The Second Admendment should have been better written.

Greater men than me undoubtedly

I'm very much in agreement with you and you make some great points about the founding fathers.

The point I was trying to make was look at all our advances and the evolution of technology do you think we should still be fighting wars with muskets? No of course we shouldn't we should update our weapons, armor and vehicles so that we can better combat our evolving enemy.

Why is updating laws or the constitution any different should we be stagnant and out of date should we still be prohibited from having alcohol should we still beat our wives society changes and laws need to change with them.

All that being said I am very pro gun and I wish semi auto was still allowed in Aus

I may have misunderstood the point you were making. In the US people often make the point the Founders couldn't have possibly conceived anything beyond muzzle loaders and thus claim that's all the 2nd Amendment covers.

Consider me an ally for Australian gun rights. Aussie's are a fine people and I trust the individual Australian to make the responsible decision for themselves with regard to what fire arms are suitable for themselves and what function and purpose they serve. I wish you luck in making progress in that respect.
 
I may have misunderstood the point you were making. In the US people often make the point the Founders couldn't have possibly conceived anything beyond muzzle loaders and thus claim that's all the 2nd Amendment covers.

Consider me an ally for Australian gun rights. Aussie's are a fine people and I trust the individual Australian to make the responsible decision for themselves with regard to what fire arms are suitable for themselves and what function and purpose they serve. I wish you luck in making progress in that respect.
Whenever I visit the U.S. I shoot anything I can get my hands our gun restrictions make it feel like I'm doing something special haha.
Good luck and hopefully these shootings will decrease with an increase on mental health spending.
 
Are you reading my posts as if it's sarcasm?

I'd say I was reading them as having a level of snark but still with the belief that you were being true to how you feel/think.
 
I'd say I was reading them as having a level of snark but still with the belief that you were being true to how you feel/think.

Let me spell it out. I find telling people what words they can use and ideas they can express as abhorrent as telling them which firearms they can or can't use. People who embrace free speech but don't embrace self-defense should have the reasoning for one compared to the other.
 
Let me spell it out. I find telling people what words they can use and ideas they can express as abhorrent as telling them which firearms they can or can't use. People who embrace free speech but don't embrace self-defense should have the reasoning for one compared to the other.

Ok
 
LoL at you wanna get my colonial muskets. I'll shoot you and uncle Sam up with my 2 bullets a minute fire rate.
 
"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."

Regardless of whether you are an untra leftwing person that believes no one should be armed with anything more deadly than a butter knife, or a hardcore gun enthusiast that thinks the government shouldn't be able in any way to limit access to weaponry, the Second Amendment should have been better written.

My point is there should not be very much left to interpretation. I disagree with people who think that it is a virtue that the Constitution is a "living document" that can be reinterpreted many different ways based on the whims and feelings of the people living in a particular era. I consider that a flaw. The Constitution should have been written in such a way that there would be no ambiguity, no room for widely varied opinions on what it meant.

There should not be a scenario where it is necessary to have highly trained legal scholars explain a short government document, and it certainly should not be the case that many different highly trained legal scholars end up with very different interpretations. It should be very clearly defined so that even the lowest lay person would understand what the document meant. Any debate about the document should be about the merits of its principals rather than what the document actually means.

Some parts of the Constitution are clearly defined such as the minimal age requirements of members of Congress. Other parts though, including the Second Amendment, are up to interpretation, and I think it has less to do with the genius of the Founding Fathers wanting a living document that will morph with the sentiments of the changing times and more to do with our Founding Fathers intentionally making it vague enough so that they could get the damn thing ratified without too many objections, and it leads to the kinds of debates that we have today.

