In article <
2986e243-5a6a-4642...@googlegroups.com>,
Michael Falkner <
darkst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 9:41:10 AM UTC-8, BTR1701 wrote:
> > Oh, and if the government can take a thing away, that means that thing
> > is not a right in the first place, and since the Constitution and the
> > Supreme Court says firearm ownership *is* a right, that means the
> > government is forbidden from taking it away.
> Oh, and the Constitution also (and this is by Supreme Court rulings, sir)
> states we have the right to travel by the "conveyance of the day" -- so why,
> then, are certain people not allowed to drive?
>
> I'll wait.
That's a flat-out lie. The words "conveyance of the day" are found
nowhere in the Constitution.
If you think they are, quote the article and section of the Constitution
where they're found and put it here--->
I'll wait.
> PS: The Second Amendment is abjectly abhorrently interpreted-- it was meant
> only for a standing Army when none existed, and now can be used as the right
> of White Right militia to march on and take over a city or state.
I'd love for you to quote the SCOTUS decision that reserves the right to
bear arms only to "White Right militias".
> > Absent a constitutional amendment repealing the 2nd Amendment-- and good
> > luck with that-- abolishing firearm ownership remains a mere
> > masturbatory fantasy for you.
>
> And people are dying every day as a result of that idiocy. #AbolishThe2nd
Oh, no! Stand back, folks. We have us another hashtag activist here!
So you want to abolish the 2nd Amendment, do you? Well, what the hell
are you waiting for? Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining
about it on Usenet and Twitter, and on HBO, and at the Daily Kos. Stop
playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop
jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares
rack up. Go out there and begin the movement to abolish the 2nd
Amendment in earnest.
Let's see what abolishing the 2nd Amendment would actually take, shall
we?
First, you have to stop pretending that you're okay with the 2nd
Amendment in theory, but you're just appalled by the Heller decision and
how it's interpreted. You're not. Heller recognized what was obvious to
the amendment's drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the
jurists of their era and beyond: That "right of the people" means "right
of the people", as it does literally everywhere else in both the Bill of
Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A 2nd Amendment without
the supposedly pernicious Heller "interpretation" wouldn't be any
impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be
an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other
words, it would be exactly what you want! Man up. Put together a plan,
and take those words out of the Constitution.
This will involve hard work, of course. You can't just sit online and
preen to those who already agree with you. Nope. Instead, you'll have to
go around the states-- traveling and preaching until the soles of your
shoes are thin as paper. You'll have to lobby Congress, over and over
and over again. You'll have to make ads and shake hands and twist arms
and cut deals and suffer all the slings and arrows that will be thrown
in your direction. You'll have to tell anybody who will listen to you
that they need to support you; that if they disagree, they're childish
and beholden to the "gun lobby"; that they don't care enough about
children; that their reverence for the Founders is mistaken; that they
have blood on their goddamn hands; that they want to own firearms only
because their penises are small and they're not "real men". And
remember, you can't half-ass it this time. You're not going out there to
tell these people that you want "reform" or that "enough is enough".
You're going there to solicit their support for erasing one of the
articles within the Bill of Rights itself. Make no mistake: It'll be
unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling
blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his
guns because he's not as well-endowed as he'd like to be. It'll be tough
explaining to suburban families that their established conception of
American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of
it. But that's what it's going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.
Keep in mind that to amend the Constitution and repeal the 2nd
Amendment, you'll need 75% of the states to agree to it. Is that a
hurdle you think you can top?
And don't stop there. No, no. Even if by some miracle you're successful
and get the 2nd repealed, there'll still be a lot of work to be done. As
anybody with a passing understanding of America's constitutional system
knows, repealing the 2nd Amendment won't in and of itself lead to the
end of gun ownership in America. Rather, it will merely free up the
federal government to regulate the area, should it wish to do so. Next,
you'll need to craft the laws that bring about change-- think of them as
modern Volstead Acts-- and you'll need to get them past the opposition.
And, if the federal government doesn't immediately go the whole hog with
gun confiscation, you'll need to replicate your efforts in the states,
too, 45 of which have their own protections for firearm ownership in
their state constitutions. Maybe New Jersey and California and Hawaii
will go quietly. Maybe. But Idaho won't. Louisiana won't. Kentucky
won't. Texas sure as hell won't. You'll need to persuade those
sovereignties not to sue and drag their heels, but to do "what's right"
(as defined by you, of course). Unfortunately, that won't involve vague
talk of holding "national conversations" and "doing something" and
"fighting back against the NRA". It'll mean going to all sorts of
groups-- unions, churches, PTAs, political meetings, bowling leagues--
and telling them not that you want "common-sense reforms", but that you
want their guns, full stop, as in Australia or Britain or Japan.
Obviously, the Republicans aren't going to help in this, so you'll need
to commandeer the Democratic party to do it. That means you'll need
their presidential candidates on board. That means you'll need to make
full abolition the stated policy of the Senate and House caucuses. That
means you'll need the state parties to sign pledges promising not to
back away if it gets tough. And if they won't, you'll need to start a
third party and accept all that that entails.
And when you've done all that and your vision is inked onto parchment,
you'll still need to enforce it. No, not in the namby-pamby,
eh-we-don't-really-want-to-fund-it way that Prohibition was enforced. I
mean enforce it with actual force. When Australia took its decision to
Do Something and confiscate guns, the Australian citizenry owned between
2 and 3 million guns. Despite the compliance of the people and the lack
of an entrenched gun culture, the government got maybe three-quarters of
a million of them-- somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total.
That wouldn't be good enough here, of course. There are around 400
million privately owned guns in America, which means that if you picked
up one in three as they did in Australia, you'd only be returning the
stock to where it was in 1994. Does that sound difficult? Sure! After
all, this is a country of 330 million people spread out across 3.8
million square miles, and if we know one thing about the American
people, it's that they do not go quietly into the night. But the
government has to have their guns. It has to. The 2nd Amendment has to
go.
So you're going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county,
street-by-street, door-to door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition
that involves the military and the police and a whole host of
informants-- and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too.
Sure, the ACLU won't like it, especially when you start going around
poorer neighborhoods and raiding their homes looking for guns.
Sure, a significant number of cops and military will simply refuse to
obey what they will see as an unlawful order.
Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would
rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses.
Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass
confiscation of a commonly owned item-- let alone one that was until
recently constitutionally protected.
Sure, it's slightly odd that you think that we can't deport 11 million
people but we can search 123 million homes.
But that's just the price we have to pay. Times have changed. It has to
be done: For the children; for America; for the future.
Hey hey, ho ho, the 2nd Amendment has to go. Let's do this thing.
When do you get started?