Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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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.
No you are wrong, here is someone much more researched, and smarter then you to explain it.
Edit: if you're only going to watch a little, maybe go with from 5-7 mins.
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”.
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.
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
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.
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.
5-7 minutes does not explain the entire arguement, hell the hour does not. It was meant to be a taster. 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.
Eppur si muove. The meaning of the words "arms", "bear and keep", and "people" is unchanged by your choice.
One of the biggest mistakes of the founders was that they failed to anticipate the constitution becoming a sacred text. They ought to have intentionally spelled out to future generations that they anticipated large parts of it becoming obsolete over time and that they wanted people to actively amend it to keep it applicable to their intent as the world around it changed. They didn't and a cult of originalism took hold.
The intention of the founding fathers and the context at the time makes an excellent case for updating the wording of the text. He's not wrong about the ineffective wording or the changing role of militias or any of that. It should be updated because the current wording doesn't do the job it should.
The problem is that a cult of originalism and infallibility has taken hold and it has become exceptionally difficult to change the constitution, even though the people who wrote the damn thing clearly wanted us to. We're keeping the bits that don't work long after their usefulness has ended. You can make a common sense argument for how the text is flawed and everyone can nod and agree but when it is time to make a constitutional amendment you simply can't get the votes.
Because we're unable to change the words people have started deciding that words don't mean what they mean and that's where they lose me. I want the second amendment to say what your guy wants it to say. But it just doesn't.
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
Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.
The only way your sentence can possibly be charitably taken as true is if you're talking about blacks. Free citizens were basically not restricted, and it's not a failure of gun control that the US later recognized black people as free citizens.
Rifles and shotguns were never touched. The only federal intervention came when weapons started to become fully automatic. There were some instances of the thing from the movie Unforgiven, where you have specific gun-free towns and have to give up your guns when you enter. Local regulations. But there's also a town in the US with a law on the books that it's illegal for a household NOT to own a gun.
They disarmed loyalists, they disarmed rebels a little after the revolution. They were very comfortable taking guns away from those they thought were threatening the government.
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
Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.
The only way your sentence can possibly be charitably taken as true is if you're talking about blacks. Free citizens were basically not restricted, and it's not a failure of gun control that the US later recognized black people as free citizens.
Rifles and shotguns were never touched. The only federal intervention came when weapons started to become fully automatic. There were some instances of the thing from the movie Unforgiven, where you have specific gun-free towns and have to give up your guns when you enter. Local regulations. But there's also a town in the US with a law on the books that it's illegal for a household NOT to own a gun.
They disarmed loyalists, they disarmed rebels a little after the revolution. They were very comfortable taking guns away from those they thought were threatening the government.
That's great evidence for them having written a shitty amendment that didn't align with what they wanted to do and didn't address all sorts of edge cases that it probably should have.
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.
No you are wrong, here is someone much more researched, and smarter then you to explain it.
Edit: if you're only going to watch a little, maybe go with from 5-7 mins.
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”.
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.
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
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.
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.
5-7 minutes does not explain the entire arguement, hell the hour does not. It was meant to be a taster. 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.
Eppur si muove. The meaning of the words "arms", "bear and keep", and "people" is unchanged by your choice.
One of the biggest mistakes of the founders was that they failed to anticipate the constitution becoming a sacred text. They ought to have intentionally spelled out to future generations that they anticipated large parts of it becoming obsolete over time and that they wanted people to actively amend it to keep it applicable to their intent as the world around it changed. They didn't and a cult of originalism took hold.
The intention of the founding fathers and the context at the time makes an excellent case for updating the wording of the text. He's not wrong about the ineffective wording or the changing role of militias or any of that. It should be updated because the current wording doesn't do the job it should.
The problem is that a cult of originalism and infallibility has taken hold and it has become exceptionally difficult to change the constitution, even though the people who wrote the damn thing clearly wanted us to. We're keeping the bits that don't work long after their usefulness has ended. You can make a common sense argument for how the text is flawed and everyone can nod and agree but when it is time to make a constitutional amendment you simply can't get the votes.
Because we're unable to change the words people have started deciding that words don't mean what they mean and that's where they lose me. I want the second amendment to say what your guy wants it to say. But it just doesn't.
