“More Democrats Should Be Calling for the Repeal of the Second Amendment”

[Smitty-48]

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... -civil-war

America’s stability is increasingly an undercurrent in political discourse. Earlier this year, I began a conversation with Keith Mines about America’s turmoil. Mines has spent his career—in the U.S. Army Special Forces, the United Nations, and now the State Department—navigating civil wars in other countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan. He returned to Washington after sixteen years to find conditions that he had seen nurture conflict abroad now visible at home. It haunts him. In March, Mines was one of several national-security experts whom Foreign Policy asked to evaluate the risks of a second civil war—with percentages. Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. Other experts’ predictions ranged from five per cent to ninety-five per cent. The sobering consensus was thirty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.

Certainly if it wasn't the United States, if it was Northern Ireland, if it was Yugoslavia, if it was some country in Africa, it would not be in anyway crazy to be on alert for it, from a military operational point of view, but it's like nuclear war, the public views it as tantamount to impossible, which actually just makes it more likely.

[Smitty-48]

I can say from up close and personal experience, that nobody in Yugoslavia believed that a civil was possible, if you had told them what was coming on 26 June 1991, even as late 26 May 1991, they would have said you were crazy.

It was just politics, right up to the last moment, when they saw the Slovenian Police defying the JNA at the border checkpoints, they said it was surreal, "like the movies".

[Okeefenokee]

Who is familiar with the history of the Philadelphia compromises that led to the Bill of Rights (in exchange for approval of the federal constitution) in the first place?

No thinking person at the time thought that Amendments I-X were anything more than redundant window-dressings.

Who knew John Marshall was waiting in the wings to make the verbiage the path to American Revolution 2.0 / Civil War 1.0?

Pro tip: Lawyers fuck up pretty much everything, fam.

I was waiting for someone to mention it.

It's in the preamble.

No BOR > no constitution > no nation.

[Smitty-48]

It's kind of like Thucydides Trap, in that the key ingredient is that the challenger to the established Hegemon is oblivious to the consequences.

When I see John Paul Stevens come out and say "just repeal the 2nd Amendment, for the schoolchildren, it would be easy, no big deal, and then, problem solved", I'm like; that's a Supreme Court Justice right thur, and he's delusional to the point of being crazy.

[brewster]

If being heavily armed is a "human right", why are you guys such pussies about being told you can't have fully auto weapons, or RPG's, or whatever. An absolute right is an absolute right, right?

Besides, calling for repeal of the 2nd is just ridiculous, it just needs the grammar fixed.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Buying my first gun this weekend. Had to happen at some point.

For what purpose?

Just in case. Things are getting a little too weird, and I've got a little too much to lose now.

Once I learn to shoot it, it's going to be locked away.

[Smitty-48]

You can own fully automatic weapons in the United States, so long as it was made prior to the 1986 cut off. You can go to fully automatic shoots in the US where they have miniguns.

You can legally own an RPG too, HE warheads are prohibited, but the launcher itself is legal.

[Smitty-48]

Buying my first gun this weekend. Had to happen at some point.

For what purpose?

Just in case. Things are getting a little too weird, and I've got a little too much to lose now.

Once I learn to shoot it, it's going to be locked away.

What did you buy?

[SuburbanFarmer]

If being heavily armed is a "human right", why are you guys such pussies about being told you can't have fully auto weapons, or RPG's, or whatever. An absolute right is an absolute right, right?

Besides, calling for repeal of the 2nd is just ridiculous, it just needs the grammar fixed.

Agree

[brewster]

Buying my first gun this weekend. Had to happen at some point.

For what purpose?

Just in case. Things are getting a little too weird, and I've got a little too much to lose now.

Once I learn to shoot it, it's going to be locked away.

What scenario do you anticipate? The only people I fear are the ones here on MHF. I've lived in Pittsburgh, Oakland (1981, bad times there!), NYC and Jersey City in the 39 years since I left home at 17, and I've never been in a situation that would have been improved had I been armed. The people in this country who are most afraid are the ones with the least to fear, in the least dense parts of this country.

I was much amused at the news that the NRA took foreign money but says none of it got spent in the election, that money was from their OTHER pocket. LOL.