I’m curious, how far would you take that logic? There are virtually no restrictions or even proposed restrictions on owning the type of muzzle-loaded muskets that were around during the time the bill of rights was written. But if someone were to invent a handheld laser-based weapon that could cut a building in half from 10 miles away, do you think it would be protected by the 2nd amendment? How do you determine which weapon “innovations” are constitutionally protected from heavy regulation and which are not?
For some weird reason people (both 2nd amendment advocates and those fighting for more regulation) often tend to forget that the 2nd amendment doesn’t mention firearms at all. It just says “arms,” which could include everything from clubs to missiles to biological weapons and nukes, and there are a wide variety of weapons invented over the last century or so that virtually everyone argrees should be heavily regulated.
It is ridiculous to distrust the government, and to be suspicious of abuse of regulatory power. Obviously whenever the state makes restrictions, it’s purely to help us. Anyone who thinks otherwise is paranoid.
In a sense the definition of “well-regulated militia” already exists. When you turn 18, you must register for the draft (Selective Service) thereby making you part of the (possibly called to duty) militia. Well-regulated I have always taken to mean as applied to the firearm itself, from the era in which it was written, that is, an era when firearms were hand-made, not factory produced like today’s modern firearms, with amazing accuracy and function right out of the box. Well-regulated then meant to take your firearm to your local militia captain and have it inspected, sighted in, tested. Regulated. I would also think that proving one’s proficiency with the firearm was part being called to serve, and indeed there are old descriptions of militias that say just that - you had to prove you were competent to use a gun if called to serve. So that would translate to modern times as periodic qualifying. Which I would have no problem with.
I agree that he NRA is blowing this opportunity but as we all know the NRA turned it’s back on common sense long ago, to the great disappointment of many of it’s members.
Well, to stop mass shootings you’ll have to remove everything that can cause one. That means that all weird laser weapons and the like are right out. As for guns that exist today, you need to restrict it to, basically, 1870s tech minus lever-action rifles because those fire fast. Even with revolvers you need to make sure that break-open models don’t exist, because with a speedloader and some practice you can shoot those damned fast, too. Probably have to mandate revolver frames have weakening sections so that they’d shatter if you modified them to break open.
If you want to allow the possibility of mass shootings (and fight them using some other method) you can be a lot more lenient and then the current regime with some light licencing requirements to reduce accidental deaths would be just fine. But nobody wants this.
Someone with a stockpile of loaded muskets could still theoretically commit a medium-sized mass shooting, so I don’t think that there are many legislative proposals out there that would eliminate he possibility of someone committing one. But what is out there are a whole lot of proposals that would drastically MITIGATE the frequency and body count of these mass shootings. For example, if guns bought by civilians were generally required to have fixed magazines with a limited capacity, some nutjobs would maybe still find a way around that from time to time but he majority of mass shooters would not have the skill to take down more than a handful of people at a time before taking significant time to reload.
If you believe the hype then you’d think everyone on the left wants to ban guns, and everyone on the right owns a gun, except that’s not remotely true. Two of my best friends, both extremely left, own guns. I have owned guns in the past, and can imagine owning one again if I really needed to.
I think the point of this comic is that The NRA dominates the debate and keeps us from even trying to find a solution that doesn’t involve more guns. The 2nd Amendment is imperfect, it was made in a time when all guns were muzzle-loading, and nobody was stockpiling military cannons in their barn. The simple fact that it’s an amendment says a lot, it was tacked on to address a particular concern, and like the 18th Amendment it can be repealed, or we can enact another Amendment to specify what exactly “the right to keep and bear arms” means in the 21st century, the same way the 14th Amendment finally specified that former slaves counted as citizens (when you’d think a person born in the US counted as a citizen already according to the Constitution.)
as a RET soldier…I see civilians with weapons and ammo that were in my day classified as military grade.
Example: armor piercing rounds. Necessary in combat against armored vehicles and combatants, is this what a civilian needs for hunting or home defense or sporting target shooting? the answer is no.
And I meant automatic, not semi automatic specifically for the reason you then outlined…which on that topic your entire response contains a tone of condescension. It is difficult to have a desire to engage someone in a discussion when that happens. I am hoping it was unintentional.
The overwhelming majority of those calling for practical and intelligent legislation are not seeking to ban all guns. That argument does not fly.
18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(17), 922(a)(7), (8); 27 C.F.R. § 478.37. Specific exceptions exist for armor-piercing ammunition that is manufactured for certain federal and state government divisions, exportation, or testing. 18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(17)(C), 922(a)(7), 922(a)(8); 27 C.F.R. § 478.37. The Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) may also exempt certain armor-piercing ammunition primarily intended for sporting or industrial purposes. 27 C.F.R. § 478.148. ︎
Now, you can buy ammunition which is good at going through armor by virtue of its caliber, i.e. there’s no law against 7.62x25mm Tokarev or 5.7x28mm ammo, but you cannot get either with hardened steel penetrators. If you see some in the wild I suggest contacting the ATF.
I don’t make a habit of correcting people, but in this instance I made an exception because automatic weapons are, effectively, impossible to buy, and those few that due to legal loopholes can be purchased are so rare that they are hardly ever used for criminal purposes. The number of traces of fully automatic firearms in 1994 (just the fragment of data I happen to have) is 0.1%.
It was.
Interesting. So leave everything as-is but replace detachable box magazines with some sort of internal magazine of limited size? How would you load that? Would revolvers be OK?
We aren’t trying to make mass shootings impossible. A mechanically skilled psychopath with adequate resources could make a machine gun and ammo from scratch even in a country where all private firearms are illegal.
