Amendment II.
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.
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No other piece of legislation is as infamous or brings out visible hypocrisy in people than this.
To get ahead of the discussion and address the first point of order which is always brought up by 2A advocates, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms was not invented by this Amendment to the Constitution. All of the original thirteen states have various statutes of reception which received English Common Law and the cases and decisions therein, as precedent; which formed the corpus of their own law.
This means that 2A did not under any circumstances give rise to the ability to overthrow the British; nor was it handed down by God on high; nor is the right innate. In fact, 2A is similar in construction to Section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act 1688.
http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/bor16881wams2c2306/s7.html
Subjects' arms
That the subjects which are protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.
- Section 7, Bill of Rights Act (1688)
It should be apparent at this point that the text of the 1688 legislation and the 1791 legislation are materially different. The 1688 legislation contains that general principle that law generally should be about the regulation, standardisation, and protection of society. The material difference here between "allowed by law" and "shall not be infringed", is the unshackling of law from those ideals, to a place where the law itself is monstrous.
Now owing to the right that SCOTUS took for itself in Marbury v Madison (1803) in which "what the law is", this means that 2A has been allowed to become even more monstrous because as a result of Heller v DC (2008), SCOTUS has functionally struck off the entire first half of this amendment. The key part of the text of the ruling from Heller v DC (2008) reads:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/
"the activities [the Amendment] protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia."
- District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)
The summary of this is that SCOTUS has held that private citizens have the right under the 2A to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia. If the right exists even when there is relationship to a local militia, then the whole first half of 2A serves no purpose whatsoever.
Defenders of 2A now must arrive at a series of internal lies in order to maintain the argument for 2A's fitness of purpose. The best test for the fitness of purpose of legislation and indeed for internal contradictions, is to test the document against itself and see how it is supposed to address the aims of the document. If you remember all the way back to the beginning of the United States Constitution, the Preamble states that in "order to form a more perfect Union" that certain criteria must be met. We can use the Preamble as the yardstick against everything which follows thereafter.
Does 2A establish Justice? No. We have to conclude that as murder rates in the United States due to firearms are absolutely hideous, then it does not. On the contrary. Justice implies that people get just rewards for their actions; which in the positive are payments and benefits and privileges, in the negative are punishments and the moral obligation to make good for injury. 2A eliminates justice by taking any and all deliberation process in disputes away from courts and placing them into the hands of an idiot who can pull a trigger, to play judge , jury and executioner all at once.
Does 2A insure domestic Tranquility? No. Again, hideous homicide rates due to firearms is the exact opposite of domestic Tranquility. Even in the worst case scenario, the homicide rates due to firearms is greater than fifteen times that of the per capita rate in my country. For calendar year 2023, the comparison was more than fifty times greater. Is a 5000% greater homicide rate per capita "domestic Tranquility"?
Does 2A provide for the common defence? No. Not only has Heller v DC (2008) functionally struck off the entire first half of this Amendment, but various other clauses such as the ones found in Article 1, Section 8, which give the Federal Government the authority and power to "To raise and support Armies" and "To provide and maintain a Navy", and which have given rise to easily the most expensive military force on the face of the planet, not only renders the need to call for a militia obsolete but makes a complete mockery of this amendment.
Does 2A promote the general Welfare? No. It might be due to lack of imagination on my part but I honestly fail to see how more murder, more violence, and an attitude of increased aggression in any way promotes "the general Welfare".
Does 2A secure the Blessings of Liberty? No. In fact, 2A not only doesn't secure the Blessings of Liberty, it shoots Liberty in the face, then urinates all over it. How can you hold any truth to be self-evident that there are unalienable rights, of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, when by operation of law, 2A destroys all three in an instant.
2A fails at every objective that the Preamble lays out. 0% is not even a passing mark. If 2A was a child in school and got 0% on a report card, you would quite rightly hold it back a year.
2A even fails at the fantasy that people put forward that they need to keep and bear Arms for personal defence. You can even test this with real world data because insurance companies, whose job it is to professionally play the gamble of calculated risk, already know that someone with a firearm is more likely to either kill themselves or be killed by someone in their own immediate family than anyone else, by at least two orders of magnitude.
The central lie at the heart of the fantasy that people need to keep and bear Arms for personal defence, is that firearms are not defensive pieces and at any rate, you can not sensibly defend yourself against people from within your own household or inside your own head. In fact, if someone with a firearm is more likely to either kill themselves or be killed by someone in their own immediate family, then the only 'defense' against this is that wives must kill their husbands, husbands must kill their wives, children must kill their parents in their god for this is right.
The argument that 2A somehow defends against tyranny, is itself spurious. Not only is waging war against the United States illegal, but actually trying to wage war against a military force with a budget of $916,000,000,000 in 2023, is a stupid fantasy. The same kinds of people who in one breath think that they can beat the US Military, are also the same people likely to have "Support Our Troops" on the back of their pickup truck. Often cited is the war of Independence from 1775-1783 but as the US Civil War proved, what might have been possible in 1775 against a military fighting a war from the other side of an ocean, is a very different prospect to fighting a war within your own borders. This fantasy needs to end.
2A especially proves that hard positions on rights conceptions are awful because if Law generally should be about the regulation, standardisation, and protection of society, then actively endangering people is in direct opposition to that telos. The 1688 Act which read "suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law" actually put sensible restraints upon the right because the awful awful truth that defenders of 2A always deny, is that Liberty in whatever conception that you might like to put forward, is utterly useless and pointless if you are dead.
The 1688 Act also assumes within the text that the right itself is not hard. The phrase "suitable to their conditions" acknowledges that it might very well be suitable and perhaps even necessary that someone in the country might need arms for things like pest control, and for facing the challenges of dangerous animals like wolves, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my), but someone in an urban environment is never going to need arms for anything, ever. The only reason that someone in any urban environment wants firearms, is to kill other people.
I also reject the notion that registering firearms is unfair as the only people who don't follow the law are criminals. On the contrary, it has been proven time and time again that having a register of firearms, means that it is far easier to find out who criminals due to forensic evidence. I note that in the United States, the 'solve rate' for homicide has been steadily falling since 1983; which should also tell us that as the number of firearms in society has increased, we have to assume that literally everyone is a criminal. In my country an assault rifle will cost more than $30,000 on the black market; which means that market forces also limit access.
This means that we can actually answer Hamilton's two key questions from Federalist No.29:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed29.asp
Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens?
- Hamilton, Fed 29, 10th Jan 1788
There is not end to your fears.
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. BAM. YOU'RE DEAD. BAM BAM BAM. SO IS YOUR FAMILY. SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed29.asp
What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests?
- Hamilton, Fed 29, 10th Jan 1788
There are no stories told in a vacuum. There is no prophecy lighting your way. There is just a lot of darkness to be afraid of; so you need to be very very very afraid. There is no Superman in that phone booth. There is no rewarding your faith. There is no one who can save you; so it's a good thing you can not be saved.
Life?
Liberty?
Happiness?
We hold these truths to be self-evident. Everyone who thinks that 2A needs to be on the books, thinks that your life is worthless.
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. BAM. YOU'RE DEAD. BAM BAM BAM. SO IS YOUR FAMILY. SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen? Very, lots, rather, real, and present, danger.
Death, Hades, Sheol, Abaddon: feeding time is all the time.
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