This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Raising an army is clearly and uncontrovertibly protected. The Amendment says it right there in the text! I'm genuinely baffled by the idea that there are honest people that can read as straightforward of a sentence as "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" and come away believing that this doesn't protect ownership of light infantry weapons for the purpose of fielding a fighting force.
As the Court noted in DC v. Heller, the "militia" referred to in the Second Amendment is not an army, nor any other sort of organized military group, but rather "'all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.'" As it also noted, the Constitution gives Congress the power to "call[] forth the Militia" and to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress."
So, yes, the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to own weapons for the purpose of fielding a fighting force,* but, no, it does not protect the right of an individual to raise a private army.
More options
Context Copy link
Arguably, congress having reserved the power to issue letters of marque would prohibit militias from developing significant power-projection capabilities.
A letter of marque is a license to use your fully-armed privately-owned warship aggressively, not to merely own one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What it comes down to is no elitist or member of the elite -- and that includes the conservative members of SCOTUS -- actually wants the unwashed plebes to have guns. So they interpret the right out of existence, or look the other way when others infringe it.
More options
Context Copy link
Does “well regulated” actually mean “free for all, any citizen can do it”? I don’t know that it does. And again, my point is that why do (most non-ancap) 2A advocates think the limit is “light infantry weapons”? That seems, again, arbitrary - why can’t I build a warship in case the people’s militia requires naval power to protect the security of the people? Why can’t I field a battalion of tanks? There’s an inherent arbitrariness to almost all except the “privately owned nukes are constitutional” and “it’s not referring to individual ownership at all” interpretations of the 2A that should be acknowledged.
A more socialist SCOTUS could define “the right of the people” as the collective, rather than individual right, and define “well regulated militia” as ‘army’. In general I think these kind of Talmudic arguments about the literal text of the constitution are stupid, but the long term solution ought to be codifying it in some detail rather than, as @naraburns says, just getting your guys on the Supreme Court to read the tea leaves and do what you want.
You can. What's stopping you?
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, and a different court could also claim that speech was only protected for purely political speech by (natural) individuals, and even then the manner of such speech could be regulated.
It IS codified. The more detail, the more wiggle room for those who wish to interpret it out of existence. As indeed, many people including yourself do using the nominative absolute the Second Amendment begins with ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State...")
I don’t see how codifying that all US citizens have the right to own any small arms (defined as X) and to own unlimited (or some other large amount) of ammunition for them would lessen gun rights compared to the current situation. You and @Walterodim seem to almost be making the opposite argument from the same perspective - he would like more codification of the actual rules, you don’t, because you think they’d inherently make things worse than the current vagueness.
I would be fine with explicit codification in principle, but I think the current state is that my opponents are bad faith interlocutors that want to disarm people as much as possible. I would only support Amendments that add restrictions for explicitly called out weapons of mass destruction. Anything spelled out as a positive right is likely to be interpreted as a negative right - think of it like the dormant commerce clause, but for weapons. With regard to small arms, I have zero interest in explicit codification beyond the existing, very easy to read 2A, which covers the relevant rights as clearly as plausible.
More options
Context Copy link
Codifying ownership of small arms can (and would) be interpreted as excluding them from ownership of anything larger. If justices are capable of reading "shall not be infringed" as "can be infringed to an arbitrary degree", they're surely capable of reading "the right to small arms" as "the right to only own small arms".
Almost everyone believes that though, they just vary on what degree, as far as I can tell. I haven't found a 2A advocate in person who thinks prisoners in prison should be allowed to bring rifles in with them, for example (though there probably are some), and quite a lot think felons even after release should not be allowed them. So as per the old saw, all we're really doing is haggling over how much infringement there should be, most people seem to agree that infringement is indeed required in some degree.
If almost immediately after being written, in order to function your society has to add the unspoken caveat, well except people in jail obviously, and the clearly mad, and, and and. Then you're just admitting from the get go, that it doesn't actually mean exactly what it says. You're just haggling over the price from then on and logically once you have admitted that it is flawed, then that makes it much easier to ignore. The right was neutered from the beginning because it was written for theory not for practice.
