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This weekend, I visited my friendly local gun store, idly browsing for shotguns and learning about interstate purchases. Then I drove to my parents and spent the evening playing board games. It was a nice night with good food, drink and company.
Meanwhile, five minutes up the highway, some lunatic was murdering random strangers at a local shopping mall.
No one I know was killed. No one I know personally was present—though a friend of a friend was. I didn’t hear about it until the next morning. Big nothingburger, right? And yet I’ve been to that mall. I’ve been to the bar across the street with my coworkers. If I’d had an errand or three to run, instead of visiting my family, I might have been cowering in a storeroom or staring at a splatter of brains on the sidewalk.
I’m not linking to any articles. Partly for the thinnest veneer of opsec, partly because media coverage is predictably terrible. All sympathetic pictures and, as we’d say here, recruiting for a cause. Nothing good will come of this. Either we’ll force through a knee-jerk bill with symbolic limits on firearms, or we’ll (correctly) dismiss that as posturing and (incorrectly) do abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
It’s not like I can do anything about it. I don’t know what I would actually expect to work, and if I did, how could it be brought about? State, even local politics is as tribal as it gets. Enjoy your a la carte selection of two options, and one of them is out of stock.
Meanwhile, I guess the best I can do is pick up some CCW training and a good holster. Fuck.
Because 'We're the baddies but there's so many of us we'll make it politically impossible for you to take our guns' is a lot less inspirational than 'We're martyrs watering the tree of liberty and defending ourselves from a tyrannical government.'
You can be anti-gun and you can believe that gun advocates are wrong and on the wrong side, but tagging them "the baddies" is literally just a boo light. Argue better than this.
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How about "Firearm ownership is literally written into the founding document of this country as a fundamental right and thus we are literally entitled to ignore your pleas for gun control unless and until you can garner sufficient political support to amend said document."
Since "we're trying to overturn a civil right that the very founders of the country thought important enough to specifically enshrine AND ignore the actual procedure for making changes to the founding document in the effort" isn't exactly inspiring either, and it's certainly accurate to describe the gun-control movement's approach to the issue.
Or in short, the deal is that we follow the rules set forth when the nation was created, and those rules happen to include this particular provision for gun rights, so amend it or, literally, GTFO to a country that is more politically suitable to your own beliefs.
The current US constitution was the second "founding document" for the United States.
The first, the Articles of Confederation, which a number of "founding fathers" signed swearing that it "shall be inviolably observed by the states we respectively represent," was not amended under the process laid out in the document but was instead just crumpled up and tossed aside for a new constitution in secret.
While the procedure for amending the Articles of Confederation required unanimous consent from all the states, Rhode Island and North Carolina were heavily opposed, with Rhode Island refusing to send delegates and repeatedly stating their opposition to a new constitution. For refusal to sign the new constitution, Rhode Island was embargoed and threatened with blockade until they capitulated.
Talk of the current US constitution being almost sacred and inviolable, how one is bound to follow the procedures laid out by guys who had just wiped their ass with the last constitution's procedures, is a lot like seeing an usurper who killed the previous king wax eloquent on the importance of fidelity to the crown and always following peaceful succession.
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I personally find that even less inspiring but whatever floats your boat man.
Aiming less to inspire and more to point out that the country's founding document is what makes it 'politically impossible' to take guns and that the 'baddies' are simply the ones demanding you adhere to the actual agreement instead of ignoring it where convenient.
If the country's basic political framing is demoralizing to your position, well again, the options to both change it via the well-established process or to leave to someplace more suitable are open!
Or to have it ignored. It's not a magical document, convince enough people in the right places it is illegitimate or out of date and you can avoid the process entirely.
If I founded a country and said the only way to change the founding rules is by me deciding it, it's quite possible in 300 hundred years the inhabitants of SSCReaderonia would entirely disregard my well-written constitution. And they would probably be right to do so. I just got first mover privilege, no reason that needs to last after I am dead.
The political framing is downstream of people believing it is the basic political framing. It's not like the Supreme Court has not been challenged to enforce its rulings before.
Not advocating this should be done by the way, just pointing out it isn't an either/or. There are many different options.
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That's just a set-up for the Cersei Lannister response: "This is your shield, Lord Stark? A piece of paper? tears paper to shreds"
...are you under the impression that Cersei Lannister and her children lived happily ever after? Because I get the feeling that you might be under that impression.
The guys who tore the Articles of Confederation to shreds and replaced it with the current constitution did pretty well for themselves.
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No, but in the process of not living happily ever after, they made the lives of an awful lot of ordinary people who got caught in the crossfire very, very miserable. I want to avoid getting into the position where Cersei has to be violently removed from power via a horrifying and drawn-out war in the first place. So ideally, there'd be a better plan at the beginning than "you lose because this piece of paper says so."
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I mean, because she was kinda proven correct? They lost to might makes right, even after gambling the entire future of humanity on her political enemies winning a battle where her aide could have been significant.
In a stunning upset, Jeb! won both the Democratic and Republican nominations simultaneously.
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Did we read to the same books or watch the same show? If anything ASOIAF's core thesis seems to be "might makes right is no basis for a system of government"
In GOT (the show at least, I'm telling myself I should wait till he finishes to read, lest I be disappointed as I was with the show), Cerise's reign is ended by an overwhelming army and a freaking dragon.
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Questionable. Every ASOIAF government that doesn't feature a central power with its boot firmly on the throats of its constituents, barring a few fringe polities that aren't explored at all, immediately dissolves into cycles of bloodshed, revolution and genocide. The Targaryens' death warrant was written the day they lost their dragons; it just took some time to execute the warrant. The Baratheon dynasty likewise falls apart once its founder, who stamped out rebellions with his own hammer, died and left no one of parallel martial ability to reign after him. Daenerys replaces the authoritarian slaveocracy of Astapor with a proto-communist government of the people, which rapidly disintegrates into civil war and a near-total genocide of the entire city. Arguably the only successful governments in ASOIAF, measured by the ability to stay in power for more than a couple of generations at the least, are those governments which make it clear that they rule by the sword.
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And that sounds like a set up for "No, this is my shield."
And at that point, gun rights are a revolution-complete problem.
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There have been other amendments to the constitution. Why not make another to improve things?
I don't think the founders could foresee the future that well that they could predict events hundreds (or thousands) of years in the future and consider everything.
American prohibitionists actually managed to do just that. They built a sufficiently large anti-alcohol coalition that pushed their amendment through. Gun-prohibitionists can't muster enough support to repeat their achievement.
Honestly I think there'd be more chance of getting a "2A II -- ShallNotBeInfringedandweMeanItThisTime Boogaloo" amendment passed than anything the left could do for the forseeable future. Agitating for a constitutional convention on the matter might be a fun shit-stirring project if Desantis decides not to go for President this time around.
Constitutional convention is an existing far right boondoggle.
What's the holdup? A few states short of a load, or too nuclear?
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Sure, the US is basically smashing every other large country on everything, when demographically adjusted. Why not constitutionally amend to eliminate social security and medicare? Or the income tax? Or mandate the execution of drug dealers? Evidence is much more in favor of those than the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.
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Correct and that's why there is a built-in amendment process.
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If you can get 32 States on board, go for it...
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