None of the things you refer to, with the possible exception of robot technology, has to do with the direct ability to kill people. And if you want to insist that there is no difference between owning a single-shot musket and a semi-automatic gun with a telescopic rifle, I really do not know what to say to you. As well to argue that the existence of the atom bomb - or, for that matter, of the million-man conscript army - makes no difference to warfare, so that we can consider it in the same spirit as a border raider from the fourteen hundreds. But while countries have become more responsible - so that we will not see a war of great powers again, because every side knows that it would not have winners - it seems to me that the rhetoric within countries is growing ever more irresponsible.
As for legal precedents, I could not possibly care less about what I argue is a misreading of a late-eighteenth-century document built with both eyes on contemporary European practice. Illustrious legal precedents include Dred Scott, Plessy vs.Ferguson and Wade vs.Roe, and all they prove is that a sufficiently determined, ingenious and perverse group of lawyers can find anything they want in the Constitution - that skin colour can mean radical exclusion from citizenship (and Justice Tawney was a Catholic, God forgive us all!), that radical exclusion is no proof of inequality, or that humanity does not exist until the moment a child has exited the womb. I am not a lawyer, and I will always try to be good and do right so that God will not make me one; I am a historian, and I proposed a historical thesis I believe to be correct. I add that I repeatedly said that I do not see the least hope of seeing the false interpretation of the Second Amendment repealed in my lifetime (if nothing else, the Pentagon would not like it).
Sir, you say (1) that you have not the least interest in what he legal and scholarly argument is about the interpretation of the Second Amendment and (2) that the interpretation that it protects an individual right is false.
Those two statements, taken together, mean that you have excused yourself from a rational conversation on the point. If you were wise, you should content yourself with saying the drafters of the Constitution were wrong to include it. But once you say to a lawyer that I am unable to read a legal document correctly, and that you read it correctly, but that you are unwilling to argue about the legal interpretation, well, what would you have of me? Why discuss the matter at all?
As for your claim that a layman's opinion is good enough to decide issues such as abortion and so on, I agree with this wholeheartedly. In so far as gun control is a moral issue, the morality is entirely on my side, not yours. The moral order of the universe demands a father protect his wife and children. If you try, by word or deed, to remove the tools and weapons by which I carry out that duty, you threaten the people I am obligated to protect. This is not a voluntary obligation, but an involuntary one. Even the beasts of the field know they have to protect their cubs.
"And if you want to insist that there is no difference between owning a single-shot musket and a semi-automatic gun with a telescopic rifle, I really do not know what to say to you."
I do not believe I said the two were "no different at all." What I believe is that the differences are not so great in their essential character as to make private ownership of firearms a greater threat to the public weal, say, from snipers, than a ban on such arms would be, say, from a Napoleon. A sniper can kill a dozen people. Napoleon can kill countless millions.
No matter what the drawbacks and dangers of having an armed citizenry, one fact remains, clear as daylight. As long as the Americans are armed, no Stalin, no Hitler, no Napoleon, no Mao will ever arise here. You scoff at the ability of armed men to face regulars: but the reality is that no tyranny can be secure until or unless the subjects are disarmed. Read Machiavelli.
As an historian, you know (or should know) that when the drafters of the Constitution wrote, private citizens were carrying arms equal in range and power and fire rate as anything issued to a soldier.
Let me change the subject for a moment and ask an unrelated question. Is it just a coincidence that socialists are invariably in favor of disarming the people? If there is an exception to this, some socialist who favors the Second Amendment, please tell me: I can think of none. If it is not a coincidence, why is it? What is it about the philosophy that opposes private ownership also opposes private self-protection?
You seem to think that this is an anti-gun article. Please check my answers to others before you misplace any more certainties. And your notion that an educated Italian has not read Machiavelli is as curious as your other ideas about Italian history.
As for legal precedents, I could not possibly care less about what I argue is a misreading of a late-eighteenth-century document built with both eyes on contemporary European practice. Illustrious legal precedents include Dred Scott, Plessy vs.Ferguson and Wade vs.Roe, and all they prove is that a sufficiently determined, ingenious and perverse group of lawyers can find anything they want in the Constitution - that skin colour can mean radical exclusion from citizenship (and Justice Tawney was a Catholic, God forgive us all!), that radical exclusion is no proof of inequality, or that humanity does not exist until the moment a child has exited the womb. I am not a lawyer, and I will always try to be good and do right so that God will not make me one; I am a historian, and I proposed a historical thesis I believe to be correct. I add that I repeatedly said that I do not see the least hope of seeing the false interpretation of the Second Amendment repealed in my lifetime (if nothing else, the Pentagon would not like it).
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Those two statements, taken together, mean that you have excused yourself from a rational conversation on the point. If you were wise, you should content yourself with saying the drafters of the Constitution were wrong to include it. But once you say to a lawyer that I am unable to read a legal document correctly, and that you read it correctly, but that you are unwilling to argue about the legal interpretation, well, what would you have of me? Why discuss the matter at all?
As for your claim that a layman's opinion is good enough to decide issues such as abortion and so on, I agree with this wholeheartedly. In so far as gun control is a moral issue, the morality is entirely on my side, not yours. The moral order of the universe demands a father protect his wife and children. If you try, by word or deed, to remove the tools and weapons by which I carry out that duty, you threaten the people I am obligated to protect. This is not a voluntary obligation, but an involuntary one. Even the beasts of the field know they have to protect their cubs.
"And if you want to insist that there is no difference between owning a single-shot musket and a semi-automatic gun with a telescopic rifle, I really do not know what to say to you."
I do not believe I said the two were "no different at all." What I believe is that the differences are not so great in their essential character as to make private ownership of firearms a greater threat to the public weal, say, from snipers, than a ban on such arms would be, say, from a Napoleon. A sniper can kill a dozen people. Napoleon can kill countless millions.
No matter what the drawbacks and dangers of having an armed citizenry, one fact remains, clear as daylight. As long as the Americans are armed, no Stalin, no Hitler, no Napoleon, no Mao will ever arise here. You scoff at the ability of armed men to face regulars: but the reality is that no tyranny can be secure until or unless the subjects are disarmed. Read Machiavelli.
As an historian, you know (or should know) that when the drafters of the Constitution wrote, private citizens were carrying arms equal in range and power and fire rate as anything issued to a soldier.
Let me change the subject for a moment and ask an unrelated question. Is it just a coincidence that socialists are invariably in favor of disarming the people? If there is an exception to this, some socialist who favors the Second Amendment, please tell me: I can think of none. If it is not a coincidence, why is it? What is it about the philosophy that opposes private ownership also opposes private self-protection?
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