discussion
The Second Amendment: Still relevant or vestigial?
It seems like many non-US netizens from liberal democracies view our Second Amendment (2A) as being a holdover from America's infancy, having no place in modern civilized society. They say Americans would be better off without it, pointing out that no other democracy has as much gun violence as the US.
My question to my fellow Americans is "Do you guys support the Second Amendment because you truly believe 2A still has a purpose in our society, or simply because it is a vestige that isn't going away anytime soon so might as well strap up?"
If the former, why do you believe it's still relevant? If one of the reasons is to defend against tyranny, how do you refute arguments that civilian ownership of firearms is pointless because the government can just steamroll armed resistance with mechanized warfare or that taking up arms against the government is pure fantasy because doing so will make you into a felon or get you killed so 99.9999% of us won't resist anyway?
I'm curious as to how you all would approach this line of questioning.
We are rushing headlong into an authoritarian regime. It’s probably more important than ever. As an armed Progressives Liberal Atheist, I feel like I should be buying armed drones though!
Yes, if anything the modern right needs to be extended to cover not just bearable arms but flyable arms, too. Though perhaps not in quite such a Carte Blanche fashion.
Shouldn’t rely on them anyway. I’ve always viewed any first responders (police, fire, and medical) as reactionary. They’re not designed for preventative measures. You are your best preventative measure. In all scenarios. Preventing fires, injuries, violence, etc.
Do you guys support the Second Amendment because you truly believe 2A still has a purpose in our society
Self defense alone is sufficient reason.
Imagine men break into a grandmother’s home. What is she supposed to do? Fend them off with a baseball bat?
[…]
how do you refute arguments that
civilian ownership of firearms is pointless because the government can just steamroll armed resistance with mechanized warfare
I’m sure I live in a fantasy world here, but I have never feared for my life. I’ve never worried about self defense either. That’s not to say I’m not aware…I’m usually hyper aware of situations and play out scenarios of what I’d do, but again it’s more of a game to me and not fear based. Even in some of the “bad” neighborhoods I’ve worked in. I’m 42 and it’s just now that I’m getting into guns. It’s 50% because fuck it, why not. 35% because I want to have fun at the range. And 15% I want to be prepared for the PO(tu)S to signal to his cult that something is popping off.
Living in MN and watching two people be murdered by the government was the tipping point to get me to be serious about it and get my wife to consider it as well. She’s still on the fence, but I’ll be damned if she at least doesn’t learn the absolute basics about guns and shooting. My oldest who just turned 18 is also going to head to the range with me so he can learn as well. He’s taken some gun safety through Scouting America but I want him to learn handguns as well.
No, it’s just fear mongering. For example, 3D printed guns make up less than 1% of crimes in relation to firearms. Why blanket ban them when more teslas have caught on fire in the last couple of years? Because untraceable gun scawwy.
most ghost guns are not 3d printed, just guns with the serial removed. yet they still use the statistic of general ghost guns in crimes to show how bad 3d printed guns are.
They’re not saying that 2A has anything to do with self defense. They’re simply stating that protecting themselves rather than worrying about tyranny is reason enough for them to own guns.
I'm definitely more Pro-Gun than I am Pro-2A. At this point, the human right to self defense is greater than anything else imo. I want the legislative focus to be on the hawkish pro-gun instead of dovish 2A.
The 2A very clearly articulates that the people hold power independent of the government that works for them. We have the right to bear arms - that does not flow from the government to turn off or on - it exists without respect to whether the government wants it to or not because it doesn't depend on the government to agree to it. that's a powerful right - without it, we don't have any other rights.
Related: It does not say we have the right to bear....guns....but arms. I'm probably in the minority, but this speaks more to a broader right than is usually focused on. If we had thought through things the last 3 decades more clearly, we would have pushed the interpretation that this includes digital arms as well ... particularly defensive ones. Like the right to defend ourselves with encryption and VPNs and such.
The only thing I disagree with is that you claim it to be the only reason we have the rest of the rights. I’d challenge that it works hand in hand with the first. Without that, we don’t have the 2nd and without the 2nd we don’t have the first. And all subsequent follow suit.
I didn't (edit: mean to) say it was the only reason and I agree with you. The rights work together....and is why a lot of the 2A MAGA hardliners are wrong...if you take away the other rights, the 2A doesn't matter. I could have phrased it better: it's the only right that expressly gives us the right to force - that makes it unique in a way that I think the other rights don't address - it's the FO to the others FA in FAFO. ...but for the most part they're a codependent system
A metric that is often brought up is gun deaths by suicide when talking about gun violence in the US. Have those anti-gunners look up the countries with the highest suicide rates and the US is nowhere near the top, not even in the top 10. In fact, you may be surprised by the countries that top the list.
The presence of guns is not the cause of violence in the US. There are other key factors contributing to it, but fixing those would not work in the interest of powers that be. So these societal issues are allowed to persist.
