Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

Point being, if they were products of their society, it has to be recognized that their society resembles ours as much as it does the aforementioned cave-dwelling rock-bangers. Therefore, I consider the the intentions of the founding fathers to be completely irrelevant because, as someone mentioned upthread, it's nothing but a matter of faith. We can't know what their intentions were because it's a matter of myth and legend at this point.

I don't ascribe to the deification of the "founding fathers" and don't particularly think a lot of their ideas were worth the paper they were scribbled on - fact is, the rights enumerated in the Constitution can and have been amended and changed, we've even made amendments to cancel out later amendments. There is nothing particularly untouchable about the first ten or even the first two. If they need to be clarified - which they obviously do - then they ought to be.

These points you have made are bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit. There is a vast amount of writing by the founding fathers which describes their intentions in this respect or that respect, and frankly, their society resembles ours to a vast degree more than your mythical cave-dwelling rock-bangers. Not to mention that the vast majority of what a follower of the Enlightenment might consider advances in moral thought and understanding of morality had already happened.


[quote[I don't ascribe to the deification of the "founding fathers" and don't particularly think a lot of their ideas were worth the paper they were scribbled on - fact is, the rights enumerated in the Constitution can and have been amended and changed, we've even made amendments to cancel out later amendments. There is nothing particularly untouchable about the first ten or even the first two. If they need to be clarified - which they obviously do - then they ought to be.[/quote]

As is not uncommonly the case, you say something reasonable after (and supposedly based upon) something completely batshit. Examine your priors, Nute; just because your conclusions are correct doesn't mean your assumptions are, and incorrect assumptions lead you to errors elsewhere.

Then why are we even having this discussion? Why isn't anyone pointing out what the explicit intent of the Second Amendment was? If that doesn't exist, then their intentions are absolutely irrelevant to this argument. In fact, if that does exist, I'd still argue that their intentions are irrelevant because they're dead.

It doesn't matter what the situation was when the Constitution was written, all that matters is now and if it's no longer relevant or useful, change it. If it can be better, change it. If parts of it were bad ideas in the first place, we should change them and to hell with what the intention of a bunch of dead dudes were.

Then don't bring up their intentions, or your critique-from-Nutian-ignorance dismissal of them and their society. The argument that they're somehow closer to cavemen than to modern man is both ridiculous and irrelevant to your actual, functional position (which is one I agree with):

Well if the man that invented bacon wants to skin a few kids in his spare time I say we not only let him, we each round up a few kids for him.

Jesus Christ, Nute, how many times do you need to shit up perfectly normal points about the limits of historical-legal interpretations with your weirdo absolutist stuff? You consistently confuse that you personally know nothing about a subject with it being fundamentally unknowable, which is stupid. And then you state it with conviction, over and over again, adding italics until...what?
There is no universe where Founding Fathers:Rock Bangers :: US 2012:Founding Fathers makes sense or does anything useful, except in the minds of the cosmically ignorant. You're not making an interesting point hyperbolically. You're stripping the substance from your argument by making it sound like the reasoning of a child with a head injury and a tantrum brewing.

You're not talking to people that are outraged at the notion of critically assessing American legal history without fetishizing its origins, by and large. Stop conflating thinking ahistorically with being unburdened by undue reverence for historical figures. They aren't the same, and it's irritating as fuck.

Sadly, there is enough material from the Constitutional Convention and history of the amendment that it's perfectly plausible to argue virtually anything you want on original intent. Historical sources deemed relevant include "the history of armed citizens in England, the Federalist and Antifederalist debates, the meaning of the word "militia," the constitutional ratification process, and the various state constitutions in existence at the time" 28 Val. U. L. Rev. 1009 (1993-1994)
History of the Second Amendment, The; Vandercoy, David E. (arguing for the individual rights side; see also 26 Val. U. L. Rev. 118 (1991-1992)
Arms, Anarchy and the Second Amendment; Henigan, Dennis A., using the same material to argue for the "militia" side).[/quote]

If you would like to explore the detailed discussion on this issue, the search ("second amendment" AND "original intent") returns 618 articles in the HeinOnline database. Check wiht your local law school or library.

