DC gun ban struck downFollow

If that were the case, we should have no restrictions on owning weaponry. For that matter, there should be no laws against libel & slander, no copyright law, I should be allowed to steal and sacrifice neighborhood children if I feel Moloch demands it, etc.

We mold and interpret the rights granted in the Constitution all the time.

Here's the problem though Ambrya. There's a disconnect between your examples of other changes to the document and what's going on with regard to gun control in this country. Can you spot what it is?

Ok. Let me help you. You are absolutely correct that the Constitution is MEANT to be altered. And in fact, we even have rules in the Constitution for doing this. It's called making a Constitutional Amendment. It's done by the Legislative Branch. All of the examples you gave about Blacks no longer being 3/5ths of a person, women getting the vote, etc resulted from Congress actually writing changes into the Constitution via the Amendment process.


So, you're correct that the Constitution is supposed to change. But it's supposed to change by having Congress go through the correct process to do so, not by having some appointed judges decide that the constitution doesn't actually say what it says. That's the problem in this case (and in a few others recently as well). The Judiciary is not supposed to make changes to the Constitution. The Legislature is. But what we're seeing here is a process of changing the constitution to meet the times by re-interpreting it in ways that the original framers didn't intend.

Now if they didn't intend that meaning because they simply couldn't envision the future changes to technology, then by all means Congress can (and should) write an amendment to the constitution reflecting that change. But it's wrong for the Judiciary to believe that they can simply impose those changes by ignoring what's actually written and just deciding that it really means something else because the times have changed.

When the times changed, we ended slavery. When the times changed, we gave women the vote. If the times have really changed to where "the people" no longer have a need for a right to keep and bear arms, then by all means, let's amend the constitution to reflect that. But here's the rub: There's no way in hell Congress could get the votes needed to make the changes. And if they did, there's no way they could get sufficient states to ratify those changes. That's exactly *why* these changes are made by the judges themselves, and also exactly why those kind of "activist" rulings are wrong.


The correct process should be that the courts rule along the law itself. If this results in a ruling that prompts outrage (like say Dredd Scott), then the people can push to change the law. The court should not partake in guessing what they think the people want and re-interpreting the law. It's just a dumb and dangerous way to go about changing the constitution.

Don't you agree?

Ambrya. There's a difference between writing legislation that violates the constitution, and writing legislation to change the constitution.

The court is supposed to determine if normal legislation violates the constitution. That's their job. If there's a belief that the constitution itself should be changed, there's an amendment process involved. It's much much much much much more difficult then just writing a law though. On purpose. Because we're not supposed to change the constitution willy-nilly.


My earlier point was that it's a bit scary that even 4 justices think that a total ban on handguns doesn't violation the 2nd amendment.


Also, I was responding to your post in which you talked about how it's ok to change the constitution to meet changing times. However, the correct way to change the constitution is for Congress to write an amendment, not to appoint justices who'll ignore what the constitution actually says, and rule on what they think it should say instead.


You can't have it both ways. Either we're changing the meaning of the constitution, or we're not. Anyone who makes the "if the founders had known about the weapons of today, they would have written it differently" argument is arguing that the constitution didn't originally allow for the type of ban in question, but today it ought to (because weapons have changed). If that's the case, the correct response is to have Congress change the constitution by writing an amendment.

If you believe that the constitution does allow for the ban in question, all by itself, with no mental modifications or account taken in for changes in weapons, then you need to make that point. But so far, other then the somewhat weak idea that the first clause places limits on who the right applies to, no one's really made any strong argument that the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" isn't supposed to mean that the government can't ban all handguns.


And at the end of the day, it's pretty poor logic to use examples of changes to the constitution brought about via the amendment process to argue that it's ok for justices on the court to rule in a way that changes the meaning of the constitution. It's beyond poor IMO. Everyone accepts the changes you mentioned earlier *because* they were so well supported by "the people" that they passed the rigorous amendment process. People ***** and complain about decisions like Roe v. Wade (and a host of others, of which this one was narrowly avoided) exactly because they change the constitution *without* going through that process.


