I'll bite.

It flows from our Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

The premise is that our rights are inherently granted by our "Creator", and not by our government.

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"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."

i honestly don't know what youre referencing? i believe that anyone who says it's a right, in the U.S., will say it's a constitutional right. (mike was posting whilst i was also, so perhaps he caught what you are referencing.)
the left wing tree-hugger that covered herself in shit this week is someone i'd consider as someone off the chart. i wont assume that if someone else is left leaning that inherently means they are that far off the chart. ive never heard anyone of my ilk, whom i'd consider normal and rational, say it's a God given right. do you have a reference?

and blep, what do you mean by this? do you mean in man has the ability but it wont happen? do you mean in the U.S. or worldwide?

i wish this gun nut was on this board, but he prob has more important things to do.
https://www.ted.com/...hm_why_i_chose_a_gun

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ΜΟΛΩΝ-ΛΑΒΕ
we're doomed

It is not man-given. 2A does not grant the right to bear arms. 2A prevents the government from infringing on the inherent right to bear arms.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Thread closed.

Yep. JSA nailed it.

It's not just the 2A. The Constitution does not *grant* rights. It acknowledges that certain rights are possessed by all.

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"Du or Du not-there is no Tri" - Yoda

That's a really good point. A lot of folks have the philosophy of our founding documents all kinds of screwed up. The Constitution and the Amendments were intended to create a carefully restricted federal government that had the ability to tell us what to do in only very limited areas. The documents don't "grant rights" to the people. The purpose of the documents is to restrain the feds from "usurping" our pre-existing rights to do whatever the hell we want.

People will look at the 2nd Amendment and say "this gives the feds the authority to <whatever>. That's a sure sign the person doesn't have a clue. You can't look at a document (the Amendments) entirely designed to restrict Fed power and use it to assert "gives the feds the authority" to <whatever>.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

It's extraordinary how often people lose sight of this elementary principle of human rights.
Governments don't give rights. In some circumstances they can restrict them, but in nearly every country there are , in turn, restrictions on the government's ability to restrict citizens' freedoms (generally in their Constitutions, &/or Bills of Rights).

IOW, everything is permitted (rights are innate - what some religious types call god given) unless and until the government by proper process restricts it.

Where the USA differs (and is almost alone) is in having Constitutional protection of the right to bear arms. The only other countries that do so are Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti. President Trump has expressed his respect and admiration for these countries, and this might be why. Not even those countries have the unrestricted rights that the US has (the 'militia' reference was long thought to be a restriction, but the USSC has ruled otherwise).

There are about another six countries in Latin America that had, but repealed, constitutional protection of the right to bear arms.

So, 95% of countries have always seen the sense in the government regulating weapons.
Of the countries that enacted a constitutional protection (every one of them based on the US), most have decided to repeal them.
Of the couple of countries (other than the US) where constitutional protections remain, the right is circumscribed by the constitution itself, and further by other regulations.
The USA is alone in having virtually unrestricted access to weapons constitutionally guaranteed. That is why US citizens can't have what polls show they by a large and increasing majority want - "sensible" gun law reform. No matter how large a majority they might obtain, they are pushing shit uphill with a pointy stick while the 2A remains in its current form. The gun lobby has the constitution on its side, and there won't be any meaningful reform until that is changed.

I don't agree the US has "virtually unristricted access to weapons," but, I agree with (or at least understand) the rest of what you said.

It is our history that lead to this. Think about it. Our Founders lead an illegal coup against the government. Having done so, they wanted to ensure no government could control them again. Right or wrong, they determined self-governance was an inherent right, even to the point where it is the "Right" of the people to take that self-governance by force.

What happened thereafter? Well, we went west. How was the West won? With the Winchester repeater 1873. The gunslingers were legends and a country was made.

When I hear people point to other countries and say, "why can't the US be like them?" I just shake my head. All you have to do is look at our history for an answer to that question.

To your last point - the problem is, those who call for "reasonable gun laws," are among the most irrational (and unversed on the topic) among us, so it is hard to have this conversation. I just don't understand how those who push for gun control the most refuse to become familiar with the subject matter. If I were to push for the regulation of anything, I would try to become an expert on the subject.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

You'd have to acknowledge that there is a large component of mythology built upon a kernel of truth in characterisations like this (your reference to "legend" is appropriate). People obtain their beliefs about this from bad movies, not from evidence.

There are, at least, a couple of elements. One is the idea that as Europeans moved westward, legal infrastructure lagged behind the settlement frontier, and if you encountered a bad guy on that frontier you might need to take justice into your own hands. There is a little truth in this, for a brief period in some locations. But if you played all the bad movies on this topic end to end it would take longer than that entire period in US history.

The related mythology is around "outlaws" (what we call bushrangers), individuals or gangs of ne'er-do-wells who roamed the landscape raping and pillaging beyond the reach of the law. Again, there have been about 50 movies made for every individual who might actually fit the description, and their actual impact on US rural life was insignificant compared to the mythology later adopted about them.

If you want to discuss this with, say, an Australian, you have to expect us to be a bit underwhelmed. The US west wasn't a harsh, unforgiving landscape as we keep hearing. It was a garden of Eden compared to the Australian west. It was "won" pretty quickly by a massive wave of Europeans with hard work and good farming of plentiful fecund land. The struggles were greater, and the threats more real, for Australian settlers.

BTW, do you know when the last Australian bushranger was brought to justice? After committing rape and murder, and living off the land (sleeping in the bush, feeding on wild animals, raiding remote farms and disappearing before the police came anywhere near) for 7 years, Malcolm Naden was captured in March 2012. This was possible because the Australian wild west actually is wild, and remained so long after the US had paved theirs wall-to-wall so you can strap on your guns to go to Wal-Mart and the all you can eat buffet at Panera.

