Debate about Gun Control

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-09-2017, 09:21 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: One noted pundit or writer was quoted in the media yesterday advocating repeal of the Second Amendment as the ultimate solution to guns. I am glad to see it. Of course, such a move would take care of Bob Butler's objections on constitutional grounds. Of course, however, America is so gun happy that such a move is extremely unlikely in our lifetime or even the lifetimes of our living descendants, despite the slippery slope arguments used by the gun nuts and gun advocates. No proposals being made today in congress come even close to repeal, but merely require what the Supreme Court has allowed, and resemble licensing for such things as cars, which are not even weapons designed solely to kill people, as many guns are.

But suppose the amendment were repealed, and a confiscation program was begun to accompany a buy-back program? Would civil war result? Well, these days, a civil war could result even from the modest gun control programs being proposed today. In the future though, we may not be so divided. Our current Divided States of America dates from our recent Awakening, and has gotten more severe since then, but might disappear in the next 1T or in future saecula. Or we may even be two or more nations by then. A blue nation would have no problem with gun control, or maybe even repeal eventually.

Today according to one poll, 42% of Americans own guns. Probably the majority of them are white Republicans, according to the poll as reported. That's too many to confiscate today. I imagine most gun owners would not be part of a resistance army, though. Under a confiscation program, duly passed by law, most gun owners would comply. However, I imagine that for the foreseeable future, the threat of such an army of resistance among some gun owners would remain. But someday, if the USA becomes a sane and responsible nation, which it is not today, a confiscation program might actually work. So, the slippery slope exists, but the slope can probably be measured in centuries and saecula, well beyond the lifetimes of gun owners and their children today.

Well, yes, we are all free to imagine weird futures.

I'm still willing to close most to all loopholes.  The hard part is enforcing a prohibition style law.

In the Las Vegas case, we perhaps should ban external mods to a firearm the same as an internal mod.  They should not have let that one slip.  Other than that, the shooter's secrecy and lack of joining problematic groups makes solving the problem with enforceable laws hard.  Anyone care to propose anything new?  Even if one accepts that the right to own and carry firearms is protected, how does owning more than a few weapons protect one more???  If the object of the NRA is to sell guns, the latter could go no where.

I would like to see the Constitution worth the paper it is printed on.  What the founding fathers wrote and intended is very clear.  The Constitution should not mean what five people says it means.  There is a well defined mechanism to handle a values change.  Many daydream about using it well ahead of the values change.