Something I hear a lot, in the ultra-blue precincts I haunt, is that the Second Amendment is a superannuated relic, an eighteenth-century atavism, and has no place in modern America. I hear mutterings about flintlocks and muskets, and become aware of a prevailing sentiment that the thing simply ought to be chucked.
Well, have a go, then! But read this first.
6 Comments
I love it! First time I have seen any proper assessment of what it would actually take to repeal the Second Amendment. BTW I see he agrees in passing with the idea that attempted confiscation of firearms would cause a civil war. I’ve been saying that for a couple of years now.
None of those nattering on about flintlocks and militias seem to want to apply that logic to the First Amendment. After all, our founding fathers could not have foreseen broadcasting, much less the internet. Surely then the Amendment only applies to manually operated printing presses, and publisher applies only to the person owning the press, not a corporation or a blogger?
The left is apoplectic with rage about guns because they can’t do anything about them. As a legal matter, the left has definitively not gotten its way on the Second Amendment (one of the few areas this is true). As a practical matter, “banning the guns” isn’t going to happen, as the linked article demonstrates.
What remains is the left going into status-striving mode by crying about how guns are evil. Missing from this conversation is a comparison between black and white gun crime rates. Control for black rates and US white gun crime is at or below Europe’s rate of gun crime.
Liberals have nothing on this issue and know it. The rest is just red sheets of anger about not getting their way.
Something I hear a lot, in the ultra-blue precincts I haunt
That must be really depressing. I’ve wanted to ask how is it that you can tolerate all that smug and stupidity.
If the left is so certain of their moral superiority, then they should put their money where there mouth is. Put a big sign on their front lawn that says “The 2nd Amendment should be repealed. This house does not have any weapons and neither should yours.”
C’mon you smug, cowardly jerkoffs, put your money where your mouth is.
But they won’t do that, because they are cowards. Freedom hating coward hypocrites who don’t mind using force under the cloak of government to achieve their means.
In defense of the gun grabbers, advocates of an armed citizenry have downplayed the real purpose of the 2A which was to defend against tyrannical government
On rhetorical method I’ve used to great effect against gun grabbers is simply to point out that if guns are really so bad then it makes no sense to let government have them as well. How they do not see that one coming is beyond me.
Finally, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that their argument that small arms aren’t a match for predator drones (in large enough numbers this is a dubious claim) is simply admitting that might makes right (it does, but that’s another matter).
Asher, the best response to your first argument is that the “social contract”, by which we lift ourselves out of Hobbesian brutishness, cedes to the State a monopoly (or at least a near-monopoly) on the use of force. If your interlocutors don’t have this response ready to hand, it only means they haven’t really thought much about any of this.
The concession of that monopoly is, however, a risky one. The understanding that a prudent people must secure for themselves a means to make it reversible is why we have the Second Amendment.
When pressed on this point, most of the hoplophobes I know will then deny the seriousness of the risk, despite ample historical evidence that it is always a very serious risk indeed, even in the most sophisticated democracies.
Your other points are good ones, I think.