This is an interesting part to ponder.
The 2nd does mention ‘well regulated’ whereas the 1st doesn’t have anything to say about the press.
I know the current case law regarding the 2nd doesn’t jibe, but it doesn’t seem that such a database would necessarily conflict with that wording, to my eyes.
“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.”
The “well regulated” part of the 2A doesn’t mean regulated in the sense that it’s full of restrictions - it means regulated as in a militia that is well trained, supplied, etc. Interestingly, the US Militia is defined in US Code. I’m much too lazy to Google it, but from what I remember the Militia is comprised of the organized portion and unorganized. The organized militia is men and women who are, or were, members of the National Guard. The unorganized portion is men (not sure I have the ages right) aged 17 to 50.
You might also notice that the text of the 2A indicates that this right “shall not be infringed.” As far as I understand, the meaning of what constitutes an infringement hasn’t changed over the years, contra “well regulated.” However, that being said, SCOTUS has ruled that in fact reasonable restrictions can be applied, i.e., no felony convictions, and you can’t buy nukes or a stealth bomber. (The bastards!)
“This is my home defense tactical nuclear warhead.”
Yeah, original intent has changed how a modern reader would interpret the language. But it’s strength as a living document allows for reinterpretation.
Even allowing for that, I don’t see exactly where that sort of thing would infringe on the right within those standards.
Hell, some level of standards might even satisfy the conditions framed by the founders re regulation as training.
I’m veering a little here, but purely as a thought exercise hear me out.
The simple quantities of firearm owners would make any attempt to seize them all futile, but there are a lot of issues with firearm availability that go beyond violence here. I’m thinking things like the number of legally purchased guns here that end up in Mexico for one.
It’s a tough thing to approach, especially as the numbers do bear out the we are largely less likely to be the victims of violent crime than in the past.
But mass shooting events are psychically damaging and raise necessary debate. While the Parkland shooter fell through the cracks of the apparatus designed to catch such high risk individuals, nothing I’ve seen on the Vegas shooter indicates he was on anyone’s radar.
There has to be some sort of middle ground the sides can reach as there are plainly some individuals who can not be trusted to exercise the right of gun ownership. I’d like to think that’s a point we can agree on
Written in bursts, apologies for rambling or non sequiturs
-shudder- I abhor the ‘living document’ interpretation. It either means what it says or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t then what’s it worth as far as limiting government? I’m more of a textualist. 
If we want to change it, we can as there’s a mechanism in place. No need for the ‘living document’ biz.
Yeah I think we all actually already do agree on this. I think the rub (this is a bit of a gross generalization just for the sake of argument) is that one side wants to pass stricter controls, and the other wants existing laws enforced. The pro-gun side sees very little utility in things like magazine-size restrictions or the banning of all semi-autos, while they see the government fail to enforce the law and deny prohibited persons from obtaining guns. Dylan Roof and the guy who shot up the church in Texas - both prohibited but not entered into the NICS system. We all want straw purchasers prosecuted (people who buy guns for prohibited persons) but it rarely happens. (Straw purchases were at the root of Fast and Furious’ gun smuggling into Mexico.)
Quite honestly, I think we all spend way too much time talking past each other and assuming the absolute worst about one another, rather than actually listening to what each side is saying. I think there’s a lot that can be done, but we’re too busy being douchebags to do any of it.
All of my posts are written like that - I’m the last to judge a rambly post!
Re: paragraph 2
It’d seem that one way those who take a more active role in exercising their right to make their message sell better for the other side would be to emphasize these points, particularly from a lobbying perspective.
As it stands now, there are a lot of people who see less of that and more advocacy for turning schools into fortresses.
This is a really interesting question. My main answer is that I tend to put events above ideas.
As I’ve said above, I have no desire to live under ‘tyranny’ (though I’ve been pressing for participants in this thread to offer reasonably concrete definitions of what tyranny actually is, what it might look like, and hence why we might need guns). Civil liberties make life worth living. I suspect we share many of these principles, though we may interpret them differently.