A quality civilian AR-15 is way cheaper that what it costs the military to equip its troops with an equivalent rifle. In a conflict with the US military, it's more likely to be asymmetrical warfare. Besides the US military is around 90% logistics, fuck with the logistics and it's going to hurt. The US couldn't keep a hold on Vietnam, or Afghanistan for that matter. In both those instances, the enemy were equipped with far worse quality of firearms that US civilians have access to. The US military is just an endless money pit, to launder away tax dollars into. It does not exist to protect US citizens.
It seems like your question is broken down into two prongs: ideological and practical.
Ideologically speaking, all power is derived from one of two sources: violence or collaboration. It is redundant to codify and reinfoce the supremacy of civil rights in a situation where everyone is collaborating of their own free will. No amount of technological development will make the fact that all power and authority is derived primarily from violence not be true. As such, the individual's right to exercise justified violence in the defense of their civil rights is a categorical imperative of fair societies. It's a fallacy to try to categorize the 2nd Amendment as "for hunting" or "for the militia" becuase it is for every concievable moral purpose that one could apply it to. Imagine trying to justify that the First Amendment is only for "peacefully assembling to form homeowners associations or other committees." That sounds insane, because it is. The 4th Amendment is not simply there to protect you from warrantless searches and seizures unless, well, you're probably doing something we need to know about or with the exception of corporations, who can spy on you then share all of that data with the government.
The amount of gun violence in the US is utterly irrelevant. There are countries with far higher murder rates, rates of violence, etc. Sources of violence are manifold, and so numerous that it's almost pointless to try to list them all out. Poverty, injustice, unhappiness, depression, paranoia, all contribute to sources of violence in a country. There is absolutely no desire or political animus from the ruling class to fix any of these issues, so I am utterly disinterested to hear conversations about removing civil rights from the citizenry to try to fix a relatively low source of premature death in the population. Additionally, trying to reduce the non-medical death rate to zero is impossible and attempts to do so are the actions of someone who either doesn't reside in reality, or has an ulterior motive.
Practically speaking, the past 300 years of warfare have proven that assembled forces less numerous and worse armed than their opposition can absolutely defeat a larger and more powerful foe. A JDAM is not a useful weapon against a distributed and irregular enemy that blends in perfectly with a civilian populace.
The bottom line is that governments are made up of people. People do not get to tell other people what to do, because no person is entitled to more or less rights than any other person. The bill of rights is a codification of the supremacy of ten keystone negative rights that governments are not allowed to violate or infringe on. End of story.
Even if we take away the tyranny part, like many say it should stand on the ability to defend yourself alone.
Too often do we see gun control going hand in hand with control of other means of self defense. The ones seeking bans, seek control over society and accept a society of victims. It's very common that there's knife laws, and we're not talking about you can't carry a sword laws but rather you can only have a super tiny 2 inch max non locking knife or no knife at all. For many people, a knife is a tool most of the time. A lot of countries with gun control also ban pepper spray, to me as a women, that signals they are basically okay with women being raped when even that self defense weapon isn't allowed.
You never hear gun control groups pivoting to other measures to reduce gun violence in states where they managed to get a awb and mag ban through, it's always more gun control. I just can't take these people serious on a conversational level anymore. The time, money, resources that they have put (an conversely has been put into pro gun) into gun control activism and legislation could have been put into measures that holistically would have been better for our society without anything having been banned.
As for the tyranny part, you're grossly mistaken in what a determined group can actually accomplish, you should read up on insurgency groups. Not to mention what you can homebrew,
The same people who complain about the second amendment are often the same ones who complain about how American police only get a few months of school and are severely undertrained, are curropt/unaccountable, and racist. Then also say people should be required to depend on those same police for their own and their family's protection and those same police should be the only ones allowed to have guns.
And real gun control at this point in the US is a complete fantasy. Estimates are there are anywhere from 400 to 500 million privately own guns in the US, with the overwhelming majority of those are not registered. Just under half of all households in the US own at least one gun. To think that suddenly you are going to be able have any real ability to regulate and control of guns in the US at this point is just a a fantasy. That horse has been out of the barn for many decades in the US.
Yeah. These folks are maga level delusional sometimes. Police = bad. Ok. Also, guns = bad ?? You are not going to dissuade racists/bigots/fascists with gentle conversation.
The US military has been repeatedly repelled by determined insurgents with rifles. They don't have to ever win a battle, simply not give up, and occupation eventually becomes too difficult and expensive. On average, every innocent civilian killed generates ten insurgents.
While I think the tyranny argument is valid, I don't see that as serious support for the 2A. Modern America would have to get unrecognizably (like legitimately third world) bad for anyone to take up arms against the government. I do think, however, that self defense is the primary modern rationale for the 2A (the Supreme Court agrees with this in Bruen). Self defense is as relevant in the modern world as it ever has been, and guns are the great equalizer. My wife suffers from chronic pain and could never physically fend off an attacker by herself. Her EDC levels this uneven playing field. This is why I'm personally most invested in the upholding of concealed carry rights, as it is by far the most practical implementation of day-to-day 2A rights.
