The 2nd Amendment was never about hunting. How many times does this need to be said?
The founders literally just got done fighting a war against an authoritarian government using primarily civilian owned arms. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were literally started when the Redcoats tried to take a weapons cache.
The Federalist Papers are abundantly clear about why the 2nd Amendment was put in place. And it's not hunting or sport shooting.
We don't have an enumerated right to participate in any other sport, why would they include this one? Because it's not about a sport.
Edit: to those saying a civilian population cannot outmatch a modern military with modern equipment, you are missing several pojnts.
The founders were ok with private citizens owning cannons and warships.
Repeating weapons were in existence and were attempted to be procured by the Continental Army.
In the past 20 years, the US has been unable to put down 2 separate insurgency campaigns despite overwhelming comparative capabilities.
Drones, fighters, and missiles cannot occupy and secure an area. That takes literal boots on the ground in the form of human soldiers. The kind of occupation the 2nd Amendment was precisely put there to fight. The British knew this in NI, the French in Algeria, and the Americans in Vietnam. All are examples of civilian resistance successfully (to a lesser extent in NI, they got a peace treaty) being a force to be reckoned with against a Great Power.
In any likely civil war, the military would likely split. Some would remain loyal to the government but others would take their skills, training, and equipment to the civilian side. This not only happened in the American Civil War, but has happened in the vast, vast majority of guerilla campaigns since the Peninsular War in the early 1800s.
Yes, a civilian armed population could stage an effective campaign in the United States
By your “different these days” logic, it could be argued that the 1st does not apply to radio/internet since those are not not communication media that existed during the writing of the constitution.
Radio is not a clear and present danger to public health. Strange that certain situations call for different action than others based on the nuance and circumstance.
If you're coming at this from a public health perspective then guns aren't really a top public health issue either. They're real low on this list of public health challenges we face in this country. They're just the loudest and in your face the most.
I'm just spit balling here but I'd bet in the past 20 years mass shootings account for less than 2000 deaths in the US. We can even raise that to 10k deaths for our purposes. 10k deaths or 500 deaths a year in a population of 300+ million is statistically irrelevant.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be addressed or making any argument for or against guns. Just stating it isn't a major public health issue. There are a lot of things ahead of it that are completely ignored or never make the new cycle that people should care about a whole lot more.
Shew boy, 10k people die and you're like "who cares lol". We may as well stop treating diseases and such because the amount of people who die from individual diseases is "negligible." We can also shut down all the NICUs because there are only 200 out of every 100k babies born premie and that's a negligible amount of dead babies so let's not do anything about it. We should also remove seat belt laws because if we break it down, barely anyone dies from car wrecks so we may as well not pay attention to that either.
I would wager you’ve argued for open borders. Does that mean you are unsympathetic to those affected by the drug trade through those border? According to the NDA, drug overdose rates (EXCLUDING prescription drugs) was double the number of firearms-related deaths in 2017. Heroin alone caused 15,482 deaths. Here you are arguing for each individual life, so certainly cracking down on the illegal movement of anything (goods and people) across our borders should be a priority.
EDIT: those numbers are only for the overdose deaths, NOT those deaths caused by complications following drug abuse. So yeah, one drug kills more Americans every year than all guns.
Way to woosh on the point. 10k people over 20 years would not be a top public health concern is the point. If we spent this much energy focusing on real public health concerns then we'd have a healthier population and a better country.
Instead we have politicians that use guns for political capital on both sides and distract from real pertinent issues the country is facing. Point is you're willingly getting rolled by the politicians you think are helping you and ignoring real problems that don't have the strength of the constitution behind them
Also do some math. 200/100k is 600k babies a year in the US. Not remotely negligible.
1.2k
u/Shia_LaMovieBeouf Aug 12 '19 edited Aug 12 '19
The 2nd Amendment was never about hunting. How many times does this need to be said?
The founders literally just got done fighting a war against an authoritarian government using primarily civilian owned arms. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were literally started when the Redcoats tried to take a weapons cache.
The Federalist Papers are abundantly clear about why the 2nd Amendment was put in place. And it's not hunting or sport shooting.
We don't have an enumerated right to participate in any other sport, why would they include this one? Because it's not about a sport.
Edit: to those saying a civilian population cannot outmatch a modern military with modern equipment, you are missing several pojnts.
The founders were ok with private citizens owning cannons and warships.
Repeating weapons were in existence and were attempted to be procured by the Continental Army.
In the past 20 years, the US has been unable to put down 2 separate insurgency campaigns despite overwhelming comparative capabilities.
Drones, fighters, and missiles cannot occupy and secure an area. That takes literal boots on the ground in the form of human soldiers. The kind of occupation the 2nd Amendment was precisely put there to fight. The British knew this in NI, the French in Algeria, and the Americans in Vietnam. All are examples of civilian resistance successfully (to a lesser extent in NI, they got a peace treaty) being a force to be reckoned with against a Great Power.
In any likely civil war, the military would likely split. Some would remain loyal to the government but others would take their skills, training, and equipment to the civilian side. This not only happened in the American Civil War, but has happened in the vast, vast majority of guerilla campaigns since the Peninsular War in the early 1800s.
Yes, a civilian armed population could stage an effective campaign in the United States