Why is gun control so difficult in the US?

Xelor said:
In one sentence you proclaim that "civil war is proof an armed population can sometimes take on the national army." In next, you declare it's "beside the point." It's either so momentous as to illustrate the application of Madison's ideas in Federalist #46, or it's not.
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It is that momentous, and it remains beside the point.
Xelor said:
Times have changed, and that is no longer so. Hell, today's U.S. military doesn't even have to put "boots on the ground" to wage the opening salvos of any rebellious uprising.
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That is not quite true, and it doesn't matter. That's not how tyranny commonly imposes itself anyway. The value of an armed citizenry in discouraging or resisting tyranny has little to do with its ability to take on a domestic standing army in combat.

And the deflection of the discussion into that minor or side issue is part of the jamb - both "sides" based in fantasy and irrationality, the reasonable split, political gains prevented.
 
In the age of swords and spears, or in the age of muskets, it seems sensible that an armed population would be reasonably well-protected against a coup by its own military. In today's age with drones, nukes and armored vehicles, it's lunacy. Furthermore, in a society with centuries of established democratic norms, it seems highly implausible that the officer corps and lower-ranking soldiers would, man by man, region by region, follow obviously tyrannical orders from a central authority.

But if the population really thinks a bunch of hunting rifles, handguns and assault rifles are what they need to protect their collective freedoms, then there should be some sort of central democratically-controlled authority/militia for each region, whose sole job is to guard a local weapons arsenal and distribute it to the citizenry in times of national emergency. That way the US government can't just come seize everyone's guns prior to a coup, but crazy individuals aren't free to make the law as they please and declare resistance to tyranny when the cops show up to seize their child porn, or shoot that annoying neighbor who won't turn their stereo down, or shoot the dog that keeps peeing on his/her flower garden.

I don't understand why folks like Sculptor are so frightened of tyranny from a government they're supposed to help elect, but when an unelected government in Syria tortures and murders hundreds of thousands of its citizens and invites radical Islamic and fascist foreign militias and armies to take control of its territory, those who resist it are automatically and uniformly labeled by these people as terrorists. Maybe it's not about tyranny itself, but more about who gets to impose it on whom.
 
CptBork said:
In the age of swords and spears, or in the age of muskets, it seems sensible that an armed population would be reasonably well-protected against a coup by its own military. In today's age with drones, nukes and armored vehicles, it's lunacy.
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The opposite. They were subject to military coups and enslavements practically at whim - followed by disarmament, of course, to forestall rebellion.
Armies were cheaper and smaller then - easier to use. Modern firearms and the development of heavy military weaponry have brought a change in tyrant tactics - in those places blessed with such industrial advancement.
CptBork said:
But if the population really thinks a bunch of hunting rifles, handguns and assault rifles are what they need to protect their collective freedoms, then there should be some sort of central democratically-controlled authority/militia for each region, whose sole job is to guard a local weapons arsenal and distribute it to the citizenry in times of national emergency. That way the US government can't just come seize everyone's guns prior to a coup,
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There is. And they are distributed accordingly. Right now. In case of emergency. That's the "keep and bear" part. (Most places have found it cheaper to not bother actually building an armory for the arsenal, since it plays such a minor role).

btw: You want to gather all the weapons into a central location controlled and overseen by the government, so that they can't be seized by the government? That's going to be a hard sell.

CptBork said:
Furthermore, in a society with centuries of established democratic norms, it seems highly implausible that the officer corps and lower-ranking soldiers would, man by man, region by region, follow obviously tyrannical orders from a central authority.
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This strawman fantasy of how tyranny imposes itself is apparently a central confusion.
Tyrannies commonly use terrorism, not military assault, against their populations.
 
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Dr_Toad said:
Are you an American, or someone from a "civilized" country? Keep and bear is pretty straightforward. Nowhere does it say where you can't keep and bear arms, and your niggling away at semantics is simpleminded.
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So why then are you not allowed to take your guns with you on airplanes, to kill the terrorists with their boxcutters?
 
iceaura said:
The opposite. They were subject to military coups and enslavement practically at whim - followed by disarmament, of course, to forestall rebellion.
Armies were cheaper and smaller then - easier to use.
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Well if the majority of the population isn't fit to wield such weapons, then it's pretty easy to control. I'm postulating a hypothetical scenario in which that's not an issue.

iceaura said:
This strawman fantasy of how tyranny imposes itself is apparently a central confusion.
Tyrannies use terrorism, not military assault, against their populations.
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In Hitler's case that's realistic, but in the USSR's case they had the Red Army rampaging everywhere and it still took them years to seize power, plus they had Germany's help as part of undermining the Tsar. But suppose Hitler's approach to tyranny is adopted by a US president, faking terror attacks and then justifying martial law to oppose them. How the hell is an armed mob of citizens supposed to stand up to that if it successfully dupes every branch of the military and nearly every soldier from every city, town and county? Wouldn't the armed mob make things even worse and support the government in its actions against the fake terrorists?
 
