this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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We do fire drills once or twice a year where I live (not the US). I've been around for forty years and I've met only two people with a firearm licence (both for shooting sport-related reasons). The European mind can understand the historical reasons beyond the 2nd Amendment, but not the fetishization of firearms.
The 2nd itself isn’t even the problem, it’s that it isn’t in any actuality followed. It explicitly says “well regulated militia”. I’m an armed leftist but nothing about US firearms is well regulated
In this context "well regulated" means like a smoothly-running clock, with the implication being that militia members will need weapons for training and practice.
As a lefty, part of me wishes we learned into the well regulated militia part and viewed firearms as a part of community defense. But, also as a lefty, there's much more important things we could do to improve community resiliency before we finally get to firearms training.
In the context and time it was written, this means something closer to "armed citizenry trained to handle their weapons and how to respond to a threat" and not "restricting weapons to the national guard" or "restricting weapons based on the number of total rounds they can hold" or something like that.
I suspect most of the pro-gun folks wouldn't be that angry at the idea of requiring range time and local emergency drills as opposed to the usual attempts to restrict 2A.
In the context of when it was written, the authors didn't believe having a standing army was a good idea, machine guns either didn't exist or would melt after any sustained use, and artillery was meant to either break walls or make infantry nervous that they might end up being one of the few hit.
The ship has sailed on all of those and many other assumptions people had in those days, which makes me think that maybe it's time for a new constitution. And maybe codify some of the gentlemen's agreement stuff and harden the system against those who just want to ruin it from within because it's more profitable for some if governments don't help people meet their needs.
I am a 66 year old American. I have no guns. The only time I have seen or operated one was when I was in the Navy in the early 1980s. I have seen the damage that guns can do several times in the 30 years I have been working as a child protective service caseworker/supervisor.