatim how it reads (I cut and paste the other thing incorrectly), and 2) your appeal to authority ("plenty of people" with way more "cred" than I have) is noted.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2015
  9. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    OK, since you're gonna get pissy about my "appeal to authority," I guess I'll just go there. Let's start with the five justices in the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller:

    DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

    Those justices in the majority at times referred to, among other works, scholarship undertaken by Eugene Volokh (I suspect you've heard of him). In his "The Commonplace Second Amendment" (NYU Law Review, 1998), Volokh notes that several state constitutions written by the founders included justification clauses (e.g., "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state ...") for other rights (e.g., free press, free speech, trial by a jury of peers, etc.) that are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

    The Commonplace Second Amendment

    Finally, you raise this idea that the right to bear arms was obviously intended to be a collective (rather than an individual) right given the authors' use of the phrase "the right of the people." Is it similarly your contention that the 4th amendment doesn't convey an individual right? Are we only guaranteed the right to be free from "unnecessary searches and seizures" when we are talking about collectively held "houses, papers and effects?"



    P.S. I deleted the footnotes in Volokh's piece.
     
  10. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    So?

    In 1860, I may have argued that nothing in the Constitution says that any person who descended from Africans, whether a slave or free, is NOT a citizen of the United States. I know I would have been 100 percent correct.

    If you treated it like you just treated my post. ... you could have dismissed me as having less "cred" than Roger Taney and quoted the Dred Scott decision to tell me how "wrong" I am.

    What someone in our judicial system did years later. ... doesn't change what the Constitution actually says or the original purpose of it.

    For practical purposes, our judicial system retroactively "rewrites" (or writes whole new things into) the Constitution based on the wisdom of appointed people, and the winds of popular opinion at any given time (sometimes, changing their earlier rewrites of the document with whole new rewrites that contradict their former manglings).

    But what the judicial system has practically done to the Constitution over time. ... has nothing to do with the original document or the original purpose of anything in the document.
     
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    I just finished reading that Volokh thing.

    I wasn't saying that the second amendment is a "temporary" right that disappears if there is no current need for a militia. That would be a nuanced argument that is as ridiculous as arguments that read assault rifles into the purpose of the bill of rights.

    I was saying that the right to bear arms was specifically related to their notions that a militia is necessary to protect a free country. i.e. -- they didn't include it in the bill of rights, because anyone saw "owning guns" as vital to liberty as freedom of speech or the right against illegal search and seizure. They spelled out WHY they were including it for a reason. That is much more logical than looking for equivalencies in obscure, unrelated documents for why it may mean more or less than what it actually says.

    You don't have to parse that militia preface with endless bullshit to make it into something it is or isn't. That "right" specifically related to the states being able to form militias to protect themselves. It's just common sense. It *says* so. It had nothing to do with a notion that people owning and shooting guns is a natural right that makes a person free. That notion is just ridiculous to me.
     
  12. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    It must be the case, then, that you've also concluded that the 4th amendment was not intended to confer an individual's right to be free from unnecessary searches and seizures.

    Is that not the case? Why not? Oh, wait, you're taking into account the background, the underpinnings, the logic behind that amendment. Which is all fine ... that's what you're supposed to do. But it's awfully dishonest of you to criticize that approach only when it leads to conclusions you don't share. And you can puff up all you want about how "common sense" all of this is, but you and I both know it's not.

    I'm not an expert on Constitutional law, nor am I particularly interested in defending the 2nd Amendment. What I won't back off is noting that it is an absolute stone-cold fact that your position re: the 2nd Amendment is not one held by the majority of people who are experts on Constitutional law. If what the experts think isn't important to you, have at it; they could be wrong. But don't tell me they're wrong just because they got to their conclusion in exactly the same manner that you did.
     
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