Thompson contender?
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Who is adoring Defense Distributed?
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I donât think a printed gun itself is particularly interesting; I think that the very low barrier (a couple thousand bucks for a computer and 3D printer and the ability to locate the relvant files online and use them in oneâs 3d printer) to anyone printing their own is. To say that that doesnât very seriously change the contours of the âgun controlâ debate is foolish, particularly as the price of the hardware for 3D printing follows the typical curve of technology, which is to say that it is monotonic decreasing.
Nice dodge. Well, no, not a nice one actually. A typical one.
So then, how do you yourself interpret the contemporary relevance of that part of the amendment to the individual gun ownership, given that say, 99% of gun owners in the U.S. have nothing to do with any well-regulated militias?
Thatâs right, weâre all car-aaa-zeeee blathering idiots who throw logic and reason to the wind to advanced our agenda to make baby-seeking bullets legal.
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If you say so.
I am cheering myself by changing the stress of the words in that sentence, and envisioning slave hunters being hunted down as fugitives.
I canât help myself any longer: controls and ownership checks and required training is NOT, repeat NOT a decrease in gun ownership rights. You are just a ***** with no sense of reasonableness.
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Frankly, if the shit were to ever go down and armed insurrection were to occur in the streets, all you need to look at is the two last wars the US was involved in. AK-47âs do not do well against tanks, jets, and drones. And it does not go well for the civilians in the middle.
Red Dawn was just a movie, not an instruction manual.
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@VVelox said:
Regardless if you want to reduce the number of violent crimes, you need to begin looking at economic issues that actually lead to it.
@AcerPlatanoides: In this case, affordable and available guns and ammo with insufficient government regulation. Right?
I thought maybe he was talking about the fact that violent crime correlates strongly with poverty and social injustice.
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Yes, in a thread nominally about gun control. Did I miss a part where he was advocating policies to alleviate economic injustice?
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Can we not do both? Please? I like the sound of both.
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As Iâve pointed out in other contexts, the relevance of this observation depends on the situation under discussion. If your house is burning down because you left a cigarette burning, insisting to the firefighters that they track down the offending butt probably isnât the best strategy.
Whatâs required here is to show that âattacking the reason behindâ violent crime is a) more feasible than addressing the means and b) more effective than addressing the means. You have not done that and in fact Iâve never seen any anti-gun control advocate come up with a sensible plan for addressing the causes of violent crime. In fact, anti-gun control advocates are generally conservative and ideologically opposed to the sorts of policies that I think would actually cut down on violent crime.
Given the fact that violent crime has existed as long as the concept of âcrimeâ itself even during periods when all forms of violent (and many forms of non-violent) crime carried a capital penalty itâs not necessarily reasonable to assert that this is one of those cases where addressing the cause would be more effective than addressing the means. And as someone has already pointed out, itâs not like addressing the cause and means are mutually exclusive strategies.
Certainly Iâve never heard anyone complain that police are useless because they only address the results of crime and not the cause. (Well, OK, anti-gun control folks sometimes do make this argument.)
This is only technically true. The majority of felons who acquire guns seem to do so through straw purchases.1 Straw purchases are technically illegal but the reason theyâre so effective is because they actually are just legal purchases. A person goes into a store and purchases a gun legally and then turns around and illegally sells it to a felon. You canât prevent this from happening without somehow interfering with the person making the legal firearm purchase in this scenario â either by tracking what he does with his legally purchased firearm or placing a greater burden on his ability to buy one in the first place. Gun control opponents seem to think that gun control laws couldnât possibly ever affect straw purchases but thatâs prima facie an absurd contention.
- Well, when theyâre felons first and obtain guns second. Presumably some people first obtain guns legally and then become felons but Iâve noticed gun control opponents donât like to admit this is even a possibility and engage in all kinds of essentialist sophistry to insist legal gun owners and violent criminals are necessarily disjoint sets.
So after Newtown were you arguing with gun control opponents that itâs not really a mental health issue? Because I seem to remember a lot of folks arguing that it was.
Gangs get their guns through straw purchases. How do you restrict straw purchases without placing a greater burden on people legally purchasing guns?
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Itâs not a dodge. Itâs how the highest court in our country interprets that law. Do you claim they are âdodgingâ too? Itâs funny (in a sad way) how gun control advocates ignore that thing called the Supreme Court.
Further, I think that if you actually do a close reading of the Second Amendment (âA well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.â) you will find that there is no explicit mention that the people (i.e., those who are very clearly afforded the right to bear arms) be in said militia. One could easily argue that because militias need to be raised from the local citizenry, it would make sense to allow individuals to own guns that they could bring, so that the fledgling country in which this amendment was passed didnât need to produce stockpiled of weapons that werenât generally used, and all of the logistical stuff that goes with it.
You may not llike my argument, thats fine. You may not buy it, but itâs supported by whatâs written. As for the interpretation, well, thats up the the Court, and we know what theyâve said.
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Gun control opponents ignore the supreme courts decisions that they donât like when they argue too.
And yes, Scalia is dodging. Despite being an âoriginalistâ he consistently ignores the Federalist papers which provide context and notes on the original intent behind various facets of the constitution. Federalist #29 makes it very clear that the purpose of allowing firearms is to allow states to be able to field militias (the bill of rights contains both rights of individuals and rights of states).
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Point made, since he is clearly the only justice who interprets the 2A that way.
Heâs the one who makes such a big deal about being an originalist while ignoring all the historical evidence we have regarding the original intent of the constitution. If other justices take other interpretive strategies then they donât necessarily need to defer to the Federalist papers but Scalia in particular is just a hypocritical ideologue who dresses up his partisan rulings as âoriginalismâ.
Which decision are you talking about in particular? You werenât specific.
Just trying to help out.
i relay this information
without any fear that humanity
will take warning and reform
Forgive me if I missed the appointment to the SC of infallible gods. Far as I know, theyâre all human, and prone to bias and misjudgment at times like the rest of us (Citizens United being a case in point, IMHO).
As for what they agree with you on, do you mean your opinion that you have the right to keep and bear arms? If so, weâre not in agreement.
Whatâs at issue, since you decided to take it up, is that âmilitiaâ part of the amendment. You do address it, so kudos to you, but not in a convincing way. Your explanation of it is all about the past. Since we no longer live in a âfledgling country,â nor in the 18th century, doesnât that part of the amendment no longer apply to todayâs societal context? And if so, since itâs in the very same sentence that you and the SC claim support your individual right to own guns, doesnât it invalidate the whole sentence?
Plus, what @wysinwyg said.
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Iâll discuss this from a slightly different perspective that maybe will add a different colour to the discussion. First, the Supreme Court in the US addressed this issue, parsing out the meaning of âwell regulated militiaâ. It wasnât a precondition to having firearms, it was to allow them to form.
Iâm a Canadian, and enjoy shooting. We have all kinds of regulations that the US does not, including licensing and registration for certain types of firearms - what many of the posters here advocating for stricter controls would likely agree with. Hereâs the thing though - once you have those restrictions in place, it does not stop. We regularly have advocates of bans, have had actual confiscations without remuneration, and we are criminalized as soon as our license lapses - we donât get a reminder by the way. Gun control advocates in the US push when there is a random shooting usually stemming from mental health issues. Here it happens with gang violence, when the registered and licensed firearms arenât even the source - we are the politically expedient âlook like you are doing somethingâ minority to attack.
If you really want to save lives? Address poverty, hopelessness, and civic engagement. What causes people to pick up a gun with harmful intent in the first place?
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The entire amendment is a single sentence, and you find its true meaning difficult to parse without the guidance of the Supreme Court? SRSLY?
