moonlantern said:
MelasZepheos said:
All that pride you place in a two-hundred years out of date document[.]
The only thing out of date about it is all the ambiguous, open-to-interpretation stuff that must have been perfectly clear back then. Just look at this: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That's so messed up the Supreme Court had to tell everyone what it means.
Not quite.
The document was written when the most advanced weapon in the world was a gun which could hold and fire an amazing one shot and was a muzzle loading flintlock that was so inaccurate that the only reason anyone died in the wars at all was that they fired a hundred of them at once from a distance of ten yards. The first ever revolver wasn't even built until 1818, more than forty years after the American Revolution.
Would the Founding Fathers have been so quick to say 'every citizen should have guns' if they could have ever envisioned the frankly ridiculous amounts of firepower available to the average American citizen? Remember also that when the document was signed everyone was restricted to the exact same gun, because there was only the one way of doing it. You either had a breech loading flintlck rifle, a muzzle loading flintlock rifle or a blunderbuss. That was it. No revolvers, no shotguns, no automatic carbines, nothing that could reliably hit a human at anything more than ten feet.
And that's another thing. Two hundred years (more like 250 actually) the threat of invasion was an actual thing. And if it had happened then there was no standing army available to America. If the British had invaded, they would have needed every man to be called to arms and be ready to fight without the government needing to arm them. Now, in the unlikely event that someone did invade, it would be carried out between militaries, and the invading military would have access to the sort of tech that would make Joe Bob on his porch with his shotgun shit his pants. The American people would not be able to repel the Chinese just because they have a lovingly cared for Desert Eagle in the house, no matter how well trained they are in it.
Also, the only other reason the American people might have to rise up is because the government has become tyrannical, but nowadays America has a standing army which would either flatten any civilian uprising and thus make it pointless, or would have joined them in the rebellion, and thus invalidated anything the citizens did. Because nowadays there is a clear distinction between the sorts of weaponry the regular infantry can have, and the guns which our friend Joe Bob has. The answer should thus be obvious, either there is no reason for Jo Bob to have it, or he needs to have access to military grade firepower, and I hope no one thinks that that is a good idea.
And there's more. Other countries have gotten rid of laws that are two hundred years old, because for some odd reason they are no longer relevant in this day and age. Britons are no longer allowed to shoot Frenchmen or Scottish people on sight, because we're not at war with them anymore. We aren't legally required to have our Water Tanks stored at the top of the house so it would douse any fires that got started when Napoleon came sailing up the Thames and starting shooting houses (that is the serious reason why water tanks originally had to be installed at the top of people's houses, so it would prevent another Fire of London.) Yet America has mad the mistake of tying its entire sense of pride as a country to its dogged determination to uphold a document written two hundred and fifty years ago, and this can only lead to stagnation as a country. The country had laws about how other races could be slaves two hundred and fifty years ago, are they still relevant?
Other countries discard laws that are out of date, America does not. But it's even weirder than that. America is uite happy discarding some laws when they are out of date or don't suit the public, they even amended the Constitution (which I understand is supposed to be the most sacred document to their law or something) when they didn't like Prohibition. But those first ten rights? Christ they have a hard time getting their heads round the idea that they might need revision at some point.
So there's the first four reasons I can think of off the top of my head as to why the Constitution should be revised every once in a while, and it's got nothing to do with the wording.
Also, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Americans shouldn't have guns, because I don't have any of the weird cultural shit that you attach to the penis extensions. I just don't think that it should be one of the most fundamental concepts of your laws.
Also, I think it's weird how when any other country has a major school shooting they immediately instigate harsh gun control restrictions, sometimes even outright banning guns, but America, which has had more school shootings than every other country on earth combined, still refuses to blame anyone in the gun industry or the rules regarding gun control. How many innocent teenagers and children need to get mowed down before you start to think that maybe making it possible for teenagers to buy guns is a bad idea?
