Criminals do not get guns legally. The law abiding citizens of the USA will lose self protection while criminals still have them. Please show common sense and do everything to let good people keep them. Some of us still hunt and rely on ourselves for self defense.

Obviously this is one question that I'm not in the best position to comment on, considering I'm not a US citizen. Still, a complete revision of any nations constitution after a period of several hundred years has to be a good thing. I would support such a move in my own country. What other areas do you think require attention? (We're getting away from the topic at hand, so perhaps if enough people want to continue discussing this, we should start a new thread?)

Why should we re-visit it when it works? Look at all of the other nations who have had a complete shift in government in the last century let alone since the late 18th century. We have had the same government system since 1787. Clearly it is working because we have not broken apart and even survived a civil war, so why try to fix what isn't broken? The constitution has evolved over the years, but note that the ONLY time it was altered to allow for limiting individual rights (prohibition) it was a miserable failure and was soon repealed.

The reason I'm asking whether or not it should be revisited, is that an entire society is based on a document written well over two hundred years ago. It was raised in this thread in the context of, is the relevance of gun ownership as presented in the Constitution, still relevant in the 21st Century? Given that question, how much else of the Constitution needs updating and made relevant for a society that has moved beyond what it was in the 18th Century?

Gun haters will never change. The leftist aka progressives lost the elections before the last one because of three things. Anti god, anti gun ,and pro the perversion of homosexual marriage.
Now the leftist aka progressives used the war to win this election. You will see the leftist aka progressives revert back to the three reasons mentioned.
The leftist aka progressives hate the right to bear arms and will stop at nothing to remove it.
Some states are attempting to pass gun bans.
The Brady bunch is still attacking the 50 cal rifles.
There has been some talk of a new AWB.
Not one law the gun haters want will bother criminals, they will have ever bother law abiding citizens. Gun free zones are proof of this. Law abiding citizens no guns, while criminals enter gun free zones to kill anybody they run into.

Why is there no gun violence at gun shows? Per gun hater logic there are more guns then people and there should be dead people every where.

The tenants on which our government is based on, which incidentally significantly pre-date the constitution, are just as relevant today as they have always been. Common Law, on which our legal system (except Louisiana, though I'm sure civil law dates back just as far) is based goes back over 900 years, and it is still utilized in many nations around the world. The theory of natural rights which our founders prescribed are not out-dated and are just as relevant now as they ever were.

There are over 16,000 murders a year in the United States. How can you believe that our society has advanced at all? If anything it has regressed.

This raises brings up an interesting point, namely the breaking point between philosophy and political theory. The philosophical community has, by and large, abandoned the ideas that justified the theory of natural rights, yet political theory has in no way reflected this. Philosophically, the theory of natural rights is very much outdated.

It seems almost egotistical to think of modern people as better than historic people. People are people, and we're no different than our ancestors.

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Yes, the little green fist up there is a symbol of Earth First! No, I'm not an eco-terrorist, nor do I agree with eco-terrorism...I just thought it looked cool.

The second paragraph negates the first. We are no different than our ancestors, hence the theory of natural rights is still quite valid.

As such, the idea of a natural right to keep and bear arms is just as valid today as it was in the days of the Code of Hammurabi. Thank you for switching to the pro-gun position. This is typically what occurs when people approach the issue logically rather than emotionally. Welcome to the correct side.

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In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

How does the second paragraph negate the first?

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Yes, the little green fist up there is a symbol of Earth First! No, I'm not an eco-terrorist, nor do I agree with eco-terrorism...I just thought it looked cool.

I look at it this way, any man or woman (including government) that can come and take my guns away, more power too them because buy the time it's over, I and "many" others will no longer be living.

First, they'd have to find ALL of them.

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Anyone who thinks freedom comes cheap, please put the blindfold on and stand against the wall.

Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

The philosophical community may have abandoned it, but people have not. The idea of certain basic rights existing without government is one that many (perhaps most) Americans subscribe to. If the idea of natural rights is no longer relevant, we must re-examine our constitution.

That is exactly the point I have been trying to make. Many people believe that the second amendment is irrelevant because modern society has somehow advanced, but in reality has not.

This is exactly the point that I'm trying to make. Our government is based on principles that are no longer considered to philosophically/logically sound, so we should begin to look more critically at how what foundations our government should actually be based on, and how exactly rights would function in that context.

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Yes, the little green fist up there is a symbol of Earth First! No, I'm not an eco-terrorist, nor do I agree with eco-terrorism...I just thought it looked cool.

I think there are some rights that we can all agree on, and most of them are found in the constitution, or are protected under legal precedent:

The right to express opinions, The right to defend oneself, the right to live without government infringing on your personal life, and the right to prove your innocence is charged with something by another party.

Those are all found within the constitution, and they are certainly not logically unsound, and philosophical views can differ.

Simple: Your argument against natural rights is that it is outdated. You then go on to state that people have not changed.

If people have not changed, then the idea of natural rights cannot possibly be outdated. If it is outdated, then people would have had to change.

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In case you were wondering, yes, there really ARE more idiots these days....technology has made natural selection obsolete.

They are logically unsound becaus it is impossible to actually derive them from nothing. You wind up saying that you value life, liberty, and property, and so therefore these rights should exist. The problem with the way our political theory functions is that it claims that these rights are "self evident," which is, again, logically unsound. It relies on an appeal to some abstract higher authority that cannot be directly or empirically confirmed.

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Yes, the little green fist up there is a symbol of Earth First! No, I'm not an eco-terrorist, nor do I agree with eco-terrorism...I just thought it looked cool.