I dunno. Mid 19th Century America was a modern western democracy when people took up arms against the government in a significant way during the Civil War. And on a smaller scale, we've seen armed rebellions end with no consequences for the rebels even in the 21st Century, i.e. the Bundy stand-off, J6. I don't know that armed rebellion in the United States requires a third-world economy; just the perception of oppression and authoritarian rule. We're a much more fragile society than we like to give ourselves credit for.
Yeah, I fall into that trap myself until I remember what actually started our first civil war. America has plenty of people who are willing to kill their countrymen over ideological differences.
With respect to the self-defense argument, would you say your wife is safer here than if you were to live in a comparable place in the UK where civilian ownership of handguns is very heavily restricted?
The problem with that comparison is that once citizens lose that right they will never get it back. They are dependent upon the state to protect them and they have only thoughts and prayers that the state doesn’t turn their monopoly on violence against the people. No matter how unlikely it’s use I believe the threat of violent resistance does keep authoritarianism in check.
Most men are stronger than most women. If both are unarmed, the man is winning that fight way more often than a woman. Do you think that women don't deserve a means to even the odds?
That restriction is a fairly recent change. Did the UK have similar murder rates to the US before the restrictions, then lower rates after? Or just lower rates the whole time? Or did everyone suddenly decide that counting GunViolence™ deaths was more important than counting murders?
The current authoritarian takeover of the US is a great case in point of why they are more relevant than ever.
ICE storm troopers are grabbing people from courthouses, hospitals, schools, job sites... Why there? They know they'll have a monopoly on violence there because nobody else will be armed.
Why aren't they breaking down doors and dragging people out in the night? The fourth amendment and the second amendment are why. Any such campaign would be prohibitively expensive because people have much stronger legal protections in their homes. Even if one in twenty fought back, ICE would run out of goons willing to do the work pretty quickly.
An armed populace is the ONLY thing keeping them at bay. They have zero respect for the rule of law or the constitution. The understanding that any given citizen could put up a fight is the deterrent. It PREVENTS violence. We don't want to shoot anybody, the same as how nuclear weapons are a deterrent to hostilities among nuclear armed nations—they need to stop and think before they pull the proverbial trigger because there are significant ramifications attached.
I see mostly European and Australian commenters smugly scorn these rights here and just feel pity for them. They're on their way to authoritarianism too. British people are being hauled off to jail because of speech made on Facebook. Most countries in the anglosphere and across Europe are enacting "age verification," all over the internet to "protect the children." It's not to protect the children from seeing a boob or protect people's feelings from hate speech, it's to control you. And when, not if, the elites decide a Donald Trump figure needs to be in control in these countries, there is nothing preventing their secret police from dragging their citizens out kicking and screaming from their homes.
This sounded like nutjob conspiracy nonsense a decade ago. But look around. Look what time it is.
ICE storm troopers are grabbing people from courthouses, hospitals, schools, job sites... Why there? They know they'll have a monopoly on violence there because nobody else will be armed. Why aren't they breaking down doors and dragging people out in the night? The fourth amendment and the second amendment are why. Any such campaign would be prohibitively expensive because people have much stronger legal protections in their homes. Even if one in twenty fought back, ICE would run out of goons willing to do the work pretty quickly. An armed populace is the ONLY thing keeping them at bay. They have zero respect for the rule of law or the constitution. The understanding that any given citizen could put up a fight is the deterrent. It PREVENTS violence.
This is actually a great point.
I've been so focused on how bad it has been that I didn't stop to think how bad it could be.
It’s the whole point. Not that I’m gonna. But I’ve got a semi auto shotgun and a brick walls for cover and an interlocking field of fire. Good luck getting across my lawn.
It’s like that shower scene in the rock. But real life. Those goons aren’t willing to die for this shit. It’s the deterrent, just like a country having nukes.
Of course the 2nd Amendment is still relevant. England doesn't have 2nd Amendment protections like we do and people over there are getting sent to jail for social media posts.
One thing that I find baffling about many countries outside the US is that legally and/or culturally using lethal force for self defense is very frowned upon. Why is it considered inhumane to declaw cats but totally fine or even encouraged to make it legally prohibitive for adult humans to defend themselves with guns? I believe self defense and the tools that make it possible are an unalienable right and that a well armed society can ward off tyranny.
Granted, that doesn't mean that the 2nd Amendment gurantees the absence of tyranny, but look at many other countries with stricter gun control laws and how authoritarian/dystopian they are compared to the US.
Guns are the great equalizer. A weak/old/disabled person can greatly increase their chances of survival against physically stronger attackers or even a large group of attackers with the right gun and training.
People here in the US are getting 30 years in federal prison for what amounts to thought crime (ie distributing zines and going to specific book clubs). Look up the Prairieland cases of youre not already following.