The conclusion of this "gunslingers made the USA" mythology is the notion that most ordinary Americans had and used guns. That just isn't born out by the evidence. Most studies of 18th & 19th century gun ownership (usually drawn from probate records) show that fewer than 15% of private citizens owned guns. That's lower than today (and it was pretty similar to the Australian rate at the time - we have a rich historical gun culture as well). Guns were pretty expensive, and just not very useful.

The US's current gun culture might be influenced by events of more than two centuries ago, but it owes a lot to far more recent decisions. I come from a gun-toting frontier country (that still has relatively high gun ownership and violence rates) but I'm more interested in future directions and outcomes than in being slave to a (largely imagined) history.

What's underwhelming is your shallow interpretation of American history. Yet another non-American telling us what we should be know and do. Right. As we pushed west out of the original Colonies the "West" was Kintuckee and the Ohio River Valley. Guns have been a part of our culture from our very beginning; and that culture both preceded the establishment of our Nation and facilitated its coming into existence.

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Steve

Here's the part I get confused on, cause the Government does infringe on that inherent right already. Why is the right to bear arms limited to the approved weapons list of today and not all arms? Why cant I own a machine gun, etc..

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Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

There are plenty of government restrictions on "the right of the people to keep and bare Arms". In addition to restrictions on some types of weapons (try to buy an A-10 with a GAU-8 30 mm cannon, but that's not allowed), age limits, being a felon, and mental illness can make it illegal to purchase a firearm. Carrying your handgun on a commercial airliner is not permitted. Some local governments have laws restricting gun ownership and gun carry.

While most people accept these and other restrictions as being sensible, the resistance to any sort of restrictions on "the right of the people to keep and bare Arms" is amazing.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Because no right is without limits. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from searches and seizures, etc., all have limits. The test is when the imposition of limits crosses over into the infringement of rights.

You can own a machine gun.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

I think the wording by the Founders was more along the lines of "Nature's God."

But the whole "God-given" thing completely misses the point that the right to self-defense -- something the 2nd Amendment addresses -- is in fact due all humans as a result of their humanity, and because we're humans and in possession of what are called "natural rights," it can't be taken away by government -- at least here in the United States -- except under very specific circumstances. So in that regard, it's not "man-given" in the least.

Basically, the Constitution guarantees that right and charges the government with safekeeping it while also explicitly stating that it can't be taken away, which is what got Barack Obama -- supposedly a constitutional law expert -- all exercised when he went on about the Constitution being a so-called "charter of negative liberties."

The document's there to restrain government from its worst impulses, in other words, such as taking away the rights stated in the first 10 amendments to it (the Bill of Rights).

The Founders were brilliant in another regard: making amendments or changes to the Constitution, which aren't an easy thing to do. And that's for very good reason.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

The US Constitution was written by people. Very smart people. But not infallible people. They got loads of stuff right, but also may have made a few mistakes. That's why there were amendments.
That's why its not that inconceivable that one day soon, the 2nd amendment will be struck down. Change is a coming. And those that oppose it will be seen by history in the same light as those that opposed the addition of the 19th amendment.

As for the god aspect. Those that think that 'their' god would support people owning guns, must worship Gozer.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

I assume Obama was referring to the distinction between "positive freedom" and "negative freedom"

Negative freedom: freedom *from* government intrusion. Think 3A, 4A.
Positive freedom: freedom *to* participate in public life/government ("republic" = res publica = "the public thing") - think voting, serving in office, serving on juries, and - wait for it - participation in the militia -> 2A.

Constitution has them both. So it's not *only* a charter of negative liberties, but it is a charter of negative liberties, to the extent that it limits government intrusion into people's lives.

2 key pieces to read on this, for anyone interested, are Isaiah Berlin's Two Concepts of Liberty (1958); and Benjamin Constant's The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns (1819) .

it's an interesting way to look at today's American politics. Berlin's choice of terms was strange - the whole paper is an argument for the advantage of negative liberty, so maybe he could have given it a more appealing name.

You can't 'strike down' an amendment. That would be unconstitutional. You can repeal an amendment, through the processes stated in the Constitution, though, but that will take a lot of effort on the part of those who want to repeal it.

Of course, because of Marbury v. Madison, the courts have managed to gain a much-outsized power of judicial review they were never intended to have, so anti-gunners can always judge (or district or circuit) shop and find a friendly advocate on the bench who'll help them accomplish their ultimate aim. Maybe. Because that guy in the White House has so far managed to place a lot of judges on the federal bench who may not go for such things. And if he gets another Supreme Court pick, anti-gunners would probably have to forget about taking that tack for at least a decade or longer.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Bravo

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Good luck with that. That's not even worth attempting in the next decade. I drive a lot for work. I've been to 42 states and stayed in a ton of Motel 6s in small towns, eaten at Waffle Houses, etc. If you live in a metro on either of the coasts you're terribly out of touch with the culture and politics of the rest of the country. That's the thing: the majority of the people in the U.S. live in major metros on the coasts. However, majority of the population does not rule when it comes to amending the constitution.

I wouldn't look to the SCOTUS for help either. Chances are Trump will get to stack it for the next decade if not longer.

Agreed. Our Constitution does not give us any rights. What it does is affirm rights WE ALREADY HAVE in order to safeguard them. Note in the 2nd Amendment that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" isn't given to us by the language in that amendment. That right already exists. Instead, our right to keep and bear arms -- which exists outside of the Constitution -- is protected from infringement.

(Standing by for lectures from the progressive constitutional scholars here about all that "the Militia" jazz. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Exactly. People who live on the coasts think they are the majority and know how the rest of the country thinks. They like to ignore the "fly over country" and even the rest of their state in a lot of cases.

I don't see the states making any changes to the 2A anytime soon...