Has human nature fundamentally changed since the U.S. Founding?
Did we have homicidal maniacs shooting up schools back then?

a) In our 3rd Millennium, how many people do this, per capita?

Preparatory to our Revolution:

"Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered." Common Sense author Thomas Paine NOTE: This publication sold ~500K copies among an ~1.5M population, :. ~33% of population owned a copy, believed influential in persuading colonists to revolt against KG3

b) So how often do such massacres as Columbine, or Sandy Hook happen? One per year, out of a population of ~320,000,000?
We've grown by orders of magnitude since then, hundreds of times bigger.
So if it's the same proclivity then as now within their per capita population, we'd expect it one 212th as often.
Human nature hasn't changed that much Ud. There's probably another explanation.

c) Our Founders were meticulous about avoiding democracy, or what some Founders called "mob rule".
Instead, our Constitutional republic is designed to spare us punishing the many for the sins of the few; which is precisely what "gun control" is all about.




BUT !!!

There has been a paradigm shift.
A punk like Clebold couldn't march into his 1 room schoolhouse, and shoot the place up with a muzzle-loader.
Fire one round, and then a 40 second pause while he:
- measures out the next charge from powder horn
- replaces the charge
- places the patch over the muzzle
- places the next ball on the patch
- extracts the ramrod, and drives patch and ball to the bottom
- replaces the rod
- cocks the hammer
- takes aim, and ... *

By the time he got all that done, the other 7 students would have kicked his @$$ half way to Peoria.

The recessed flange cartridge has automated / revolutionized this.
So instead having a rate of fire of 1.5 rounds per minute, rate of fire with a semi-auto-fire
auto-loader is as fast as the trigger can be pulled; more than one per second.

Bitter history has proved the rate of fire with an AR-15 style weapon is enough to keep a class of kindergarten students at bay as they're massacred.
The Founders COULD NOT POSSIBLY have taken this into account when 2A was drafted.

BUT !!

"... shall not be infringed" is fairly unambiguous.
So it seems to me; rather than pretending the law is one thing (noting the supremacy clause, Art.6 Sect.2), but continuing to compound its infringement:

But in reality, in practice it is not.

* I do not own a muzzle-loader. I've never fired one. I've made an educated guess about what's required, and may have left out a step at the striker / hammer.

The 2nd Amendment isn't obsolete.

just would have used a Cutlass besides the Gun!
durchsichtig!


Oh yeah,and Criminals are ardent Observers of Gunlaws!

none of the Bill of Rights is obselete, but some interpretations may seem obselete because they don;t fit a certain or current belief system about how that law should be interpreted.

the 2nd amendment is actually the MOST important, without 2a theres no way to guarantee your other rights are respected. whether it be from an individual, or the government itself. as long as theres humans and governments, the 2a will NEVER be obsolete.

As it's written I think it's somewhat obsolete.
Mostly because private citizens are kept from buying nuclear weapons, nuclear subs, nuclear aircraft carriers, plastic explosives, cobra helicopters, (for the most part) fully automatic weapons, f15's, cruise missiles...that kind of thing.

But I don't think an amendment being obsolete changes a right, or takes it away.


No. It gets piled upon by social conditioning until people break under it, though.


I don't think we had many schools back then.
Weren't public schools "invented" in the 1800's?

Otherwise, weren't the homicidal maniacs busy killing escaped slaves, immigrants, indians, European troops, buffalo, each other?

Not to mention there wasn't an internet to provide immediate global coverage so who knows what else went on?
My grandma told me some sick stories of people where she grew up whom would be classified as serial killers today.

And I know there are local (to az) stories here of people erecting just smokestacks, then advertising jobs back east, then when the people came looking for factory jobs they'd be taken out in the desert and robbed or robbed and killed.


Shoot up schools?
Per capita, not many.


He could have carried more than 1 musket, carried a bunch of black powder pistols, brought his dads cavalry sword as backup, or like Columbine invited a friend or two to help, not to mention used dynamite or black powder bombs, possibly set up the town cannon to fire into the school.

