101–110 of 125 posts
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Except guns are specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and were pretty important in breaking away from tyranny and forming a new country. Cars, not so much.
And keeping slaves from rebelling, the main purpose of the second amendment.
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Sandy Hook, Colorado (3 times in recent memory), Lafayette, San Bernardino, et cetera, et fucking cetera. Every time one of these shootings happens RKBA repeal gets dragged closer to the Overton window. The only question is how much more human blood must be shed.
Going back to 2010, there have been 182 fatalities[1] in the United States due to mass shootings. In the same amount of time, there have been about 158 fatalities due to being struck by lightning.[2] In 2013 alone, there were 611,105 fatalities due to heart disease and 56,979 due to influenze and pneumonia.[3] The stats are a bit out of date, but from 2005-2009, ~3,500 people drowned each year.[4] If you're worried a…
Why?
1996 was the year the Australians banned guns.
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There is absolutely no point in debating the past or the original text of the Second Amendment. Post-Heller, post-McDonald, it's moot. The Court's word is Constitution. If the anti-gun (really, pro-authoritarian-state) minority wants to ban firearms: they should lobby for a Constitutional amendment (which will undoubtedly fail), and then lobby for each individual state to ban arms - keeping in mind, some states have…
Sandy Hook, Colorado (3 times in recent memory), Lafayette, San Bernardino, et cetera, et fucking cetera. Every time one of these shootings happens RKBA repeal gets dragged closer to the Overton window. The only question is how much more human blood must be shed.
Frankly, I don't think the authoritarians have the stomach for gun prohibition. They need to get busy, pronto. It's going to take more, a lot more, than tweets to people who already agree with them. And so far, they've done nothing to get their "Repeal the 2A" ball rolling. Time's a-wastin'.
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Which, as a firearms enthusiast and pro-gun individual: I wish groups would attempt to make. If you want to curb private firearm ownership: please, introduce a constitutional amendment instead of trying to throw shit against the wall and see what sticks. Then, once said amendment fails to get even a fraction of the support necessary, we can go back to business as usual.
Such an amendment could be passed fairly easily. Don't forget banning beer passed and vastly more people care about beer than guns. Guns are mostly political theater at this point where neither side wants change they just want to drum up support from there base.
I laughed out loud when I read this. You are very, very naive. If this is representative of your understanding of how US constitutional law works, you shouldn't be commenting.
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I will admit that I have mixed feelings about the Second Amendment. As does the Supreme Court; Heller was a 5-4 decision, in which the minority disagreed with the interpretation of the text that you claim is plain and indisputable. Furthermore, "Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia." [0]…
> I also wonder how well even armed citizens can defend themselves against a tyrannical government in this era of militarized police, modern weapons, and SWAT teams. Citizens have proven very capable of defending themselves in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria. It's true that a government willing to firebomb entire cities and murder literally everyone could overcome that resistance. However, in the modern era a government that di…
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And keeping slaves from rebelling, the main purpose of the second amendment.
That's actually not the main purpose of the Second Amendment at all.
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> I also wonder how well even armed citizens can defend themselves against a tyrannical government in this era of militarized police, modern weapons, and SWAT teams. Citizens have proven very capable of defending themselves in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria. It's true that a government willing to firebomb entire cities and murder literally everyone could overcome that resistance. However, in the modern era a government that di…
That's awfully naive. That 1/100 number includes babies, the elderly and people not able or interested in actual fighting.
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Except guns are specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and were pretty important in breaking away from tyranny and forming a new country. Cars, not so much.
And keeping slaves from rebelling, the main purpose of the second amendment.
The right to arms was part of English common-law (English Bill of Rights of 1689) and in 1689 the right was claimed to be a reinstatement of "ancient rights" originally granted by James II. Fear of a slave revolt was not the primary reason for this right in either time.
In U.S. Supreme Court's D.C. vs Heller (2008) decision ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller ), the court claimed that historically the right to bear arms was:
'"clearly an individual right, having nothing whatsoever to do with service in the militia" and that it was a right not to be disarmed by the Crown and was not the granting of a new right to have arms.' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United... )
In The Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Aguilar (2013), the history and reason for the 2nd amendment was summarized ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller ):
> "guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation" (id. at 592); that "central to" this right is "the inherent right of self-defense"(id. at 628); that "the home" is "where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute" (id. at 628); and that, "above all other interests," the second amendment elevates "the right of law abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home" (id. at 635). Based on this understanding, the Court held that a District of Columbia law banning handgun possession in the home violated the second amendment. Id. at 635.[46]
If the primary reason for the right to keep and bear arms was to guard against slave revolt, it would have been more central to the discussion. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court was focused on whether or not it was an individual right to self-defense, and they determined it was. While protecting oneself from a slave revolt could be one case of self-protection it was by no means the primary reason.
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No, I don't think you can extrapolate that, those seem like entirely unrelated issues. Neither of those points imply an overly broad law that only works based on the trust and restraint of the government.
The government often claims that they will not use gun registration records to seize guns. So far they have not. But they have the information, and they could try to do it, so it is a matter of trusting the government.
Not true in California and I think New York state. Threatened in D.C., and I'm no doubt missing more than a few examples.
Needless to say, the majority of US gun owners are opposed to registration (to the point that such a requirement nationwide would light a slow match to a hot civil war; as it is, the post-Sandy Hook registration laws in Connecticut and New York state have been mostly ignored, in these Bluest of states), especially since there are no significant benefits to such schemes. Plenty of us know our 20th Century history as well and the retail and wholesale democide that registration led to abroad.
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Well, sure, anything is debatable if you take the Humpty Dumpty stance. But if English words mean things the language in the Constitution will hamper gun control efforts in the USA. These articles are examples of what I call "sneaking repeal under the wire". Just because an article comes from a scholarly source doesn't mean it stands up to scrutiny: Michael Bellesiles landed himself in hot water attempting to argue t…
I will admit that I have mixed feelings about the Second Amendment. As does the Supreme Court; Heller was a 5-4 decision, in which the minority disagreed with the interpretation of the text that you claim is plain and indisputable. Furthermore, "Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia." [0]…
Wrong. All 9 Supremes interpreted it as an individual right, they could hardly do else so given the written history of all this and the plain language of the Bill of Rights (which amendments, after all, confer a collective vs. individual right?). What they split 5-4 on what did that really mean anything in practice, or, ultimately, could D.C. freeze its registration, and require to you keep your guns unloaded and disassembled until an intruder entered the room you were in.
A set of laws I'll note were often nullified by sympathetic juries. Since Heller and McDonald, a majority of the court clearly holds that you only have a right to keep and bear arms in your home, they've denied cert on all relevant appeals since McDonald.