Democracy means the minority get their say but the majority get their way.
So if the people vote for a government that declares gun ownership a bad thing and makes it illegal, then it is no longer a right lost.
The government have a mandate to do such a thing
The continued existence of the 2nd amendment is absolutely dependent on public support.
Because of the way the Constitution works, this majority has to be a significant one and not a fickle 50% +1 that would change a constitutional clause on a whim.
You're right. This is the way it works. The relevant question is:
Should we change the constitution? As a libertarian, with a personal understanding that the constitution was meant to be a libertarian document, I don't think we should in this case. I do think, however, that it should be interpreted with common sense, and that appropriate regulation to balance personal freedom with personal security is warranted.
Outlawing firearms would be unbalanced. It would punish a hundred million law abiding citizens for the crimes of thousands. This is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It might well be his but it's also ours.
If your neighbor decides to kill as many people as possible tomorrow, do we wait until he's actually broken the law ?
If you say yes, then we part ways.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
No, if I found out that my neighbor was going to kill as many people as possible tomorrow, I would not wait until he's actually broken the law. I would be in favor of physically preventing him from accessing a firearm. And if he said he was going to do it with his car, I would be in favor of physically preventing him from accessing his car as well, in both cases by arresting him for making terroristic threats. I would not then deem the car or the firearm too dangerous for anyone else to own solely because of his plan to misuse them.
But what if there is no evidence that he has decided to kill as many people as possible? Taking away his ability to kill as many people as possible with a firearm because there is a 1 in 40,000 chance that he
might decide to kill someone is irrational and a clear example of legislative overreach. Not unlike outlawing alcohol and violent movies and video games.
Take away his guns (and sadly everyone else's) and he may wish to kill as many people as he can tomorrow, but he lacks to means to do it.
(yes, he can always use a car to ram a crowd but the European experience is that is largely confined to terrorism and is fairly rare)
Hardly. Killing large numbers of people is terrifyingly easy in America even without firearms. Guns are nowhere near the most effective way to kill large numbers of people, they're just the most common because they are readily available. In fact, they are one of the most inefficient ways if one's goal is not to get caught. A properly placed poison could dwarf the number of casualties of any mass shooting, and the poisoner would stand a far better chance of getting away with it than a mass shooter would.
It is a myth that if there were no guns, then the number of homicides, especially mass homicides, would be reduced by the number of current gun homicides per year. Humans kill each other by whatever means we can. No matter how many weapons you remove from circulation, a new tool or weapon will then become the most common means of committing homicide. Then you'll have to ban that one to,
ad infinitum.
