If you can come up with some source like the Federalist Papers, in which contemporaneous writers actually discuss the advanced weaponry envisioned by Thomas Jefferson when he penned the Bill of Rights, then I’ll believe this claptrap. The statement “shall” can equally mean we are looking into the future, so that future governments don’t allow it to become true that people cannot have arms. Not necessarily that the arms will become advanced and therefore even the advanced ones are exempt from regulation. I think you are misreading the 2nd Amendment horribly.
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‘almost’ Orwellian?
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Well, we don’t have the Two Minute Hate.
Yet.
Yes I can.
To infringe is to limit. Dont limit me. Now, or in the future. I am here now. I will be in the future.
Agreed it is an assumption that things will change but the path shall not be infringed upon.
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I personally see no compelling reason for a wild west of gun laws. I think the US being awash with guns is a major reason for our high crime and murder rates. Sure, you can kill someone with a knife, but it is a hell of a lot harder and takes vastly more intent. Guns don’t enable all murders, but they sure as hell make murder a lot easier. The US high (for a first world country) murder rate of the US can be directly tied to the fact that the country is awash with guns. All but banning guns in Chicago does fuck when any idiot can travel one state over and buy a pile of guns from Walmart and resell them in Chicago.
That said, I actually agree with the OP. Nuanced interpretation of the constitution is how someone can twist the fourth and fifth amendments to mean other than the blatantly obvious and not nuanced thing that it stated. If the US wants to strictly regulate guns, it should amend the constitution, not try and ignore the icky parts. The point if a constitution is to do away with nuance and set down ironclad protections that take more than a little inertia and brief majority to overturn. Even if the US had lost its mind completely and tried to repeal the fourth and fifth amendment after 9/11, the time the process takes would have forced us to make sure that is what we really wanted, and it would have taken more than a simple scared majority to make the change. That is what constitutions are for.
Personally, as destructive as I think guns are, the regulations we attempt are utterly worthless. Assault weapon bans for instances are hilarious political theater and nothing else. Boring old hand guns kill a couple of orders of magnitude more people than assault weapons. It is like adding rear seat side curtain airbags to a car, but not not having front air bags or a crumple zone.
The gun thing is more cultural war than anything real. Swinging regulation one way or another does absolutely nothing to change murder rates. If you want to reduce the number of people getting killed in the US, you would need to do an Australia style mass confiscation, and you sure as shit can’t do that with the US constitution unamended. The kicking around of the the regulations beyond that is just theater for partisans. Banning AK47s just pisses off red necks. It doesn’t make you any safer from being shot in the face with a handgun by a criminal or pissed lover.
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I wonder if I should post the violent crime rates of U.K. vs U.S. vs Mexico. That would start to much I think.
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That is really debatable, given one of the stories that came out of GITMO about the guards there having to attend showings of violence committed by insurgents…
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Thanks. I guess I just read it more along the lines of Justice Stevens rather than Scalia, i.e. the government may not limit the formation of a well regulated (trained and disciplined) militia, which of course would require the use of arms.
That, to me, displays a direct reason for non-infringement. And certainly there are some kind of arms that have been restricted from militia use, so whatever path of advanced arms you’re talking about has indeed been infringed upon (rocket launchers, nuclear arms…)
So, I disagree, but thank you for explaining your thought process.
Salgak, you have GOT to be kidding. We have the 24/7 HATE. Just turn on CNN after yet another school shooting.
I like your thinking. Cueing the True Believer Constitutional Scholar Brigade in 3…2…1…
Understood,
I do not disagree with the thought process of mass killing weapons. I really do not agree in times of war. Dis-associative weapons such as uranium munitions, nuclear, or any indiscriminate weapons should be a different conversation due to the fact that defense for a humans rights are obviously forgone.
Amazingly, as citizens, we can have this respectful dialog with out arguing beyond reason. That I thank you Jim. I wish politicians would just understand reason with respect for our ability to live as free people, without the fear of being judged. I think the NSA is beyond criminal. I am dearly offended that most citizens in the United States seem to accept oversight committees or transparency. If you did not break the rules you would not have even worry about it - So Don’t.
For those who think that any amount of this is needed by the NSA: May I remind everyone the choice by Hitler or Hirohito (emperor of japan during WWII) not to invade the United States was out of fear that every citizen was armed. A famous quote from Hirohito:
“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”
We do not need fear to be our motivator. We are strong as we are.
I was speaking in the general case: we don’t have an official nationwide daily hate target. Although they’re really trying to use the Tea Party as the scapegoat more often than not: that happens here on BB as well. . .
Can the gun debate be taken elsewhere? It’s a rathole that distracts from the topic at hand.
(Cue Robert Solow: “Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers.” Apparently everything reminds some folks of the 2nd amendment.)
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Well, assuming it gets to the Supreme Court, it will take 5 to reach a verdict… and if things go the way you fear I suspect Alito (!) has just as great a chance as writing the opinion as Roberts does. If I had to guess I would think the decision, at worst, will come out like an amalgamation of the concurrences in US v. Jones, with Alito joining the liberal wing and determining that the scope of monitoring facilitated by new technology makes this different than the traditional investigative techniques allowed under Smith v. Maryland’s conception of what reasonable expectations of privacy are.
Blatantly obvious? Not nuanced? I think that if you examine contemporaneous treatment of the constitution, you might be surprised at what was (and was not) considered blatantly obvious. Quick and easy examples include that the First Amendment was not seen as outlawing prosecution for blasphemy, and the Fourteenth Amendment not prohibiting segregation. The Fourth Amendment itself explicitly demands nuance by only requiring warrants for “unreasonable” searches and seizures.
A better start would be to simply answer a previous question and show how the text of the Second Amendment anticipates the huge advances in personal armament.
Hey, not only is this quote typically attributed to Yamamoto, and not Hirohito, but it’s something that Yamamoto never said.
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Yes, and the opposition’s logic is that somehow, even though it is our right not to have the government infringe upon our natural rights, they should be allowed weapons vastly superior to those allowed any ordinary citizen.
Now. Tell me again how that guarantees my rights against the government?? Just as a practical problem alone, the logic fails sadly. As a problem of principle, what fails practically, likewise fails to succeed as a matter of principle. If the government was either morally superior or used better judgment than I am capable of…why is this article on a challenge to phone surveillance in existence in the first place? Because they can be trusted to honor our rights?
Sadly comical place to try to argue against 2nd Amendment rights. Sadly. Good place to thank Snowden and the plaintiffs, though!
Judge Leon and his family better have their tax records in order, because the audit’s coming.
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this quote irks me a bit:
“The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack,” the judge wrote.
i hope a single case wouldn’t change the judges opinion of the constitutionality of the mass surveillance.
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That’s a good point. Yet, the judge isn’t wrong about the efficacy of the NSA’s data hoovering.
Let’s assume this ruling stands, all the way up to SCotUS.
What does it actually mean? Will anything change? It’s not like they haven’t been ignoring laws and rules already, why would that stop after this?
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Ben Franklin, “Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.”
Pawn Shop Clerk: “Hey, just what you see, pal!”
Ben Franklin, [Looks around] “Muzzleloading flintlock musket, with bayonet attachment.”
Pawn Shop Clerk: “You know your weapons, buddy. Any one of these is ideal for home defense.”
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