hi everyone -
I'm asking this with sincerity and in the hopes that I can learn something about gun culture and maybe even something of a particular American perspective.
The whole 'Right to bear arms' thing, what, the 2nd Amendment, most Canadians don't really 'get it'. Some have more of an affinity to it, mainly in the West, but most from the large cities don't get it at all. We think things like;
- well, that was written back when it took 4 minutes to load a one shot rifle
- it was revolution times and the power of the individual was imperative to protecting the fledgling nation
- 'bearing arms' has limits, or should, just as 'free speech' has limits
I wanna hear the counter arguments though, and not from Fox News or CNN or Michael Moore.
Remember, I'm really seriously asking and wanna read whatever you write!
thanks!
Let me see if I can help.
The first, and most important thing to understand about the US Bill of Rights is that it is not a list of what a US citizen's rights are. In fact, the rights of citizens are never enumerated - we are assumed to have all possible rights, and furthermore, to have received them from 'our Creator', without having had them conferred on us by the government - any government. That may seem like a small thing, but in reality, it is huge. And a whole lot of Americans don't understand it either, or they would not say such stupid things as
"Oh yeah? Show me where in the Constitution it says you have the right to XYZ (replace XYZ with whatever)."
What the Bill of Rights does instead is list the rights that the US federal government (and by extension for some of them, the various states) are PROHIBITED from infringing. And you can see that if you read them carefully. They usually end in some language like "shall not be infringed." So the Bill of Rights does not tell us what rights we have, it tells the federal government what rights they may not infringe upon.
OK, having said that - yes, there are limits to every right. As you mentioned, the right to free speech. But - and this is important - a right can generally only be abridged or curtailed when it infringes on ANOTHER right of citizens. One example is the old saw
"Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins." One may have the right to free speech, which the federal government may not infringe upon, but if that speech negatively impacts the rights of another, then it CAN be infringed upon - the classic example is yelling
"Fire!" in a crowded theater. Doing so can be restricted, because a direct line cause-and-effect can be shown between uttering those words and inciting a panic that leads to dead citizens, trampled on their way to the exits.
As to the 2nd Amendment, it can be infringed, and has - based on a variety of issues, some of which may be re-examined some day by the Supreme Court, some of which may not be. For example, a convicted felon may not own a firearm - that right is permanently stripped from them. The courts have held that felons, even ex-felons, represent a threat to the lives of their fellow citizens in perpetuity. In some states, such rights can be restored by government, in some, the right is never restored. The same, by the way, is true of voting for some felons.
However, in general, if one is going to restrict the 2nd Amendment to a class of people (felons, drug addicts, registered sex offenders, domestic abuse convicts, fugitives from justice, mental defectives, etc), then the reason given must reflect a direct threat to the rights of other citizens. How clear that 'direct threat' must be varies from year to year as different political parties hold sway in the USA.
Now, as to your second point - about how some laws are simply considered outmoded and hence not worth following anymore - US law doesn't work like that. Every law - all of them - are required to pass constitutional muster. If challenged, they must not only reflect the Will of the People as expressed by the legislative system, but they must also not infringe upon rights protected by the Constitution (Bill of Rights). This is the actual purpose of the Supreme Court of the USA (SCOTUS). They have two jobs. The first is to determine the Will of Congress in cases where laws appear unclear or vague. The second is to determine if challenged laws violate the restrictions placed on the government by the Bill of Rights.
Now, there are some who view the Constitution as a living, breathing, document, one which must change with the times, and one which should be interpreted by comparison to the
zeitgiest (Spirit of the Times). There are also those who believe that the job of SCOTUS is to interpret the Constitution based upon what the Founders meant - and nothing to do with what the ziegiest might happen to be.
The former is considered a liberal viewpoint in the USA, the latter a conservative viewpoint - although there is some bleed-over. For examples, liberals in the US tend to want the 1st Amendment interpreted strictly, whilst conservatives in the US tend to want the 2nd Amendment interpreted strictly - both are less concerned with the other amendments in general, IMHO.
As a conservative, I take the viewpoint that the Constitution and the included amendments known as the Bill of Rights and the later amendments to be sacrosanct, and that they should be interpreted based upon the perceived Will of the Framers of those amendments. I don't much care about the zeitgeist, because I see it as a Will O' The Wisp, here today and gone tomorrow. The USA is not a leaf to be blown about upon the winds of the common whim, with our laws interpreted this way today and that way tomorrow, based upon how most of us 'feel' about things. In fact, I view this as absolute folly - and I wish liberals could see that as well. What if things go your way today, and twenty years from now, racists rule the popular perception? Shall we then reinstitute slavery, because that's what's hip and cool twenty years from now, or 100 years from now? No.
I believe that our US Constitution was carved in stone, and is not to be interpreted any way but the way our Framers intended, and their intent is clearly known through historic scholarship. We have a method whereby we can override the Will of the Founders, and that is by a new amendment. It is hard to do - on purpose. But it exists and it can be used anytime, if enough of us feel strongly enough about it. That is the ONLY way in which the Constitution should be modified, and the only method by which new interpretations should be reached, in my humble opinion.
Of course, others may disagree with my assessment.
I hope you found this helpful.
