zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

BS. Madison wrote “the people” specifically to protect their right to own firearms otherwise he would have not used “the people” and instead would have used “militia”.

Um, he DID use the militia. Twice. At the beginning and the end. And if he had wanted to make it an individual right, outside of state militias, he wouldn’t have said “the people” in the context of state militias.

It was understood to mean a collective right, solely in the context of the state militias for more than 200 years. That’s how our courts understood it. That’s how our judges understood it. For MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES.

It’s only been since Heller than this changed. I gave you the articles to show all of that. You haven’t bothered to read them, have you?

WRONG! The militia was NOT the government! The militia was the people! The arms of the militia were provided by the people themselves, thus the “shall not be infringed”. In the Revolutionary War the militia stood BY CHOICE with the Continental Army and congress. However the militia were free to come and go as they pleased. The people were free to form militia and that right was recognized and guaranteed in the 2nd Amendment.

Militias were not democratic organizations. They were run by state governments. That is what “well regulated” means. In fact in those years people who formed independent, unregulated armed groups for their own purposes were put down by force of arms.

Read up on the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, which Washington put down as the head of combined militia forces provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

The militias at that time were an organic local response to a threat to the community. It was already a long standing practice in the colonies. They were people, not professional soldiers, who took up arms together. They did not start out as a part of government. Since congress was always broke the need for the militia was recognized and government DURING THE WAR offered what assistance it could. Materially that assistance wasn’t much since congress couldn’t even supply the Continental Army adequately. Government assistance given to the militia was usually in the form of additional training and those troops were then called minutemen.

zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

You think you are the judge and jury.

One more personal remark and I will be forced to consider closing the thread.

We all get warned about personal remarks now and then in this forum…it includes a lot of emotional topics.

But I can’t in good faith offer more than two warnings and not act. It comes with the job description.

Oh brother. I’ve been more than patient with the personal shit thrown my way this week. Do what you must.

Billy_T wrote:

You can’t wiggle away from that fact. When you want to change something that I can do now legally to make it illegal you are denying me the freedom I had before. Because it is freedom we’re talking about when you use the force of law to punish.

So, according to you, when we imposed regulations on things like asbestos and lead, and construction companies could no longer use them in buildings, this was “punishment” and took away “freedom” from those companies? Is that your take? Any new laws or regulations designed to improve the health and safety of Americans, if they mean a little inconvenience for you, and cause you to try something new, that’s “punishment” and a denial of your “freedom”?

Again, no one is suggesting that you can’t own a gun, or use it to defend yourself, or take it hunting, or use it for target practice. Gun control advocates are saying we should have universal background checks, maybe a waiting period, and some suggest a ban on certain high-capacity weaponry. Maybe licensing and registration, like we do with cars. How is that “punishing” you?

Again, you still get to own guns, use them, play with them, etc. etc. You just have to abide by a few new common sense regulations. Why is that a problem for you?

I already abide by so many laws. I already jump through numerous hoops. Enough. Your objective is clear. The death of the 2nd Amendment by a thousand cuts. People can see that and are fed up with the lies.

Billy_T wrote:

Besides, in the case of assault weapons, it was banned before it was permitted. They let the law expire.

Yep. Banned before it was permitted. And before that, the technology didn’t even exist. And the amendment itself has never “permitted” unlimited consumer choice of weaponry. If we really want to read it as it was written and intended, it never “permitted” weaponry outside the context of state militias. That was already permitted long before the 2nd amendment came into affect . . . and it would exist in its absence.

There is no amendment in the Bill of Rights granting the kind of right bnw thinks he has. It doesn’t exist. It’s never existed.

This was among Madison’s earlier revisions, nearly adopted. It makes it even clearer that this was aimed at a military context:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

BS. Madison wrote “the people” specifically to protect their right to own firearms otherwise he would have not used “the people” and instead would have used “militia”.

Billy_T wrote:

No it is you who doesn’t respect freedom. I want to protect our BOR.

As the young kids used to say, OMG!!

I respect “freedom” greatly. But I don’t respect people who radically twist and distort what it means in order to pursue an agenda that greatly benefits the gun industry. I don’t respect people who radically twist and distort what it means in order to pit Americans against each other, with the very real possibility of violent opposition in the mix. I don’t respect people who radically twist and distort what it means in order to win votes and increase their political power.

