[ubernostrum]

Gun owners have given up rights time and again, to zero gain of their own.

My question is simply: what is the thing they would like to gain? The NRA's modern reinterpretation of the Second Amendment (and make no mistake: they are pushing a modern invention, not a historical understanding) does not appear to allow the possibility that any compromise would be reasonable. Hence anything which is not a complete and utter victory is immediately spun as a complete and utter defeat.

[schismsubv]

Our answer is equally simple: some of what we have lost. We perceive it is you who has reinterpreted the Second Amendment.

It appears you choose to categorically reject returns in the same space as losses; what do you wish, that we exchange something trite like steaks and sexual favors in return for all firearms? Do you believe firearm rights are somehow perfectly fungible? If so, it would appear you yourself are insisting on complete, utter victory.

I cannot begin to speak for others, but ask not for complete victory. Rather, I wish we would make steps back in what gun owners regard as a positive direction. The seven options hga gave above are not a linked list, they are several options. Even one would be regarded as a victory.

[ubernostrum]

I believe that the Second Amendment provides no guarantee whatsoever of an individual right to own firearms. And given what we have in terms of historical documents and commentaries about it, it's pretty clear that the intent was to create a collective right for purposes of protecting the well-established militia system of the time.

So, given the lack of support for a guaranteed individual right, what exactly do you feel is being infringed? If there really is a possibility of compromise, then why is even the tiniest hint of the possibility of a suggestion of perhaps trying to implement a sensible background-check and registration system guaranteed to stir up such disgusting rhetoric from the allegedly "reasonable" people who oppose it? It's gone far beyond just basic hyperbole like claiming that any regulation actually consists of outlawing and confiscating all guns from all people (though that's still a popular one), and well off the deep end into suggesting that the murders of children have been faked by paid actor "parents" in order to give support to the gun-confiscating plan.

Again: it's very very clear what the proposal from those folks is, and it's all-or-nothing with no compromise possible.

[bdowling]

The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees with you.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, 478 F. 3d 370 (U.S. 2008) https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html, the court held that the Second Amendment does guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected with militia service. In particular, the District of Columbia's law banning possession of usable handguns in the home for self-defense violated the Constitution.

In McDonald v. City of Chicago, 567 F. 3d 856 (U.S. 2010) https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1521.ZO.html, the court held that the right of self-defense in the Second Amendment is a fundamental right and its guarantees are applicable to the States by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Legislation similar to that in Heller was struck down as unconstitutional.

I encourage you to read both opinions (and the dissents), even if they are laden with constitutional legalese and references to language from hundred-year-old opinions. You can argue all you want about your own opinions, but the opinions of the Supreme Court are the law of the land and are binding on every other court in the United States.

[ubernostrum]

I'm aware the Supreme Court disagrees. The Heller opinion was written by Justice Scalia, who could have opened a Waffle House with the number of flip-flops of historical revisionism he went through in order to justify decisions which just coincidentally agreed with his personal political views. And while it is enforceable, it is neither right nor historically correct to find an individual right in the Second Amendment, and I hope that within my lifetime a better-composed Court will agree.

[bdowling]

I'm sure that those opposed to gay marriage and abortion are hoping the court will change and support more limited historical views as well, but the court's recent substantive due process decisions have taken a flexible view of history and generally moved towards ensuring more freedom, not less. "Deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" doesn't meen what it used to.

[schismsubv]

You presume I must agree with your selective interpretation of historical writings as viewed by you through your own personal filter, because for you, your interpretation is the only logical conclusion. Since that is so firmly settled in your mind I see no use in further arguing that point.

The problem is that you keep talking about compromise and an all-or-nothing attitude, but ignore the fact that gun owners have bent over backwards over the past century and you offer nothing but more limitations. How, exactly, is that compromise? Imagine this conversation:

  Lion: I want to eat you
  Gnu: No
  Lion: Fine, let me bite you
  Gnu: No
  Lion: Be reasonable, compromise with me here - let me nibble one of your legs, you have four.
  Gnu: You've already eaten my cousin and sister, and I like all four of my legs just the way they are, thank you.
  Lion: Being alive provides no guarantee whatsoever of a right to four legs.  Your four legs make me feel unsafe, you could kick me. I insist you let me have one.
  Gnu: No, I'm just fine the way I am.
  Lion: You just have an all-or-nothing attitude, all I'm trying to do is be sensible here.  I need to eat so I can hunt you next week.
  ...

As noted in other threads nearby and easily verifiable by yourself, every 20th century and later civilian disarmament (save one) has been preceded by no-negotiation registration. Since most people I speak with that advocate gun control also advocate eventual complete disarmament as the end goal, why would I believe something different would happen?

