In #16 you state:
Two questions:
1.) What are the margins in those Republican controlled legislatures?
2.) How much would it cost to buy sufficient Republican votes to have the 2nd Amendment legislated out of existence?
When it comes to politicians, especially establishment Republican politicians, everything has a price. I consider my liberty and the 2nd Amendment, which goes a long way towards protecting that liberty, too valuable to put up for sale - someone might just decide to meet the price.
A reasonable man would infer from this and many other statements you have made that you feared that merely entering into a convention of states creates a grave risk of repealing the Second Amendment. It is now clear that you have abandoned that position when you state in your latest reply:
Nathan, that particular flaw I pointed out in your plan A was not the chance that it could go rogue and cause us to lose some very valuable parts of the Constitution.
You reaffirm that again in the same reply:
That is the flaw in your plan A, not that the COS could go rogue.
Since plan A is a convention of states, it is now clear that your position is that there is no danger to the Second Amendment arising out of An Article V convention to amend the Constitution.
What are the inescapable inferences from this about-face?
It is now clear that your position now is that there is no downside to an Article V proceeding. But we should not try because the same arithmetic tells us that there is no upside. This is not something that I have been blithely unaware of, indeed, I have long been posting on the reciprocal problem of rejection by 13. Here is just one reply along those lines published here on August 3, 2014:
One thing is crystal clear, Washington other cannot or will not reform itself. Article V is concededly a thin even a desperate hope but it at least it offers the promise, however remote, of reform because it is conducted outside of Washington.
The numbers are admittedly daunting, 34 states needed to propose amendments, a recalcitrant Congress to accede to the application and actually "call" a convention, and the legislatures or the conventions of 38 states agreeing to ratify the amendments. Indeed, except for Nebraska both the House and Senate of these 38 states must approve if Congress elects ratification to be conducted by the legislatures rather than state conventions.
So the bad news is also the good news. Even though Republicans control far more legislative houses than do Democrats, they do not have enough to make 34 and certainly not enough to ratify with 38. So the prospect of reform in view of these numbers is daunting.
But the good news is that the Democrats are even less able to persuade the legislatures to ratify any amendment they might propose -putting aside the likelihood that they would not be able to propose anything in a convention because the authorizing legislation from the states would not permit it. In any event, there is really no practical danger of a "runaway" convention producing an unpalatable result much less a result that would be ratified by 75 of 99 legislative bodies the great majority of whom are controlled by Republicans.
My view is that the danger of doing nothing clearly outweighs the remote danger of a "runaway convention" or the fanciful idea that Republican legislators in the in 75 legislative bodies would ratify such an amendment. I note the resistance on the right seems to be coming from gun rights groups, especially including the NRA, Phyllis Schaffly and the John Birch Society. I believe that the Second Amendment groups are exaggerating the danger beyond all proportion to reality.
If we do nothing we will continue on the path we are on which in my view is a path to destruction. In this sense the bad news, again, is also the good news. I believe it will require some sort of "Black Swan" event such as financial crisis, a war, or some utterly unforeseen situation which stirs the country to take action. We are losing our liberty and we are losing our solvency and we are doing so at an accelerating rate. The risks of doing nothing are unacceptable and events might well bring the people to see that.
So here we are, you advocate that we should not strive for the good even though that striving carries no downside but we should instead wait for the apocalypse even though that approach carries no upside. How do we know there is no upside to your previously bellicose assurances of the ability of trained men to fight with small arms? Because you now state in a remarkable about-face:
There was no need to tell me again how a revolt by men armed with rifles could never win against the US Military. I largely agree with you
So in my proposal there is no downside and in your proposal there is no upside - completely the reverse of what you unaccountably contend in your last reply.
More confusingly, after these abrupt about-faces you revert to your original position that somehow to pursue and Article V strategy is somehow to risk the Second Amendment:
And that is why I don't support your COS. The 2nd Amendment is just too valuable to us to ever be put at risk.
It seems that the NRA propaganda is just too thick a shell to crack.