Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

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Boac
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#81 Post by Boac » Thu Jul 28, 2022 6:22 pm

boing - just reign in that galloping mare of yours, Mr Revere! I am not criticising the 2nd, but pointing out that while it was originally written with the best (and necessary) aims it is now totally outdated. I have no desire to 'campaign' against it - you are very simply stuck with it and I wish the US good luck.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#82 Post by Dushan » Thu Jul 28, 2022 6:54 pm

If the second is outdated, for some reason, then the first could be deemed so as well.

At the time the only way to disseminate one's speech was by voice, press, and published works. You can argue that it does not extend to TV, radio, and internet because of that, yet we fully accept that it does.

So the restriction to infringe the bearing of arms today is no less relevant than it was 250 years ago.
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#83 Post by Undried Plum » Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:06 pm

boing wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 5:11 pm
a concept and guidelines that have served the US well for over 200 years
The second amendment most emphatically has NOT served the people of the US well.

It has led directly to an average of three children per day being killed or seriously injured by firearms which are owned and operated outside the context of a well regulated militia. It has led to far more Americans being killed by the damned things than the total number of US servicemen killed in the whole of the second world war plus the whole Korean war plus the whole of The American War in Vietnam combined.

It has been a bloody disaster for the US and continues to be so.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#84 Post by boing » Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:45 pm

Plum,

You are not paying attention. The existence of a right is the basic concept. In this case that right allows possession of a firearm but it in no way endorses committing a crime with that firearm. The Bill of Rights is a list of rights not a compilation of laws. As a parallel argument we have the classic case of crying "Fire" in a cinema which has been raised over the First Amendment. Yes, you have a right to cry fire in a cinema but it is accepted that if you do so you face the consequences. In exactly the same way the people have a right to possess a firearm but they should face the consequences for misuse --- this is what is not happening.

I can guarantee you that misuse of firearms would decrease dramatically if people were given an automatic ten year sentence for introducing a firearm into a road rage incident or robbery and even more time for using it

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#85 Post by Boac » Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:01 pm

Dushan wrote:If the second is outdated, for some reason, then the first could be deemed so as well.

At the time the only way to disseminate one's speech was by voice, press, and published works. You can argue that it does not extend to TV, radio, and internet because of that, yet we fully accept that it does.

So the restriction to infringe the bearing of arms today is no less relevant than it was 250 years ago.
To say your logic processes are broken is being kind.

Have a go at explaining why you need a well-regulated militia.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#86 Post by John Hill » Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:48 pm

Dushan wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 6:07 pm
John Hill wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:40 pm


Like I said
The sheeple become immersed in a flood of quasi religious and patriotic clap trap and when any controversial subject arises it can be readily settled by invoking a convenient interpretation of holy scriptures. Gun rights and abortion are obvious examples.
Gun rights are definitely there in the Bill of Rights. The word "abortion" is nowhere to be found in the declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, and any other document considered as a founding fathers' core documentation.

You really need to try harder...

Abortion is however included in various religious clap-trap so what is your point, except to agree with me?
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#87 Post by John Hill » Thu Jul 28, 2022 9:16 pm

Boac wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 8:01 pm
Have a go at explaining why you need a well-regulated militia.

I hope I do not have to wait too long to see the answer to this.
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#88 Post by boing » Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:23 pm

Well regulated militia.

Very simple. Unlike the UK and NZ in America there was a long way between population centres that could support any sort of official military units and the national government was not yet developed in the remote areas so the only type of semi-organised units that could be formed were citizen militias (and clearly a well regulated militia was preferable to an unregulated one). Not to mention the fact that the newly free states had a very healthy distrust of government controlled military units. Very obvious really.

Please excuse me jumping in Dushan but these guys seemed to be in rush for an answer. Perhaps now they will be able to answer points made to them rather than creating new points to hide their inability to answer the old ones.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#89 Post by llondel » Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:48 pm

boing wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:23 pm
Well regulated militia.

Very simple. Unlike the UK and NZ in America there was a long way between population centres that could support any sort of official military units and the national government was not yet developed in the remote areas so the only type of semi-organised units that could be formed were citizen militias (and clearly a well regulated militia was preferable to an unregulated one). Not to mention the fact that the newly free states had a very healthy distrust of government controlled military units. Very obvious really.

Please excuse me jumping in Dushan but these guys seemed to be in rush for an answer. Perhaps now they will be able to answer points made to them rather than creating new points to hide their inability to answer the old ones.

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I would say that was the reason the US needed a well-regulated militia. I think things have changed significantly since then.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#90 Post by John Hill » Fri Jul 29, 2022 12:15 am

boing wrote:
Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:23 pm
Well regulated militia.

