[yequalsx]

I would like it to be illegal for people to own guns. Those who violate the law (as the ban would be in the form of a law) would go to jail. Current owners would turn in their guns and those guns would be destroyed.

The 2nd Amendment is oddly worded. It does speak of a well regulated militia. I'm not a lawyer or a legal expert but it seems to me that banning the ownership of guns except for members of the militia should be constitutional. I could be wrong. It also seems to me that for those who tend toward original intent interpretations (majority of current Supreme Court) would agree that the founders only saw it fit that people be able to own guns with similar firepower and lethality as muskets. So I could see a law saying that we can own guns but they are quite limited in comparison to what is currently legal to own.

There are far more people in the country now versus 250 years ago. The population density is far greater. We are much more of an urban society. In such circumstances I see no necessity for allowing gun ownership. I don't think the propensity to assholeness has increased but by virtue of having far more people now than in the past the number of assholes has greatly increased. It's best that the lethality of devices we can carry be very much curtailed than what it currently is.

[ameister14]

> It also seems to me that for those who tend toward original intent interpretations (majority of current Supreme Court) would agree that the founders only saw it fit that people be able to own guns with similar firepower and lethality as muskets.

You'd be wrong there. The Supreme Court agrees that the founders saw fit that people are armed with weapons similar to those used by the military, with certain restrictions.

[yequalsx]

And those weapons at the time were....muskets, bayonets. They had no vision of the M-16, AK-47, etc. The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia..." So let's well regulate it.

According to Wikipedia:

In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence" and limited the scope of the Second Amendment's protections to the federal government.[11] In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia".[12][13]

As I stated, I have no expertise in this matter. If it requires a repeal then that is what I would favor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...

[Turing_Machine]

"They had no vision of the M-16, AK-47, etc. "

They also had no vision of the Internet.

So, obviously, the First Amendment only applies to quill pens and manually-operated printing presses. Right?

"The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia...""

If the First Amendment had read "A well-educated legislature being essential to the governance of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed" you would argue, what? That only well-educated people should have books? That only the legislature should have books?

No, you wouldn't. Neither would anyone else, because that would be a contrived and nonsensical interpretation of the language.

[pbhjpbhj]

That's a clever analogy.

[yequalsx]

Well if the first amendment were stated differently than what it is then people would interpret it differently. I fail to see your point on that.

There is much that the writers of the constitution didn’t foresee. I think it’s ridiculous, in many cases, to try to seek what they originally intended. Society is far more complex now than it was then. I mentioned their views for the self described originalists. These people tend to have a very broad interpretation to what the second amendment means but narrowly interpret other parts of the Constitution.

The 2nd amendment has had many cases before the Supreme Court. It wasn’t until 2008 with Heller that it was interpreted to mean an actual right to own guns. As far as I understand the history of the legal interpretation if the second amendment. It appears the modern interpretation is out of sync with what the founders intended.

[logfromblammo]

My interpretation of the 2nd is that not only does it make explicit the right to own and carry arms, but also the right to own any and all arms of military relevance. You can't fight off King George XXIII if he has war machines imaginable only by the likes of Tyssot, Swift, Mercier, or Restif, and you still only have your musket from the 1770s.

At the time of drafting, the founders hadn't yet encountered the Pawnee vs. Cheyenne/Lakota style of total warfare, and had barely even invented hit-and-run tactics. As such, it would have been prudent to amend the amendment at least once in the last 230 years. I'd prefer that laws banning chemical, nuclear, radiological, and biological weapons would have constitutional backing, that torture and other war crimes be banned explicitly, and there be some concession for denying deadly munitions to antisocial maniacs and bellicose outlaws.

Reinterpretation is not the proper channel towards rational arms policy, or to resolve any other problem with the document not anticipating societal progress. Amendment is the prescribed remedy. There have been calls in the past to convene an Article 5 Amendments Convention, as it is the only way to propose an amendment when the Congress won't, but we've never actually had one. Perhaps it is time?

[yequalsx]

This sounds reasonable. For a variety of reasons I think the U.S. constitution is badly in need of being updated.