Yes.

Should have quit while you were ahead.

I dunno, man. Dude was possessed of a phenomenal, gigantic intellect, and had an enormously positive impact on the development of scientific thought. From a perspective of judging a person by their works, he's pretty high up there.

I just find it a bit off-putting to replace the founder pedestal so transparently with the scientist pedestal, especially when you make a broad comparison to present-day people around emotional and dramatic criteria with little substance. It's reminiscent of a more obscure version of the Tesla fetishism that contaminates the internet, for instance, in that it's mainly a secret handshake for a certain social circle rather than an insight on the historical place of a person.

Fair enough; I can see how my post came off that way. For what it's worth, I was more just continuing to make fun of Nute's position, by pointing out one particular luminary of the generations-before-the-founders time period who I personally rather admire. I don't put him on a pedestal, anymore than I put Feynman or Cervantes on a pedestal; I just think he was awesome.

Just for the sake of discussion, Article 16 of the Vermont Constitution (ca. 1790ish) reads as follows:

Since times don't change, we should completely dismantle our standing army and rely on the militia.

John Milius would approve.

Congratulations! You've just adopted the strawman argument that gives Scalia and his minions wet dreams. I recognize that you've likely been blinded by what you perceive as the "fetishization" of the founding fathers, but there are often very good reasons for a court to consider the intentions of the drafters in attempting to understand and apply ambiguous constituional/legislative mandates that have nothing to do with personal regard for them.

No there aren't. All that matters is what's useful now.

So then every judge is free to interpret any given law the way he or she wants without regard to the purpose of the law when written, with no regard to the purpose of the law as intended by those who enacted it, unless it's say, only three years old (three because I don't know where you're drawing the line), based on the judge's perception of what's "useful" now? So then each judge is is own legislator, determining whether a law is useful and how to best interpret it to make it useful?

No. Just no.

Vermont was founded by communists and that's why they never really became a state.

Yes, because that's what judges and specifically the Supreme Court do. Otherwise you couldn't do things like repeal Amendments. "Nope, sorry, it was the intent at the time to ban alcohol, we can't change that, nope nope nope. Can't go against the intent even when the intent is harmful."

When a law causes more harm than good, there is an obligation to change the law.

That last part is completely different from what you have been saying. Before you said intent doesn't matter at all.

While overstated, this has happened as long as there has been judges. Most famously I'd point to a certain second amendment which was reinterpreted in the last 50 years to be an explicit right to own firearms for self defense.

This explains it then. You are a visitor from another dimension where the fundamental principles of the Anglo-American legal system developed in a completely different manner. Here in our dimension, however, the judical and legislative functions are embodied in separate institutions. Case in point -- our Supreme Court couldn't simply decide they didn't like the 18th amendment and nullify it. Instead, we had to ratify another amendment (the 23rd).

p.s. - does the bizarro world version of me look good with a goatee?

And the last part doesn't have anything to do with intent. If the framers had put in a clause saying "For the good of the nation, slavery shall be legal" - it doesn't matter if they thought it was for the good of the nation, the law would be harmful and should be changed, and their thoughts on the matter would be irrelevant. It has nothing to do with their intention - going back to the main point, I'm sure that at the time they thought arming the citizenry was a necessary thing to do given the state of affairs at the time.

As it can be argued that it is no longer necessary (due to our military, it is literally impossible for our nation to be conquered by any other nation on the planet through force) and that an armed citizenry can categorically be proven to cause harm, and that countries where an armed citizenry is not the norm do not suffer any of the consequences that pro-gun advocates predict - then it should follow, in my opinion, that the Second Amendment as traditionally interpreted is no longer necessary and is, in fact, a detriment to the well-being of our society.

Just because some old white men said "citizens need to be armed to be truly free" does not make that a fact. They were wrong about a number of things, and that would be one of them.