First, you're missing the key word "arbitrary". Even if we accept for sake of argument that almost everyone agrees that it can be infringed on to a degree, it does not follow that it can be infringed upon to an arbitrary degree.
It's one thing to argue that waiting periods don't interfere with the purpose of the second amendment and therefore is not "an infringement" in any significant sense. It's a completely different thing to argue that semi-automatic firearms can be banned because "stopping school shootings is more important than preserving the right to keep and bear arms". And if you try to argue that banning semi-automatic firearms "isn't a significant infringement" because you think "stopping school shootings" (or whatever the claimed motivation is) is more important than the right to keep and bear arms, then it's just the latter dishonestly presented as the former.
The point of the comment you're responding to is that justices have shown a complete lack of integrity in pretending that clearly significant infringements "aren't really infringements" because they want to infringe. Even if their desire to infringe is justifiable (like in the case of nuclear weapons, for example), that doesn't mean "Well... it doesn't really mean what it says. It means do whatever we think is appropriate while giving lip service to this 'right'". It means get your shit together and pass an amendment that says "The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed further than prohibiting private ownership of weapons of mass destruction" -- and whatever other infringements that you think are so clearly appropriate that you can get the necessary supermajority support for.
Second, even if we did all agree that "some infringement is necessary" (rather than, e.g. taking the stance that criminals imprisoned/awaiting execution following due process no longer count as "the people" who are being protected, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed), the very premise of "we all agree" means that there is sufficient support for passing an amendment and the only reason it's not being done is that we're all on the same page about what is meant. If it ever gets to the point where we're even discussing whether or not "we all agree" that "shall not be infringed" didn't apply to that kind of infringement, then we clearly do not all agree -- so get your shit together and pass the damn amendment if you think you can justify it, or make the case if you think you have important insights that aren't shared by the necessary supermajority.
This is basically my point though. We did this almost immediately. Of course people who don't like guns will use this tunnel to try and drive a battleship through it (or to prevent other owning a battleship perhaps!), that is a given, but the response is not to put our fingers in our ears and pretend the tunnel doesn't exist at all. It does, it exists because the right as written was too broad to be practically useful, and therefore every court since has had to define what exactly that unwritten tunnel should or should not include.
As for passing an amendment to clarify, that applies to pro 2A people more so. Once you have established there is an unwritten tunnel, then it's just a matter of convincing enough people it should be bigger, if you are pro gun control. It is the pro 2A people who would have benefitted from an amendment more accurately specifying a max size to the tunnel. Of course that isn't going to happen either, because the amendment process itself has just as many problems in the modern world as the 2A does if not more!
Do you mean "Once you have established that politicians and justices have been dishonestly passing unconstitutional laws", "Once you have established that doing so is legitimate", or are you conflating the two?
The former can be argued, but the latter is clearly false. You're essentially arguing that we shouldn't expect our government to be intellectually honest -- is this a bullet you will explicitly bite?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, it means functional.
No, that is the minimum that anyone could plausibly claim that it allows. If it protects anything at all, it protects ownership of light infantry weapons. I think it protects much, much more than that, but there is no plausible and honest reading that would exclude light infantry weapons, which are the most basic component of constructing a militia.
So where do you think the line is, if there is one?
There is no legitimate line currently. If we need context to know whether the maximalist interpretation is consistent with the intention of the writers, we can look at the private ownership of warships and the explicit power of Congress to grant letters of marque and reprisal. If privately owned warships with dozens of cannons were considered as legitimate by the United States federal government, I am very confident that the intent was not to exclude categories of weapons discussed in most modern conversations.
As I said in another post, I would favor an Amendment (or just an outright convention) that updates to exclude weapons of mass destruction explicitly. There is a pretty clear process for that and I see no good reason to expect strong opposition to a ban on private ownership of nuclear weapons. My position is that making laws should require actually writing them down, not concocting completely implausible interpretations to fit sensibilities. Really though, this is a thought experiment, and a pointless one. The current status quo is so comically far beyond legitimate law and relies on such utterly ridiculous reasoning that it makes no sense for me to be put in the position of outlining where I would draw my line. It suffices to say that I don't draw it at 10-round magazines.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link