The second amendment was written at a time when guns simply weren't that deadly, the deadliest things in those times were canons and I don't know if those were allowed.
A musket, colonial rifle, or fowling piece would blow a hole in your chest same as anything else. The idea that guns in the 18th century weren't deadly isn't correct by any stretch. What
is true is that they generally had to be hand-loaded, so you couldn't have one person fire off a lot of rounds in rapid succession; that didn't become possible until around the mid 1800s (shortly before the American Civil War) with the rise of the repeating rifle.
Even if you don't think the guns of today are deadly enough to warrant any change, what about the future? I mean just hypothetically, if we were able to go from muskets to very versatile m4's, wouldn't logic dictate even more effective killing machines later down the road?
Certain kinds of guns are
already restricted in the US, and this is fine. I don't think most reasonable people would think you should be able to carry around a full auto weapon on the streets, and indeed you can't do so legally.
Also, what you're arguing is essentially a slippery slope fallacy. The idea that allowing something now may possibly lead to allowing something bad in the future isn't a valid reason not to allow something now, as they're two separate issues. If there arises an argument over whether we should allow people to carry around personal death lasers that can blow up a city, I think I'll safely be on the side of restricting those for personal use. But that's not what we're talking about at the moment. We're talking about owning your typical semi-auto pistol or a shotgun to defend your house and family with, and I think those things are fine.
And if we ban those, the government would still have them. So by that logic over time the point is moot because the government would be allowed more and more powerful products but the civilians are limited to things that aren't that dangerous.
The role of small arms in a modern day resistance scenario would be more about defending against hostile police (not military) forces long enough to band together with other fighters and rogue military elements to mount an effective resistance. I don't think anyone's going to argue that between a tank and a shotgun, the shotgun's going to come out on top.
Was the second amendment always about people personally bearing arms to stop a tyrannical government, I always thought that each state had its own small army until sometime either before or after the civil war.
That was the intent and it's even stated right in the text. The framers of the Constitution believed that having a population trained and able to use arms and organize against a tyrannical power was an incredibly important check on the government; keep in mind this happened right after the American Revolution, where they overthrew a tyrannical power with a loosely organized resistance of mostly armed civilians.
However, intent aside, I think a lot of unintended benefits came from ensuring the right of the people to bear arms, and I think these are important even if they weren't intentional on the part of the framers.
Is there really no other way to defend against a tyrannical government then arms being so easy to acquire, what if 5% of the military budget was dedicated to giving money for a small army for every state?
I think that's more or less what the Army National Guard is. And yes, it's a good idea, but an organized military follows a hierarchy and if the top is compromised, most of the chain of command is compromised, especially if soldiers are trained to follow orders rather than to think independently. The idea that was really important to the framers was that ordinary people could band together and defend themselves against a tyrannical power even if they were normally just farmers or some other non-military profession.
And I do think that guns are bad for our society, the USA has a huge amount of gun deaths compared to other first world countries.
That's going to be a natural result, but the idea is that we think the importance of this right offsets that. Looking at the bigger picture, our mortality rate per capita isn't really that; as of 2014, we were at about the same rate as Norway and Switzerland were.
It's true that a lot of our dangerous cities have strict gun laws, but that doesn't really matter because guns get funneled into them through non strict gun states.
That's basically what would happen if we tried to ban all guns in the US. They'd funnel in from Mexico and Latin America, from rogue elements in the military, and from arms manufacturers here selling on the black market (the US is one of the leading firearms manufacturers in the world). That's assuming you can somehow get them out of the hands of countless people who regularly say things like "you can take my guns over my dead body."
If banning guns would only allow bad guys to have guns, and good guys would be defenseless, why has banning guns worked so well for other countries?
Other countries are not the United States. Canada, for example, hasn't had the same problems with organized crime in its history as we have, and weapons manufacturing isn't one of its main market forces. And most other countries don't have the gun culture that we have here. We have our own unique considerations to take into account when considering gun regulations and these are things that are unique to us that other countries don't have. What works for some country in Europe may not work for us and vice versa.
I dont agree with a lot of pro gun arguments. "People kill people, not guns", well if people are killing machines why would you let them have things like guns that make killing even easier?
The point of that line is that individual people should be held responsible for their own actions. If a person misuses an item, they should be held accountable rather than punishing every other legitimate user of that item.
"Cars kill people too", but cars aren't made to kill people, so any car killing people is working in spite of its design, not because of it.
The point I made with respect to cars killing people was that all freedoms have a cost. I've already established why I think this right is important in a previous post.
With respect to your argument, I don't think the design choices of the device really matter. What matters is whether it is useful for the population to have access to, and in the case of guns, I think they are because I think being able to possess the means to defend yourself is an important right.
If bombs were legal and the majority of bomb owners used them safely just to watch cool explosions, it wouldn't matter since there are still people who would and could use bombs to hurt others. Isn't that why bombs aren't allowed? Should bombs be allowed to by this rationale?
Bombs serve no practical purpose to the average citizen. You can't use a bomb to defend yourself or your family, you can't use a bomb to defend yourself against a hostile government, you can't hunt game with a bomb, etc. Bombs have only one purpose and that is to cause an explosion, and explosions really only see any practical use as an offensive tool, not a defensive one. Guns can and regularly are used defensively and for other practical purposes, so they're a lot more useful of a thing to have than a bomb.
And why did the NRA say teachers should have guns to stop school shooters, isn't that just escalation?
I disagree with the NRA's position on this because I think there are a lot of opportunities for teachers to misplace or lose their sidearm and introducing that to a setting with a bunch of curious kids is a terrible idea. I think arming a single security guard or having a liason in the police department who is in the school during school hours is sufficient.
Also another argument is always that "you can't change the constitution!", I don't even know what that means.
I don't know where you heard that. We have a process for changing the Constitution, it just requires the support of more congresspeople than you're likely to see support a single issue right now.
I know its impossible to even implement a gun ban, though places like australia did and had less gun deaths because of it, doing it here would just result in a lot of chaos and violence. But isn't that basically gun owners holding america hostage?
Gun culture is one aspect of the equation, but there are a lot of others. This is assuming you believed a gun ban would be the right thing to do to begin with, which I don't.