Functionally the same damn thing, the 23rd Amendment is a de facto repealing of the 18th.

Following that precedent, we could simply ratify another Amendment that would modify and clarify the Second Amendment.

Tell me, Nute. Do you write yourself grocery lists, or does that too count as the past and therefore useless?

And the 23rd Amendment was not enacted by Judges. That is not their job.

I think you misunderstand the role of judges. Judges don't amend and repeal laws or constitutional provisions. It is the legislature's role to make laws, to amend laws, and to repeal laws. Judges don't do that. Judges determine whether someone's behavior violates a law. Sometimes, in order to do that, a judge has to determine what the intent of the law is. Judges also determine whether laws are unconstitutional. You disagree. but judges generally find it wise to examine the intent of the law and the intent of the constitutional provision at issue. if the judge determines that the law is unconstitutional, the judge doesn't re-write the law to fit his idea of what would be useful. That is for the legislature.

We agree -- As interpreted to permit fairly unregulated private ownership of guns, the Second Amendment sucks harder than a black hole. How you get there and what you propose to do about it is from Crazytown.

I'm happy just being right. People who've purchased more degrees than me can write the laws.

That's functionally the same thing only in bizzarro world where the Congress and the Court are one and the same.

As noted by the editor the author of the article, Dwight R. Worley owns a pistol in NYC. Apparently he's not on the interactive map. I thought owning a gun in NYC is very hard to get permit for?

A blogger has posted the addresses, twitter and Facebook information of the staff of the Journal-News.

Interesting that he owns a gun but didnt feel the need to provide everyone with his address like he did for others.

Apparently Sen. Dianne Feinstein used to have a conceal-carry permit.

She was a poster-child for hypocrisy on gun control for many years. I saw a few things on Facebook today mentioning that she's preparing to introduce more gun-limiting legislation in early 2013 and already the Hitler/Stalin/Mao comparisons have begun.

Also:
There Were Two Rocket Launchers Turned in at LA's Gun Buyback Program
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/poli...rs-were-turned-las-gun-buyback-program/60390/

The final numbers from the massively successful one-day gun buyback in Los Angeles have arrived: 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and two anti-tank rocket launchers were traded in for supermarket gift cards — no questions asked. But ... but ... we have so many questions.

Finally I also ran across this beeb article and thought it was somewhat germane to the thread. (edit: rawr formatting! Plus it has that one-sentence-per-paragraph thing. I'm nerd raging like an idiot here.)

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm

A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

[...]

The use of knives is particularly worrying amongst adolescents, say the researchers, reporting that 24% of 16-year-olds have been shown to carry weapons, primarily knives.

The study found links between easy access to domestic knives and violent assault are long established.

Yes, Feinstein's CC permit is an ancient artifact of the gun debate. It's usually paired up with discussions of Hollywood celebrities bashing guns while having armed guards and so on.

Ok cool: as soon as the average person gets as many death threats as Dianne Feinstein they can get a concealed carry permit. Problem solved.

Otterloop that is pretty much the most idiotic statement you have ever made here.

In fairness, a lot of people stupidly buy huge cutlery sets with a bunch of extraneous pieces. Aside from a service set (steak knives, basically), there's rarely a reason for the layperson to own more than three kitchen knives. A chef's knife and a paring knife will get you pretty far on their own.

If I'm completely honest with myself (and I always am) I am TOTALLY aware that when I take the time to carefully select which of my two chef knives I'll use to mince basil or cut up potatoes I'm only doing it so I can feel just a tiny bit more like I know what I'm doing because there's an ass hair of difference between the black one and the wooden handled one.

Tell me about it. I bought a 17 piece knife set a couple weeks ago and the fuckin handle on the main chef's knife broke while I was cutting something. Just snapped right off under pressure. Looking inside the halved handle, it didn't even have a solid metal core! Idiotic.

So I returned that shit and bought a single good chef's knife plus some steak knives for place settings.