[dragonwriter]

The Second Amendment did not limit the type of arms it applied to, and the reason that it's preamble referred to the dependency of the security of a free state on a well-regulated militia was because it was in the context of the best universal opinion at the time that large standing professional armed forces for either internal security or international conflict were a mechanism of tyranny, and that having a free country absolutely required a dependency on avoiding those and instead relying on mobilizing the armed populace (with all the weapons of war) to deal with internal and external threats.

Leaving aside gun laws, we've long since completely abandoned the premise of the second amendment on a far more fundamental level with our professional militaries and paramilitary police forces.

[yequalsx]

According to the quote I have of the Wikipedia article there are Supreme Court cases that say it does limit the type of arms.

[ameister14]

Yes, you can't have sawed-off shotguns, for example, because those are not a military weapon and cannot contribute to the common defense.

[lostapathy]

Only because Miller was not properly heard almost 100years ago.

Short barrel shotguns were extremely common in world war 1 trench warfare, and that’s what Miller was charged with. Too bad he was dead before the supreme court heard that case.

[SlowRobotAhead]

Please man, the pre-Heller 2008 argument of “well regulated” where you need to pretend means “lots of regulations” and not the real meaning of “well trained and in good working order” is tired.

Leave that nonsense at Reddit.

I used to... I still find it interesting how the “collective right” angle is pushed post Heller and MacDonald with the obviousness that’s always been there of “can you read the rest of the right past the first few words?”

[bonzini]

So where's the training?

[humanrebar]

Well, there used to be some YouTube videos on proper firearm maintenance and safety...

[SlowRobotAhead]

Are you advocating for government subsidized ammo and training? That's something I could get behind!

[bonzini]

How would you regulate the training---what if you fail the training that's required to be part of a well-regulated militia? If the right to bear arms would be only contingent to being part of a militia, would the failure void your right to bear arms? (serious question)

[yequalsx]

I’m not a lawyer, never claimed to be an expert. Heller is a recent ruling. Previous rulings contradict Heller in some aspects. See, the way the Cinstituion is interpreted over time changes. It’s not like we are bound by a ruling for all eternity.

The reasoning is not tired. It’s how I interpret the text. Fortunately for your position my interpretation doesn’t matter since I’m not on the Supreme Court. Indeed, even decades after Roe v Wade people still argue against the reasoning used in that ruling and desire change.

It’s not nonsense to advocate for one's position just because there is a Supreme Court ruling against that position.

[SlowRobotAhead]

Using words that don't mean what you think they mean is a bad argument.

Sorry, well-regulated means well trained and in good working order.

Militia - is you and I, and anyone else of able body that can fight for defense of self and country.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. - that's the part you apparently didn't read. Of all the bill of rights, they all apply to people directly - except of course 2A where you say "people" is collective inexplicably.

Hey, I'm not arguing. Keep using arguments that very old, very tired, well defeated by logic and precedent. It makes my job as someone who cares about civil rights easier.

[yequalsx]

I quoted a Supreme Court ruling in which the justices said there was no such right enshrined in the 2nd amendment. Thus there are people who are learned in the law who disagree with your position. Is it really hard for you to imagine that well educated, knowledgeable people can come to a different conclusion than you on what the 2nd amendment means?

I’m claim neither to be well educated or knowledgeable. I do claim that when I read that amendment it seems to give the government broad powers of regulation over gun ownership.

As I’ve said through these posts, fight for your rights. Be vigilant. We are on opposite sides but open debate and discussion is good for a democracy. Maybe my view will prevail in the coming decades. Maybe not. Societies evolve and views change. Only by people of like mind to you being willing to advocate for your rights will my position be prevented from becoming normative.

[emusan]

While the military arms at the time were muskets and bayonets, that was not the only technology available. Many colonial troops had rifles of their own that they used. These rifles were superior to the British musket in many regards and helped the colonial troops win.

Surely the founding fathers were aware of this and knew that the second amendment would allow citizens to have weapons that were more deadly than the standard military firearm at the time. In fact, this trend even continued well into the Vietnam war. It was really only in the past 50 or so years that the military has eclipsed the citizens in terms of standard issue firepower.