Very simple. Unlike the UK and NZ in America there was a long way between population centres that could support any sort of official military units and the national government was not yet developed in the remote areas so the only type of semi-organised units that could be formed were citizen militias (and clearly a well regulated militia was preferable to an unregulated one).
Very interesting. However this does raise the question of why any military units were required in those remote areas.
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#91 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:54 am

The badly draughted amendment to the badly draughted constitution failed to make clear the relevance of the second amendment to a well regulated militia.

Nowadays the US has a very well regulated militia in the form of the US Army and half a dozen other branches of the armed forces.

The cause of the epidemic of mass shootings is very directly caused by the failure to ensure that gun ownership is to be maintained within the context of the modern equivalent of a well regulated militia.

The gun nuts of America are fond of quoting the high level of gun possession in Switzerland, but they ignore the fact that in that country such possession is mostly under very tight control by the military Reserve. Not only the guns, but also the ammunition. Regular (that word again) inspections are carried out to check that the seals on the privately possessed ammunition boxes are intact.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#92 Post by John Hill » Fri Jul 29, 2022 7:36 am

Oh, but they do have a 'well regulated militia' ...........
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#93 Post by boing » Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:04 pm

You are apparently not aware that civilian militias, as defined by the government, have been banned for many years.

Here is an article published from "Findlaw" a legal community journal.
By Christopher Coble, Esq. on January 08, 2016 10:07 AM

They're right there in the Constitution, prefacing the right to bear arms: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ..." Those words were ratified in 1791, a time before a standing army, National Guard, or city, county, or state police forces.

Are militias still necessary? And beyond that, are they even legal?

Which Militia?

The legality of militias depends largely on which militia you're talking about. By strict definition, a militia is a group of private citizens who are trained for military duty in case they need to be called upon to defend their state or country in an emergency. And as the United States has grown and changed, so has the definition and sanctioning of militias.

Some states have a reserve military or state-sanctioned militia, referred to as the state guard or foot guard. For example, the New York Guard is a volunteer force that provides additional manpower and support to the New York National Guard. On the other hand, Texas considers any male citizen between the ages of 17 and 45 as belonging to the "Unorganized Reserve Militia" and the state constitution gives the county sheriff and the governor the authority to call on the unorganized reserve militia to uphold the peace, repel invasion, and suppress rebellion.
You see, the definition of a militia has been changed to fit the desires of the Federal government. Initially, because of the lack of detailed government oversight, militias were created on lines determined by the community. As government influence became more widespread the organisation became more standardised but the strict delineation between a community group as opposed to government controlled unit still remained. In fact, as the comments above show, there are still large differences in the approach to the militia from State to State.

But here is the paradox, generally only trained (and government approved) militias are now sanctioned but how can trained militia be created unless an UN-trained militia exists to provide the training? In most of the US it is now illegal for a group of citizens to join together, say they are going to train themselves as a militia unit, and offer themselves to the service of the State. Very specifically under Federal law this is not possible and attempts to start a true civilian militia are prevented firmly and sometimes violently by the government. The response to forming a militia is generally "If you want to play part time soldier join the State Guard unit" which totally ignores the fact the State Guard is under the control of the State Governer and it is, unless there is a strong governor, in effect under the control of the Pentagon.

So, in no way can a "well regulated militia" of civilians actually be created and all of the descriptions of (left or right wing, make your choice) militias are total rubbish, they are, at most, untrained groups of like minded people.

If you want to find a photo of illegal militia take a look at this photo. Military weapons, military clothing, etc. Our good friends AntiFa at the Portland riots. Funny no one complained about this group.
image.cfm.jpg
image.cfm.jpg (48.04 KiB) Viewed 210 times

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#94 Post by John Hill » Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:26 pm

boing wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:04 pm
You are apparently not aware that civilian militias, as defined by the government, have been banned for many years.
I guess you have not yet read the full text of the Sacred Document :-
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.
Do you see that bit about a 'free State'? So no wonder that the Federal government would try to ban the 'regulated Militia' when the divine Framers clearly intended the Militia to keep the States free, 'free' from whom? Well obviously free from an overbearing Federal government.
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#95 Post by boing » Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:58 pm

The sentence you quote has been subject to microscopic examination for many years. There are two main camps, (I can't remember what they call themselves right now but we will use "originalists" and "constructionists") Originalists stand by the actual grammatical meaning and intent of the sentence as understood when it was written. Constructionalists say the meaning of the sentence must be interpreted according to modern circumstances. You will hear (whatever expressions are used these days) of members of the Supreme Court being labelled as one or the other depending on their interpretations of the Constitution.

Now which of the interpretations is more valid? Originalists may be out of date but they have a firm grammatical and historic bias towards their ideas, they have the written words. The ideas of Constructionalists are designed to change over a period of time, perhaps to the extant that the words in the Bill of Rights become meaningless. Fortunately there is a third way, amendment of the Constitution as expressed in the document itself. So why is this third way not used? First, the Originalists do not care because they like things the way they are. Second, the Constructionists have a tough road to walk (which is why they would rather pack the Supreme Court with sympathisers than try amendment). I can fully support the idea that there could be a publicly approved amendment to the second amendment but I totally cannot support this being imposed by political manoeuvre by a minority.