And for the billionth time, no one here is trying to attack the Bill of Rights. It doesn’t need your “protection” in the slightest, and you’re delusional if you think you have to. Gun control is well within the parameters of the Bill of Rights, and nothing I have suggested in any way goes against the BOR. Not remotely. Not one iota.

Now, if you refuse to accept that, that’s your problem. Not mine. You don’t defend the Bill of Rights by stubbornly clinging to a radically wrong interpretation of it, and those of us who seek sensible gun control aren’t giving you any reason to think you need to “protect” it.

That is your problem not mine. You think you are the judge and jury. You’re not. In my neck of the woods you’re woefully out of touch.

zn wrote:

No, it is about freedom.

To you.

We get that you think that.

The rest of us (from what I can tell) don’t think it has anything to do with “freedom.”

So, you can repeat yourself from your own “place” as if you were speaking for a truth.

Or you can realize this is a clash of different viewpoints. You see the whole the one way. Many of us simply do not see it that way.

You insisting it’s your way is only that and nothing more…you clinging strongly to a particular opinion and calling it a “truth.”

Well I for one (and many of us) don’t share that opinion and sure don’t think it’s a truth.

To go back to an analogy I used earlier, it’s as you’re saying to me “the sun god requires of you a sacrifice.”

To which I say “uh, but there’s no such thing a sun god.”

It doesn’t change anything if you then keep insisting “yes there is!”

..

I certainly realize you and others see it differently. But when I’m specifically ASKED my answer remains the same. You are essentially wanting to take away something which is permitted. To do so denies someone else their FREEDOM to do as they had before. Do all the mental and linguistic gymnastics you want but that doesn’t change the reality of your position.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw,

I provided several links that show the origins and history of the 2nd amendment, and how the right, led by the NRA, has radically reinvented that history out of whole cloth to suit its agenda. The history of guns in America is not the history as the right presents it. Nor was the 2nd amendment ever, ever meant to bestow citizens with an individual “right” to own guns outside of state militia contexts. We could do that prior to the 2nd amendment, and would be able to now without it. English common law established the right to self-defense, centuries ago, and the Brits did not change that in the colonies.

The 2nd amendment was solely to support the continuation of state militias, and the right it bestows only exists within that context. Within a context of something that no longer exists. It’s as if we were given a right to cook dodo birds, and they went extinct. That renders the right itself obsolete.

But we’ll never agree on the above, and I get that. We could go back and forth forever on the subject, and we’d get nowhere. So, I ask you to at least consider the following, so we can establish some common ground:

This is your original thesis:

Those that support the 2nd Amendment want freedom. Those that don’t support the 2nd Amendment want perceived safety. I see no middle ground.

Will you admit to the following, that this is our position?

1. We don’t see the 2nd amendment as meaning the same thing as you say it means. In fact, we’re light years away from each other on that.

2. We don’t associate support for the 2nd amendment as having anything to do with “freedom.” We don’t see “freedom” in the ownership, use or proliferation of guns. We don’t define “freedom” the way you do.

3. We don’t necessarily oppose the 2nd amendment. We just oppose your interpretation of that amendment. We see it as in error. Profoundly in error. We have a profound disagreement about what the 2nd amendment means.

4. Given that we don’t agree on the meaning of the 2nd amendment, or how “freedom” comes into play here, or the way “freedom” is defined . . . it makes no sense for you to set this up the way you do, as some kind of battle between the forces of “freedom” and those opposed to it.

Can we at least agree about that?

No can do. What are the Bill of Rights? The BOR protect individual liberty by placing limits on government power.

Lets take a look at the definition of liberty-

noun, plural liberties.
1.
freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2.
freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3.
freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4.
freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint:
The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
5.
permission granted to a sailor, especially in the navy, to go ashore.
6.
freedom or right to frequent or use a place:
The visitors were given the liberty of the city.
7.
unwarranted or impertinent freedom in action or speech, or a form or instance of it:
to take liberties.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/liberty?s=t

Notice how each use of the word is defined by use of the word FREEDOM!

Freedom, don’t fear it. Embrace it.

wv wrote:

I’m leavin to go camping in a few minutes. Maybe float in the water, eat some cicadas, lay in a hammock. That sort of thing. Probly wont take a gun, but I’m goin inta southern wv with a Bernie sticker on my car, so I might decide to take a gun.