My definitions of civil liberties are largely influenced by the same philosophical tradition that motivated both the English Bill of Rights and its American adaptation. But I do feel these ideas are nuanced and often ambiguous, which motivates my argument that, if governments can cross a line beyond which violent revolution is necessary, that line needs to be well-considered, even if it’s hard to draw firmly. (Incidentally, while I’m not denying principles of liberty inspired the American revolution, I proffer the suggestion that it was actually the decision to grant Canada land which changed civil protests to armed resistance). I’m also concerned about who gets to decide when to start firing, given that opinions on this can evidently be split.
So, to your question. Would I ever support violent revolution?
My answer is that I try to be pragmatic. The events that this might involve matter as much as moral justice. In the end to me, history starts from who dies, not what their killers thought. We have to consider what fighting would actually achieve, and what the costs would be. I think this is a real problem with armed militia arguments, which is why I’ve dwelt at length on it upthread.
When I look at how modern weapons have been used by insurgents against far better armed governments, I see little hope of success and a strong likelihood of civilian suffering. I can’t think of a recent revolution that I could judge successful enough to be worth the brutality it caused. And I feel this even more strongly when the provision of these arms causes real harm in the present.
The success of 1776 was permitted by a set of specific historical circumstances that I don’t think will be repeated in the future; that’s the problem with written constitutions. There is a risk that America will be overtaken by tyranny, but I think imperialism is very unlikely, and that makes the success envisioned by Madison et al less relevant in my opinion.
If a revolution won’t succeed in unseating tyranny, I’m extremely wary about endorsing it, and recent history suggests to me that it would fail. Syria is on my mind a lot.
I also think it’s important to consider what comes after a revolution, even if it succeeds. It’s striking to me that so many revolutions, while inspired by noble aims, failed to create a state which lived up to them. The tragedy of revolutions is that brutal civil wars, social chaos and often the reinstatement of tyranny in a different form generally follows. It would be foolish to take America’s relative past achievements here for granted.
So I’m wary of big events that will supposedly solve a problem by radically changing the social order. Yes, tyranny is enforced by governments, but I think it ultimately comes from people, and armed resistance can’t solve that problem.
I apologise for the length of this, it’s a subject that really interests me! TLDR, I’m not a pacifist, but both for pragmatic reasons and because I think humans have a predisposition to create authoritarianism that revolutions rarely overcome, I would gladly see every AR replaced with books by Hannah Arendt. I think we have to fight the spread of tyranny in other (discursive) ways.
It’s very useful for fighting crime.
The second question is something that can be negotiated and I’m not sure it’s an argument against having a federal gun register altogether. I don’t see how a register translates to confiscation; anyone who drives a car is on a register but cars are still going strong.
Yes, but I think it’s a question of balance.
I can actually sympathise with the desire to have a gun for self-defence (as long as it’s spelled like that). I’m a single woman, I live alone in the centre of a large city, and I like walking the quickest (darkest) way home without being attacked.
But for me, that desire to have a gun is weighed against the serious risks the law allowing it would create. Not just in my own home (statistically I’m more at risk of violence from a future partner than when I walk in the dark). If I was allowed to have a gun, so would everyone else, and I suspect that this would negatively effect many lives. So I would rather give up that individual right, and any advantage it might bring me, in order to prevent that suffering.
I’m not trying to sound noble here or to imply that those who disagree lack compassion, but individual rights balance that compassion for others; it’s natural that we all disagree about how to negotiate this, but the gun violence Americans suffer (which I don’t have to) makes this a relatively easy one for me.
I have to tell you: I absolutely LOVE what you wrote here! We definitely don’t agree on everything, including the right of armed resistance, but we for sure agree more than we disagree. The conversation is taking a turn for the philosophical, and I LOVE it!
Our guiding principles are extremely similar, that’s for sure.
Forgive my ignorance, but if criminals often use stolen guns, or guns obtained through illegal straw purchases, I’m unsure how a database could help fight crime?
Very reasonable stance. One which I, obviously, disagree with, but I don’t think your opinion here is unreasonable.
It should be noted that if one discounts violence associated with gangs and drug activity (incidentally, drugs should ALL be legal - eliminating the black market would cut down on the associated violence by a lot), the US murder rate looks more like Sweden than Somalia.
Sigh… here we go again…
Always pointing fingers at the wrong things… the bottom line is its mental health and seems that no one wants to do dick all about it… just scapegoating bandaid fixes… ugh kinda venting here not sure if I can even debate… just getting tired of seeing humanity crumble behind a blindfold.