CptBork said:
Well if the majority of the population isn't fit to wield such weapons, then it's pretty easy to control. I'm postulating a hypothetical scenario in which that's not an issue.
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You were assuming historical states of affairs that did not exist.
CptBork said:
- in the USSR's case they had the Red Army rampaging everywhere and it still took them years to seize power, plus they had Germany's help as part of undermining the Tsar.
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The despotic coup itself - when the Revolution, a successful armed citizen's uprising against the military of the State, was betrayed into tyranny - was called the "Great Terror"; the analogous event after the French Revolution was called "Reign of Terror", and it failed: the ambitious despot was defeated.
If you are doing a statistical survey, count all the countries of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, that have suffered coups by despots of various kinds. The army, when it fought, fought another faction of the army or some other army - almost every time. Turning the domestic army against the domestic population is largely unworkable: very expensive, very dangerous, clumsy and slow and ineffective. That's not the threat an armed citizenry is primarily forestalling.
 
iceaura said:
Why are you posting irrelevancies?
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Why are you?
That's not true. There was no comparable standing army when the distinction was made, for starters - and as soon as there was, it had all kinds of heavy artillery and stuff that no militia ever had, which everybody treated as a normal state of affairs.
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The whole point of an armed populace, as given in the Federalist papers, was to safeguard against an army capable of overwhelming the people.
But nobody wrote that into the 2nd, and very few militia had them, and they would of course be regulated up the wazoo if some militia folks armed themselves with anything of the kind now. So?
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The framers assumed it and Madison expressly allowed it as president.
Muzzleloading cannons not capable of firing fixed ammunition and manufactured in or before 1898 and replicas thereof are antiques and not subject to the provisions of either the Gun Control Act (GCA) or the National Firearms Act (NFA).
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/are-muzzleloading-cannons-classified-destructive-devices​
Again, what one "has" doesn't determine what one is "allowed to have." So all these "very few militia had" arguments are irrelevant red herrings.
But it does reflect what was meant by well-regulated - a properly outfitted militia did not need cannon.
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No, it doesn't. Madison, as president, expressly said civilians could own cannons.
Only when there was no army to compare it with.

It wasn't then, and it doesn't need to be now for good regulation. You are going to lose that case, because it's silly.
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No, again, read the Federalist Papers. Or just keep sounding ignorant, which is one of the best arguments against gun control.
CptBork said:
So why then are you not allowed to take your guns with you on airplanes, to kill the terrorists with their boxcutters?
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Airplanes are private property, where the owner or his representatives can bar guns on their property, just like anyone else.
 
Vociferous said:
The whole point of an armed populace, as given in the Federalist papers, was to safeguard against an army capable of overwhelming the people.
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That was also the point of limiting or forbidding a standing domestic army.
That has little to do with defeating said army in open battle.
Vociferous said:
The framers assumed it and Madison expressly allowed it as president.
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They didn't have a standing army.
Vociferous said:
Again, what one "has" doesn't determine what one is "allowed to have."
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Now we see that language - the Constitution "allowing" people to have things - from the NRA side.
It's a "bothsides" issue, this jamb.
So all these "very few militia had" arguments are irrelevant red herrings.
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The existence of well regulated militia of the time without cannon proves that being a well regulated militia did not require cannon in the view of the authors of the 2nd Amendment.
And it wouldn't matter if it proved the opposite at the time - cannon like that are not the weapons of a well regulated militia now.
Vociferous said:
Airplanes are private property, where the owner or his representatives can bar guns on their property, just like anyone else.
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Guns are also banned on government owned airplanes, and from areas in municipal airports, and so forth.
 
Vociferous said:
Airplanes are private property, where the owner or his representatives can bar guns on their property, just like anyone else.
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Mr. Toad says that it constitutes an infringement of his right to keep and bear arms wherever he pleases. My argument is that he doesn't have that right, even in the US constitution.
 
CptBork said:
So why then are you not allowed to take your guns with you on airplanes, to kill the terrorists with their boxcutters?
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firarms are situationally limited on aircraft
the general public can't carry as it's a pressurized tube in flight and it's not a common training tactic for the general public to train in pressurized tubes at 25K plus feet travelling at above 250+ knots depending.

Firearms are allowed for specifically trained personell due to the complexities of the situation
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunition

to share a quote from another experienced person, Christopher Hawk, Retired after 30+ years police/EMS experience:
Off-duty municipal or State police officers are not allowed to carry firearms onto a commercial airplane.

In order to fly while armed, an officer's employing agency must submit an armed travel request/notification through the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS) computer network. The message must include the name of the officer, the destination of the flight, and the reason why the officer needs to have his/her firearm available immediately upon landing (prior to being able to retrieve checked luggage). This might include picking up a prisoner at the destination airport, being involved in a surveillance operation while following a suspect on the airplane to the destination, or as part of a special security detail for a person who is traveling. All of these situations would be considered "on-duty," so off-duty officers are bound by the same constraints as any other member of the traveling public.

Some Federal officers may be required to be armed, even while traveling off-duty, so they may be able to fly armed even while not on duty. The Federal agency, however, must have a general policy requiring its officers to be armed.
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