The Second Amendment should have clearly defined the following items:
  • Is it intended for the maintenance of a militia only?
  • Is it intended to still provide protections in the event that militias have been rendered obsolete by modern permanent armies?
  • Is it intended for protection against a foreign enemy?
  • Is it intended for protection against an internal enemy (i.e., the local, state, or federal government itself)?
  • Is it intended for home defense against petty criminals?
  • Is it intended to provide ALL people with the right to bear arms (i.e., convicted criminals, children, the mentally ill etc...)
  • Does the Second Amendment allow local governments to pass any type of regulation or restriction on the sale or manufacturer of firearms?
  • Does the right to bear arms extend to every location (i.e., court rooms, private businesses, public transportation, schools, churches etc...)?
  • Which types of arms are actually we allowed to bear? (i.e., rifles, handguns, hand held rocket launchers, cannons etc...)?

It is pretty clear to me that the amendment protects the right of private American citizens to own guns. The founding fathers didn't dream up automatic weapons, so we can expect that they would have incorporated that contingency into the language. Although, if the primary purpose of allowing private citizens to keep hand guns was to allow them to defend themselves from an oppressive government, allowing private citizens to own weapons the military has access to would keep with that line of reasoning.
 
I must have been napping when we carpet bombed all of Syria.

Sources?
Never claimed they carpet bombed all of Syria, I claimed they carpet bombed where the terrorists were, with out any regard for civilian casualties. You can't just bomb terrorist targets with out thinking of the civillians still on the ground which is what they have been doing. The war needs troops on the ground not aerial bombardment. Why would they be any different if the citizens of the USA took up arms against the government?
 
Never claimed they carpet bombed all of Syria, I claimed they carpet bombed where the terrorists were, with out any regard for civilian casualties. You can't just bomb terrorist targets with out thinking of the civillians still on the ground which is what they have been doing. The war needs troops on the ground not aerial bombardment. Why would they be any different if the citizens of the USA took up arms against the government?

Thanks for clarifying.

Precisely because they are citizens. Also theres no guarantee all the military or even most would be willing.
 
Thanks for clarifying.

Precisely because they are citizens. Also theres no guarantee all the military or even most would be willing.

That's why I think it's highly unlikely the people of the USA would ever need to rise up against it's own government. But if they did they'd be in trouble.
 
Much less. How does this invalidate the marked decrease in Australia's gun violence, and why would the US not be able to apply a similar model and achieve success?

Seriously? You can't grasp the fact that simply put . . . we have more guns and none of us will be turning them in . . . . you can't honestly be trying to compare gun ownership in the US to previous ownership in Australia . . . . are you?
 
Were there as many general stores back then saturated as much as their are Walmarts today? No, because there werent as many people period.

What does that have to do with anything? There were as many stores as the population of the day required . . .



And you think law-abiding citizens wanted these people to have guns? Theres no reason for those guys to have encouraged that, since they were trying to bring the country together and a general state of anarchy would have only hindered that.

I think that was the last thing on the minds of the law abiding citizens of the time . . .
 
I am familiar with that argument, and I agree with it to an extent. To me the First Amendment is an example of why you can't be too narrow because then it would only protect free speech in certain limited circumstances.

That being said, defining protections too loosely also causes harm because then the protection is open to being reduced or altered by varying interpretation.

Don't forget the 9th Amendment here. Narrowly prohibiting the federal government from restricting the right to free speech (using your mouth to create words) as is done in the 1st Amendment does not empower the federal government to prevent one from wearing an offensive article of clothing or from burning a flag.

Recall Federalist 84, in which Hamilton wrote: "Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?" This line of thinking was the impetus for the Federalists' opposition to the idea of a Bill of Rights and ultimately led to the inclusion of the 9th Amendment.
 
Constitution was written 200 years ago...

There's your problem

It's like Isis guys trying to implement laws of 7th century arabia to today's world.

Things change over time

What made sense 1500 years ago or 200 years ago might not in 2017
Should the Constitution have any bearing on the laws that Congress passes or the actions taken by the President?
 
You're literally talking about an amendment to the document while saying it shouldn't be viewed as a "living document".

For god sake what is wrong with this world
With all respect brah, this is not your best post
 
i dont view it as a religious document, that youre going to go below hell for criticizing or wanting to alter/change.

It can be altered via the amendment process, which is built into the document itself. Unfortunately there are many political partisans and uneducated people who are fine with extra-constitutional actions under the view that the ends justify the means.
 
Back
Top