The Gun Rights of Prisoners?

[lpetrich]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Many prisoners are black and would therefore just sell their guns to buy illegal drugs. Why are you encouraging drug use?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

Because they're not that stupid.

 

[sharon45]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

Well, considering that both guns and prisoners were easily around during the creation of the Second Amendment, this would have been instead a much more appropriate question to the framers themselves.

 

[repoman]

The guns were given to people to make posses for hunting runaway slaves more productive.

 

[bilby]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

Well, considering that both guns and prisoners were easily around during the creation of the Second Amendment, this would have been instead a much more appropriate question to the framers themselves.

Well considering that the framers are not around now, it's rather difficult to ask them.

 

[sharon45]

Well, considering that both guns and prisoners were easily around during the creation of the Second Amendment, this would have been instead a much more appropriate question to the framers themselves.

Well considering that the framers are not around now, it's rather difficult to ask them.

Ya think?

 

[bilby]

Well considering that the framers are not around now, it's rather difficult to ask them.

Ya think?

Yes, I do think.

And were you to do likewise, you would realise that your comment was rendered valueless by the simple fact that I pointed out, and that you (now) claim to be obvious.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

Advocacy groups can use their limited resources to fight for whatever side of an issue they want. Just because the NRA lobbies for certain gun issues, that doesn't make them hypocrites for not supporting every possible gun ownership issue.

An absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment would probably say everyone has a right to walk down the street with a flamethrower, but the gun lobby doesn't have to support that, either.

 

[beero1000]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

Advocacy groups can use their limited resources to fight for whatever side of an issue they want. Just because the NRA lobbies for certain gun issues, that doesn't make them hypocrites for not supporting every possible gun ownership issue.

An absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment would probably say everyone has a right to walk down the street with a flamethrower, but the gun lobby doesn't have to support that, either.

It certainly undermines their argument for insisting on an absolutist interpretation when it comes to their preferred weaponry. That's what absolutist means.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Advocacy groups can use their limited resources to fight for whatever side of an issue they want. Just because the NRA lobbies for certain gun issues, that doesn't make them hypocrites for not supporting every possible gun ownership issue.

An absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment would probably say everyone has a right to walk down the street with a flamethrower, but the gun lobby doesn't have to support that, either.

It certainly undermines their argument for insisting on an absolutist interpretation when it comes to their preferred weaponry. That's what absolutist means.

Yeah, they probably shouldn't use words like absolutist.

 

[lpetrich]

Well considering that the framers are not around now, it's rather difficult to ask them.

Ya think?

What do you mean? Trying to channel their ghosts? Like a spiritualist medium? If it could ever succeed, that might be fun. Imagine Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton and the rest grumbling about people asking about issues that they had never addressed.

 

[Trausti]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

You can be deprived of life, liberty, and property by due process of law. If you are in prison you obviously are deprived of your freedom of movement, freedom of association, property, etc. Moreover, if there is a compelling government interest some rights can be limited or curtailed. (Ensuring the safety of guards and other inmates would be such an interest.) This OP is just silly.

 

[Juma]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

You can be deprived of life, liberty, and property by due process of law. If you are in prison you obviously are deprived of your freedom of movement, freedom of association, property, etc. Moreover, if there is a compelling government interest some rights can be limited or curtailed. (Ensuring the safety of guards and other inmates would be such an interest.) This OP is just silly.

So you agree that it is ok if some rights are limited. Good.

 

[Trausti]

You can be deprived of life, liberty, and property by due process of law. If you are in prison you obviously are deprived of your freedom of movement, freedom of association, property, etc. Moreover, if there is a compelling government interest some rights can be limited or curtailed. (Ensuring the safety of guards and other inmates would be such an interest.) This OP is just silly.

So you agree that it is ok if some rights are limited. Good.

Due process of law. Do you understand what that means?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Too late. Trausti already fell face first into it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

About the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the absolutist interpretation of it has a certain problem: the gun rights of prisoners.

According to that interpretation, prisoners have a right to have fully-functional guns with them, including fully-functional ammo, just like anyone else.

Yet the gun lobby refuses to address that issue.

Why might that be?

Well, considering that both guns and prisoners were easily around during the creation of the Second Amendment, this would have been instead a much more appropriate question to the framers themselves.

Disagree--there was little use of prison that far back. It was too expensive.

 

[bilby]

Well, considering that both guns and prisoners were easily around during the creation of the Second Amendment, this would have been instead a much more appropriate question to the framers themselves.

Disagree--there was little use of prison that far back. It was too expensive.

Expense had nothing to do with it - Until the 19th Century, imprisonment was simply not something to which a convict could be sentenced; Rather, it was what happened to convicts while they waited for their sentence (typically corporal punishment, shaming, forced labour, deportation/transportation and/or execution) to be carried out.

The concept of imprisonment as a punishment in its own right to which a criminal might be sentenced was developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and driven by opposition to capital punishment (particularly by Utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham, who was a strong opponent of the American Revolution, and the author of An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, which was sharply critical of the Declaration of Independence).

Bentham' critique of the authors of the Declaration of Independence didn't pull many punches; The opening paragraph reads:

IN examining this singular Declaration, I have hitherto confined myself to what are given as facts, and alleged against his Majesty and his Parliament, in support of the charge of tyranny and usurpation. Of the preamble I have taken little or no notice. The truth is, little or none does it deserve. The opinions of the modern Americans on Government, like those of their good ancestors on witchcraft, would be too ridiculous to deserve any notice, if like them too, contemptible and extravagant as they be, they had not led to the most serious evils.

(The full text can be found here).

It seems highly unlikely that the framers of the Second Amendment were any more fond of Bentham's views on imprisonment as punishment, than they were of his opinion of 'modern Americans' such as themselves; and it is far from certain that they would have anticipated its adoption, and subsequent embrace, by their new nation.

 

[sharon45]

Ya think?

Yes, I do think.

And were you to do likewise, you would realise that your comment was rendered valueless by the simple fact that I pointed out, and that you (now) claim to be obvious.

I was talking about consulting with the other writings of the founders, since they go into much more detail about their thought process.

- - - Updated - - -

Ya think?

What do you mean? Trying to channel their ghosts? Like a spiritualist medium? If it could ever succeed, that might be fun. Imagine Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton and the rest grumbling about people asking about issues that they had never addressed.

See above.

 

[sharon45]

Well, considering that both guns and prisoners were easily around during the creation of the Second Amendment, this would have been instead a much more appropriate question to the framers themselves.

Disagree--there was little use of prison that far back. It was too expensive.

There are people kept in dungeons back through Biblical times. They don't need to necessarily practice it to still be much aware of it anyway.