I agree with all of this, but he also talks about why the originalists still are getting it wrong and the historical context to back up his points. It is a great worth while hour that I'm sure would give you lots of ammunition to win future arguments especially given your recall and ability to process and put things into your own words and wonderful analogies.
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
Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.
The only way your sentence can possibly be charitably taken as true is if you're talking about blacks. Free citizens were basically not restricted, and it's not a failure of gun control that the US later recognized black people as free citizens.
Rifles and shotguns were never touched. The only federal intervention came when weapons started to become fully automatic. There were some instances of the thing from the movie Unforgiven, where you have specific gun-free towns and have to give up your guns when you enter. Local regulations. But there's also a town in the US with a law on the books that it's illegal for a household NOT to own a gun.
They disarmed loyalists, they disarmed rebels a little after the revolution. They were very comfortable taking guns away from those they thought were threatening the government.
That's great evidence for them having written a shitty amendment that didn't align with what they wanted to do and didn't address all sorts of edge cases that it probably should have.
It was never their intention to have a biblical text. And he makes the originalist argument far better than I.
Edit: I'm taking off, but I'm not the best one to argue this because I'm no constitutional historian. But this guy is and one of the best. So anyone is interested in a non political, non manipulated look at the 2nd amendments original intention and meaning, take the hour, bet you learn lots.
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
Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.
The only way your sentence can possibly be charitably taken as true is if you're talking about blacks. Free citizens were basically not restricted, and it's not a failure of gun control that the US later recognized black people as free citizens.
Rifles and shotguns were never touched. The only federal intervention came when weapons started to become fully automatic. There were some instances of the thing from the movie Unforgiven, where you have specific gun-free towns and have to give up your guns when you enter. Local regulations. But there's also a town in the US with a law on the books that it's illegal for a household NOT to own a gun.
They disarmed loyalists, they disarmed rebels a little after the revolution. They were very comfortable taking guns away from those they thought were threatening the government.
That's great evidence for them having written a shitty amendment that didn't align with what they wanted to do and didn't address all sorts of edge cases that it probably should have.
It was never their intention to have a biblical text.
I completely agree with that. They wanted us to change the words when the words got out of date. They knew they were fallible. They'd have wanted us to rewrite the second amendment a hundred times over addressing machine guns, bump stops, chemical weapons, age restrictions, mental health restrictions, and so forth.
But that didn't happen. We can talk all day about the why but none of that changes the what. What right is specifically granted. We're stuck with the original words and the words just aren't ambiguous. Arms. Keep and bear. People.
Edit: people with common sense are stuck because they know it needs to be changed but they aren’t allowed to change it. That’s why they argue that it really means something different. Because they have to. Because it’s important. Because it’s a matter of life and death. Because America is killing its children. But if you offered any of those people creatively reading the second amendment their own amendment, the ability to change the words to specifically ban machine guns etc. then I’d wager exactly none of them would say “no need, background checks are already included in the original text”. They want background checks and so they say it’s already there. But these people can read, same as you and I.
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
Nope, lots of people were not allowed to own guns at the founding.
The only way your sentence can possibly be charitably taken as true is if you're talking about blacks. Free citizens were basically not restricted, and it's not a failure of gun control that the US later recognized black people as free citizens.
Rifles and shotguns were never touched. The only federal intervention came when weapons started to become fully automatic. There were some instances of the thing from the movie Unforgiven, where you have specific gun-free towns and have to give up your guns when you enter. Local regulations. But there's also a town in the US with a law on the books that it's illegal for a household NOT to own a gun.
They disarmed loyalists, they disarmed rebels a little after the revolution. They were very comfortable taking guns away from those they thought were threatening the government.
That's great evidence for them having written a shitty amendment that didn't align with what they wanted to do and didn't address all sorts of edge cases that it probably should have.
It was never their intention to have a biblical text.
I completely agree with that. They wanted us to change the words when the words got out of date. They knew they were fallible. They'd have wanted us to rewrite the second amendment a hundred times over addressing machine guns, bump stops, chemical weapons, age restrictions, mental health restrictions, and so forth.
