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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the 2a just a "well armed malitia"? Maybe an RPG is more than well armed, but encryption?

"well-regulated militia," but it's pretty much an open question how much that actually has to do with the right described in the second clause. Gun rights activists tend to down-play that first bit, as it implies a collective perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with unlimited individual gun ownership rights.

Some context into the mindset and beliefs of the people who penned the original amendment is helpful in this case, but you find very little in support of the level of control that the anti-2A people want.

Gun rights antagonists tend to downplay that bit, as it implies an individual perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with tightly-controlled gun ownership permissions.

They also downplay that in every case of a gun being used in some criminal way, numerous laws and regulations are already being broken. So what difference will more regulations make? The only thing that could possibly give the gun-control people what they really want is total confiscation of all guns, and even if that were somehow possible there would be a civil war over that if it were to be seriously attempted.

> The only thing that could possibly give the gun-control people what they really want is total confiscation of all guns

Strawmen are so unhelpful in reasonable debate.

Not all gun control advocates are either anti-second amendment, nor in favor of eliminating all guns. To say otherwise, creating a false black/white dichotomy in the gun debate, does a massive disservice to both gun advocates and gun control proponents.

Ironically, by making the choice "all guns" or "no guns", gun advocates themselves are forcing the "no guns" option to the center of the debate. As a wave of frustrated anti-gun youth become voters and reasonable political moderates look at options to "protect the children", I really think it's in gun proponents' best interests to provide a better alternative than "do nothing" on one side and "civil war" on the other.

It ceases to be a strawman when it's on a sign held by protestors acting in good faith[1].

At the end of the day, these stances, even the "moderate" ones you mention, are irreconcilable all the way down to first principles. If you are for gun control, you are necessarily for measures that will restrict the right to bear arms as it is recognized today, some more, some less, but restrictions on the right all the same.

There's no real evading that.

[1] https://pics.me.me/yes-i-do-want-to-take-away-youur-guns-you...

agar said that not all gun control advocates want to repeal the second amendment, not that there aren't any gun control advocates who want to repeal the second amendment.

Of course some gun control advocates want a "we've come to collect your guns" law. I never said that no one holds extreme positions.

But that does not mean that everyone holds extreme positions, which is what you claimed.

Arguing that the extremes are the only options is a problem.

How productive would health debates be if the only two options presented were veganism and paleo? If the only sex ed options are abstinence or polyamory?

There must be room for compromise, or there is no debate, only argumentation.

The problem is that the "compromise" touted by gun control advocates is entirely one-sided - more restrictions, no concessions. No quid-pro-quo, only further restrictions on the right.

That's not compromise, that's capitulation.

This leads to an honest question on my part:

What concessions would gun rights advocates accept in order to allow some restrictions? What's there left to give on this issue that wouldn't undermine any controls.

Say, for example, I wanted gun owners/users to be required to be as responsible as car users, i.e. pass a test, maintain a license and registration for weapons and weapon users, and hold liability insurance to cover damage either intentional or accidental (that would obviously scale with the likelihood and amount of damage the gun can do). What can gun control advocates give that will get that done?

I think part of the reason the gun debate can be one sided from the "control" side is that the US already is quite far to the "rights" side of the spectrum, relative to the rest of the developed world. It can be difficult to see where we could plausibly move further in that direction without causing more of the problems we're (hopefully) all trying to solve: unnecessary bloodshed.

In your example, since we now have a mandatory testing/licensing scheme and insurance, I see no reason why CCW's countrywide shouldn't become shall-issue. There should also be a stipulation that licensing is a thing you grant to people, not individual weapons.

Another example I floated in previous threads is surfacing psychological issues in NICS checks (stuff like certain diseases or involuntary holds) and granting access to that system to everyday people rather than just retailers.

My state constitution clarifies it as "The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state..."

Does it really say ‘himself’?

Yes, it likely does. With English lacking a gender-neutral pronoun, "he" or "him" or "his" historically did not necessarily imply the male sex, depending on context. As "man" can refer to all of humankind, again it's a matter of context.

Yet the actual second amendment seems to avoid the problem as far as I can see. Edit: And of all the second amendment issues that could be argued, I somehow picked this one.

I wish this was the only surprising bit in the constitution of Alabama. The section outlawing interracial marriage was only removed in 2000, and it still contains a section mandating segregated public schools.

Your state constitution doesn't particularly get a say in what the US constitution means (so says the 10th amendment).

That's not necessarily true. The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment only prohibits the federal government from "infringing" on your right to bear arms, and not the states.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_Unit...

> The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment only prohibits the federal government from "infringing" on your right to bear arms, and not the states.

This was true only between 2008 and 2010. In 2010, the Supreme Court clarified that it was incorporated against the states by the 14th Amendment.

How is it then that different states infringe on the right to bear arms to different degrees?

And it was indeed the case well before 2008-2010. See United States v. Cruikshank (1875), Presser v. Illinois (1886), Miller v. Texas (1894).

See DC vs Heller, 2008.

> "it implies a collective perspective that they find conceptually incompatible"

so says you. it's not clear to me at all that militia members don't support collective action

The militia in that sentence IS the collective action. How many gun owners are part of a well-regulated militia?

Even the NRA removed references to that first clause from their material.

To be fair, militias of the day weren't generally standing militias, and needed to be mustered.

We do have definitions as to what militias are informed to us by writings of the founders, the federalist papers, previous drafts of the second amendment and, failing that, codified by law in 10 US Code § 311. The definition of militia there ("consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard") will likely have been expanded by our recent advances in military equality.

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