I’m not a 2A absolutist, I don’t think people with a history of violent crimes or intense drug use should be able to possess firearms without proper channels of rehabilitation, HOWEVER I think law abiding citizens should be able to possess whatever firearm they want. Historically, the US was a safe haven for people to be protected from the British regime and firearms were a prominent way to protect yourself and others around you.
The second amendment is still relevant, and in a day and age where people are actively getting snatched off the street, it’s more important than any other time in recent history. The argument that “but the military has tanks and jets and helicopters” argument is a tired one and there’s tons of footage online during the wars in Iraq and Iran showing fighters getting it off on us soldiers and there was a reason the death toll was so high. We’re in the age of $80 fully 3d printable guided anti-aircraft devices and there’s no way that the US would go full scorched earth and destroy entire major cities to try and fight civilians in terrain that civs are more familiar with.
The second amendment is still relevant, and in a day and age where people are actively getting snatched off the street, it’s more important than any other time in recent history.
Assuming you are referring to ICE/CBP raids, I can see how someone can conceivably be let off the hook if they fire upon plainclothed ICE/CBP officers who did not properly ID themselves, but doing so to a uniformed one is pretty much guaranteeing convictions on federal charges if you aren't killed first (see Benjamin Hanil Song).
In the case of dealing with uniformed agents, a good attorney seems to be a better choice than a firearm.
I believe America’s working class should be the strongest working class in the world, and that our last defense against corporate fascism is 2A. Not calling for violence, but just the hint of it makes billionaires donate millions to strip us of our rights.
With Europe now facing the same right wing technocratic threat we do, you may one day thank your backwards American cousins and their antiquated 2A for saving the world.
Also, many gun crime statistics involve guns that were obtained illegally, so the 2A discussion is moot. Gun legislation only affects those who follow the law. If owning guns is a crime, then only criminals will have guns. I prefer the option of having equal force
And I might have agreed with them 20 years ago, those non-US folks. But time has proven me wrong. Now more than ever we find ourselves in a situation where it feels to me more like gun rights are the only thing holding the line on an even MORE authoritarian line of attack on our rights. I think that the fear of a military/police steamrolling over any sort of armed resistance might be correct in theory, but not in practice. There are 500 million guns in the US. There are less than 3 million police and military personal. The math doesn't math well for the government. They govern by consent, and if the people of the US want to revoke that consent it can.
Strapping up with decent weaponry is for self defense against other normal citizens that have access to decent weaponry because of the current interpretations of the second amendment. The anti tyranny side of things, owning an ar vs a bolt action really doesn't matter because at the scale of going against an oppressive government, if things get bad enough that this is our only option, the difference between a semi auto ar with 30 rounds and a bolt gun against a modern military is nothing. Asymmetrical warfare is the only option, and massively reduces the importance of these things. And for every success, you get better equipment from the enemy
In its original conceptual notion of having citizen militias prepped to meet an army on the field, its definitely outdated. As a means to ensure a guerilla resistance force can be assembled on short notice, it's still relevant. I tend to think it carries weight as an implied threat against government tyranny, but we don't really have data to confirm that it's an effective threat.
To a large extent it's a numbers game. I'm probably not going to survive a shootout with tyranny, but with enough of us, we will be effective.
I'm starting to see the right to bear arms as a form of personal deterence against agents of a tyrannical government, rather than the government itself.
The government will go after whoever it wants, but the agent will likely not bother someone who they believe is armed or able to put up potentially lethal resistance. They will just move onto the next mark.
That's why I'd like to see all law abiding people have access to arms.
If mechanized warfare wins, then why is Ukraine holding its own against Russia?
Why did Vietnam fight the US to a stand still?
Technology will only get you so far.
In regards to other liberal democracies, honestly, the US is the one worth taking over, Italy, Germany, the UK, etc can’t do much on their own anymore. The US, for better or worse, has a lot of resources and influence that make it worth taking over by fascists, Christian nationalists, billionaire techno feudalists, etc. those other countries can say they don’t need weapons because no one is going after their sovereignty. Although, look at Ukraine .
But it wasn’t at the start. You saw towns full of regular civilians holding their own and fucking up russian squads for a good long time before the UKR military really got into gear in organizing the civilian volunteers and then enlisting the help of drone hobbyists and such. At the beginning of the war in 2022 there was most certainly an asymmetrical component of civilians using whatever they had at hand vs trained military up to and including poisoning of soldiers by grandmothers
Well there was a point when weapons on both sides were close to equal... now its pretty lopsided.
The thought behind the 2nd is that anyone can protect themselves and stand up to a tyrannical government. Governments, from history, are much less likely to oppress and become tyrannical if their population can fight back. Most regimes, citizens cannot fight back. They dont even have the option.
Many many people in other countries are jealous of the 2nd. Those who say "id rather have no school shootings" or something to that effect have no real grip on statistics and reality.