But that didn't happen. We can talk all day about the why but none of that changes the what. What right is specifically granted. We're stuck with the original words and the words just aren't ambiguous. Arms. Keep and bear. People.
Edit: people with common sense are stuck because they know it needs to be changed but they aren’t allowed to change it. That’s why they argue that it really means something different. Because they have to. Because it’s important. Because it’s a matter of life and death. Because America is killing its children. But if you offered any of those people creatively reading the second amendment their own amendment, the ability to change the words to specifically ban machine guns etc. then I’d wager exactly none of them would say “no need, background checks are already included in the original text”. They want background checks and so they say it’s already there. But these people can read, same as you and I.
I mostly agree, although there's really nothing in the Second Amendment that precludes background checks. Just like the free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment doesn't allow for blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, CSAM, etc., the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment doesn't mean people who are a blatant mortal danger to others must be allowed to own a firearm.
The Bill of Rights fundamentally exists to prevent the federal government (and state/local governments after the passage of the 14th Amendment) from abusively infringing upon the rights of citizens, but the government is also failing to ensure public order and safety if it can't restrict individual rights when they encroach upon the individual rights of others, so any interpretation of any part of the Constitution that results in extreme disorder like civil war or frequent mass shootings must be null.
Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
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.
No you are wrong, here is someone much more researched, and smarter then you to explain it.
Edit: if you're only going to watch a little, maybe go with from 5-7 mins.
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”.
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.
He hasn't spent his life studying the single, very clear, sentence that is the second amendment. And if he did, then I definitely don't want to watch a 55-minute video by him. What he has presumably dedicated his life to is the history of the second amendment. Why the founding fathers thought it was a necessary amendment, what they in his opinion intended with the second amendment and a whole bunch of other things which are all not nearly as useful when interpreting the meaning of a law as actually reading that law. Which is a sentence that might be interpreted as some outdated caveats to gun ownership (because militias no longer exist in the sense that they used to), and then states the individual right to keep and bear arms.
Unfortunately for you, and that professor, rather than interpret the first bit as a caveat, the supreme court has repeatedly interpreted it as a preamble to that individual right and nothing about it limits that right. Other laws might possibly limit it. An amendment could and absolutely should change it. But as it's written, it's pretty clear and nobody needs 55 minutes to explain the meaning of those words.
On September 14 2025 02:39 KwarK wrote: Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
So, how come the same logic doesn't apply to blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, (owning but not making) CSAM, etc. being protected by the First Amendment? A defendant accused of any of those things could say "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you," and no judge I'm aware of would say "you're right, by the principle of judicial review I declare all laws to the contrary null and void."
On September 14 2025 02:39 KwarK wrote: Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
So, how come the same logic doesn't apply to blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, (owning but not making) CSAM, etc. being protected by the First Amendment? A defendant accused of any of those things could say "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you," and no judge I'm aware of would say "you're right, by the principle of judicial review I declare all laws to the contrary null and void."
Why are you challenging me to defend a document that I keep insisting is deeply flawed? That doesn't make any sense.
On September 14 2025 02:39 KwarK wrote: Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
So, how come the same logic doesn't apply to blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, (owning but not making) CSAM, etc. being protected by the First Amendment? A defendant accused of any of those things could say "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you," and no judge I'm aware of would say "you're right, by the principle of judicial review I declare all laws to the contrary null and void."
Why are you challenging me to defend a document that I keep insisting is deeply flawed? That doesn't make any sense.
I'm challenging you to defend inconsistency in how it's interpreted. All sides of the political spectrum hold the First Amendment does not guarantee speech when it's an obvious danger to others, but only one side of the political spectrum holds the Second Amendment does guarantee firearms even when it's an obvious danger to others.
By far the simplest approach to fixing the Second Amendment if you want to get creative about what words mean and want to draw in some of the weird things that founders did and said as evidence for what they really meant would be to focus on the word "people".
The right to own guns was granted by them to "people". If you want to redefine the right away then all you need to do is come up with a definition of people that doesn't cover Americans. So, let's go back to the founders and decide what it is that they really meant when they said people. And we can bring in basically anything we like from the broader context of America at the time they wrote it plus we can extrapolate anything we like about their views from other things that they may have done at any point in their lives. At that point it's pretty trivial because we can find as many examples as we might care to of them treating others as objects.
