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Gun Control Discussion 2


TerraPrime

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3 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

My reading of that clause is that the first comma in it is either archaic or a typo. Can't tell, I'm not a native speaker or a linguist. But the comma in there makes no sense syntactically. Without that comma, the sentence seems a lot clearer.

It's probably just an archaism from the time; certainly, a lot of English philosophy is littered with an abundance of unnecessary commas, from what I remember. I agree if you remove the comma (and insert a conjunction), it reads much more naturally. And also supports the pro-gun control perspective. However, as none of the people who wrote the Amendment are here to tell us whether or not we've correctly identified and fixed their archaism, it's basically guessing, so I don't see much fruit in that line of argument. 

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That said, interpreting the specific sentence of the 2nd amendment isn't particularly productive, as there were a whole lot of writings done contemporaneously about what they were doing and why, and history of the last 100 years indicated their reasoning pretty soundly.

Namely:

  • They didn't want ANY national standing armies ever
  • They wanted a force that could mobilize quickly in the case of foreign or domestic tyranny
  • They wanted to ensure states could defend themselves

The 2nd amendment arose entirely from arguments from Federalists and Anti-Federalists worried about the Federal government having the right to regulate the defense of the nation, and the only argument about the 2nd amendment at the time was whether or not it would be enough to dissuade tyrants from taking over nationally. It was a given that people as a rule would have firearms in their home (though as a matter of fact, most firearms at the time were registered locally and with states, and were heavily regulated by the states).

For the founders, arms and liberty were inexorably linked.

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1 minute ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

I don't see hate speech, but I will concede to sexual harassment. I asked if you had reference that suggested that these elements were factors in gathering the statistics which determined the U.K. to be the violent crime capital of Europe in 2007-2009? Can you provide a reference that?

I've just finished my second bottle of wine, so I can't be arsed! What I will say is that being the violence capital of Europe is like being the tallest midget in the Wizard of Oz, totally irrelevant to the massive figures the US displays. But if you are happy with those death figures for some reason connected with a defunct constitutional application, good on you.

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9 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

I don't agree with this line of reasoning; by that token, you could claim all sentence fragments are just elliptical clauses.

No you can't. Because sentences containing lonely predicative nominatives aren't fragments. Subordinating clauses, verbal, infinitive, and participial phrases, and appositives can constitute sentence fragments. And "a well regulate Militia" is none of them. It's as predicate nominative. Case in point:

"Even though I went to the store." This is a fragment because despite having a verb and subject, it's an incomplete thought and fails to subordinate an independent clause.

"Carrots." This isn't a fragment. Despite not seeing the subject and verb, the implied or obvious predicate is a conjugation of "to be" because it's obvious that carrots exist. Hence, "They are carrots" is the obvious extension of the elliptical sentence, "Carrots."

25 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

By your own admission it's not, since you've considered two predicates ("it is" vs. "there shall be").

There's no admission. If we're going to go by my thoughts then we have to admit that "obviousness" is subjective. Based on the grammar, the assumption is "it is." My personal view is based on traditional British grammar. But it's like I said, it doesn't matter because they're both either a conjugation or a tense of the verb "to be."

31 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

I disagree. I think the correct conclusion is that we can't make inferences about the intent of the founders from the grammar of the Amendment alone, because as it is written, it does not make sense. One has to change the sentence construction to make sense of it, and there are multiple ways of doing that, with no non-arbitrary (grammatical) means of selecting which one. 

It does make sense. You just disagree with how it makes sense. "Being necessary to the security of a free State" is the only subordinating clause in the statement. It's either modifying the predicate nominative "a well regulated militia," which is part of an elliptical sentence or it's modifying the independent clause, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." You don't have to change the construction; you just have to know the communication of the construction once you recognize it.

40 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

Double posting, since the quote machine got fucked up. I believe theguyfromtheVale meant, "even if overall violence isn't reduced." Why do gun bans need to reduce overall violence in order to be justifiable to you? Do you not believe that there are different categories of violence? If gun bans reduced gun violence, but vehicular violence contemporaneously increased at a faster rate, would that, in your mind, have any bearing on whether the gun ban was justified? If so, why? They aren't related. 