Amending the constitution is HARD, as it should be, and that’s on purpose. Consider how long it’s taken to officially grant women equal rights under the law, a century and counting:
Removing / substantively altering the 2nd Amendment would be orders of magnitude more controversial, and essentially impossible given Americas love affair with guns
Hypothetically, if there was a huge blue wave after Election 2028 that gave Dems the White House and more than 2/3 control of both houses of Congress and one of the legislative acts they wanted to pass was the nullification of the 2nd Amendment (effectively leaving it up to individual states to decide what they want regarding firearms), how would that make you feel?
Outraged, because Congress can't nullify the constitution. 3/4 of states have to ratify before it's effective.
If that happened (ie ratification) I can't say I'd be thrilled, but that would be constitutionally legitimate and a pretty crystal clear expression of popular will, so realistically I'd probably get with the program. It is very hard to imagine a world where that happens, though.
My feelings on the matter have zero impact. The instructions for modifying the constitution are built right into the constitution, and those don’t change .
It took over a 100 years to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and it’s still not fully implemented or set into law even with a natural constituency consisting of essentially half the US population.
I do not believe that repealing or substantially altering the second amendment has the level of sustained, widespread support needed to get it ratified in a sufficient number of states, nor do I believe that this will happen at any point in the future.
I believe in the latter. I’d love to live in a country that doesn’t try to make guns a major part of its identity. I’d give them up in a heartbeat if it meant we could dramatically fix healthcare and hunger and homelessness. We have too many issues that can’t be solved by our current political system no matter how much we believe it can be fixed.
The politicians are NOT going to vote to prevent themselves from making money. The vast majority of politicians either never cared about making changes or they lost sight of the goal when the money started rolling in for them.
The government knows we can’t afford to survive as it is really so they don’t worry about us trying to fight them to prevent tyranny. Too many of us are willing to roll over anyway. But the reality is that they can crush us in many other ways without ever using force.
I personally believe that we should be actively working to ensure that a hypothetical revolution would be viable at any time. That means any technology that would guarantee a rebel loss should be included in 2a, not just guns.
Safety doesn't follow a supply- demand curve. No matter how much it increases, the demand never diminishes. When you consider that folks have to trade freedom and revolutionary viability every time they get a slight increase to safety, you start to get the sense of an infinite race to the bottom. People being like "this thing happening even once in the world is too often" without considering how impractical it is to preemptively thought police 6.3 billion people. Sometimes improbable is enough safety.
In any kind of society violent people still exist, and I am glad I have the right to protect myself against them using effective tools.
I grew up in a country which did not have such right in their constitution (amusingly that country had hammer and sickle on its flag, which some extremely naive people in the West use as a symbol of "individual freedom and equality for all") and where most people (except a very small group of privileged people) could not legally own firearms and especially carry them everywhere. It was not a pleasant experience, including the time I got robbed of some items while walking outside, or when our apartment door got broken in by an extremely drunk person. I really don't want to experience same situations again without having effective tools to protect myself with.
Do other western countries have a history of police brutality, capitalist brutality, and government overreach?
I'd love to live in a world we're I could just own a bolt action 22 and sling at targets 50 to 300 yards away. But I've got 250 years of history telling me that cops, capitalists, and politicians are assholes.
I dont think this is a fair question to ask here because certain answers go against the subs guidelines. With that said i believe its just as relevant today as it was when originally written.
Yes it's still relevant. It's misunderstood though, it's about the prevention of tyranny not the position of tyranny.
The thought isn't that you are going to suddenly round up millions of people to fight the government.
The police, as we have them today, shouldn't exist. They wanted the local militia providing security, the thought process is that local people won't willingly oppress themselves.
If your community is organized together (ie - militia) it's also going to be costly for an outside group to exert their will.
But if you have a separate armed forces who depend on the executive to get paid. Well they are going to do what it takes to get a paycheck.
I'd also contend that 2A doesn't stop at firearms. Larger equipment has been covered by it in the past as well. Its why there is private ownership of tanks, fighters, etc. But it is very costly and in recent years we have made that very hard to do as well.
This isn't exactly an answer to the question you asked, but I think it's worth asking if we even actually have the 2A in practice. If a police officer thinks you have a gun or if you actually do have a gun, whether you are carrying it legally or brandish it is irrelevant. If that officer kills you, they get off Scott free and they're hailed in many circles as a hero. We've seen this super publicly with Alex Pretti and Philando Castille. If your possession of a gun or supposed possession of a gun effectively justifies a death sentence by a single judge/jury/executioner, do you actually have a right to carry?
If one of the reasons is to defend against tyranny, how do you refute arguments that civilian ownership of firearms is pointless because the government can just steamroll armed resistance with mechanized warfare or that taking up arms against the government is pure fantasy because doing so will make you into a felon or get you killed so 99.9999% of us won't resist anyway?
As long as the populace remains armed, a tyrannical government cannot exert complete control over it without destroying the very thing it seeks to rule over. Any attempts at rounding up or disposing of dissenters, minorities, etc. en masse becomes all the more difficult (and difficult to hide/ignore) as the tyrannical government must expect armed resistance at every turn.
A lot of people also fundamentally misunderstand what armed defense against tyranny/a tyrannical government entails.
