I have to ask this. Harve Curry...why did the founding fathers...the framers of the Constitution of the United States...the 2nd Amendment, infringe upon the 2nd Amendment? Why did they pass and practice gun control laws before and after the 2nd Amendment was adopted. Why were they so hypocritical? Did they not want the federal government regulating firearms? Was gun control the legal and exclusive domain of state government at that time? They did pass gun control laws at the state level back then. If the politicians of that time wanted unrestricted gun laws why did they ignore the 2nd Amendment. Why has it been ignored all through the history of the United States? I know this does not sit well with many but it is the truth. I'm just attempting to get factual answers.
Because they were racists and classist elitist snobs.
They might have been very smart men in many ways but they believed that though all "men" were created equal that not all humans were men.
They did not believe that Blacks were men, that non property owners were men, or that women were "men" in the category of being created equal.
These same groups of people could not vote either. They were denied many rights back then.
But that does not make the fundamental argument of the Second Amendment wrong, it makes the people that wrote it bigots.
The fact that there have been gun laws in this country since it's founding is another argument I don't quite get the point of. What does that have to do with anything?
The Second Amendment, as does the rest of the Bill of Rights, does not describe things the government gives away. It describes a belief that certain things are given by nature/God/Universe/Whatever to men born on Earth and says that this new government will respect those pre-existing rights.
Certainly all of them have been infringed on at one time or another, but that doesn't make it OK. The document itself is not flawed, the ideas themselves are not flawed.
If that same government has a flawed definition of "men" then it doesn't work.
Over time that definition changed to one that made more sense. Today that definition of "men" still doesn't include non-citizens for the most part. The rights exist for non-citizens but it is the policy of this government not to recognize most of those rights.
None of that changes the fact that the right of one to preserve one's own life by tools such as firearms is inherent in being born human and the Second Amendment recognizes that.
Just like you can't say a time when there were no gun laws; so you can't claim that having no gun laws makes society safer.
This is another quote that doesn't seem to make any sense.
If you believe that these rights exist simply being human then there has to be some weight on a government to have a very good reason to infringe those rights.
One way that is done is to require a government to prove the necessity of the infringement.
Just because a government "feels like" gun laws help doesn't mean it's true.
If you want to pass a law restricting a natural right you should have to prove that the good far outweighs the bad. That is not the case with gun laws.
It's a well proven fact that gun crime hasn't significantly changed with the passing of all these laws.
This quote says "you can't claim that having no gun laws makes society safer". No, you can't claim that, but it doesn't matter. The burden is on the government to prove that HAVING gun laws makes us safer. If they cannot prove that, then the laws should not be there.
This is very similar to the idea of being innocent until proven guilty. You're arguing for the reverse by saying that gun laws don't have to prove their value to exist, that it's OK to pass laws based on "gut feelings".
ETA:
Ruggles said:
Trying to push 40 year old statistics and laws is not going to move the gun debate one inch in our favor. The world of 40 years ago is so vastly different than our they have no relevance today in the real world. Using them as a example is silly and in fact counter productive as it tends to say we have nothing modern which to debate with.
Thank you for making my point. Gun laws exist and become more necessary when other society programs have failed.
Your statement that we need gun laws more now because "the world is different" is exactly the problem. Focusing on gun laws does not fix the real problem.
All the 40 year old statistics show is that a 40 year old gun law didn't have much impact so let's not pass any more.
That is what we're saying here. No one is lobbying Congress to get rid of all gun laws, we know that's not going to happen. What we are saying here is that with all the gun laws in place we still have a crime rate that's basically unchanged so stop passing more gun laws and look into fixing the actual problem.
The gun is not the problem and more gun laws don't solve anything.