We're WEIRD. Get over it.

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-02-2020, 11:11 PM)David Horn Wrote: No, I'm unconcerned about consistency. It's a good thing overall.  I am concerned about arcane rules of engagement, for lack of a better term.  Digging around in dusty archives trying to ascertain the intent of this or that historical person as a guide to parsing language written decades or even hundreds of years ago makes no sense.  We don't live in that distant past.  We live today.  More to the point, the impact of laws, especially their unintended consequences, weighs more heavily with me than the original intent from ages past.

So I might be a bit more stochastic than determinant.

Following the law does make sense.  Putting your values ahead of the Constitution does not.  A ‘living constitution’ is an excuse for putting the values of part of the country ahead of the social contract that is keeping the country together.

The temptation is to embrace law that disregards the values of the nation as a whole.  The founding fathers believed in a right to self defense.  They could not conceive of weapons that should not be in the hands of all citizens.  The wrote the law accordingly.  A good fraction of the population still holds these values, enough that the lawful means of changing the laws to reflect modern values has not yet been met.

Some can still read the intent of the authors.  Some can still see the wisdom of it.  Now, there is a lot of experience that might change it, a lot of room to compromise.  Yet, it seems folks on both sides would rather legislate from the bench than work out a compromise.  You don’t need 100 guns to defend yourself, to deter tyranny from the government, to discourage lawlessness.  You do not need a full auto fire weapon with overkill power and an immense magazine.  You do not need to have a nuke in you car trunk with a remote control to set it off.  It is possible to come up with reasonable restrictions on military arms but still leave people a right to defend themselves, to own and carry civilian weapons.

But reasonable compromise is impossible as long as folks from both sides believe they can legislate from the bench.  They believe their side can achieve an illegal total victory if they shred the law.  As a result, we have this mess.

And you are part of the problem.