You asked about places in TN and I spent all day in Roan Mtn. State Park, specifically Carver’s Gap. My son says the view there when the sky is clear is the second best on the entire Appalachian trail. (Second to the White Mtns. of New Hampshire.) The rhododendron festival packed the park and trails and the temperature at 20 degrees lower than in the valley made hiking great.

Oh and this was done in TN and NC where you can conceal carry in the state parks and national parks. And as usual no shots fired!

Eternal Ramnation wrote:

I support your 2nd amendment rights, if you are a member of a well regulated militia you may have and bear a musket.

Wrong. That was decided so very long ago. The militia was comprised of people who owned and served in the militia with THEIR OWN FIREARMS. Every advance in gun technology has been made available to law abiding citizens ever since.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw is framing the debate — or it was framed for him — in an extremist, radical way, that was considered on the edges of the fringe in America for more than two centuries. It was NOT a part of American jurisprudence to view the 2nd amendment as bestowing an individual right to own weapons or use them. It was, for two centuries, considered tied to membership in state militias, and only for those state militias. And, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term “bear arms” referred to presentation of arms in a military context — not in the home, not for private citizens in their day to day lives.

As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

It is only due to a concerted, organized effort on the right to reinvent the 2nd amendment, pushed by the gun industry, that bnw’s wildly radical vision is even known by more than that fringe. The conservative judge, Earl Warren, called this right-wing movement to rewrite the SA “fraud.”

Tons of good articles on this subject:

How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment

Originalism as Popular Constitutionalism in Heller

The Price We Pay for Liberty?

For starters . . . .

You act as if it is 1802 and the issue hasn’t any history. Well it’s a 230 year history that covers the private ownership of guns from muskets through machine guns for law abiding citizens.

zn wrote:

bnw wrote:

Those that support the 2nd Amendment want freedom. Those that don’t support the 2nd Amendment want perceived safety. I see no middle ground.

And the gun debate to me boils down to the difference between people who see it the way you just said you see it, and the rest of us.

I don’t see it as being anything even remotely the way you describe. Not even a tiny bit. I take your description of the discussion as this completely alien viewpoint.

It has nothing to do with “freedom.”

And all over the world, there are societies with different forms of gun control that are ALSO completely democratic–frankly, in a lot of cases, more than we are.

So here is what you have to get used to, IMO.

For the rest of us, your way of seeing the DEBATE is alien. I don’t mean your position on guns etc. I don’t even see the DEBATE ITSELF as being about the same thing you do. We see the DEBATE differently. That means we are not the opposite of you, it means we come from a position that does not even see the DEBATE the way you see it.

That leads to 2 choices.

1. Block out and fight with everyone who doesn’t even see the DEBATE the way you see it. That’s the stubborn party-liner approach.

2. Actually try to find out what the other side thinks the DEBATE is even ABOUT. Cause, frankly, right now, I don’t think you can do that. That’s not personal–it refers to your position in a discussion. I don’t think from your position that you could post an accurate description of what the rest of us even think the debate is ABOUT.

For one thing, most of us do not equate the 2nd amendment with freedom, and never will. In fact to me that’s so foreign it sounds like someone stating as solid real truths some religious beliefs I don’t share. So to me we are not choosing between “freedom” and the militia amendment…that has nothing to do with it. To me, there is no such choice. It’s as if you asked me to choose between eating my vegetables and sacrificing to a wrathful sun god. I just go “uh, there is no such thing as a sun god,” and keep eating my vegetables.

Really. It gets down to that. You and I don’t even define what the debate is about in the same way.

So like I said there’s the 2 choices.

It has everything to do with freedom. The BOR guarantees certain freedoms. Your position is the “alien” position. We have so many laws already on the books regarding firearms now. If you honestly believe your position is correct and has the support of the people then you will have to amend the constitution. You have two choices:

Get it passed through congress (won’t happen) then have it ratified by 3/4 of the states. Won’t happen.

Get petitions from at least 34 states (won’t happen) in order to convene a constitutional convention to propose one or more amendments and then get 38 states (won’t happen) to ratify.

That is the only way to get what you want. Executive Orders won’t cut it not with the BOR.