throughout the history of this country, amendments have been modified to reflect what is in the national interest. New amendments have been added to supersede amendments or provisions of the constitution that are not appropriate for the changing world.

The 2nd amendment is pretty bald-

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."


The world has changed since this amendment was ratified, and in relation to this amendment in specific, in two key areas.

One, there are way more people, and two, firearms are way more dangerous than ever before.

In 1776 there was something like 800 million people in the entire WORLD, today, there are over 300 million in the USA alone. In 1776, there was 2.5 million people in the Americas as colonists including north and south America, 80 percent of the country was unexplored wilderness filled with hostile peoples.

The height of weapons technology at the time for rapid fire was a smoothbore musket requiring 20 seconds to fire a single shot and reload, in 13 separate steps. The most accurate weapon at the time would have been a rifle, requiring far longer to load, and far more cleaning.

To kill as many people as this nutjub did in a few minutes were it back then, you would need a cannon loaded with grape shot, a team of cannon loaders numbering from 7-14 men, and a lengthy amount of time to do so, with a crowd of people hanging around in range and on target until the process was completed.

The founding fathers would have no idea of the incredible speed and lethality of the modern weapon, combined with the compact nature of many smaller automatic weapons. Had they an inclination, im betting they would not have made that amendment so interpretable and bald.

Its important to remember that many of these amendments had to do with the immediate situation of their time, for instance, the 3rd amendment-

"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

This was exactly what british troops were doing pre-revolution, and I would label this as a hotbutton issue of the time, requiring a specific resolution, but how much does this amendment really have to do with the modern world and the modern soldier? Not much.

The point is, that we have done nothing as a culture to even discuss very minor limitations of firearms, constantly pointing to a right first stated 200 years ago in a very different time, and a very small country surrounded by enemies.

Ive seen several references to both Switzerland and Israel in this thread, as if we should go out of our way to militarize all aspects of our society out of perceived safety, as they HAVE to, being small in number, and surrounded. We do not have that same problems anymore as we did 200 years ago, and the changes in our demographics necessitate a realistic discussion of the issues at hand and what may be done to protect our future.

I use jplinvilles post in #652-

I can nearly guarantee that at least 75% of gun owners would become law breakers by refusing to register their guns.

Thats the spirit of no compromise, no discussion that will eventually make this issue a matter of all or nothing. People refuse the most basic, mildest ideas on at least tracking gun sales, limiting just who can get them, ect.

So far, its mostly nothing, weak compromises that are ineffectual, like the no guns in schools rule.

Ongoing mass shootings mostly perpetrated with legally owned and often hoarded weapons stolen from their rightful owners. I know this statement seems to upset Brian Carlton, but my analysis of the situation shows the by far, the most popular stolen weapon for mass shootings is the automatic hand gun. At the same time, who here can actually tell me that the automatic hand gun is gonna be useful in fighting an oppressive government?

Logically, if we rounded them all up and turned them into sewer main covers, the most popular legally owned weapon for the last 60+ mass shootings since the 80s would now no longer be available for the future.

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here is what I see. I see gun control legislation not having much to do with affecting violent crime with illegal weapons, but ironically, it may certainly have an effect on these types of mass shootings using stolen legally owned weapons by suburbanites.

The argument can be made that these kids can find an illegal weapon, but thats easier said than done, let alone a socially awkward kid who fears and hates the world and is from a nice, happy middle class area.

I use Australian information as an example. They modified their gun control laws, rounded up huge numbers of guns, but not even half of the total number, but the most likely to be used in these types of crimes, and boom, not a single incident for over a decade of this type.

We on the other hand are screaming that the only solution to gun violence, is more gun violence, and arming teachers, ect ect. Just doesn't make sense to me at all, and moves us toward a ID check police state "for the protection of our kids".

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shuffled off to the streets only to be picked up and shuffled off to the jails.....

Read Susan McDougal's book about her experience in jail with the mentally ill........

The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk: Why I Refused to Testify Against the Clintons & What I Learned in Jail: Susan McDougal, Helen Thomas, Pat Harris: 9780786713028: Amazon.com: Books

Every person's perception is their own reality. I don't have a need for guns and I don't own any, though I go to skeet shooting and target practice when it's available. I wouldn't want to mess with the 2nd amendment, especially when the new laws are unenforceable. It would be window dressing. But I get the general feeling that's what the general populace wants to hear - placebos, and not a call to personal responsibility. I wonder what is the NRA's view on how Switzerland implements gun control?

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a call to personal responsibility does what? how does that protect against a nutjob like in this situation?

I also have no need or desire to own weapons anymore. I stand to inherit a couple historic firearms, but I would happily surrender them if I believed that surrendering them would make it less likely that these types of atrocities can continue, which I do.

What drives me nuts is the spirit of no compromise, no discussion. As shown in this thread, when logical facts and examples of gun control effects on murder rates in other countries is demonstrated, the response is always that more guns are indeed the answer, not less. Same old story, different year.

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Switzerland and Israel both seem to have a lot of guns but not much gun violence. It seems their situation needs to be looked at to see why and how it apparently works so well.

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..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Sadly, I think we've been moving in that direction for at least a couple decades now.

Even though Bot's statistics point out that homicides are at quite a low level now historically, the 24/7 news cycle sensationalizes every occurrence such that it appears to the average person that the world outside their front door has turned into a free for all killing zone.

Add to that your observation, that today's populace believes their lives should be a guaranteed "zero risk" existence from cradle to grave, in every aspect.

