"Britain doesn't have a Second Amendment." Topic

They don't have thirteen colonies, either.

And this helps me paint castings how, exactly? This is The Miniatures Page, not The Politics Page.

Nor do we speak Swedish. That's about as connected as the previous two statements.

And this helps me paint castings how, exactly? This is The Miniatures Page, not The Politics Page.

This is the description on this site of the discussion forum:

For discussion of anything related to the American Revolution/War of American Independence.

So, it appears that the OP is appropriate for the forum.

The US also did not have a 2nd amendment to the nonexistent Constitution during the Revolution…

But they do have Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, GCVO, popularly known as Kate Middleton.

I wonder if it possible to have a monarchy without an accompanying royal family?

The POINT, of course, is that America has been an armed society pretty much from the beginning. I have sometimes told students that the reason we are free is because there were Indians in the woods. That was a central fact of the Revolution; "popular sovereignty" was a reality before it became a theory, not the other way around.

Governor Berkeley, in reference to Bacon's rebellion in 1676, bemoaned the difficulty of governing a people of which "six parts of Seven at least are Poore, Indebted, Discontented and Armed." If it were not for the last, the other three would not have mattered much.

Bacon's rebellion, which I will need to read about, was presumably not successful. Nor were any others for 100 years. Just saying, conditions had probably changed in that time.

Very glad that we (UK) don't have a 2nd amendment or the equivalent – it appears to be very costly.

Huscarle, we had the bill of rights, but things changed between the world wars. Even now, I think you'd be surprised by both the quantity and type of firearms held by licensed owners.

If I were to choose to revolt over anything, I can think of few things more worthy than bacon.

People in the UK regularly carried firearms until about 1900, a gentlemen in London seldom went out without his cane sword or a small pocket pistol.

The UK also requested the donation of firearms from American civilians in early WWII when they thought they were going to be invaded by the Nazis. They were not so worried about the Second Amendment then. I have armed civilians in my figure collection.

Also the IRA was seldom at a loss for weapons, so it seem that those who really want guns can get them. Only the law abiding are denied guns.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

I have sometimes told students that the reason we are free is because there were Indians in the woods.

New Zealand has Maoris, but they seem to have ended up with a different approach to gun rights.

I thought all Indians/Natives were peaceful people who made and ate popcorn all day?

The extent to which American society has been armed has waxed and waned over our history.

When I checked earlier this year only about 30% of people in the USA have registered firearms. I couldn't say how free the rest feel or how I would in such an environment. I used to think that undoing this would be impossible and violent but then again, how many Americans loved a drink and how much money was tied up in that? They can change when enough of them decide to. In the meantime I'd suggest that as someone who is not an American, it would be impolite to discuss the subject further.

Ignoring the fact that the 2nd Amendment wasn't a thing at the time, is the OP implying that the American Revolution was won because most of the colonists were armed? I think there was a lot more to it than that!

However it does bring up some interesting questions that I don't know the answers to off-hand. For instance:
How quickly did mass production of muskets commence?
How significant were the imported arms?
With no war production or imports could the colonists have kept going?

( I have to say though, the tone of the OP seems a little more goading and political than wargaming or historical which is disappointing).

Strange… I have lots of firearms. I live in the United States. None of mine are registered. There is no place or facility to register them.

Perhaps most folks in the US don't register their firearms.

Joe Collins

People in the UK regularly carried firearms until about 1900, a gentlemen in London seldom went out without his cane sword or a small pocket pistol.

Only if 'Sherlock Holmes' was a social science thesis.

Also the IRA was seldom at a loss for weapons

or generous funding, thanks to- um- a certain NATO ally.

Also the IRA was seldom at a loss for weapons

Not one of the US better moments and a fair amount of those weapons included Semtex for indiscriminate bombings. All those NORAID collections particularly in the Plastic Paddy bars were a huge contributor to the IRA's coffers.

I'm in the same boat as lkmjbc3. I own plenty of firearms, not one registered and all 100% legally owned.

