Fifth and fourteenth haven't been seen in a minute, either.
Peaceable assembly's overrated anyway. (RNC '04)
How much of the first needs to be gone until it's enough to recognize that the USA is no longer a free society?
How many whistleblowers, security researchers, and cryptographers need to be thrown in prison on bullshit trumped-up charges? How many hunger-striking political prisoners need to be held in secret prisons indefinitely without trial?
How many decades of PATRIOT Act abuses of individual privacy will be enough?
It's time to emigrate. Vote with your tax dollars.
Not even close. True if you live in one of 10 very bad states, two of which oddly are shall issue concealed carry ones that just went very bad (Connecticut and Colorado), but continuing that concealed carry theme, i.e. the "bear" in "the right to keep and bear arms" (RKBA), there's been a nationwide sweep of shall issue, starting in Florida in 1987 and ending with Iowa and Wisconsin in 2011. And Illinois has a Federal court deadline to go shall issue by June 9th. So that's ~42 states and ~2/3rds of the population.
And other good things have happened, and in general the political RKBA Zeitgeist has drastically changed. So there's hope here ... which is important, since it's the ultimate check on an out of control government.
What I'm pointing out is that when you have people like Bloomberg and Emanuel individually violating double-digit millions of individuals' constitutional rights on their whims, you don't have a free society.
Whether it's RKBA this month or the right to peaceably assemble during a political convention in an election year, they get to pick and choose which rights you are allowed, with no repercussions.
Those are in the 10 of the worst states, and they're the worst cities in each of the states, all but SF with their own, special, even worse laws (California has preemption, which means SF gun law is a constant of wack-a-mole, although of course they issue concealed carry licenses just about never, e.g. exactly 1 last year, to a jewler).
I was born, raised, and have retired to Missouri, which once it shook off its "KKK" post-Civil War anti-gun laws in the last decade has ... well, kept up with the rest of the "good" states. When I lived in Arlington, Virginia it was also good. Massachusetts for college and work for a dozen years ... not good at all, much worse today.
So due to the wonders of Federalism I believe I've lived in a free society since 1991; you, obviously not so much. And it's not a month to month thing, e.g. NY's Sullivan Act comes from 1911, when the Irish NYC Tammany Hall machine wanted to keep newer immigrants in their place.
But I agree its a very big problem, about 1/3 of our nation's population are by definition subjects, not citizens, and this makes me think about Lincoln's "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free."
As for the political convention, I suspect you and I have different definitions of "peaceably assemble", plus I see no inherent issues with suppressing protests at a political convention. That's not what I understand that part of the 1st Amendment to be protecting, rather, it e.g. protects each of the conventions, where people are peaceably assembling as part of politics. I submit to you that it is at least a debatable point.
Fun fact: none of the Bill of Rights originally applied to the states. In 1795, Illinois, California, and New York could have banned all guns totally Constitutionally. It wasn't until the 1900's that the Bill of Rights was interpreted to apply to the states via the 14th amendment.
More specifically, Gitlow v. New York, 1925. Before then, the Supreme Court ruled in Barron v. Baltimore, that the Constitution's Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government [1] and had only recently looked at the 5th amendment w.r.t. the 14th.
Fun factoid #2, most states had (varying degrees of) "official" religions. This 14th amendment ruling also ended state support of religion in the few states that hadn't changed their constitutions by that time.
Fun factoid #3: This ruling happend about a month before the Scopes trial [2]. Interesting time the 1920s.
I don't disagree that the 2nd Amendment is now incorporated, and I'm actually not a proponent of gun control. My point is that talking about how it's a "Constitutional issue" is, while technically true now, also a little misleading, in the sense that the Founders would not have considered state gun control laws to be a Federal Constitutional issue.
The whole process of incorporation has been a modern attempt at redrawing the boundaries of federalism to address things the Founders got wrong. The most decisive revision was with regards to slavery/civil rights, where the Constitution was revised at the point of sword with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. A lot of other things have come along for the ride (from free speech to abortion), but all of that is rooted in a modern understanding of what states can be trusted to do.
Consider a hypothetical where 90% of the population was in favor of state-level gun bans. If you held up the 2nd Amendment in opposition to that consensus, you'd be in the position of arguing that states should be constrained in a way that neither the framers nor contemporary consensus contemplates them being constrained.