There may have been more culturally relevant means too.
Like poisoning the family's well, burning crops, stringing them up as they worked in the fields, accused them of witch craft or cattle rustling or horse theft, burned their houses down, put snakes in their bed, given them blankets infested with fleas and smallpox.

The musket argument is more of an argument against public schools, the DOE and mandatory education, mandatory attendance for everyone in a single convenient place, than against guns.


Why not? It's just a matter of scale.
It's like saying "the founders could envision the government being in debt 100 dollars...but 100,000 dollars? They COULD NOT POSSIBLY have taken this into account!"


Ultimately, it can't be infringed.
It's human nature to look for an advantage when they feel in danger, and to try to secure themselves.

The more a government tries to infringe, it simply motivates people to fight against it.
Sometimes by direct conflict or opposition, sometimes by circumvention.

If the government truly wanted to get rid of guns they wouldn't try to pass legislation against them, they'd just keep up and increase the whole "you're in danger, we're your only chance at security, everything else is pointless, we love you and you can trust us" thing it's got going on now.
Lies and propaganda and manipulating information.

That would take a bunch more generations though, which a lot of politicians aren't really patient for because they want to maintain their jobs by looking like they are doing something plus leave a "legacy," so they have to try and do something now.

So

I think government is obsolete with communication technology the way it is now.

False logic does not an argument make!

One could have walked into a one room schoolhouse with a pistol, rifle or musket, and a sword. One could then shoot the schoolmaster with the rifle, finish him or her off with the pistol, then proceed to cut the throats of every child.

An infinite number of scary scenarios can be made as to how one or more people can kill many. None have anything to do with the second amendment which is about the right to protect one's self and family from danger which may include the government.

NO metalwing! its for shooting targets! and hunting ducks! government wouldnt EVER harm their own citizens!.....

That's subjective.

Let's test your position.
A wealthy Muslim cult in the U.S. devises a doomsday weapon.
It's more fatal than Ebola, it's the most contagious disease known, and if released to the environment there'd be no stopping it.
It is a genuine doomsday weapon. EVERYone dies.

Some in the cult have died and gone to heaven for their 40 virgins and a mule via truck-bomb; BUT technically it's not a terrorist organization.

Does the Second Amendment protect private ownership of such a weapon?
BTW, the government protocol for this type of pathogen is called
"Level IV" containment. But the cult doesn't do that. They just keep it in the refrigerator, next to the baklava.

- or -

Nuclear Weapons?
Do you think Madison wanted mentally unstable people to own explosives measured in "megatons"?

They're weapons.
"Shall not be infringed."
So 2A is not obsolete. Right?

- or -

Might it have been meant to apply to:
- non-lethal weapons like pepper spray
- bow & arrow
- crossbow
- conventional firearms

but not WMD, which didn't exist in the 18th Century?

nope,, people just seem more likely to ignore the 'regulated' part,,,lol

mostly,, everyone that can afford a gun and has no criminal or psychiatric background can still bear 'arms'

A fair amount of the Constitution could arguably to be said to have been obsolete at the time it was written.

And the so-called Bill Of Rights Amendments were not the best written things themselves. The politics and paranoia driven ancestor worship which so many people still indulge in about it all, gets in the way of the kind of basic recognitions needed, that it has always been a flawed document.

Most classic exemplar: the Tenth Amendment. That's the one where they said "We can't think of anything else right this second, and we're in a hurry to get this thing rolling, so we'll just say that anything we didn't think to mention so far, is to be assumed as having BEEN mentioned anyway."

Why else do we constantly need a Supreme Court, reinterpreting it?

It's a bit ironic from my own point of view, that so many of the people who want the Second Amendment to be chiseled into the stones of every government building in the nation, don't feel the same way about any of the other amendments. Too bad. Some of the other roughly written ones provide balance.

