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[CertifiedFP]

And yet why according to this list has no senator even proposed to repeal the 2nd amendment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...o_the_United_States_Constitution#21st_century

Proposing to repeal any part of the Bill of Rights is political suicide.

I'll be honest, this needs serious action fast - But the gun issue is never going to be solved through directly attacking the 2nd. The ATF needs to be allowed to do their job properly (Including getting agents who actually know what they are doing - IE, less of that one officer that put an "AK47" label on a Glock 17G4.), there needs to be expanded monitoring of gun purchases - Treat mass purchases of ammunition and guns like buying mass amounts of fertilizer or known Meth ingredients, make wait periods longer (At least 30 days), actually perform background checks and arrest felons and others barred from buying weapons who are caught attempting to purchase ones, increase penalties for breaching existing laws, and actually ENFORCE these laws to the fullest extent.

Also possibly the most important of all, work towards creating a licensing system that is mandatory for all future gun purchases that will keep legally purchased weapons out of the hands of criminals by creating an environment of accountability where purchases can be tracked.

In tl;dr though - The 2nd protects the 1st. And I don't mean the guns. Once you compromise ANY part of the Bill of Rights, you compromise the entirety of the bill of rights.

 

[GaimeGuy]

In tl;dr though - The 2nd protects the 1st. And I don't mean the guns. Once you compromise ANY part of the Bill of Rights, you compromise the entirety of the bill of rights.

Bullshit.

 

[Chairmanchuck]

Can anyone please tell me whenever the 2nd amendment comes up as some defense that every citizen should have a gun?
Im not American, but if I read it right it just shows "arms", not guns. That could be pitchforks for all I know or bombs. So why is it guns?

 

[CertifiedFP]

Bullshit.

Insightful reply. I've never seen someone back up their argument in such detail before.

 

[Volimar]

Bullshit.

The founders expressly intended for the first 10 amendments to be a list of inalienable rights. And many Americans still hold to that today. Fear that opening the floodgates against individual liberties should any of those rights be repealed is enough to prevent it from happening at all. You'll get a lot more traction with common sense gun control than you ever will with overturning the second amendment.

 

[Feep]

You don't need to overturn it, you just need the Supreme Court to read the fucking words it's made of.

 

[Metroxed]

I think that's more people shot in a few hours than in my entire country for a year or two (or maybe even more)

 

[nomis]

The founders expressly intended for the first 10 amendments to be a list of inalienable rights. And many Americans still hold to that today. Fear that opening the floodgates against individual liberties should any of those rights be repealed is enough to prevent it from happening at all. You'll get a lot more traction with common sense gun control than you ever will with overturning the second amendment.

Yeah but you don't have to repeal it, the amendment just needs to be limited in scope from its current interpretation

 

[Maedre]

Honestly, that's a tiny number, except for Chicago.

Every number higher than zero is too high.

 

[Imperfected]

Can anyone please tell me whenever the 2nd amendment comes up as some defense that every citizen should have a gun?
Im not American, but if I read it right it just shows "arms", not guns. That could be pitchforks for all I know or bombs. So why is it guns?

The term "arms"--armaments--can generally be construed to mean "modern weapons of sufficient combat capability to conduct warfare", considering the arms are explicitly meant to be used by a well-regulated militia.

Therefore: a militia of private citizens (such as a National Guard unit) should be able to possess basically any military hardware that the regular army has access to.

What does not logically follow: a singular private citizen should, not as part of any such militia, have private access to weaponry which in fact is completely unfit for task in such capacities (such as the average person having a handgun).

The "well-regulated militia" part tends to get blithely ignored by NRA rhetoric, despite the fact that the framers of the Constitution went to all the trouble to make it the start of the 2nd Amendment, in spite of how incredibly awkward it made the phrasing to do so.

 

[BladeoftheImmortal]

48 out of over 300 million is nothing though, 0.00000016%, so pretty much nothing.


That's ridiculous. Unless you live in a shithole area, you wouldn't be afraid of being shot. The US is a huge place. The mass shootings that occurr are terrible, but not very likely to happen to people.

Until your mom is one of those.

 

[Ri'Orius]

The founders expressly intended for the first 10 amendments to be a list of inalienable rights. And many Americans still hold to that today. Fear that opening the floodgates against individual liberties should any of those rights be repealed is enough to prevent it from happening at all. You'll get a lot more traction with common sense gun control than you ever will with overturning the second amendment.

Didn't the founders intend for the Bill of Rights to only apply to the federal government, and that the states could restrict them willy-nilly? I know the 14th Amendment now means that the BoR applies to the States as well, but I haven't been able to find anything about pre-incorporation legal history implying that the founders were okay with them not being incorporated in the first place...

 

[MarkMclovin]

Probably a stupid question, but if there was a public vote (similar to the UK staying/leaving the EU), where you can either ban guns, or not, would it still be a landslide victory to keep them?

How come it can't be left to the people, rather than a president, to change this?

 

[Imperfected]

Probably a stupid question, but if there was a public vote (similar to the UK staying/leaving the EU), where you can either ban guns, or not, would it still be a landslide victory to keep them?

How come it can't be left to the people, rather than a president, to change this?

As far as I'm aware, there's no provision in our government for legal application of defaulting to direct democracy. The president or Congress could call a public vote as a method of establishing the popularity of their position on the issue, but it would not be legally enforceable to any meaningful degree unless they specifically passed legislature to make it so, which of course the Republicans in the House would be keen to block.

Personally, I think there's value in direct democracy, but we've pretty thoroughly structured the (legal) framework of our government to stymie it wherever possible.

 

[Abilidebob]

Some murder rates:

South Africa 33.0
Brazil 24.6
Mexico 15.7
Nigeria 10.3
Russia 9.5
Iraq 8.0
Argentina 7.6

Ukraine 4.3
Cuba 4.0
USA 3.9
Iran 3.9
Egypt 3.4

Ghana 1.7
Canada 1.4
France 1.2
United Kingdom 1.0
Australia 1.0
Germany 0.9
Spain 0.7
Poland 0.7
South Korea 0.7
Japan 0.3

The US is significantly worse than other developed nations.

Brazil es número dos!