There's a reason the founders put such difficult requirements for changing the constitution. They wanted it to only happen as a result of a broad and sweeping belief at both state and national level that the change was needed. To allow this by judicial fiat contradicts and sidesteps that important protection.

Because we're not supposed to change the constitution willy-nilly.

You mean like changing the definition of an amendment intended to keep the relative power of the Federal military in check with capable state militias capable of competing with it to secure the liberties of their citizens into "any citizen can own a handgun"?

Willy-nilly like that?

Or did you mean changing "The right of the people" to "The right of the people who aren't felons or mentally unstable or under a certain age or who want rocket launchers"?

Which one did you mean, Capitan?

Better give us Womyn the ERA, before those nuts get their guns and religion.

Are ya'll still ignoring the point that our government has defined Militia as an individual citizen (regardless of military status)?

regardless the "debate" really hasn't been about whether or not the ruling was appropriate and has been more along the lines of whether people can disagree over the amendment's implications and whether they can/should be changed as time changes.

Edited, Jul 7th 2008 11:24am by Xsarus

how is that even relevant to your argument? Pick an issue, don't keep changing. Right now you've been arguing about how to interpret the amendment not whether gun control should be in place.

To be fair Ambrya, you're creating an impossible standard though. Somewhat by definition, the only sites that will have compiled lists of states/counties ranked by relation between gun control laws and violent crime rates will be identified by you as "far right propaganda" sites. Because the only sites or organizations that do this sort of comparison are "pro-gun". If you automatically reject them because of that, then no source of data, no matter how large or complete, will ever satisfy you.

It would be wonderful if anti-gun organizations did factual studies of crime rates within the US and correlated them to the gun control in that area, but they don't do this. Ever. Which should be your first hint btw. What they do is compare the US as a whole to other nations. Which is a pretty fallacious method of comparison.


Honestly though. This isn't really relevant to the question of what the constitution says about the issue. Just figured I'd point out the impossibility of what you demand.

Sure. And if a poster here wants to spend a few months pouring through DoJ stats in order to accumulate and correlate the numbers needed for this, then that's wonderful. Most of us don't want to put that much work into it though. Which is why we read the info from groups that have already done this.

Look. Find me an anti-gun site that debunks the numerous examples given earlier showing crime rates lower in a state with lose gun control laws and higher in one right next to it with stiffer gun control laws. If the actual statistics the pro-gun folks use are wrong, then it should be easy to find anti-gun sites refuting them, right?


Both sides have access to the same data Joph. Yet, while hundreds of pro-gun sites post the accumulated data relating crime rates and gun laws, none of the anti-gun sites seem to debunk them. So I think it's reasonably safe to assume that the facts quoted earlier are accurate.


That's not to say that the anti-gun folks don't have an argument. But it's not about the facts being incorrect. They simply believe that those stats are artificially created when you have two areas next to each other with different gun laws. The criminals will buy guns in stateA, then commit the crime with that gun in StateB, where they know fewer victims will have a gun.


The correct anti-gun argument is that if the entire US had super stiff gun control laws, then crime rates would be lower across the board. Or at least gun related violence would be down (as well as accidents of course). But that's an entirely different argument then simply saying that since the facts are on a pro-gun site, that they must be false...

That's fine. Then just say you don't have an neutral cite.Not interested. It wasn't my argument anyways. It was Varrus's that having guns lowered the crime rate. Either he has a neutral cite for this or he doesn't. If not, then he just needs to say so. It doesn't become Ambrya's (or mine) job to find information for him.

As for the rest, I don't care because -- again -- it wasn't my argument. but the data supposedly exists so saying "No one can find it because only these pro-gun sites can provide it!" is a lame cop-out. If the data the pro-gun sites are using is accurate then it's out there. If the pro-gun sites aren't giving a direct link or cite in some form to the raw data, I'd really be wondering why not.

Edited, Jul 7th 2008 5:29pm by Jophiel