ZaineB wrote:cleger wrote:ZaineB wrote:always so much 2A bashing on here, from non USA citizens, what does wanneroo and other USA citizens on here think?
What do we think about what? The 2nd amendment in general?
well more the rather flagrant disregard for your rights in general by those who don't live there/don't understand America and the history etc.
I don't get emotional about it. I understand that the U.S. is the outlier.
I'm reminded of the time I was at "Harlequin Jack's" in Brisbane, to play trivia. A bunch of us were out on the porch, between rounds, smoking cigarettes.
You hay have noticed yourself that when you're perhaps the only representative of your people for many thousands of miles, others will at times want to engage on the subject of your country. As soon as one of the guys on that Brisbane porch heard me talking and realised I was American, he launched straight into "you people think you have a right to own guns." That's a verbatim quote. He had much more to say along those and similar lines. I tried to explain that we Americans believe our rights should be considered universal, but he rejected that, and I can understand.
As for our critics who might not "understand America and the history..." I would suggest that few Americans truly understand "the history" either. I'm feeling especially pedantic this evening, so here is all you need to know, if you ever need to deal with anyone (Americans in particular) of the mind that the rights listed in the U.S. Constitution sprang into being as from a burning bush:
The
Petition of Right of 1628
https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/academics/founders/petitionofright.pdfThe
Bill of Rights of 1689
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/England.asp...and then perhaps
The
Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of 1780
https://malegislature.gov/laws/constitution#partTheFirst...being the first part of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is the world's oldest, still in-force. Dating from 1780, as it does, it predates the "Bill of Rights" in the U.S. Constitution by eleven years.
Of the 10 Amendments in the bill of rights, the first 8 of them can be seen in some form in those two pieces of English legislation. All of them are present in the Massachusetts Constitution.
The Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that is perhaps most closely copied from a prior source is is the 8th, which reads "
excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." In the Bill of Rights of 1689, it reads ".
..that excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." So, 100 years later, the authors of the U.S. Constitution changed "shall not" to "ought not to," and left it at that. Note that the Massachusetts Constitution already held in 1780 that "
no magistrate or court of law, shall demand excessive bail or sureties, impose excessive fines, or inflict cruel or unusual punishments."
I bet you have laws like that. Copies, copies, everywhere.
As I say, the same is true for all the rest of them. You can do your own reading. And even those two English laws that I've cited are not generally the first instance of their elements... for example, the famous American 5th Amendment, that provides in part that "
no person" shall be "
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" has its origin in the "
Liberty of Subject" act, that provided "
That no man of what estate or condition that he be, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without being brought in answer by due process of the law." It was passed in 1354, in the reign of Edward III.
http://www.queenslandinstitute.org/a_library/el_liberty%20of%20subject%201354.pdfSo, none of the rights given in the U.S. Constitution were new, nor were any of them even American (except for the content of the 9th and 10th Amendments.) It's just that we'd seen that the English and than the British governments kept ignoring their own laws, and so we created a higher class of law, to which all other law would be subject. But all of those ideas originated prior to and outside of the U.S. Constitution. Its authors were simply learned men.
Now you know part of the history of the American Bill of Rights, in case you didn't before. That brings me to guns.
Millions know the words of the 2nd Amendment by heart. There are those who believe in error that the right is limited to militia service, just as there are those who believe in error that any regulation or legal limits are an "infringement."
Eleven years before the 2nd Amendment was adopted, the committee formed here in Boston wrote Article 17:
"
The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it."
Before that, in 1689, in reaction to Charles II's attempts to disarm Protestants in favor of his Catholic friends, they wrote in the Petition of Right
"
...that the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law."
Before that, it was a commonly recognised right of Englishmen, who were free to own weapons; Charles was merely the first prominent usurper. So the idea that I hear from some Americans that the 2nd Amendment was adopted because of British attempts at disarming the militia at Concord is wrong - that was just the most recent example. The right did not appear first in the U.S. Constitution, or even the Massachusetts Constitution.
It is an ancient right.
But Parliament in 1689 recognised that the right was limited to what was "
allowed by law," and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 tied weapons to the "
common defence" -- words echoed a decade later in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution that stated that the government was being constituted in part to "
provide for the common defence," and then linked the right to arms to "
a well-regulated militia."
Still, the argument that we no longer rely on militia for our defence in America does not obviate our right, any more than the existence of government-sponsored press like the "Public Broadcasting Service" or "National Public Radio" eliminate our right to free speech, or that no amount of bail can be excessive in the case of a wealthy man.
We have the same rights, it's just that we respect them in different ways. Americans and Australians have a right to trial by jury, and to be safe from unreasonable searches, for example, but in my case, it's entirely clear where those rights come from, and they're less subject to legislation, and thus relatively unassailable, but not without limit. Here in America, we say that such rights exist prior to and outside the Constitution; the Constitution merely recognises them. From there, it's a short reach for us to say that our rights should be considered universal. though we recognise that this principle is not always observed.
This is what I tried to explain to my friend at Harlequin Jack's, if in fewer words. He wasn't buying. If you believe as he did that you have no such right, then I suppose you don't.
As for us, we may yet strike the 2nd Amendment, but even then, we'd have the 50 state constitutions to deal with, of which 44 recognise the right to arms.
https://gun-control.procon.org/state-constitutional-right-to-bear-arms-2/
