General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAs long as the second amendment remains mass shootings will continue.
The NRA's self serving interpretation of the second amendment which SCOTUS upheld allows nearly un-restricted access to guns for everyone in the US. Now, even if the NRA disappeared, access to unlimited guns would continue.
Laws can be written to try to control access but they will always be limited as long as the second amendment remains.
This amendment and it's interpretation is a plague on all of us. We are the only advanced country that allows citizens access to weapons of war and it's only because of the unfortunate wording of this amendment. As long as it stands there will continue be forces that use those words to keep supplying guns to mass murders.
I know it's viewed as impossible to change but that is the only way America could really begin to control the wanton murder of innocents by random misfits.
Scrivener7
(51,025 posts)we have tried.
Let's not make "repeal the 2nd" the "defund the police" of 2022.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Imagining progress on this is effectively impossible, as it would be if your statement were correct, is probably not the best way to support progress.
After all, all we had to do was elect Hillary Clinton and the Democrats riding her coattails in 2016 and we'd be in a different world gun-wise today. We were so close! We will be again, someday.
And also, nothing continues forever. Events generate change. The era of terrorist hijackings did and passed, as did the era of serial killers. Someday we'll have another chance -- just have to not blow it.
Response to Kablooie (Original post)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
Initech
(100,107 posts)Those gun humpers aren't going to lay down their arms that easily.
relayerbob
(6,559 posts)It is designed to give states the right to their own military forces - ie National Guard. Period. "Bear arms" in the 1700s was a military term. It specifically mentions "well-regulated militias". But, SCOTUS, esp in 1939, decided that despite that fact, individuals could carry weapons that weren't deemed to be "military", which has now eroded to the point where almost anything short of nuclear weapons is OK.
The 2A is, IMO, the single worst sentence ever written in any legal document, ever.
Mister Ed
(5,944 posts)Its clear purpose was to support a well-regulated militia that the government could call upon in times of need, such as today's National Guard. It was understood as such until relatively recent times.
Only over the past eighty years or so has it been distorted into a universal license to threaten and kill.
Calling all professed "Constitutional Originalists" in the judiciary: where is your voice now?
gldstwmn
(4,575 posts)the interpretation of the second amendment...
Amendment II
"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."
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER (No. 07-290) Scalia writing the opinion
although he did include
...
"2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose"
so here we are...
key.....
"well-regulated"
"militia"
"infringed"
mi·li·tia
NOUN
a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency:
"creating a militia was no answer to the army's manpower problem" · [more]
synonyms:
armed forces · army · forces · services · soldiery · navy · air force · marines · special forces
a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities in opposition to a regular army.
synonyms:
armed force · force · military detachment · military unit · unit · platoon · brigade · regiment · squadron · battalion · company · legion · corps · troops · soldiers
historical
(in the US) all able-bodied citizens eligible by law to be called on to provide military service supplementary to the regular armed forces.