Because the regulations which are sought impose a liability on law-abiding gun owners, who have not used their weapons in a violent offense. You're seeking to undermine a person's right to bear arms on the notion that you're reducing violence by imposing restrictions. There has not been sufficient evidence that the outcomes intended by these regulations have been produced as a result of these regulations. (Scroll a few pages back to see my exchange with dmc515.)

40 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

Knives serve a myriad of useful purposes that guns do not, and they do not enable people to inflict fatal or grave harm nearly as easily as guns.

All of this is subjective. The point is to reduce harm. Regardless of how many uses each serve, if having them in the possession of citizens poses a potential threat, however big or small, then they should be banned, right?

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6 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

The founding fathers made it fairly clear their intent with the second amendment through numerous letters they wrote and speeches they gave.

I understand why the left wants to argue the wording and intentions of the second amendment, but it’s subversive.

 

The intent is utterly meaningless in today's society though. The whole underlying principle of the Second Amendment was that the Founders didn't want the U.S. to have a standing army, and that ship has forever sailed. 

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I think we passed that point sometime last week, yes. :(

That seems to be the case. In never ceases to amaze me how effective the delay and distract tactic is when it comes to gun control conversations after mass shootings.

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

In fact, a gun ban advocate might argue that one reason to ban guns is because humans get violent. And the difference between a serious assault and a homicide is often, in fact, a gun. Similarly, the difference between suicidal ideation and suicidal success is, in fact, a gun. 

I can't link the Jim Jefferies stand up routine on guns and gun control, but he makes a really obvious and great point why banning guns, at least to some extent, can save a lot of live. We all go a little crazy at some point in our lives, and having a gun in the house dramatically increases the likelihood that suicide attempt will be successful. It's something we all know, but the way he frames it really makes it hit home.

2 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I always scratch my head when I see the whole violent crime isn't reduced argument brought up.  That would be like saying we are having a ton of fights in the school yard, so let's give everyone knives.

It's been a while since I read the last study I saw regarding gun control legislation and out right bans, but IIRC, what typically happens is gun violence and suicide rates drop a lot and some other violent and non-violent crime stats go up a little bit, but that they rarely if ever outweigh the the benefit of the former in this equation. 

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53 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

I'll bite on this one. Are you suggesting that restriction of knives had no affect on knife crime is proof that regulation of guns would have a similar outcome? While quoting  an article that points out that police numbers are at their lowest levels for 30 years?  

In addition stop and search due to said reduction in numbers, and political pressure has resulted in a fall from 250k per year to just over 150k in 2 years from 2014-2016. 

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3 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Because the regulations which are sought impose a liability on law-abiding gun owners, who have not used their weapons in a violent offense. You're seeking to undermine a person's right to bear arms on the notion that you're reducing violence by imposing restrictions.

No, we are not.

3 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

There has not been sufficient evidence that the outcomes intended by these regulations have been produced as a result of these regulations. (Scroll a few pages back to see my exchange with dmc515.)

What would sufficient evidence look like to you?

3 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

All of this is subjective. The point is to reduce harm. Regardless of how many uses each serve, if having them in the possession of citizens poses a potential threat, however big or small, then they should be banned, right?

No. As with everything else in life, moderation is good, extremism is not. Or are you proposing that everyone should be allowed to have nuclear weapons?

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9 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

 

All of this is subjective. The point is to reduce harm. Regardless of how many uses each serve, if having them in the possession of citizens poses a potential threat, however big or small, then they should be banned, right?

There is almost literally no object that couldn't be used to cause harm to another. I've seen someone choked to death with a slipper, and I've seen someone killed with a comb. Stop being so ridiculous. 

As to you bizzaro assertion despite all evidence to the contrary that restriction wouldn't have any impact on mass killings, read up on Australia post Port Arthur. 

 

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5 hours ago, Hereward said:

I've just finished my second bottle of wine, so I can't be arsed! What I will say is that being the violence capital of Europe is like being the tallest midget in the Wizard of Oz, totally irrelevant to the massive figures the US displays. But if you are happy with those death figures for some reason connected with a defunct constitutional application, good on you.

BUT....Can you provide a reference for that?!?