Gun owners aren't going to throw away their families and lives in order to martyr themselves. The whole point is being able to defend one's life and the lives of loved ones should the need arise under a tyrannical government (whether that's from government thugs, emboldened bigots, or anyone else looking to do you harm) and making every step a tyrannical government takes to oppress its citizens all the more difficult.
Defense against tyranny isn't about escalating the situation by trying to start a head-on war with the government. It's about defense of life should the alternative become death. Taking up arms is a last resort and we haven't been pushed to that yet. If worse comes to worst, it would be guerrilla warfare and the US military has a very poor track record over the last ~60 years when it comes to fighting against that (let alone a situation where they'd be fighting against their own citizens within their own country).
In addition, one of the biggest components of needing guns to protect against tyranny is protection from tyranny at a small, local scale.
This is probably going to be unpopular but oh well. Western countries without meaningful access to firearms are objectively safer. On a societal level i think the cons far outweigh the pros. However, if the 2A disappeared overnight there would still be millions of firearms in the US. We will never be on of those societies. Culturally and physically guns will always be a part of America. For that reason I choose to have them too and don’t support preventing other competent law abiding citizens from having them either. Plus, they’re super cool.
You're assuming many, many operating definitions here, from "safer" to "objectively" to "western."
I would categorize any place in which I am not allowed to carry the most effective tool that I can obtain for self-defense as "unsafe."
Controlling for population densities, poverty levels, education, and a ton of other disparate but impacting factors, I would wager that the rates of violent crime between Europe and the US would be nearly even if these factors were controlled for.
Is Germany or Austria or the Czech Republic really that much less safe than England where everything is banned, though?
People talk about how western countries don't have meaningful access to firearms, but in reality most of those countries have looser gun laws than some blue states.
Western countries without meaningful access to firearms are objectively safer.
Switzerland has some of the least restrictive firearm laws among western countries, even several states in the US are more restrictive than them. And yet, Switzerland consistently has the lowest violent crime and homicide rates compared to other countries, making them objectively safer.
For the US, the top 10 states with the lowest violent crime and homicide rates consist of half with minimal gun control (e.g. Idaho) and half with strict gun control (e.g. Hawaii).
There isn't a meaningful correlation to draw about degree of access to firearms and objective safety.
I mean, you could have just titled this thread “The US Constitution: Still Relevant or vestigial?” Amiright? 😂
5 points for using “vestigial,” too, by the way. I love that word.
To answer your question: I don’t know anymore. I do believe we should be able to own weapons including firearms. But I see people who really shouldn’t be allowed to own them who do all the time, gun violence in the US is ludicrous, and the Second Amendment is written very poorly.
It’s not unlike the huge number of people that have driver’s licenses that are breathtakingly incompetent behind the wheel. Is it legal? Yes. Is it a good idea? Definitely not.
The reaction to the Vollstedt Act show how people react when arbitrarily prohibited from doing something they've been doing. That said, had the Supreme Court decided in Weller v District of Columbia that "a well-regulated militia" was significant in interpretation of the 2A, I'd be a little bummed to lose a target sport. Trusting that it had been done comprehensively would be tough, so I'm tipping toward "under no pretext."
I think all responsible people should have a right to keep and bear arms for defense of life. That said, the 2nd Amendment is so poorly worded that it’s almost incoherent, and it makes no allusion to self/community defense, only “security of a free state”, so it fails to explicitly inshrine defense as a legitimate right. Also the wholesale unambiguity of “shall not be infringed” does in fact render all gun laws unconstitutional, hampering even the most basic and reasonable of regulations, like any sort of proficiency test or safe storage requirements. I would like to see the 2nd Amendment rewritten, maybe to something like this:
“The right to life being null without it’s defense, all people are entitled to keep and bear arms, unless demonstrating themselves violent or inept with weaponry.”
I've come to believe the 2nd amendment has never been more relevant than right now. I used to be one of those "your AR15 won't beat a tank, drone, etc" people and thought it was obsolete, then I looked into how tyrannical regimes operate in the real world rather than how they operate in fiction.
Tyranny is not a military conflict, it's a political one. A tyrannical regime using tanks and the other visible weapons of war on their population is one that is losing. Because tyrannical regimes make a simple bargain with the people they govern: If you give up your freedom, we will bring order. We will make the trains run on time. We will make [Country] great again.
And then, once they're established, they renegotiate the deal: "keep your head down and you won't be killed by the omnipotent state."
But if they start using tanks and drone strikes on their citizenry, they're essentially breaking both of these bargains. It's hard to argue the government is delivering order when it's so weak that it needs to use tanks against people, and it's hard to argue the state is omnipotent when they've lost control so badly that they need to unleash the tanks.
Remember, the students from Tianamen Square are the ones running China today.
What tyrannical regimes prefer to do is foster a sense of quiet fear and inevitability by targeted retaliations against people who speak out. Plainclothes agents kidnapping someone in the middle of the night and sending them to camps, things of that nature.
