US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5225

On September 13 2025 12:53 Acrofales wrote:

Given how the Supreme Court also consistently over past 50+ years has ruled that any regulations that restrict the ownership of guns is unconstitutional, I am more inclined to go with the interpretation that there's supposed to be guns for everybody who wants them. The second amendment in full is a single line of text. I don't think anyone is shocked by it. They might be shocked at how people might explain it as emphasizing the militias bit, but the supreme court has pretty consistently interpreted that bit as a mere justification for why everyone should be allowed to have semi-automatic rifles with bumpstocks, which they carry into shops and schools.

On September 13 2025 12:55 KwarK wrote:
“The right of the people” is about as clear as it gets. If you don’t like it then amend it, but the text isn’t ambiguous. The fluff surrounding it about why they wanted it doesn’t matter much unless you’re making a case for a constitutional amendment to remedy an obsolete section. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference even if it said “Specifically and exclusively to deal with the threat of plains buffalo the people need to be armed. For that reason alone the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

You can use the fluff to make a case for why it should be changed but you can’t use the fluff to change what right is specifically granted or to who. The right specifically granted is to keep and bear arms. It is granted to the people.

It’s why they established a process for constitutional amendments. You don’t have to read it creatively like it’s early Greek translations of scriptures and you’re not sure what is allegory. If you don’t like the words and what they say then change the words. The founders expected people to update the bits that got out of date as they ceased to be useful. If you resurrected one and challenged them on their shortsightedness for writing an amendment that was subsequently abused to facilitate all these school shootings then they’d just turn it around on you and ask why you kept it.

On September 13 2025 23:54 KwarK wrote:
For what it’s worth I think that laws against machine guns and other personal weaponry are also unconstitutional. So are age restrictions and felon restrictions and so forth. I’m not going to protest it because it’s common sense and the constitution is wrong, not the restrictions, but they are incompatible. The gun nuts are clearly right in this case, the second amendment could not be clearer about the right that it grants and to who it is granted. Arms, meaning armaments (weapons of war), keep and bear, meaning own and carry, and people, meaning everyone.

Lots of people will say that the founders didn’t intend illegal immigrant felons to operate unjammable fiberoptic guided AI assisted anti personnel drones and that’s true which is why they gave us permission to change the language. But you have to change the language.

On September 13 2025 23:55 Billyboy wrote:
being necessary to the security of a free State,

Your leaving this part out and talking about things that make it a much less secure state.

On September 14 2025 00:02 KwarK wrote:
Can you please start spelling lobbyist as lobbyist.

The -ist suffix means someone who does something. Like a hobbyist is someone who does a thing as a hobby. Or a racist is someone who does racism.

The -est suffix means the most of a given attribute. Like tallest or shortest.

A lobbyest would be the platonic ideal of a lobby. Like you went to the dentist and the waiting area was the lobbyest lobby you ever saw. Plastic chairs, years old issues of magazines, a plastic plant. A lobbiest wouldn’t be anything.

I let it pass the first time because I didn’t want to be difficult but this is kind of a basic English first language fluency thing. One of the things that if you grow up reading and learning English you just know. Ist and est sound a bit similar but the meanings are very different and the different meanings see used consistently all over the language and every English speaker should be familiar with how they’re used and which is appropriate when.

Which brings me back to the subject. No. You’re wrong. If you can read English fluently then the second amendment is extremely easy to read and understand. Arms. Keep and bear. The people.

On September 14 2025 00:14 Introvert wrote:
Iirc the Heller decision was one of those rare Supreme Court cases that helped lead the way on something rather than follow. My understanding of the scholarship nowadays is that there it is much more supportive of the individual right, even sans militia. A lot is history (being a member of a militia was being a member of a very broad group). A lot of it has to do with the structure and context as well. What was the amendment for? Or the fact that it was listed with other rights that apply to individuals, for example. The best you could really argue is that among many at the time of the founding gun ownership was so accepted that they somehow did not feel the need to write it down explicitly

On September 14 2025 01:02 Billyboy wrote:

Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.

On September 14 2025 01:01 Billyboy wrote:

No you are wrong, here is someone much more researched, and smarter then you to explain it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ3NVmSvh34

Edit: if you're only going to watch a little, maybe go with from 5-7 mins.

On September 14 2025 01:23 KwarK wrote:

I don’t need a YouTube video to explain the meaning of “arms”, “keep and bear”, and “people” to me.

It’s written in my native language using words I’m familiar with. They didn’t need asterisks or lengthy explanations or case studies, they were trying to express an extremely simple idea and they deliberately took the approach of minimalism. They said exactly what they meant. A lot of the framers were lawyers by trade, they could have written pages and pages if they wanted to delve into ifs and buts and exceptions. They didn’t.

The fact that it takes him 55 minutes to explain the meaning of a simple statement in clear English tells me enough. It tells me that he has to work for an hour to get from what it clearly says to what he wants it to say.

It doesn’t take me an hour to tell you what it says. All it takes for me to explain it is “just read the words”.

On September 14 2025 01:18 Introvert wrote:


That's true but not the same thing. Excluding people from a general rule is everywhere, and it was back then. There was a general presumption (including membership in a militia) to which there were exceptions. Looking at it the other way is approaching it backwards. You didn't have a be a member of a militia to own a weapon.

On September 14 2025 01:02 Billyboy wrote:

Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.

On September 14 2025 01:26 Billyboy wrote:

You don't know everything, maybe listen to an actual scholar who has spent his life studying it and come back to me. If the shoe was on the other foot you would be mocking the person with oyur response.

Two plus two being five and this being the underpinning of liberty, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

On September 14 2025 01:34 KwarK wrote:

I watched 5 minutes to 7 minutes per your suggestion and absolutely nothing there is relevant. What he's arguing is an argument that should have been made 250 years ago. He's saying that the second amendment is badly written, that a militia wouldn't be effective unless you kept track of who had guns, that the people running a militia would surely want to have a way of making sure the guns were kept in working condition and so forth. That if their goal was for the best possible militia then they should write a much longer second amendment that provides a whole lot more detail. That if the second amendment as written was the policy during the revolutionary war then they would have lost the war.

Literally none of that matters at all. It could not be less relevant. They wrote what they wrote and what they wrote became the constitution.

Consider a counterfactual. Let's imagine the second amendment instead says
He'd be even more right about the silliness of how they worded it. He'd be here telling us that two plus two equals four and that two plus two being five has absolutely nothing to do with underpinning liberty. It doesn't matter. The specific right granted by the text of the amendment is completely unchanged by any of that.

He can argue for hours about how it was poorly written, ineffective at achieving the goals of the founders, lacking in foresight, incomplete, whatever the fuck he wants. I don't disagree with any of that. The second amendment is bad. It should be changed.

But what the second amendment is not is unclear. It's exceptionally clear.

On September 14 2025 01:41 Billyboy wrote:

5-7 minutes does not explain the entire argument, hell the hour does not. It was meant to be a taster. You clearly do not understand his argument, which totally makes sense since you did not hear it. But you don't understand because you think you know everything.


Hmmm should I listen to the guy on the internet who thinks he is really smart and never wrong. Or a leading constitutional historian whos work has been widely cited by legal scholars, historians, and has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and several state supreme courts.

I'm going to go with the latter.