The Second Amendment, like the rest of Bill of Rights, does not ESTABLISH rights: it prohibits government from infringing on (natural) rights the people already possess, as individuals. And the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, on which the US BofR was largely based, was passed in 1776, before the Declaration of Independence. So the idea as well as the centuries-old reality of an armed society was integral to the Revolution.

As to the questions about arms, I know the situation in Virginia. Its 50,000 militia were well armed when hostilities began; men had to prove they had a working firearm at monthly musters. (How rigorously these rules were enforced varied from county to county.)

The losses at, e.g., Camden, of hundreds if not thousands of muskets created a problem. However, the Virginia government could and did buy thousands of French muskets using tobacco (which to a great extent served as money anyway).

By Yorktown, though, the permanent militia battalions through whom militia contingents rotated had to be careful to keep men whose terms had expired from leaving for home with the state's weapons, so they could be issued to the next rotation.

The Virginia State Gun Factory—also known as the Fredericksburg Gun Factory or the Public Gun Factory—was among the first public arms factories established by one of the former British American colonies. Colonel Fielding Lewis and Major Charles Dick established the facility along the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg after the Virginia council approved its creation in July 1775. The Virginia State Gun Factory operated throughout the war, repairing and manufacturing muskets, bayonets and small quantities of gunpowder for Virginia troops.

One of the points of tension within Virginia was whether workers at key logistical points like the Gun Factory (and the state leatherworks, etc.) were exempt from militia duty. Later in the war the only pay the workers received, sometimes, WAS exemption from militia duty.

George Rogers Clark's Illinois Regiment (Virginia state troops, not Continentals) were equipped with imported Spanish muskets.

Only in a few states are most firearms registered. I live in Maryland where only some firearms are registered. In some states, a permit is required to buy some firearms but it is not necessarily registered by that process. Throughout the US, full auto weapons and suppressors are registered with the federal government. The net is the vast majority of legally owned civilian firearmss are not registered.

That mishmash of non-standard rifles and muskets would have been a logistician's nightmare, but firearms familiarity would have been of value.

After the Confederation, some of the newly Sovereign States refused to join the second attempt at a USA until the Bill of Rights was ratified apparently reflecting how important they viewed those Amendments.

Good discussion!

From what I've read, there's no 1st Amendment either, since some speech is severely restricted, especially now.

People in the UK have been jailed for speaking out on certain subjects.

Of course, under the last guy in charge here, one film-maker was unlawfully imprisoned too, for political theater, under a false premise that his movie caused a riot and killings in a certain North African country, but that should have never happened, and was an illegal abuse of power.

It's a real pity that those perpetrating that lie haven't been sued, charged with their crimes, and imprisoned for them.

"Britain doesn't have a Second Amendment."

So I take it that UK re-enactors aren't allowed to take their billhooks & pikes home with them…? ;-)

Britain doesn't have a written constitution either.

Don't forget that thousands of those armed Americans would have been Loyalists.

Australia doesn't have a 2nd Amendment either. We do have a written constitution. We are a Federation of States & Territories. Average voter turnout is 90%+. Most farmers have guns to shoot vermin on their properties e.g. foxes, rabbits, feral cats, feral dogs, feral goats, crocs up north and the odd snake. We have a small sporting shooter population and there is a small quantity of black market guns in the criminal population. The rest of us down here don't seem to really need guns yet we still feel safe in our beds. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

I feel safer in the UK.

The USA has more deaths from gunfire from toddlers than Britian has in total…

"Don't forget that thousands of those armed Americans would have been Loyalists".

We've got at least a couple, just on my block, I suspect. One speaks "strine", and another flies the British flag from time to time.

Perhaps true, BHM, but I wonder how you stack up against us for deaths from cutlery?

Yes, I believe I have seen reports that britain has a real problem with knives and clubs and such. Thing is, a firearm can be used for defense by a 90 pound woman; it eliminates much of the advantage that size gives a male aggressor. How safe you FEEL is not quite the same as how safe you ARE.

