With the carnage in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York in May 2022, calls have begun again for Congress to enact gun control. This marks the 22nd school shooting in the United States in 2022 alone and even after the massacre of 20 primary school children and at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, any and all legislation introduced in response to mass killings has failed to pass the Senate.
The central plank of legislation that continues to allow children to be slaughtered in addition to more than 10,000 people per year every year being killed, is the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution.
It states:
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.
- 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified 15th Dec 1791.
It replaced the existing right to bear arms which was contained in the English Bill of Rights Act 1688 which stated:
http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/bor16881wams2c2306/s7.html
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
Already there is a material difference between the 2nd Amendment and the Bill of Rights Act which it replaced; being that the Bill of Rights Act placed limits upon the right being "suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law". I think that limits to liberty where the exercise of that liberty places the lives and property of other people is both just a reasonable. However, as someone who is 10,000km and not a citizen of the deliberately stupid country across the waves, my opinion ain't worth a hill of beans.
In that spirit, I shall now explain why despite all prevailing stupidity, the reason why 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution should stay and endure.
Here we go...
A drunkard may be bound under quite reasonable grounds, if that drunkard causes harm or has the potential to cause harm to other people or property. I think that everyone would agree that being intoxicated in the street and being disorderly is sufficient reason for that drunkard to spend a night in custody.
However, a drunkard who is found dancing in the streets and having a lovely time but who poses of threat of harm to other people or property, may be reasonably allowed to go free. One may argue that the spill over of drunkards on Bondi Beach, or slumped over in parks surrounding Sydney Harbour on New Year's Day after reveling and celebrating the arrival of a new year, although they may be unsightly and ugly, is in fact a reasonable consequence of freedom allowed.
A drunkard who by virtue of being filled with rage and anger as a result of being intoxicated, can and might cause damage to both people and property. In the case of damage to people, this results in the tort of assault and/or battery. In the case of damage to property, this results in the tort of vandalism or some other like crime.
Not only do we place reasonable grounds upon someone who exhibits fury as the result of the consumption of and subsequent intoxication due to the effects of alcohol, we also place limits on who is permitted to supply, sell and produce alcohol. Where I live in the state of New South Wales, it is illegal for private persons to be in possession of a still. Although home brewing kits exist for the home production of beer, it is illegal for someone who possesses a home brewing kit to sell their ware to the public. As for the possession of a still, it is illegal for someone to have one; much less to sell the ware of the product of that product unless they be the holder of a liquor production licence.
Likewise when it comes to the sale of alcohol, not only is there a liquor licence which must be held by the proprietor of a shop that sells liquor but there is also a different licence which must be held by the landlord for the consumption of alcohol on the premises. Thus, there are off-licence premises which includes bottle shop where proprietors may sell alcohol that is not consumed upon the premises and there are also premises which allow for the public to bring their own alcohol to be consumed upon the premises but which does allow the proprietors to sell alcohol on the premises.
On top of this, in order to serve alcohol to the public at a licenced premises, the person who is at the bar must be the holder of another licence which is called the Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA). This also places responsibility upon the server, to assess whether or not the person they are serving alcohol, if under suspicion of reasonable grounds, is someone who has the potential to cause harm to other people or property. Is it reasonable that a product such as alcohol, which can and does present a societal problem of harm and damage of both people's bodies and property, be subject to rules and regulations? Overwhelmingly and evidently, yes. To suggest otherwise is deliberate stupidity.
At this point we run back into the the domain of the harm principle; made famous by John Stuart Mill in his 1859 work "On Liberty". I note that this was written 68 years after the ratification of the US Constitution; which means that by then, there was the equivalent of almost five generations' of people's thought which may have been distilled into this work.
And even (it will be added) if the consequences of misconduct could be confined to the vicious or thoughtless individual, ought society to abandon to their own guidance those who are manifestly unfit for it? If protection against themselves is confessedly due to children and persons under age, is not society equally bound to afford it to persons of mature years who are equally incapable of self-government? If gambling, or drunkenness, or incontinence, or idleness, or uncleanliness, are as injurious to happiness, and as great a hindrance to improvement, as many or most of the acts prohibited by law, why (it may be asked) should not law, so far as is consistent with practicability and social convenience, endeavor to repress these also? And as a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to practise them?
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
The question then arises of whether or not it is reasonable to place a prohibition upon the sale of alcohol entirely. Enough people though that it was sufficiently reasonable enough to curb the consumption of alcohol, that this resulted in the Temperance Movement in the United States gaining a large enough influence on American politics and American society to do precisely that with the passage and ratification of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution. The next question which follows is, was the prohibition on the sale of alcohol reasonable? Actually; surprisingly, yes.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html
The amendment prohibited the commercial manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages; it did not prohibit use, nor production for one's own consumption. Moreover, the provisions did not take effect until a year after passage -plenty of time for people to stockpile supplies.
Second, alcohol consumption declined dramatically during Prohibition. Cirrhosis death rates for men were 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 and 10.7 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis declined from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.
Arrests for public drunkennness and disorderly conduct declined 50 percent between 1916 and 1922. For the population as a whole, the best estimates are that consumption of alcohol declined by 30 percent to 50 percent.
- New York Times, 16th Oct 1989
However, in 1933 the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution was passed during the Great Depression as both a method of raising taxation revenue in a hurry as well as to salve the sadness caused by the depressing fact that millions of Americans were out of work and unemployed. Given that prohibition actually worked despite the mythology which surrounds it and is unsupported by fact, the single biggest reason of why the 18th Amendment was repealed and with it prohibition, amounts nothing more than this: people like to drink alcohol.
What does any of this have to do with the 2nd Amendment?
The United States of America in essence, likes to kill people. The side of politics which defends the Second Amendment because of a spurious reason of 'self-defence' is saying nothing more than they want the right to kill people coming onto their premises. Therein lies the whole reason in its entirety why the 2nd Amendment actually stays on the books. Furthermore, since they don't bear the consequences or the expense of the right, the amount of consideration that they exhibit for the people who have borne and who do consequences for the expense of the right is equally and exactly commensurate. It is nil.
People like guns. People like guns so much, that they don't want to give them up. It's okay America, you don't have to lie. The truth is that you like guns more than you think that other people have a right to life. Let's not pretend that in spite of modern weaponry being vastly unsuitable to the conditions of an urban environment, that the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution continues to exist for any other reason.
Aside:
I think it's an evil reason and that everyone who defends the right, is either stupid or evil or both.
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