Back in the 90's, John Stossel (with ABC at the time) hosted a program called "Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death", covering many topics in our society that were cause celebs, from the environment to the current topic.

He presented the following hypothetical to the panel of guests, representing a cross-section of groups and society at the time - "I have a new fuel I want to put on the market. It's clean burning, we already have the technology and infrastructure in place to handle it, it's relatively cheap, and this country already has an abundance of it - that could drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help our economy. The downside is it's highly flammable, colorless and odorless, and on average you could expect 100 people per year to be killed from mistakes and accidents occurring while using it."

"My question to you is, do the benefits this fuel would give to the country as a whole outweigh the potential accidents and cost of human life? How many say NO, that 100 lives is too high a price to pay?"

Nearly every member of the panel held up their hands.

"How about if we could reduce that to 10 lives, how many still say NO?"

This time about 2/3 of the panel held up their hands.

"How about if we could reduce that to just one person, how many would still say NO, that even one life is still too high a price to pay for the benefits our country would receive from this fuel?"

About a 1/3 of the panel still held up their hands.

Mr Stossel then explained, "In that case, you had best call your utility and tell them to shut off you gas service, becasuse you believe it's too dangerous to use - because that's exactly the fuel I've been describing, and the numbers of deaths that occur each year from it's use - natural gas."

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Good question but once again the purpose of the media is not to inform. The purpose is to make you believe. We think we are seeing an information service but what we are really seeing is more like a form of religion. You think, you believe, you know what happened but you weren't there and never saw what happened.

And it works brilliantly. The people believe. Hail the opiate of the masses.

Their situation can be described as an external threat to small bodies of like minded individuals with similar cultural backrounds.

For Switzerland, its a cultural tradition of neutrality enforced by bristling defenses and military traditions going back forever, and for Israel, if they didn't arm everyone on the map, they would have been wiped off of it long ago.

There is no way we, as a huge varied powerful country with thousands of different cultural traditions and viewpoints either realistically can, or really needs to act in the same way.
We have more guns than anyone in the world though, and our needs for them are less imperative than either of those countries. How many people here have over a dozen weapons? all for apparently home defense, and all more likely to shoot or be shot by a loved one with them instead than actually defend their home.

Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self-defense | Ars Technica

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on the sensationalism, we agree, but I don't think that when a whole bunch of kids in a school are shot, and that its a recurring theme, that the boiled down response shouldn't be "***** happens, we need to toughen up".

your arguement is basically that these types of mass shooting tragedies are simply the breaks of the game, I think thats not the right way to look at it.

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The country is flooded with firearms. They last indefinitely and more are being produced every day. Here and elsewhere, in factories and in private 1-man shops. Those are facts. We have seen gun bans that do nothing. We only need to look at Prohibition in the 1930's for a similar scenario of worthless laws. So controlling the supply is a nonstarter. Personal responsibility and getting a line on potential wackos would be the logical direction to go. Some form of mandatory gun safety school should be required for everyone, and that venue would also provide an opportunity to weed out some of society's sick people who need help. The trouble right now is the people who are flying under the radar who desperately need help but they are not getting it. Just one gun or any weapon in that person's hands spells disaster.

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Exactly the point I tried to get across a few pages back. Instead of just simple self-examination and trying to figure out what we've done wrong, do a comparison against other countries that apparently have gotten it right (albeit for their particular circumstances) - a high number of guns per populace, but seemingly low gun-related violence.

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on this we agree, but many of the compromises on the table are not discussing limiting weapons ownership, but placing restrictions and methods of tracking them, and even small changes are rejected, meaning that the flooded situation will continue as it has without even an attempt, and who knows, the next one could be the crazy relative jplinville described breaking into his house, taking his gun, and shooting a bunch of people.

Any effect would be a good effect, even in you completely halted the manufacture of certain types of guns and cut off selling them to people, thats something that could be done. There are a million ways we could do something to improve control and regulation.

I personally think that things like no waiting period gun show sales should be forbidden, and ammunition should not be saleable without demostrated proof of gun ownership in that exact caliber.

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heres a way to consider it. The state of Delaware is under constant attack and threat from the states of NJ, NY, MD, PA and VA. These 6 larger, heavier populated states have repeatedly attacked, and threatened to attack Delaware on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis for the last 50 years.

Thats an external threat that delaware has to take seriously, so they have a huge external enemy that they are highly militarized to react to. Thats Israel.


Now, elsewhere, the state of Colorado in mountainous impassible country has been walling itself off for the last 500 years and attempting to wait out every single of the dozens of wars that have been taking place all over the midwest without stop. In order to do this, every bridge in is lined with tank traps, every highway tunnel has included blast doors and hiding space for the population, and every one is armed to maintain their neutrality with force. Switzerland.

Again, its the external threat and their small size and vulnerability that makes these countries better able to retain military weapons for every single adult trained with them with required military service.

We don't have the training, we don't have the incentive, we dont have the fear of external destruction, we don't have the demonstration that its very possible, and we have more weapons to enjoy in the meantime. One thing we do have, is more freedoms than either of those countries, which would be nice to maintain. A closer country that we should be comparing ourselves too is Australia, who have interesting weapons bans based on similar circumstances, and a similar sense of national identity without external threat that is very real.

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Bull****. You completely misunderstood the point.

The argument being that when taking into account the two factors I mentioned, instead of a reasoned rational discussion and response to events such as this, we're even more likely, as a country, to have an emotional knee-jerk response that does nothing to address the problem, or even makes matters worse.

For example, as one poster already mentioned, the Patriot Act in response to 9/11.

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