Quote:
Originally Posted by Makarov
Who has proposed that the US Constitution be amended so as to remove the Second Amendment?
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According to the Declaration of Independence:
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.
The Founders were declaring that we are all equal, and that we are defined by rights that we are born with, not given to us by government. Among those rights is the right to pursue happiness--to live our lives as we think best, as long as we respect the right of all other individuals to do the same. The Founders also declared that governments are created by people to secure their rights. Whatever powers government has are not "just" unless they come from us, the people.
Now according to the NRA that means that the right to own a gun pursuant to the Bill of Rights is an unalienable right given by God and not from the government.
Therefore government limiting the right is defacto violating it. It's the government making a conscious effort to remove a right.
Now in Canada the government can limit a right pursuant to section 1 of the Charter. So the only way to make a comparison between Canada and the US is for the Canadian government to actually remove a right to be a violation on the level of the limit in the US.
Hence the poor analogy as you can't directly compare the two.
Now you can argue that the government already limits the right to bear arms. And you'd be correct.
But
And this is the thing
That doesn't matter.
In order to implement effective gun control in the United States you have to win in the court of public opinion. Which means you have to understand what John Q Public (and the NRA) believe. And here's the real kicker,
their logic is flawed.
But you have to accept their logic as fact and improve upon it until you can come up with a scenario where their flawed logic either changes or is still intact but with gun control.
It doesn't matter that you're right. It doesn't matter that lives will be saved. It doesn't matter what the statistics demonstrate.
You have to win public opinion. And nitpicking analogies where people are trying to tell you how the US population feels isn't going to get you anywhere in mental exercise that is US gun control. It's the wrong fight.
No, no one is saying abolish the second amendment, but that's how gun control plays out via the NRA. Like it or not you that's the way it is.
All I'm doing is trying to demonstrate "this is how you win the fight".
I think there should be gun control. But I don't know enough about the various types of guns to effectively come up with a strong working theory. What I do know is what needs to be done to get gun control. And it's finding a way to show that people can have guns without the threat of government hanging over them. Make it so people don't feel like they are losing their God given rights.