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Permalink Reply by kris feenstra on January 13, 2013 at 3:47am

I'm not entirely certain that it is a fallacy, though I suppose you could say it is false equivalence. Don't say that though, because I haven't really thought it through; I'm just bored.

The second amendment references 'arms' which are tools. The particular tools defined as 'arms' at the time the Constitution was written are scarcely in use anymore. 'The Press', on the other hand, can refer literally to printing presses, and also to the publishing houses themselves. In the former definition the analogy is very crude, but it still stands (more or less). In the latter definition, it is referring to institutions which still stand in a very similar fashion today. Even if the technology and medium has changed, the freedom those institutions are guaranteed under the Constitution should still stand.

I don't think either statement from the original post is all that useful though. I'm sure there have been court rulings on how the definitions of 'arms' and 'press' should be applied to the Constitution in modern times. If anything, both lines argue that there are limits to the relevance of the perspectives of the framers of the Constitution to modern times. I think the analogy is bad, but the point behind it is valid. 

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Permalink Reply by Gallup's Mirror on January 13, 2013 at 8:42pm

The spirit of the second amendment was for people to have muskets not machine guns. Well the spirit of the first amendment was for newspaper not the internet. In both cases they do the same as the original, just faster and better.

The logical fallacy in this case is a false comparison between newspapers and muskets. 

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Permalink Reply by Luis Veras on January 29, 2013 at 7:38am

You are assuming that there is indeed a logical fallacy, just to prove a point. You "know" there's a fallacy, you're just not sure what it is. What you're doing is a logical fallacy in itself. You're doing the same as the theists that "know" there's a god, but are trying to find an excuse/justification for XYZ, just to make their beliefs "fit".

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