To be fair to the Founders, they would not have expected the states to ban guns, as their historical context was that the states needed citizens to have guns to be reasonably certain they (the states) could deal with threats; not least of which was "foreign invasion" like the War of Independence. At the time of the ratification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the states were more concerned with a central (and remote) government having too much power over them than they were with its citizens running amok.
Just got my revised and updated edition of Halbrook's groundbreaking That Every Man Be Armed, and on pages 69-70 he confirms that prior to the conditional ratification of the Constitution, 7 of the 13 states had declarations acknowledging the RKBA, and 2 that didn't "later demanded protection for the right to keep and bear arms in the new federal Constitution."
He goes on to add that "with the defeat of the British [for whom gun grabbing was a major strategy and what sparked the war], no one feared that the natural and common-law right to have arms was any longer in danger."
You are far more knowledgeable about this than I, but wouldn't Heller suggest that the "contemporary consensus" (at least as far as SCOTUS can mold it) is that states are indeed constrained from instituting what amount to gun bans, no matter how popular they might be locally?
You already acknowledged that the 2nd Amendment is incorporated, so I'm sure I just don't follow the point you're making with the hypothetical.
Right, I agree. The point of my alternate hypothetical is to get to the fact that incorporation of the 2nd amendment rests on contemporary consensus, rather than centuries old Constitutional dictate. If that contemporary concensus did not exist, you couldn't fall back to a "the Founders intended" argument.
Although it remains to be seen if this means much of anything, the changes on the ground to date are minimal to nothing. They recently denied cert in an appeal of NY's capricious concealed carry laws, and have given Illinois extra time to appeal an opposite direction decision against it. Keep and bear arms, after all.
2nd Amendment jurisprudence way back when didn't think that.
Among other things, how could the states be allowed to prevent the Congress from calling up the militia, one of the latter's enumerated powers?
You're also skipping the step in 14th Amendment jurisprudence where it was explicitly passed to protect freedmen from things like stripping them of the RKBA, and it was judicially nullified in 5 years. That the Supremes started taking it seriously decades later is not a bad thing, at least if you care about the rule of law. That they took 140 years to apply it to the 2nd Amendment has more than a little to do with today's lack of respect for a Federal government which all too often holds itself as being above the law.
> since it's the ultimate check on an out of control government.
Realistically, a bunch of pea-shooters stand no chance against the US military. This holds true whether it's Americans or hired sub-Saharan mercenaries driving the tanks.
> Realistically, a bunch of pea-shooters stand no chance against the US military. This holds true whether it's Americans or hired sub-Saharan mercenaries driving the tanks.
The people bearing arms isn't to shoot at the government. That's a common misconception.
It's a deterrent - enough people armed and willing to shoot at the government means that the government doesn't come knocking to create the situation wherein everyone loses.
Eric Blair once wrote: "That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
"Stays there" both in the RKBA sense, and "stays there" in the "above the mantel and not taken down out of necessity" sense.
Realistically our army isn't sporting the greatest record against "pea-shooters" the world over. They do good for quick and dirty but they have not held out for a prolong period of time. Add to that they will be fighting where their family and home will be in the line of fire.
Forgot to add: a "pea shooter" would be a lot better description of the US rifle/carbine that's been issued since the '60s, especially with its FMJ ammo.
If people emigrated when the government was literally killing striking union organizers (e.g. the "Wobblies"), holding Nisei captive, holding blacks in bondage, locking up political dissidents (e.g. Lincoln), infecting the poor with syphilis, or ruining the lives of countless suspected Communists with the full authority of the state...
just imagine how far worse off we'd be.
Leaving is always your choice, but the U.S. would still have the power, just with less moderating influences such as yourself to ensure that it's used with a conscience.
I emigrated because there was no hope in my lifetime of the United States extending marriage rights to everyone (specifically, immigration-related.) I had no real choice other than to find someone else to fall in love with.
It's a fucking shitty situation, but I'm making the best of it, and I don't really miss my former country. Just some of the people in it.
Fair enough. I had meant "world in general" given the current status of the U.S. as a hyperpower, but I can see how that is playing "butterfly effect", which is a game none of us can figure out.