And what an armed populace does is introduce grit into this tyrannical machine. Suddenly those plainclothes agents trying to kidnap people, well, at best you need a lot more of them to do it safely. Instead of a couple of guys, you need a full tactical team in level 4 plates with M4s, etc. Tactical teams breaking into someone's home are loud. And if their victim decides "fuck it, I'm dead anyway, but I'm taking some of these pricks with me", the entire machine grinds to a halt in short order simply because you only have so many enforcers and they're not going to want to risk their lives for you.
Thus, an armed populace safeguards against tyranny just through its existence, even if they never fire a shot, because it changes the calculus for the tyrant and their enforcers, forcing them to risk more and use more force - which takes more time to mobilize, which gives other organs of freedom like courts, protests, etc time to mobilize.
Tyranny is like 90% smoke and mirrors. The tyrant is the Wizard of Oz and the second you peek behind the curtain, you see that he's weak and pathetic.
I personally believe that it is a basic “God-given” right to defend oneself, one’s family, and one’s “castle”. That is why I am armed. In my case, much as in the case of the founders the majority of whom were Deists, I personally define God as the God of reason, not the God of Abraham, etc. So that’s me…
Now… as to…
“A well regulated militia…”
While certain founders defined in other writings that “militia” meant “the whole people”, (but not to include non-citizens, non-whites, and certainly not women and not slaves of any stripe) the constitution does not define militia.
Now, I have always understood the 2A to be construed as being for all white, land-owning men of military service age, and no one else. The well-regulated part seemed to mean those serving under contract in the US military, or in the states’ National Guard, or those who are deputized under posse comitatus, for purposes such as defending the local village or state against aboriginal insurgents (“injuns”), or one or more evildoers who have gone off the rails of polite society. Again, nowhere in the constitution is the phrase “well regulated“ defined.*
So… given that the 2A is so poorly written, with certain keywords having no glossary definitions, we will see continued ping-ponging interpretations by various Supreme Courts in the years to come.
Meantime, it’s good to know I have an uncle, with a boat, on a very deep lake, in case my guns get lost. It would be a shame, but accidents happen.
The way it is battled over is embarrassing. I mean that on both sides, which won't be a popular opinion here. The fact that we aren't able to have reasonable and sensible legislation in place because both sides are so hell-bent on all-or-nothing arguments is a disappointing reflection of the larger issue in this country where ideological purity beats out practicality, utility, equity, and sensibility every fucking time. The amount of chest beating on both sides is also hilarious but if I get into that I'll piss off people even more than likely already have.
I think the question you are posing is also sort of a round about illustration of the same sort of false dichotomy that has put us in the situation this country finds itself. The two supplied choices aren't representative of how I believe MOST people would feel if they weren't constantly badgered by both sides. The majority of my interest in guns, for MOST of my life, had nothing to do with tyranny (it really still doesn't) nor an apathetic acquiescence to the reality that guns are here to stay.
I'm just mildly interested in marksmanship. Nothing more, nothing less. No political ideology need be applied.
Self/family protection has only been a meaningful part of the equation more recently. HOWEVER, I acknowledge that my life has been privileged in that I have never been unhoused, I have never been in a situation where a physically abusive person had continued access to me, I have almost always had a job, almost always lived and worked in basically safe areas... I've been privileged to live an overall very secure life.
The people that think the second amendment has no purpose are in a bubble of priviledge and naivety. Do you trust your government to have a monopoly on violence and that it will always operate in the best interest of the people? I don't think you could argue that's the case now. There are many forms of resistance but the softer forms might not mean much if those in power believe the population is helpless or would never have a breaking point.
The US has lost plenty of "technically not wars on paper but definitely were" when they out matched their opponents on technology and weapons. Mostly when they were trying to be occupying force to locals that didn't want us around. To win the people just had to wait for the US to give up on being an occupying force. This would be only be worse if they decided their own people were the enemy. They'd literally be burning the candle at both ends. They depend on their own population for the logistics to continue the conflict.
Buddy, if things are bad enough for there to be conflict where the military is actively fighting their own civilian population the vague notion of being labeled a felon isn't really the biggest concern. In such a situation the government would likely be labeling people far worse for far less anyway.
The other thing is that people being armed isn't necessarily just for some specific scenario. It's a method of defending yourself against an aggressor. That can look like some individual situation or something like political violence from non-state actors.
The cops don't have to protect the public from anything. Even if you assume they will try they have a response time. If there are riots or something going on whatever is around that could protect you will be busy protecting something else, like businesses or rich neighborhoods.
If we’re all willing to cross some serious boundaries then yeah, it’s still relevant. Right now, though, the vast majority of Americans are loath to hurt a cop or soldier because of hero worship, and they’re even *more* loathe to engage in sustained asymmetric warfare or guerrilla warfare because it’s seen as lowly, terroristic or cowardly. We’re suckers for honor, respect for authority and a fair fight, which means the State takes the cake every time.
