Repeal The Second Amendment

[westwall]

holic, Which of our rights would you target next? Privacy? Speech? All of them?
Get your hands off of my Rights. The fact that you want to remove freedoms instead of adding to them, means you are to stupid to be making decisions that effect me..

Didn't read the article, eh?

Bret Stephens is a conservative.

I didn't write the article.

A repeal of the 2nd doesn't mean you can't have guns.

Anyone who has ever read anything by that clown knows he is an elitist of the first order. That means he could never be a conservative or a liberal either. Elitists are the same as progressive scum. Which you should know.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

“From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious.”

It’s also ridiculous, idiotic, and wrong.

The First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments are the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power, not the Second.

Indeed, the Second Amendment doesn’t ‘trump’ the First – that a small minority of conservatives incorrectly perceive ‘the government’ as having become ‘tyrannical’ is not ‘justification’ to seek its ‘overthrow.’

A government put in place by a majority of the people – reflecting the will of the majority of the people – can only be removed at the behest of the majority of the people, through only the democratic process, consistent with the Constitution and its case law, not by a minority of citizens with an unfounded, unwarranted hostility to government through ‘force of arms.’

The Second Amendment codifies an individual right to possess a firearm pursuant to the right of lawful self-defense – not to act as a ‘check’ on government excess and overreach.

 

[Harry Dresden]

‘Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.’

Nonsense.

It’s because the people are ignorance of the Constitution, its case law, and how the law works.

The Constitution exists solely in the context of its case law – including the Second Amendment.

And Democrats support current Second Amendment jurisprudence, as determined by the Supreme Court: that the rights enshrined in the Second Amendment are not ‘absolute’ – that those rights are subject to reasonable restrictions by government.

It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER

Indeed, firearm regulatory measures advocated by Democrats are perfectly consistent with Second Amendment case law, where none of the proposed measures have been invalidated by the Supreme Court.

Consequently, Democrats’ fidelity to the Second Amendment is just as sincere as President Obama’s support of traditional marriage, where protecting the right of same-sex couples to marry is to defend traditional marriage, consistent with the Constitution and its case law, as determined by the Supreme Court.

no_reply_jones with another crock of shit.....care to reply jones?....

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Democrats are certainly welcome to put their next presidential campaign on repealing the second amendment.

Why wait? Run on it in 2018! PLEASE!

McCaskill is already being destroyed by it...spread it across the country as fast as possible.

De-Claire

Her opponent in 2012, Todd "Rape Is No Big Deal" Akin, got the same percentage of votes that hillary would get in 2016.

 

[Hossfly]

Written by uber-conservative Bret Stephens.


Opinion | Repeal the Second Amendment


I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder. “States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.

From a personal-safety standpoint, more guns means less safety. The F.B.I. counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” by private citizens involving firearms in 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those killed were children.

From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass.

From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?

And now we have the relatively new and now ubiquitous “active shooter” phenomenon, something that remains extremely rare in the rest of the world. Conservatives often say that the right response to these horrors is to do more on the mental-health front. Yet by all accounts Stephen Paddock would not have raised an eyebrow with a mental-health professional before he murdered 58 people in Las Vegas last week.

What might have raised a red flag? I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F.B.I. field office would have noticed.

Given all of this, why do liberals keep losing the gun control debate?

Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.


*SNIP*


Repealing the Amendment may seem like political Mission Impossible today, but in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth recalling that most great causes begin as improbable ones. Gun ownership should never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a blanket Constitutional protection, either. The 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that soon awaits us.


*SNIP*


Some conservatives will insist that the Second Amendment is fundamental to the structure of American liberty. They will cite James Madison, who noted in the Federalist Papers that in Europe “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” America was supposed to be different, and better.

I wonder what Madison would have to say about that today, when more than twice as many Americans perished last year at the hands of their fellows as died in battle during the entire Revolutionary War. My guess: Take the guns—or at least the presumptive right to them—away. The true foundation of American exceptionalism should be our capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, not our instinct for self-destruction.




You should go read the parts I snipped out.

