Isn't it time to repeal the 2nd amendment?

All I will say is that if the NRA didn't cave after Sandy Hook, they have no moral baseline. Gun laws won't tighten until the NRA is out of power in Washington. That won't happen without some serious campaign finance reform. Given the new Congress' first attempted move was to abolish an independent office of ethics oversight, I doubt that campaign finance reform will be a priority to them.

Guys I'm convinced CS guy is just a troll because there is no way someone that emotionally reactive and devoid of measured logical flow could get a job there...unless he's heavy back office in a third tier city. Stop feeding the troll, and send him back the pits of Infowars where he can talk about how Bush did 9/11 and Obama did Sandy Hook. Now - @JPM3 - I'll engage because despite your attack on my reading comprehension to distract, I think you have a baseline of respect for intelligent debate. Amending the constitution doesn't mean that the system of checks and balances has cracks. In fact, the ability to amend the constitution is written into the document! It's designed to be a living, breathing document that gives the people the ability to adapt with the times - hence the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. That only congress, a body that's supposed to represent the people, can change the constitution is a demonstration of the health of those checks and balances (as long as they are actually representing the majority's will).

From my cold, dead hands Weedhopper. A lot of good those gun laws are doing in Obama's hometown Chicago. You can't even stop heroin crossing the border, hence the epidemic, and you liberal idiots think you can keep guns out. How about mandatory 10 years on top of the crime sentences for committing a crime with a gun? You won't do it as it's so much better to keep poor blacks on the Dem Plantation. Better chance of dying in a black Chicago neighborhood than in combat at height of Afghan war.

Actually, CS guy enjoys torturing liberals by pointing out their sanctimony, their elitist snobbishness (never from a GS guy, I'm sure) and their moral relativism. Trump was never my candidate but I'm impressed with the conservative cabinet choices. He has the Ryan brain trust and Pence is the perfect COO from central casting, so we'll be more than okay. I'll take a tweeter over an intern molester or an apologist tour president who funded the worlds greatest sponsor of state terrorism any day. I believe that Obama was our first anti-American president and that he took his party to the modern day equivalent of Jacobins. And I have the election losses experienced by Dems at all levels to prove it. I believe that HRC combines the worst case of character flaw and elitism; the kind expressed by Obama when he cut school choice scholarships from poor, mostly black inner city D.C. Kids and confining them to teachers union hell holes while sending his cherubs to Sidwell.

A2 - I think revoking women's right to vote and bringing back slavery is preposterous and any reasonable person would think the same. I do agree with you about choice. I also think it is very difficult to take a freedom away. But I don't think it is unreasonable to say guns laws need to be reformed. The US has a problem with guns and the number of people being shot and killed is tragic.

Four years ago 20 children were brutally murdered in an elementary school. I guess I don't understand how we're still having a conversation about reform.

So you think if you take away guns then you take away crime? Omg

👆😂 "Obama was our first anti-American president" says CS1.

Not to be too Foucault, but the role of the government is to maintain a monopoly on violence. The more heavily armed the general population, the more freedoms the government will need to curtail in order to maintain that monopoly e.g. freedom of privacy, freedom to walk in the streets without fear of the police. As an American living in Britain, I feel "more free" here than I do in the States despite my "freedom" there to carry semi automatic machine guns.

According to Foucault/Weber, the monopoly you describe means that States/gov is the source of legitimacy for that power. It extends that legitimacy through the laws it circumscribes upon its citizenry. Greater freedom yields greater responsibility. In the work /words of John Dewey, "the more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and freedom of the individual." You may "feel" more free in your example but it doesn't mean you have greater freedoms. People often forget that being free bears a weight because the individual assumes the liability (cost) and the positive responsibility (benefit) from that privilege .

I didn't grow up in the south, but I grew up in a state that relates to and associates itself with the south. I get it. I don't think a lot of people want to abolish the second amendment at all. I think that people would like to reform a bit. Which means restrictions on mass assault rifles, greater background checks, and not allowing no fly people to buy fund. This all seems pretty reasonable and you'd be surprised how many Americans support some combination of those measures. We don't sell grenades to the general public, so it doesn't make sense to sell other weapons that could wipe out an entire room within 20 seconds.

Yes

So illegal arms trade means nothing?

Hell yes Citi

JPM2, your question was 'do I think a militia would go up well against a government'? No, but that is how America was founded. And if you have the ability to repeal the 2nd ammendment then you lr checks and balances aren't made of stone either.... so read the prince a third time.....slower.....

I hope your momma got to keep her doctor if she liked her doctor. Period.

@VP1: very well said. But doesn't address the argument. Are you then implying that the freedom to bear arms that is currently enjoyed by Americans (with the breadth of the definition of "arms" as it's currently legislated) or in your description, "the benefit" worth "the cost" of increased fear, violence and death in our society. My position is simply that it is not.

@VP1 continued: Unless your argument is implying that right wing nonsense that we, the citizenry, bear a responsibility to bear arms in order protect our other freedoms and the 2nd amendment is that cost? I've also heard that ol' chestnut bandied about...but doesn't hold water. This isn't the 18th century. More like 1984. And no disorganised militia of the people is going to be able to take on the US Military of today.

Note to OP. Please don't raise in future.

Wow! Thank you for the compliment. Recognising sexual attraction without knowing my gender is very liberal of you! 🙂

You are welcome. What I recognize is intellectual attraction at this stage. It is a slight yet important nuance a lot of men overlook and immediately assume sex. See not all conservatives are simple minded. 😊

Nope. How about government actually starts doing its job? Oh yeah, while we sit around and wait for it to happen, I will be toting my gun for self-defense.