You're out of the woods
You're out of the dark
You're out of the night
Step into the sun
Step into the light

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13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

There is almost literally no object that couldn't be used to cause harm to another. I've seen someone choked to death with a slipper, and I've seen someone killed with a comb. Stop being so ridiculous. 

As to you bizzaro assertion despite all evidence to the contrary that restriction wouldn't have any impact on mass killings, read up on Australia post Port Arthur. 

 

I doubt that the slipper was used to kill at a distance, and likewise the comb. Firearms are designed to kill at a distance unlike other household objects.

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18 hours ago, Kalbear said:

That said, interpreting the specific sentence of the 2nd amendment isn't particularly productive, as there were a whole lot of writings done contemporaneously about what they were doing and why, and history of the last 100 years indicated their reasoning pretty soundly.

(shortened)

 

For the founders, arms and liberty were inexorably linked.

This. 

Arguing about clauses and commas and conjunctions as a way to justify and validate a wide-affecting set of laws that impact directly on people's safety and security is inane, in the literal sense. When your framework produces absurd outcomes, you shouldn't be justifying the absurdity based on a grammatical argument about proper use of omitted conjunctions. 

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7 hours ago, TerraPrime said:

This. 

Arguing about clauses and commas and conjunctions as a way to justify and validate a wide-affecting set of laws that impact directly on people's safety and security is inane, in the literal sense.

If we were arguing in the context of the law's impact, this statement would be true. But the context has since shifted to the meaning of the second amendment; therefore, arguing clauses, commas, and conjunctions is very much relevant. Because words have meaning and purpose, and grammar helps in the understanding of what the arrangement of words communicate.

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56 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

If we were arguing in the context of the law's impact, this statement would be true. But the context has since shifted to the meaning of the second amendment; therefore, arguing clauses, commas, and conjunctions is very much relevant. Because words have meaning and purpose, and grammar helps in the understanding of what the arrangement of words communicate.

I agree, and I am by no means adept in constitutional law, nor am I an expert in grammar (I’m sure that sentence is grammatically wrong).  However, those who desire stricter gun laws (I am not yet willing to resort to negative political labels; e.g. gun nut, though I’m not sure why, they seem willing to label me quite liberally) will argue the nuances of the grammar of the 2nd Amendment.  Then they say that the founders couldn’t foresee the advance of technology; and they’re wrong again, IMHO.  The founding fathers said things like “self-defense is the first law of nature”.  

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22 minutes ago, King Ned Stark said:

I agree, and I am by no means adept in constitutional law, nor am I an expert in grammar (I’m sure that sentence is grammatically wrong).  However, those who desire stricter gun laws (I am not yet willing to resort to negative political labels; e.g. gun nut, though I’m not sure why, they seem willing to label me quite liberally) will argue the nuances of the grammar of the 2nd Amendment.

And to their dismay, they would lose that argument.

22 minutes ago, King Ned Stark said:

Then they say that the founders couldn’t foresee the advance of technology; and they’re wrong again, IMHO.

You're right. The continental congress was about to acquire automatic weapons. The only thing that prevented this acquisition was a budget constraint, not the inability to foresee the advancement of technology.

22 minutes ago, King Ned Stark said:

The founding fathers said things like “self-defense is the first law of nature”.  

Exactly. The right is a concept put into practice by law. The founding fathers were heavily influenced, as you hinted, by the concept of natural rights, which aren't subject to the relativism of changing cultures.

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3 hours ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

You're right. The continental congress was about to acquire automatic weapons. The only thing that prevented this acquisition was a budget constraint, not the inability to foresee the advancement of technology.

Exactly. The right is a concept put into practice by law. The founding fathers were heavily influenced, as you hinted, by the concept of natural rights, which aren't subject to the relativism of changing cultures.

Disagreed; they would have been unparalleled military geniuses if they recognised in advance what automatic weapons could be used for. This hadn't even been properly figured out by the outbreak of the First World War, decades later. The sheer destructive powers of machine guns just weren't understood, and it horrified Europe en masse to witness the scale of damage machine guns caused (because, of course, they were fine when they were used against Indigenous people but horrified when they saw what they actually did to their own people).