Keep the 2d Amendment, repeal the 2d Amendment, it really doesn't matter to conservative gun owners. We're gonna keep our guns either way.

 

[Old Rocks]

Written by uber-conservative Bret Stephens.


Opinion | Repeal the Second Amendment


I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder. “States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.

From a personal-safety standpoint, more guns means less safety. The F.B.I. counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” by private citizens involving firearms in 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those killed were children.

From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass.

From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?

And now we have the relatively new and now ubiquitous “active shooter” phenomenon, something that remains extremely rare in the rest of the world. Conservatives often say that the right response to these horrors is to do more on the mental-health front. Yet by all accounts Stephen Paddock would not have raised an eyebrow with a mental-health professional before he murdered 58 people in Las Vegas last week.

What might have raised a red flag? I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F.B.I. field office would have noticed.

Given all of this, why do liberals keep losing the gun control debate?

Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.


*SNIP*


Repealing the Amendment may seem like political Mission Impossible today, but in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth recalling that most great causes begin as improbable ones. Gun ownership should never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a blanket Constitutional protection, either. The 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that soon awaits us.


*SNIP*


Some conservatives will insist that the Second Amendment is fundamental to the structure of American liberty. They will cite James Madison, who noted in the Federalist Papers that in Europe “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” America was supposed to be different, and better.

I wonder what Madison would have to say about that today, when more than twice as many Americans perished last year at the hands of their fellows as died in battle during the entire Revolutionary War. My guess: Take the guns—or at least the presumptive right to them—away. The true foundation of American exceptionalism should be our capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, not our instinct for self-destruction.




You should go read the parts I snipped out.

He's as big a conservative as you are. In other words, he ain't one.

You assholes continue to defend the sale and conversion of the assault weapons to anyone with the money, and we see more atrocities like that at Vegas, you are going to see a real movement to repeal the Second. I do not agree with that, but I do agree with making a law requiring you to have the same license to have one of those assault weapons off your property as is required to own a fully auto .45 Thompson.

Look at the recent progression. 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook. 49 killed, 58 wounded at Orlando. And now 56 killed, nearly 500 wounded at Vegas. And the profiles of the killers all very different. What was similiar was the choice of weapons, and their easy availability.

 

[Rustic]

holic, Which of our rights would you target next? Privacy? Speech? All of them?
Get your hands off of my Rights. The fact that you want to remove freedoms instead of adding to them, means you are to stupid to be making decisions that effect me..

Didn't read the article, eh?

Bret Stephens is a conservative.

I didn't write the article.

A repeal of the 2nd doesn't mean you can't have guns.

It is all about control with you progressives, huh?
Lol

 

[Old Rocks]

holic, Which of our rights would you target next? Privacy? Speech? All of them?
Get your hands off of my Rights. The fact that you want to remove freedoms instead of adding to them, means you are to stupid to be making decisions that effect me..

Didn't read the article, eh?

Bret Stephens is a conservative.

I didn't write the article.

A repeal of the 2nd doesn't mean you can't have guns.

It is all about control with you progressives, huh?
Lol

Why no, it is about putting accessories to murder like you out of business. LOL Scared to death you might lose out on the sale of those weapons that are so handy in cleaning out crowded grade school classrooms, nightclubs, and Country and Western concerts? LOL

 

[Rustic]

Written by uber-conservative Bret Stephens.


Opinion | Repeal the Second Amendment


I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder. “States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.

From a personal-safety standpoint, more guns means less safety. The F.B.I. counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” by private citizens involving firearms in 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those killed were children.

From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass.

From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?

And now we have the relatively new and now ubiquitous “active shooter” phenomenon, something that remains extremely rare in the rest of the world. Conservatives often say that the right response to these horrors is to do more on the mental-health front. Yet by all accounts Stephen Paddock would not have raised an eyebrow with a mental-health professional before he murdered 58 people in Las Vegas last week.

What might have raised a red flag? I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F.B.I. field office would have noticed.

Given all of this, why do liberals keep losing the gun control debate?

Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.


*SNIP*


Repealing the Amendment may seem like political Mission Impossible today, but in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth recalling that most great causes begin as improbable ones. Gun ownership should never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a blanket Constitutional protection, either. The 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that soon awaits us.


*SNIP*


Some conservatives will insist that the Second Amendment is fundamental to the structure of American liberty. They will cite James Madison, who noted in the Federalist Papers that in Europe “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” America was supposed to be different, and better.

I wonder what Madison would have to say about that today, when more than twice as many Americans perished last year at the hands of their fellows as died in battle during the entire Revolutionary War. My guess: Take the guns—or at least the presumptive right to them—away. The true foundation of American exceptionalism should be our capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, not our instinct for self-destruction.




You should go read the parts I snipped out.

He's as big a conservative as you are. In other words, he ain't one.

You assholes continue to defend the sale and conversion of the assault weapons to anyone with the money, and we see more atrocities like that at Vegas, you are going to see a real movement to repeal the Second. I do not agree with that, but I do agree with making a law requiring you to have the same license to have one of those assault weapons off your property as is required to own a fully auto .45 Thompson.

Look at the recent progression. 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook. 49 killed, 58 wounded at Orlando. And now 56 killed, nearly 500 wounded at Vegas. And the profiles of the killers all very different. What was similiar was the choice of weapons, and their easy availability.

Time for the next news story to dominate the news…
The chances of being killed by someone using an AR style of sporting rifle is next to nothing.

 

[Rustic]

holic, Which of our rights would you target next? Privacy? Speech? All of them?
Get your hands off of my Rights. The fact that you want to remove freedoms instead of adding to them, means you are to stupid to be making decisions that effect me..

Didn't read the article, eh?

Bret Stephens is a conservative.

I didn't write the article.

A repeal of the 2nd doesn't mean you can't have guns.

It is all about control with you progressives, huh?
Lol

Why no, it is about putting accessories to murder like you out of business. LOL Scared to death you might lose out on the sale of those weapons that are so handy in cleaning out crowded grade school classrooms, nightclubs, and Country and Western concerts? LOL

Shit happens
More people die from falling out of bed then from being killed by someone using an AR type sporting rifle...

 

[danielpalos]

Written by uber-conservative Bret Stephens.


Opinion | Repeal the Second Amendment


I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder. “States with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” noted one exhaustive 2013 study in the American Journal of Public Health.

From a personal-safety standpoint, more guns means less safety. The F.B.I. counted a total of 268 “justifiable homicides” by private citizens involving firearms in 2015; that is, felons killed in the course of committing a felony. Yet that same year, there were 489 “unintentional firearms deaths” in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Between 77 and 141 of those killed were children.

From a national-security standpoint, the Amendment’s suggestion that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State,” is quaint. The Minutemen that will deter Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un are based in missile silos in Minot, N.D., not farmhouses in Lexington, Mass.

From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious. The Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, the New York draft riots of 1863, the coal miners’ rebellion of 1921, the Brink’s robbery of 1981 — does any serious conservative think of these as great moments in Second Amendment activism?

And now we have the relatively new and now ubiquitous “active shooter” phenomenon, something that remains extremely rare in the rest of the world. Conservatives often say that the right response to these horrors is to do more on the mental-health front. Yet by all accounts Stephen Paddock would not have raised an eyebrow with a mental-health professional before he murdered 58 people in Las Vegas last week.

What might have raised a red flag? I’m not the first pundit to point out that if a “Mohammad Paddock” had purchased dozens of firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition and then checked himself into a suite at the Mandalay Bay with direct views to a nearby music festival, somebody at the local F.B.I. field office would have noticed.

Given all of this, why do liberals keep losing the gun control debate?

Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.


*SNIP*


Repealing the Amendment may seem like political Mission Impossible today, but in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth recalling that most great causes begin as improbable ones. Gun ownership should never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a blanket Constitutional protection, either. The 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that soon awaits us.


