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In response to
"Good luck to you. -- (edited)"
by
znufrii
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Thank you! -- (edited)
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And to your IM, I would say: "Not necessarily."
I've started floating a thought experiment (with a few folks, including zork and tRu) starting with the question: What if the Second Amendment didn't exist?
Not an argument about whether it should be repealed, but what if it never existed in the first place. Like it was never part of the U.S. Constitution.
Rather than the presence of the Second Amendment, we need to be arguing about its purpose. I can't think of another country that has an equivalent Constitutional right to "bear arms." Yet plenty of other countries are perfectly capable of allowing gun ownership without such a Constitutional guarantee to back it. And without obscenely high levels of gun violence.
Laws and regulations are more than enough for those countries; a lot of them have much higher per capita rates than we do, yet much, much lower rates of gun violence. How do other countries manage to do what we Americans cannot find a way to do?
So why can't America get its act together? Is the Second Amendment in the way of good government? I dunno, but I'm not afraid to ask the question or engage in conversations about it.
I just think we're making two fundamental mistakes when we debate these issues in America:
1. We rely too much on the Second Amendment. It's not the interpretation that matters, it's the underlying importance. Rather than arguing about the Second Amendment, let's try a different approach. Remove it from the argument entirely--temporarily--to focus on those deeper questions.
Let's talk about solutions first. If the Second Amendment wasn't there, what would we be talking about instead?
If we had to come up with some sensible laws and regulations (that could not be tossed aside just because five people declared them "unconstitutional"), what could we come up with? What rules do we need to put in place?
2. We debate solutions before we agree on the problems.
The worst answers to the best problems always start with arguments about the solutions first. We do a horrible job in America of identifying the problem to be solved.
If we can't agree on the problems to be solved, we'll never agree on possible solutions--much less "the right solutions." We'll just end up arguing about the problems whether we realize it or not.
That is what I've learned as a lawyer and mediator, anyway. At least half my work, and about 99% of the litigation work I do, arises only because my clients and their opponents can't agree about the problems they were arguing about. Hell, they can't agree on which problem to start arguing about, much less which problem to identify first.
So if you're arguing about Problem A, and I'm arguing about problem B, and the next person is arguing about Problem C, and then someone else chimes in focusing on Problem D, but we're all talking about "gun control and the Second Amendment," then of course nothing is going to happen. We're just going to get frustrated and angry with each other because we don't know what the hell the argument is about.
So, if you want to take the Second Amendment out of the discussion, go right ahead. I'll follow along tomorrow.
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