I guess maybe they should have outlawed kool-aid after Jonestown...

Makes about as much sense as this.

the tool that has actually had the MOST killing in the last 100 years...hasn't been guns at all...although that is what the media likes to report.

Can anyone guess the tool?...it's EXTREMELY effective MASS murders....


That tool?....well it's fire!

There are stories where criminals have chained doors shut in nightclubs then set the place ablaze,

Stores where concerts were taking place and criminals set a 'fire' pereminter and torch houses etc.


it's killed more people than guns....maybe we should ban fire,(or anything that could possibly start one) then we are just left with knives...

oh wait those kill people too...we should ban those as well

We can go back to Neanderthal living and just use sticks....oh wait those have been used to kill people as well.

Well now we are down to just our bare-hands oh wait...those have been known to kill people as well....

maybe we should just chop those off(wait there is no knives..that won't work, guess we'll have to tie them(wait...ropes can kill people to...they wouldn't be allowed either)

Yes i know this is a little off-base but the point is....no matter WHAT we take away....there will always be a WHO who figures out how to kill. Regardless of what type of weapon/tool/etc

If all guns were destroyed, you'd have people with swords, that people would use the same logic to get rid of those....and the list would go on...


Today the evil is the 'gun', people are always trying to find 'something' to blame it on...when in reality is 'someone' a weapon can't be a evil, a person on the other hand can definitely be...and will continue to be regardless of what tools they have access to.

Obviously.
Outlay blades, they'll use clubs and throw stones.
Outlaw them, they'll use fists.
Outlaw them, and we're in prison.

BUT !!

In that circumstance, the massacres at Columbine, & Sandy Hook, would not have happened.

i disagree, if they had their mind made up they were going to kill people, what would stop them from walking into school with katana's and stabbing everything in sight. or making some kind of IED and taking it into school in a bookbag and blowing it up in a classroom full of kids. point is, humans are violent by nature, some of us anyway. if people want to kill people and they dont have guns they will just get more creative on how they go about killing.

2A. will always be important, probably the most important. if there was no 2A and government and law enforcement were the only people allowed to have guns, how would we be able to ensure we stay a "free" society? people who say the 2A is obsolete and doesnt apply to todays world needs a history lesson. theres far too many guns out there to ever confiscate every single one of them. so if you take away normal peoples right to own, only criminals will then. and if a criminal is going to have one, i will make damn sure i have one as well, illegal or not.

really? ....look up Osoka school massacre weapon used: Kitchen knife


at least we can detect guns....I'm worried about when people start using bio weapons and no one escapes because they didn't even realize it was happening. ...when that starts happening we'll be wishing the days that kids used guns would come again

Seriously?!

This talentless pencil-neck?!



If he was a 3rd degree black belt, or samurai, I might agree.
This dork couldn't open a letter with a katana.

You miss the point g8.

Guns do all kinds of awful things.
- They can fire a projectile at an innocent person's head or heart, and kill them instantly.

- Guns can blast wound-channels into vital tissue, inflicting fatal injury, leaving the shooting victim to suffer, enter shock, and die.



BUT !!!

One thing the gun does that broadsword cannot:

The gun empowers the weak against the strong.

Make up your own examples.

And to my knowledge, this is unprecedented. I can't think of any other human invention that accomplishes that.

But as Lord Acton is reported to have warned:

As an NRA life member I'm familiar with the slogan.

An armed society is a polite society.

Whether the NRA's utopia, where most or every man & woman is "packin' heat" would result in fewer firearms murders than our status quo, I don't know.
Stats and indications on that seem to be mixed.

Yes agreed, knives and forks don't make people fat.

Or should forks be banned in the hope that the obesity rate will drop.

If guns were legal here would I have one, you bet your bottom dollar I would.

maybe they should start by taking people off the anti-physcotic meds ALL of the recent mass murders have been on... if you really want to blame, then blame the phrama companies and doctors that prescribe these like candies...