So no, the founding fathers were not aware of the M-16 and AK-47[0], but they also had more than muskets and bayonets, and were perfectly content to have a citizenry that outgunned the military.

[0] - I should note that the M-16 and AK-47 are essentially illegal in the US at this point, along with any weapons of similar firepower, so that point seems moot anyway. The only people able to acquire them are incredibly rich collectors.

[lostapathy]

Many, many more recent cases have conflicted with Cruikshank and chipped away at its jurisprudence. The court was not well run or fair in those days.

Miller is especially bad case law too, he was dead by the time it was heard and essentially no one even argued that side of the case - it was a total sham.

[swalsh]

"banning the ownership of guns except for members of the militia "

The definition of militia is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246

There are two "militias", the national guard, and the unorganized militia...

When I read the Federalist papers, I interrupted it as Hamilton and Jay were trying to describe a defense strategy of the country, which included internal, and external threats. When I read it, I got the feeling they both were very much against the state of affairs we have today. They advocated for a small professional army, and a large reserve of men if needed.

I personally feel this is the right model, today our DoD budget is 600 BILLION dollars! Every social service other first world countries have, we can't afford. That is directly a result of our military spending. If we spent less getting into conflicts we probably don't need to be involved in (I still do not understand what the national interest in Afghanistan and Iraq is), and we had a very large reserve of men. We could maintain the defense readiness we have today, but also have publically funded education, healthcare etc.

I do concede that the requirements of training are much different though. A model like Switzerland's militia might be preferable. In their model, each citizen has 1 year of conscripted service. It's spread out a bit but is an adequate amount of time to train someone properly. It also provides a method for "weeding" out individuals who should not be a part of this reserve. Their gun laws are also far more strict. Gun ownership is more of a privilege there. I don't know how much of that we can do here, but I think it's a good example of how to build a militia in modern times.

[leetcrew]

> Every social service other first world countries have, we can't afford. That is directly a result of our military spending.

The US spends a lot on its military, but it's only about 15% of central government spending. When you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, we (3.3%) are not that far off from European powers like France (2.3%) or the UK (1.9%) whose defense we essentially subsidize through NATO. We just have a much larger economy so that 3.3% turns out to be a really big number.

There's no obvious (to me) fiscal reason why our social services have to be so poor, so I have to assume we just suck at allocating the money (possibly intentional).

[swalsh]

I can't recreate your math, but I don't think that's important for the point.

By your numbers, there's a 1% difference. On the scale of the GDP, that is a HUGE number. I think looking at the absolute numbers matters. Free higher education for everyone would cost $75 billion (according to Bernie Sanders). Trump asked for an additional $116 billion dollars for defense. I don't see the logic in arguing if we can afford $600 billion, and another $116 billion, while at the same time arguing $75 billion is impossible and would bankrupt the country. We're clearly making priorities.

[leetcrew]

the 15% turned out to be a lowball, it's more like 17% if you use the 2015 numbers from wikipedia[0]. I got the %GDP numbers from wikipedia as well[1].

> Free higher education for everyone would cost $75 billion.

this I find hard to believe. the US government estimated that ~20 million students would be enrolled in college/university in fall 2017. assuming enrollment would not increase if college were free, that $75 billion works out to about $3750 per student. this substantially undercuts even in-state tuition at the average community college, which already receives significant funding from the government.

although I pushed back on that particular claim by Sanders, I still maintain that we have an allocation problem, not a money problem. according to 2012 data[2] the US government spends almost exactly the same percentage of its GDP on education as the UK, and we are in the high range of money spent per student in primary and secondary education[3].

i'm no expert, but this doesn't look like the kind of thing where you can just throw money at it and expect it to work. we should figure out how to use the money we already have to produce more similar outcomes to those in Western Europe.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

[cuckcuckspruce]

The original question was about your legal mechanism for implementation of a ban on private ownership on weapons. What change would you make to existing laws to enact this ban?

Additionally, what is your plan to deal with the potential for violent, armed resistance to this ban, and in what facilities would you put all of the violators of this ban?