*SNIP*


Some conservatives will insist that the Second Amendment is fundamental to the structure of American liberty. They will cite James Madison, who noted in the Federalist Papers that in Europe “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” America was supposed to be different, and better.

I wonder what Madison would have to say about that today, when more than twice as many Americans perished last year at the hands of their fellows as died in battle during the entire Revolutionary War. My guess: Take the guns—or at least the presumptive right to them—away. The true foundation of American exceptionalism should be our capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, not our instinct for self-destruction.




You should go read the parts I snipped out.

Well regulated militia of the People, are necessary to the security of a free State.

There should be no security problems in our free States.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

The left cannot even convince the victims in these shootings to give up their rights.

Don't worry about that. Run on repealing the 2A, please. Keep telling yourself its a winner.

 

[MindWars]

Republicans in Congress thinking about buckling on gun control should think twice.

 

[danielpalos]

The left cannot even convince the victims in these shootings to give up their rights.

Don't worry about that. Run on repealing the 2A, please. Keep telling yourself its a winner.

Well regulated militia ensuring the security of our free States, is our right.

 

[MindWars]

 

[danielpalos]

Better aqueducts, better roads, and more well regulated militia ensuring the security of our free States!

 

[Carl in Michigan]

From a law-and-order standpoint, more guns means more murder

LIE!

 

[Carl in Michigan]

He's as big a conservative as you are. In other words, he ain't one.

Oooh, a self-described Liberal telling us all who is and who isn't a conservative!

You Liberals are arrogant!

I'm guessing he uses the term the way the Founders did before the Statists latched on it.

A "liberal" believed in an invisible and limited federal government that FEARED the power of the People.

You are a Statist.

 

[Carl in Michigan]

Well regulated militia of the People, are necessary to the security of a free State.

There should be no security problems in our free States.

"The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted."

Thomas Jefferson, by no means an imprecise thinker, was well aware of this consideration. In commenting upon how the Constitution should properly be read, he said:

"On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning can be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one which was passed."

Yet despite this clear evidence, gun control and prohibition proponents attempt to squeeze out of the text of the Second Amendment the meaning that only a “collective” ― not an individual ― right is guaranteed by the amendment. They argue that the words of the amendment allegedly apply only to the group in our society that is "well regulated" and "keeps and bears arms," the National Guard. But they are wrong.

David I. Caplan, who has examined this issue in depth, provides this analysis:

"In colonial times the term ‘well regulated’ meant ‘well functioning’ ― for this was the meaning of those words at that time, as demonstrated by the following passage from the original 1789 charter of the University of North Carolina: ‘Whereas in all well regulated governments it is the indispensable duty of every Legislatures to consult the happiness of a rising generation…’ Moreover the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘regulated’ among other things as ‘properly disciplined;’ and it defines ‘discipline’ among other things as ‘a trained condition.’"

Privately kept firearms and training with them apart from formal militia mustering thus was encompassed by the Second Amendment, in order to enable able-bodied citizens to be trained by being familiar in advance with the functioning of firearms. In that way, when organized the militia would be able to function well when the need arose to muster and be deployed for sudden military emergencies.

Therefore, even if the opening words of the Amendment, "A well regulated militia…" somehow would be interpreted as strictly limiting "the right of the people to keep…arms"; nevertheless, a properly functioning militia fundamentally presupposes that the individual citizen be allowed to keep, practice, and train himself in the use of firearms.

The National Guard cannot possibly be interpreted as the whole constitutional militia encompassed by the Second Amendment; if for no other reason, the fact that guardsmen are prohibited by law from keeping their own military arms. Instead, these firearms are owned and annually inventoried by the Federal government, and are kept in armories under lock and key.
The James Madison Research Library and Information Center

 

[Old Rocks]

The Supreme Court has already ruled on this issue. It ruled that the type of weapon that is available to the public could be regulated by using licenses to determine if the person buying that gun would be a public menace. That is why it takes a special license to own a fully auto .45 Thompson. That rule should extended to all the semi-auto assault rifles. Furthermore, the magazines should be limited to no more than 10 rounds. That would at least slow down the crazy.