Why exactly is the NRA so powerful?

2nd amendment ... "the right of the people"

4th amendment ... "the right of the people"

How are these different in what they actually say?

 

To me, you kind of buried the lede there. I agree with you about the NRA being well funded and effective at lobbying. I don't think anyone could dispute that. But there are plenty of politicians (at any level) who are gun owners themselves that will protest any gun restrictions themselves, even if the NRA wasn't doing any lobbying at all. In other words, I second what doctorquant said early on the first page of this thread.
As for the Second Amendment, I agree with The Big Ragu's interpretation, as I've said before. But the Second Amendment has become such a gun-guaranteeing document by now in the eyes of many, so engrained in our fabric, I don't know how you'd get the necessary support to overturn it. Even if you put aside pushback and influence from the NRA, so many people (politicians and non-politicians alike) believe the Second Amendment means any individual can own a gun, how do you overcome that?
I'd argue the recent mass shootings, instead of drawing the country more together on the gun control topic, have done the opposite. In the last couple of days, I've seen a couple of my local politicians post on Facebook post about the increase of mass shootings under Obama vs. other presidents. Plus plenty of other anti-Obama, Clinton or gun posts (seems like more so than usual). I don't think you could pin that on the NRA.

 

Sorry Rags, you're parsing both the 2nd and the 4th. That's how it's done. That's the only way it can be done. I don't particularly care where your parsing takes you. But you're parsing nonetheless.

 

You can line up 100 constitutional scholars and get 100 different interpretations of the Second Amendment. I'm not a constitutional scholar, but my understanding has always been that the "well-regulated militia" thing was there to protect us against a possible future tyrant government. Which kind of made sense 226 years ago. Now, if the government wanted your guns, well, it would come and take them. Today's government doesn't have just guns. It has tanks and airplanes and drones and all manner of mayhem-causing objects. If a tyrant government really wanted your AR-15, it would vaporize you and it would take it and it wouldn't miss the possible one or two soldiers you took out before the airplane came.

So it comes back to the protection of the concept of individual gun ownership. If you're that scared of the world around you, fine, own a gun. If you like shooting for fun, maybe own a few guns. Hunt for your food? Absolutely, you'll need one of those shotguns or rifles. But under what circumstances do you need 1,500 rounds of ammunition? Maybe if we made it as hard to buy ammo as it is to buy Claritin-D, that might be a start.

 

So we have to choose between figuring out what people who died 200 years ago meant, or we're trying to figure out a way to decode a meaning from their words that is workable for our time period.

That's a pretty shitty choice when "Write the documents that govern us ourselves" should be on the table. Tyranny of the dead is real.

 

Have at it champ. Nothing's stopping a soul from giving it a go.

 

All I have to do is convince two people on SJ.com. Then they convince two people each, etc. A movement is born.

 

I think you should let Baron write the preamble. He's got the gift ...

 

I was thinking Starman.