Tada
High wind in the Washington D.C. area today. If you see a giant flying rat, please notify the Secret Service so that they may promptly return it to the president’s head.
rimshot.gif
Sad to say it but I’m sure some teacher is going to flip out on a student and shoot em.
On that topic (kinda) a teacher had a full on mental break down locked his kids out the class and if someone tried to get in he shot through the window…I want to minimize that possibly and I don’t think any teacher should have a fire arm in the building ESPECIALLY without years of education on them
I had a few teachers back in the day that joked about shooting certain minorities/religious groups. Living in the boonies in fun. /sarcasm.
Holy ■■■■, that’s nuts! How’d that teacher get a gun into school in the first place?? Schools are supposed to be gun-free zones!
EDIT: Ha, when I was a kid my little brother’s teacher brought a musket to school to use a prop for their discussion on the US Revolution. This teacher was a lot on the eccentric side, and ended up loading the musket with powder - no bullet, tho - and discharging it inside the classroom. YES, INSIDE THE CLASSROOM.
Needless to say, there were quite a few “concerned” parents up at school the next day. 
Don’t have time for as full a response as I’d like (ie looking stuff up on gun databases - may have some breathing space later in the week!). It doesn’t surprise me that we have general philosophical agreements and I’m pleased to hear it!
This comparison sounds interesting but as I’ve mentioned before comparisons of raw data between countries are meaningless without competent statistical adjustment for compounding variables. This happens best through meta studies and the peer review process; one of the reasons I consider the NRA one of the most despicable organisations in Western politics is their efforts to ensure this kind of research doesn’t get funded, which to me suggests an odd lack of faith in their claims about the social benefits of guns.
I generally agree with you about drugs, my own position is that they should be decriminalised to allow addicts to get help, and there are some substances like pot that I really don’t see any point in making illegal.
I’m not entirely convinced that the effectiveness of drugs’ illegality is much evidence of how gun control would fail; drugs are obviously very different from guns in that their physical addictiveness presents a fairly unique challenge to people’s free will about respecting the rule of law. Not to mention that the ‘war on drugs’ in America is arguably not much of an example about whether drugs could be eliminated from society as much as an excuse to lock up ethnic minorities.
Compliance is an important factor in how to approach making any act illegal, but the general argument that any kind of gun control is pointless because gun crime would still exist always seems rather odd to me; laws are manifestly capable of producing multiple social benefits even though crime still exists.
Philosophical rant ahead. This may, or may not, reflect my pragmatic views of society…
The libertarian in me believes in maximizing freedom. Therefore it, quite honestly, tends to not matter all that much which studies say which freedoms are harmful and to which group of people. Doesn’t matter if that freedom takes the form of choosing which substances I ingest, deciding if I’d like to exchange sex for money, speaking freely no matter the topic, exercising my natural right to keep and bear arms, freely engaging in employment, etc.
Which freedoms would I enjoy, one might ask? ALL OF THEM. ALL THE FREEDOMS.
Personally, I give money to the ACLU and the NRA. That way, I’m financing the defense of the entire Bill of Rights, not just the parts those two groups like best.
Ha, this statement was only half-serious – quite frankly, I’m unaware of the Swedish and Somali murder rates. My only point here was that a very significant portion of the ~12,000 or so murders in the US are gang/drug related, and tend to occur in the same relatively few cities and counties. Like St. Louis, for example. We tend to lead the way in MURDER! Woo! We’re No. 1, baby!!
The gang violence leads me to wonder if that maybe the way to tackle our gun violence problem isn’t with more gun control than we currently have, but perhaps it’s a societal problem?
Illegal drugs + the associated black market + readily available firearms + a disinterested populace = lots of violent death. I’m unsure how quickly, and in a nation of 300 million or so privately owned firearms, how effective additional gun control would be. However, I am reasonably certain that we could change some of the other variables in that equation relatively quickly and easily.
Just chiming in to say I’m watching the mooch on Dr Phil with his wife right now.
This is life now.
Heard on the radio that Democrat turnout here was 105% higher for mid-term primaries than last election cycle.