And yes, one of the things the Patriots had to do, and did pretty effectively at local levels, was to disarm the loyalists.

About half the homes in America have guns inside. This protects everyone, because potential invaders don't know which half YOUR home is in. Of course, you COULD put a sign outside declaring your house a gun-free zone. That'll work. I think I remember that the colonists on the frontier tried that with the hostile natives.

How would you wargame this?

The best sticker I have seen on the protection of one's home was:

'This house is protected by a shotgun three days a week-you guess which three.'

:-)

The Second Amendment, like the rest of Bill of Rights, does not ESTABLISH rights: it prohibits government from infringing on (natural) rights the people already possess, as individuals.

There is no such thing as a natural right. A right only exists if it is recognised in law and can thus be defended (hence 'rights' and 'law' are the same word in French and Spanish, etc).

A universal 'human right' may be acknowledged philosophically but it has to exist in law to be cited or protected.

Mq>This protects everyone, because potential invaders don't know which half YOUR home is in.

i believe law enforcement have found a way round that.

nsolomon99 – 90 % is an impressive voter turnout.

Is it true that Australians are REQUIRED to vote ?

Yes, I believe I have seen reports that britain has a real problem with knives and clubs and such.

Good to see such a high standard of rigour applied to claims and statements in this discussion.

DBDD

Can anyone explain what this thread is about and what it has to do with wargaming?

1) it's about Britain not having a 2nd Amendment
2) Go figyure

42, per Locke and then Mason and then Jefferson, governments are created via the social contract to protect natural rights. If a government fails to perform its contractual obligations, and when a pattern of abuses evinces a design to deprive the people of their rights, there remains one final natural right, the right of revolution.

This is not JUST theory, as Americans have created governments -- and abolished them -- as necessary, from the Mayflower Compact on. Wagon trains wrote constitutions to govern them during the months they were outside any other jurisdiction. There ARE some rights derived from government, what we call civil rights such as voting; but the fundamental liberties exist naturally, anterior to the government created to protect them. If the First Amendment were repealed, I would still possess the natural right of free expression -- and would have grounds to overturn that government.

There is no such thing as a natural right…

Have you ever studied the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason? Have you read Locke and Montesquiue as well as Rousseau?

Natural Rights:

1.'Legal definition of natural right: a right considered to be conferred by natural law.'

2.'Definition: Natural rights are those that are fundamental to human being existence. They are universally accepted and applied and can't be contradicted by human law.'

3.'Natural rights are those essential to society and mankind. There are three natural rights that are considered universal, based on the idea that all men are created equal. These three rights are: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'

4.'General: Fundamental human rights based on universal natural law, as opposed to those based on man-made positive law.'

Any questions…?

The US Bill of Rights was added to the US Constitution in order to codify American civil rights which were also considered natural rights.

Practically all men of service age in Switzerland (I believe) keep arms at home ready for possible invasion/resistence. Yet he murder rate is less than the USA……. It's a thought?

The following might also help:

Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and are therefore universal and inalienable (i.e., rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws). They are usually defined in opposition to legal rights, or those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system.

Although natural rights have been discussed since antiquity, it was the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment that developed the modern concept of natural rights, which has been critical to the modern republican government and civil society.

During the Enlightenment, natural rights developed as part of the social contract theory. The theory addressed the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.

Thomas Hobbes' conception of natural rights extended from his conception of man in a " state of nature." He objected to the attempt to derive rights from " natural law," arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refers to the absence of obligations.

The most famous natural right formulation comes from John Locke, who argued that the natural rights include perfect equality and freedom, and the right to preserve life and property. Other Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophers that developed and complicated the concept of natural rights were John Lilburne, Francis Hutcheson, Georg Hegel, and Thomas Paine.

The modern European anti-slavery movement drew heavily from the concept of natural rights that became central to the efforts of European abolitionists.

link

In order to understand the American Revolution, an understanding of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment as well as the Philosophes is essential.

I will entertain questions until the end of the class period… :-)