As far as "sensible background checks" go, they already exist. You already cannot own a firearm if you fit a fairly broad list of disqualifiers, and attempting to buy a weapon at a licensed dealership and undergoing the already compulsory (if inaccurate and problematic) check will result in your wasting $20 and going home empty-handed. The "sensible" most people seem to be attempting to espouse today is reaching into private activities. If my father wishes to give me a gun that has been inherited over 3 generations, why must we go to the gun shop and pay them $20 to tell him he can? Why would I agree to risk a felony charge by loaning my brother a rifle for his two-week hunting trip without a $20 visit to the gun store?

"But the gun show loophole" you might say - if a licensed dealer sells an individual a firearm without undertaking the proper background check, they should lose their license. That's my opinion. If a private citizen sells another private citizen a firearm without undergoing a background check, nothing has changed or will change that. All you're doing is putting already extraordinarily lawful citizens in yet greater jeopardy of committing a felony.

Other than our fundamental disagreement about the Second Amendment, I perceive a core issue here: gun control advocates fail to take criminals into account. Criminals don't buy guns at gun shops that run background checks, they don't register them (ask California and Chicago), and they illegally modify guns (removing serials and shortening weapons). No proposed measures (even complete disarmament) would put even a dent in that, and criminally-owned guns are disproportionately represented in firearm crime.

So what, exactly, do you propose registration and further background checks would solve, and what assurance can you offer that civilian disarmament is not the end goal of all involved?

[ubernostrum]

your interpretation is the only logical conclusion

My interpretation of the Second Amendment is the only logical conclusion one can reach following a review of commentaries on it, and on the general view toward and position of firearms in the United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. Since that doesn't match the interpretation preferred by the NRA and its fans in the present day, the onus is on them to demonstrate how or why a genuinely new absolute individual right should be introduced and protected, and what we could gain from it.

Since most people I speak with that advocate gun control also advocate eventual complete disarmament as the end goal, why would I believe something different would happen?

Plenty of countries have strong regulation and much lower murder rates than we do, and haven't felt the need to move to complete disarmament. Nor have I advocated for it. You have, however, precisely as I predicted someone would, jumped immediately to that particular hyperbole in an attempt to cover up the fact that you can't refute the reality of successful gun control existing in the world. Same for the insipid "only outlaws will have guns" objection. Gun control works, has worked and continues to work in many free countries, and you're still trying to deny it by parroting tired old memes. All that's missing from what you presumably thought was a smashing knock-down reply is the Navy SEAL leading the class in the Pledge of Allegiance and the bald eagle swooping in to shed a tear as the liberal atheist professor runs from the classroom.

[schismsubv]

I wish you'd be reasonable and discuss the matter rather than make sweeping, dismissive statements and veiled ad-hominem attacks. Consider me a poor, uneducated young soul and show me the error of my ways rather than presume I'm following some set of talking points. I'm being completely earnest here, and wish I had the same impression of you. Seriously - how would registration and universal background checks actually address criminal behavior, or is just adding more felonies to the law-abiding enough deterrence? I'm sorry if it's insipid to observe that criminals are, by definition, criminals, but give me something to work with here - compromise with me and tell me why that's irrelevant.

If you wish to discuss success of gun control elsewhere in the world, so be it. Please point us to appropriate research literature that identifies a causative link between gun control and proportionately reduced crime rates. I particularly enjoyed slatestarcodex' writing on the matter, but even he with good numbers and well-considered statistics is not as confident as you. Sweden and Norway, for example - rather strict gun control, reasonably low crime, but if you've spent time in-country you know there's a significant cultural factor there. Rather than gun control causing their relatively low crime rate, I'd assert that their culture has actually dictated both the crime rate and the gun control, but that's anecdata. Let's have some real discussion with real numbers and not hand-wavy statements about free countries.

Thus far, the Supreme Court disagrees with your interpretation of the 2A, and likely my own as well. I expect they come to a far more reasoned and logical analysis of it than either of us can, but for most of US history they have been on the individual-freedom side of its interpretation.

[ubernostrum]

I wish you'd be reasonable

And how am I to do so? You have literally been acting out a predictable, tired pattern of sound-bite arguments which neither prove nor refute anything, and you've yet to actually answer the question I originally posed: what would be, in your eyes, a "reasonable compromise" on guns? If you adopt the logical consequence of your own statements on the Second Amendment, the only possibility you can offer is that no compromise whatsoever is possible; after all, who could countenance "compromise" with the sort of vicious disarming tyrant I must obviously be (or be paving the way for), in your eyes? Who could accept any "compromise" with a government over something alleged to be the sole protection from that government?

And since you've literally acted out a stereotype, why shouldn't I just say that's what you've done and leave it at that?

[gozur88]

>My interpretation of the Second Amendment is the only logical conclusion one can reach following a review of commentaries on it, and on the general view toward and position of firearms in the United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution.

Are you basing this on your own research, or are you relying on other people who wish to see guns banned in the US?

[gozur88]

>and make no mistake: they are pushing a modern invention, not a historical understanding

Depends on who is writing the "historical understanding". Are we talking about the courts, or the people who actually ratified the constitution?