And sure, the founding fathers believed being armed was an inalienable right. But they also did not have a standing army, because that was the role of state militia. So it was stupid in their minds to leave their men (only men) undefended when they were the only thing preventing invasion. They were meant to be able to rally at a moment's notice.

You must either toss out what they did in their time or accept it, picking and choosing to defend something on the basis of it being written by the "founding fathers" doesn't work with a piecemeal approach. You can say that something they did is worthy of merit on its own, but not simply because some dead people said it. Otherwise, you must also take as gospel the fact that a black man is 2/3 of a white man, that women cannot vote and that the Electoral College is meant to be allowed to exercise discretion that ignores the will of the voters.

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Sometimes I wonder if it would be more worthwhile for us gun control advocates  to argue strongly, steadfastly and unashamedly for a complete repeal of the second amendment, rather than tiptoeing around the issue and trying to sneak in half measures like background checks and limitations of clip sizes, or indeed discussing the finer points of grammar of the amendment. Maybe that way we could, in time, create a strong political movement to abolish this piece of legislation, which is a disgrace and increasingly for every mass shooting becoming an embarrassment for the United States of America.

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1 hour ago, Yukle said:

Disagreed; they would have been unparalleled military geniuses if they recognised in advance what automatic weapons could be used for. This hadn't even been properly figured out by the outbreak of the First World War, decades later. The sheer destructive powers of machine guns just weren't understood, and it horrified Europe en masse to witness the scale of damage machine guns caused (because, of course, they were fine when they were used against Indigenous people but horrified when they saw what they actually did to their own people).

And sure, the founding fathers believed being armed was an inalienable right. But they also did not have a standing army, because that was the role of state militia. So it was stupid in their minds to leave their men (only men) undefended when they were the only thing preventing invasion. They were meant to be able to rally at a moment's notice.

You must either toss out what they did in their time or accept it, picking and choosing to defend something on the basis of it being written by the "founding fathers" doesn't work with a piecemeal approach. You can say that something they did is worthy of merit on its own, but not simply because some dead people said it. Otherwise, you must also take as gospel the fact that a black man is 2/3 of a white man, that women cannot vote and that the Electoral College is meant to be allowed to exercise discretion that ignores the will of the voters.

Whether you disagree is irrelevant. The Continental Congress in 1777 was in negotiations in acquiring the designs of Joseph Belton's "Belton flintlock," which boasted firing 16 or 20 balls within spans of 5, 10, or 16 seconds. The Continental Congress commissioned Belton to modify 100 muskets, but cancelled it soon after because he was asking for too much money. (This can be found in the Journals of the Continental Congress.) Not only were they aware of what it could do, but they commissioned it. And the Bill of Rights was proposed by James Madison in 1791. It's safe to say that they knew about automatic weapons for 14 years prior to the second amendment.

And again, I don't give any credit to the right to bear arms because the founding fathers conceived it. As I said numerous times, the government doesn't dictate rights; it protects them (allegedly.)

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2 hours ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Whether you disagree is irrelevant. The Continental Congress in 1777 was in negotiations in acquiring the designs of Joseph Belton's "Belton flintlock," which boasted firing 16 or 20 balls within spans of 5, 10, or 16 seconds...

I don't disagree that they had automatic weapons, they were probably even used during the war with Britain.

I disagree that they understood their capacity for danger and destruction. That was not widely understood at the time we're discussing. I disagree that you can say that they anticipated their technological development and future usage. You were responding to this comment:

8 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

... Then they say that the founders couldn’t foresee the advance of technology; and they’re wrong again, IMHO...

... which I also disagree with.

Knowing that automatic weapons exist is not the same as knowing what they can do. And, as I point out above, there is no way that the USA of the time knew how dangerous such guns were because the great powers of WWI were shocked at the effectiveness of machine guns when deployed en masse. It took more than two years to have any working solution against them; indeed the Russian Empire originally dismissed them as using ammunition too quickly and were caught out when the German Empire used them against their positions.

You cannot reasonably say that the Second Amendment was written with the full understanding of how personal arms would develop in future. They probably had it in mind but nowhere near the scale of what would happen. 

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