By the way, you may be misinterpreting the word State. In this context I believe State refers to the nation. This link covers the general arguments, you can see the interpretation of the word is quite critical.
What Does “Free State” Mean in the Second Amendment?
By Eugene Volokh on June 15, 2007 5:00 pm

I thought I’d pass an excerpt from a new article of mine, “Necessary to the Security of a Free State,” which will be coming out in the Notre Dame Law Review this Fall. I might blog more excerpts from it next week, but for now here’s the Introduction; to see citations, and the rest of the article, look here.
https://volokh.com/2007/06/15/what-does ... amendment/


Another point you have forgotten is that the United States is not technically a nation, it is a conglomeration of States. I do not know how many States this applies to but technically, if not practically, individual States can succeed from the Union over contentious issues. So, I suggest you spend several years reading all the arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment and when you have established your new theory that nobody else has discovered get back to us.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#96 Post by llondel » Fri Jul 29, 2022 6:24 pm

boing wrote:
Fri Jul 29, 2022 5:58 pm
Now which of the interpretations is more valid? Originalists may be out of date but they have a firm grammatical and historic bias towards their ideas, they have the written words. The ideas of Constructionalists are designed to change over a period of time, perhaps to the extant that the words in the Bill of Rights become meaningless. Fortunately there is a third way, amendment of the Constitution as expressed in the document itself. So why is this third way not used? First, the Originalists do not care because they like things the way they are. Second, the Constructionists have a tough road to walk (which is why they would rather pack the Supreme Court with sympathisers than try amendment). I can fully support the idea that there could be a publicly approved amendment to the second amendment but I totally cannot support this being imposed by political manoeuvre by a minority.
The way things are at the moment, it's quite possible for something to have 75% support of the people and yet fail. Classic problem with a representative democracy where the person elected to represent you may not vote the way you want and there's nothing you can do about it until the next election, and possibly not even then. If you stick a party rosette on a pig there are people who will blindly vote for the pig, which is not a problem confined to the US.

The US is stuck with a very unrepresentative Senate, probably because the writers of the constitution never thought the country would end up with California's 40 million people having the same power in the Senate as Wyoming's half a million, or possibly because that's exactly what they wanted. There are occasional attempts to get a measure on the ballot to get California to split into several smaller states, but these generally fail because the proposed boundaries are blatantly gerrymandered to end up with (based on the last attempt) two Republican-biased states and one Democrat-biased state.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#97 Post by boing » Fri Jul 29, 2022 7:14 pm

Very true. I can't remember the number used but it is well said that CA is something like 10 countries in one state. The urge to split is also active in Oregon. For many years the direction of the state has been decided by voters in the major cities and several counties in Oregon have actually voted for transferring to a combined state with Idaho to be called Greater Idaho. The whole push is due to obvious lack of voters in rural areas versus the cities.

We actually see now why the electoral college is a perhaps flawed but necessary tool to prevent rural states being dominated by the more populated states.

I liked the idea for repositioning the national border between the US and Canada. Use the new border to split the countries vertically rather than horizontally because the attitudes in the western US and western Canada are more compatible than between the west and east parts of both counties. Of course, we have to deal with CA but that's nothing some Gulags in Death Valley can't fix.

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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#98 Post by John Hill » Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:12 pm

By the way, you may be misinterpreting the word State. In this context I believe State refers to the nation. This link covers the general arguments, you can see the interpretation of the word is quite critical.
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Another point you have forgotten is that the United States is not technically a nation, it is a conglomeration of States. I do not know how many States this applies to but technically, if not practically, individual States can succeed from the Union over contentious issues. So, I suggest you spend several years reading all the arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment and when you have established your new theory that nobody else has discovered get back to us.

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[/quote]

That is all very interesting, thank you and the message I get from this is that your country, nation, et al, is in a serious condition.
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#99 Post by John Hill » Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:56 pm

You may recall I wrote ......
You should spend time in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or any others of the host of theocracies to be found in the world today.
.. and the further we look at this Second Amendment imbroglio the more we see that the USA and Afghanistan et al. have more in common than we would like to even consider.
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Re: Another mass shooting, but the system is working!

#100 Post by bob2s » Fri Jul 29, 2022 11:59 pm

I believe that the only way for the gun debate to change is for half of the presiding members of the court to meet their demise at the hand of a gun-toting idiot, I am
sure that the other judges in a very quick fashion will rule that the 2nd amendment is out of date and requires changing regardless of what the gun lobby says. The
ramifications of this would possibly have the gun lovers rioting about their rights being taken away. I know the above will never come to pass, but sooner or later
people have to come to their senses and put human life above the right to bear arms.

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