Alas nobody seems to want to make the argument that Americans aren't people. But that's the low hanging fruit on misinterpreting the amendment after extrapolating implicit restrictions based on assumptions about their intent when writing it using examples of their actions.
On September 14 2025 02:39 KwarK wrote: Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
So, how come the same logic doesn't apply to blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, (owning but not making) CSAM, etc. being protected by the First Amendment? A defendant accused of any of those things could say "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you," and no judge I'm aware of would say "you're right, by the principle of judicial review I declare all laws to the contrary null and void."
Why are you challenging me to defend a document that I keep insisting is deeply flawed? That doesn't make any sense.
I'm challenging you to defend inconsistency in how it's interpreted. All sides of the political spectrum hold the First Amendment does not guarantee speech when it's an obvious danger to others, but only one side of the political spectrum holds the Second Amendment does guarantee firearms even when it's an obvious danger to others.
But I agree it's inconsistent. I return your challenge. You defend it.
On September 14 2025 02:39 KwarK wrote: Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
So, how come the same logic doesn't apply to blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, (owning but not making) CSAM, etc. being protected by the First Amendment? A defendant accused of any of those things could say "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you," and no judge I'm aware of would say "you're right, by the principle of judicial review I declare all laws to the contrary null and void."
Technically it probably should, but as with allowing laws to restrict automatic rifles, the Supreme Court also allows restrictions on the first amendment to stand. However, if an insane supreme court were to overthrow past rulings (Pollard vs Lyons, New York Times vs Sullivan, maybe some others) and create new precedent they probably could. But these are exceptions carved out by the Supreme Court, and a "first amendment absolutist" SC could presumably change that in the same way a second amendment absolutist SC could and have in the past nixed many restrictions on the second amendment.
It's simultaneously an advantage and disadvantage of common law systems that the constitution is "malleable" in that way. In civil law it generally works very differently, and laws are tested against the constitution before they become law. And thus the constitution has to be better written (and more often amended), in order to not trip over fuzzy and overly broad clauses like the first and second amendments.
On September 14 2025 02:39 KwarK wrote: Nothing in there that precludes background checks is a weird argument because it precludes infringing on the right of people to have arms. So I guess technically you can do a background check before giving them the gun but you still have to give them the gun. But “it doesn’t say X” is just the Airbud argument. It does say Y.
The Second Amendment just doesn’t work very well. It was poorly thought out.
So, how come the same logic doesn't apply to blackmail, libel/slander, death threats, (owning but not making) CSAM, etc. being protected by the First Amendment? A defendant accused of any of those things could say "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you," and no judge I'm aware of would say "you're right, by the principle of judicial review I declare all laws to the contrary null and void."
Why are you challenging me to defend a document that I keep insisting is deeply flawed? That doesn't make any sense.
I'm challenging you to defend inconsistency in how it's interpreted. All sides of the political spectrum hold the First Amendment does not guarantee speech when it's an obvious danger to others, but only one side of the political spectrum holds the Second Amendment does guarantee firearms even when it's an obvious danger to others.
One side of the political spectrum can "hold" whatever you say but for centuries we have lived in a reality where the 2nd amendment does not "guarantee" firearms. Including when that side is in federal power, which they are now, and have often been in recent memory. It's under Reagan that new machine guns were twilighted.
This feels like it might be the first moment of alternative history. It will be interesting if we end up with a unified narrative regarding the Kirk killer or if left and right will simply each have their entirely different version of history
On September 14 2025 03:09 Mohdoo wrote: This feels like it might be the first moment of alternative history. It will be interesting if we end up with a unified narrative regarding the Kirk killer or if left and right will simply each have their entirely different version of history
I would like to point to the JFK assassination to why this isn't the first time.
On September 14 2025 03:09 Mohdoo wrote: This feels like it might be the first moment of alternative history. It will be interesting if we end up with a unified narrative regarding the Kirk killer or if left and right will simply each have their entirely different version of history
Confederacy apologists have spent the last century trying to make "the War of Northern Aggression" a thing.
EPT