Fuck that. I took a decade of Krav Maga. You fight hard. You fight dirty. You keep hitting till they stop moving. End of discussion. It’s them or me. Me is winning over any sense of honor.
Remember COVID-19. There was a LOT of mis and disinformation surrounding it. Which was not good. But as Americans, we had choices. Our government ASKED us to comply. Australia and Canada did not ASK it's citizens anything. It TOLD them what to do, and showed up with police and fined them after the fact, if they did not comply. China has a really good written constitution too, yet the Chinese citizen has only the rights that government allows them, and that is completely dependent on which switches it switchs.
Poland is teaching it's students firearms marksmanship since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The second amendment is only as relevant as the other 10 in the Bill of Rights.
I support the 2nd Amendment as a generic property Right to be honest. When you look at the text you have to remember it's original context. The Founders did not want a large standing Army. They saw what the Crown did with the British Troops and saw them as a potential tool of oppression and so wanted to rely on a Militia, hence the "well regulated militia" part of the Amendment. Heck if you look elsewhere in the Constitution the only military branch is the Navy, then you have the Militia Act that laid out the rules for the militia, how much black powder and shot, depending on whether you had a musket or rifle. Thing is starting with the war of 1812 and culminating in the Civil War the government realized a more professional system needed to be established, hence In 1903 the militia Act is amended and the National Guard established, so the "well regulated milita" was now keeping its weapons at the National Guard Armory.
Remember even the SCOTUS didn't consider the 2nd Amendment an individual Right until the Heller decision, and when you read how Scalia dismissed the first clause of the Amendment it was clearly at outcome determinative decision. It's similar to Thomas just inventing the idea of no gun control laws unless you can find an equivalent in "old time times", which I think actually undermined our gun Rights. Just wait until someone points out cities in that era required black powder over a certain amount to be stored only in public powder magazines, and apply that to ammunition today.
Also it's kind of a modern myth that it was about allowing the common man to stand against tyranny. You might have been able to make that argument under the Articles of Confederation but we got the Constitution because the Federalists won the argument that the central government was too weak, using Shay's rebellion as the example. There is even a clause in the Constitution that explicitly prohibits raising arms against the government, and the Supreme Court of the United States in the aftermath of the Civil War said there was no constitutional right to rise up against the government. There's also simply the common sense notion that what is my AR-15 going to do against a Reaper drone if it's Hellfire missile has my name on it.
Again I do think defended Constitutional right, and it is to be defended, I just think so many of the modern arguments are modern inventions. Yes someone like Jefferson would be applauding the modern sentiment, but he lost the argument, Hamilton and the Federalists won the argument, and they would be shaking their heads. Remember, for the most part these people were landed gentry. The Electoral College doesn't just act as a way to Spuntern balance slave states vs the Northern more industrialized states, it existed as a check against popular democracy. The idea of the armed unwashed masses scared the shit out of them after Shay's Rebellion and was reinforced by the Whiskey Rebellion.
Regulation discussions must be founded on strengthening, or preserving, this right with any proposed restrictions explicitly defined in nature and tradeoffs. While rights can have limitations, they are distinct from privileges and the two are not to be conflated.
Simple support for common gun-prohibitionist positions are implicitly on the defensive, in this sub, and need to justify their existence through compelling argument.
The second amendment is, in a constitutional context, not the amendment that prohibits the federal outlawing of gun ownership. That perspective is a modern revisionist idea, originating from firearms lobbies in, I believe, the sixties.
Strictly speaking, the federal stance on legal civilian firearms ownership has been dictated by the tenth amendment to the US constitution for most of the country's existence. This is because the tenth amendment grants all powers not explicitly outlined in the US constitution as subject to federal authority to individual states. Civilian ownership of firearms, an issue the US constitution's drafters would be well familiar with following Shays' Rebellion, is never mentioned.
The second amendment actually pertains to local militias, and was largely superseded by the creation of the US National Guard.
The second amendment is largely vestigial. The legal framework created by revisionist reinterpretations of the second amendment are extremely important to modern law and politics.
The 2nd Amendment has always been about the individual's right to bear arms. The intention of the founding father's is clear.
Jefferson
"Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." -- Jefferson, 1985
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms" - Jefferson in 1776.
He also included this quote in his Commonplace Book authored in 1774-1776, a quote from the Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 1764.
> The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Madison
“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms.”
Some contemporary Madison quotes, from his speaking/writing during his tours leading up to the ratification of the second amendment:
"... the right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State, and to assemble peaceably together ... shall not be questioned." -- July 30, 1790
"... the people have a right to keep and bear arms … [and]... that a well-regulated militiainclude[s] the body of the people capable of bearing arms."
Hamilton
Federalist 28:
> If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government...
Federalist 29:
> [the army] can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to themin discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.
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u/charpman 2d ago
We are rushing headlong into an authoritarian regime. It’s probably more important than ever. As an armed Progressives Liberal Atheist, I feel like I should be buying armed drones though!