Which is a great reason to change it. Which in turn can not achieved by anyone as easily as American citizens.
If all people leave who disagree with, say, a police(ish) state and aggressive wars, +and+ are able to leave, then guess who remains? People who can't leave for one reason or another, and, uhhmm, the rest. And it's not like economical strain ever nipped fascist tendencies in the bud, to the contrary.
Think of a nuclear reactor, and the cooling elements saying "it's getting too warm in here, let's split". I can understand that when it gets really really bad, but right now, I dare say it would only make it worse. You need to stand up, not run away. If America falls, the rest of the world is pretty much caught between whatever it morphs into, Russia and China. So unless it gets bad enough so you want to move to either of those countries, please reconsider..
It is a fundamental flaw of democracy as it is currently realized that in order to attempt to change the system, you must continue to subject yourself to a system that you do not believe in.
You don't get to vote, you get to choose among several pre-selected candidates. Or maybe you could say the two parties vote for you, and they sure as fuck aren't looking for your input on that. To achieve critical mass for substantial change requires more than voting.
You mean the assembly whose Wikipedia page has... ?
"Expected security expenditures reached $70 million, $50 million of which was funded by the federal government."
"The NYPD infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups (most of whom were doing nothing illegal), leading to over 1,800 arrests and subsequent fingerprinting."
"Over 1800 individuals were arrested by the authorities, a record for a political convention in the U.S. However 90% of those charges were eventually dropped."
Wow! Indeed, a great failure of the right to peaceful assembly!
(Who were they protesting against, anyway? An illegal act of war? Their leaders, who had lied to them into said war? Minutiae.)
Errrm, isn't it the case that the default is that a Swiss citizen can own guns?
Which is the default for 2/3rds of the US population, and includes permanent resident aliens.
I know there are significant cultural differences, but when you come down to it, does the government trust the people or not? This is the touchstone for that question.
No, it's not 'the touchstone' for the question. It's a massive oversimplification to claim it's only or fundamentally about governmental trust. You hand-wave away the cultural differences, but they are highly significant when comparing the Swiss and the American experience of firearms held by the public.
Without answering my question about it being a default, you're misstating my position. Let me try again:
The touchstone of whether a government trusts it people is allowing them to keep and bear arms without conditions besides the usual disbarments for criminals and the seriously mentally ill.
This is only tangentially related to their actually doing so and why. 14-17% of American gunowners (if you assume there are only 75 million, which I think is low) do so at least to hunt. In Western Europe that's obviously a lot more limited due to population density. In Switzerland, a max of 600,000 or so can be issued the current service rifle (because that's how many were manufactured...) and serve in any capacity including the reserves, which by tradition is structured differently (e.g. personal weapon stored at home).
The best source I can find now for a relevant quote from John McPhee's La Place de la Concorde Suisse, written back in 1984 when this was very significant, is "Communist Swiss soldiers keep rifles and machine guns at home. It is said that this is not dangerous for political purposes; it is dangerous only for the wife."
The laws are definitely more strict. Every purchase requires a permit. If you sell a gun to an individual, you are required to keep record for 10 years.
Nevermind that Americans have no sense of civic duty.
Definitely. Americans never serve jury duty, volunteer for the military, maintain volunteer fire departments, donate to charity on an incredible per capita basis, work in food banks, volunteer to provide free medical/dental care to less fortunate countries, etc etc.
We're all just sitting around drinking out of our Buy N Large sodas watching the latest Kardashian life drama.
Is the permitting based on the "shall issue" principle? I.e. do the authorities determine if the applicant is not a banned individual and then automatically issue the permit? Or does the applicant have to jump through hoops?
Fifth and fourteenth haven't been seen in a minute, either.
Peaceable assembly's overrated anyway. (RNC '04)
How much of the first needs to be gone until it's enough to recognize that the USA is no longer a free society?
How many whistleblowers, security researchers, and cryptographers need to be thrown in prison on bullshit trumped-up charges? How many hunger-striking political prisoners need to be held in secret prisons indefinitely without trial?
How many decades of PATRIOT Act abuses of individual privacy will be enough?
It's time to emigrate. Vote with your tax dollars.