We’re trying to make it require a NON-TRIVIAL EFFORT to commit a mass shooting, thus dramatically reducing their frequency.
Quite true…as long as there are people and guns there won’t be an ‘endgame,’ things just evolve. If humans are gone and the world is only populated by robots and microorganisms, there might be an endgame but then robots might desire guns and keep them around.
Yes…if you make it a non-trivial matter you buy time. during that time there is a chance a potential shooter might either come to their senses or do something else to make a statement (suicide for instance). Maybe they decide to do drugs instead and get sidetracked.
You don’t just buy time, you dissuade any shooter who doesn’t have skill and resourcefulness and self-discipline.
That alone rules out a very large percentage of mass shooters because most people who possess those traits find something more productive to do with their lives than commit a senseless act of mass murder.
You could start by not banning government funded scientists from investigating anything slightly related to shooting deaths. Or perhaps by allowing the national gun registry to use computers.
You could even (gasp!) require owners to get a license. Obviously no-one is expecting common sense when it comes to Yanks and guns so they’ll probably be handed out with Happy Meals, but it could be a start.
I’d guess it’s from one of the sources used by the colleges that send out marketing materials to high school seniors. Or perhaps one of the sources that the credit card companies use when they send out their offers for first credit cards. Nice to see bulk mail marketing being used for a good purpose here.
I agree with this. We obviously disagree on the degree of risk.
o_0 source? Or perhaps definition of “working class”. I know a lot more average middle to lower class people who shoot vs rich ones. Especially when it comes to small towns and rural areas.
Why does everyone who points this out stops reading half way through? “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The people! I mean holy cow, it says it right there. The point is, if you have a well armed populace, one will have a large pool of people to pull from for a Militia. Being part of a Militia is NOT a requirement for the right. I am not sure why they enumerated the reason here, but that is one of many reasons if you read letter and essays of the time.
And to further clarify, because you keep saying “well regulated” like you mean well regulated with laws. Well regulated in this context means a Militia that is will equipped, maintained, and drilled; working properly. “A well regulated watch keeps perfect time.” The word “regulate” is used twice more in the Constitution/Bill of Rights, but not “well regulated”, because there is a difference. It is a more archaic meaning not used much any more, but these definitions are still in the larger dictionaries.
Uh, they do have standards. Ever hear of SAAMI? They are the ones who put together all the specs and standards for ammunition. So when you buy a .30-06 bullet you know that it’s dimensions fall within these specs, and the powder load will produce this high of PSI, and if you make a gun that will shoot that round, it needs to withstand at least that much force.
Gun deaths are not a problem of lack of safety standards. Over half of all gun deaths are from people willfully killing themselves with them. The other half is people willfully using their guns to hurt other people. Neither of these are from lack of safety standard or training. We have 500-800 accidental gun deaths per year, which given ~80 million users is very small. And of those accidents, many if not most of them are not from lack of understanding safety rules, but from lack of following them.
Where and what kind? True AP rounds are very rare and I’ve only seen a handful of examples from WWII. I can’t recall all the legalities and I can’t look it up right now, but unless you know people sitting on old stock, I doubt it is true AP.
Something like M855 has a steel penetrator, but it isn’t actually armor piercing. It won’t go through AR500 steel or armored vehicles. Yes it will go through more concrete soft cover than the standard M193 ball ammo. Some of the cheap Russian ammo also has steel cores, but it is because they are cutting costs.
At any rate, the hunting ammo out there is way more “lethal” than any military rounds out there. The whole “military grade” crap is just a label. The Barrett .50caliber rifle was made by and for long range shooting enthusiasts. So that would be a “civilian” rifle, right? It took over 10 years for the Army to show interest in them, and then bam - same rifle is now “military grade”? And don’t get me started on mil-spec. Mil-spec is the minimum specs something needs to be considered reliable. You can easily make better stuff than the military uses. Cheap hunting rifles are more accurate than the average military rifle.
This may be true, but there are calls to ban huge swaths of fire arms. And many of the people making calls to action don’t know what they are talking about. It is like Congress crafting internet law when half of them are still on AOL. The perception of what is “bad” and “too dangerous” for many people is based primarily on looks and emotions. When it comes to trying to nail down what “functionality” to ban, you end up either banning cosmetic or certain features, or broad features that encompass a wide range of weapons.
This isn’t a good meme, but it provides an example.
Um… they “address” this all the time, which is why there are so many laws now/recently broadening gun rights. Concealed carry in schools/universities/churches/bars in some states, for example.
Instead of opposing all regulation, they are in a perfect spot to set standards for “A well regulated Militia,” implement their own self-regulation, propose meaningful legislation, and participate in this conversation constructively.
I think “militia” is already well defined, most recently in the Miltia Act of 1903. Frankly I would feel much better if owners of guns were required to be reserve National Guard members (if of an appropriate age etc. to be such), or something like that.
Wait, if lack of training is never a reason idiots do shitty, irresponsible, and deadly things with guns, then why did you say this?
If someone willfully using their gun to harm someone else is going to happen regardless of how well-trained someone is, then how and why would the Pink Pistols have been able to help prevent this poor previously-responsible gun owner from shooting out her back window in a fit of road rage?
Good to see you’re still on team Suicides Don’t Matter, though.
You sound like Marco Rubio right before the crowd cheered his incredulous remark that we’d have to ban over 2,000 kinds of guns to enact an “assault weapons” ban.
And you’re right, that is a really shitty meme, because not all of those guns behave the same way. The top three appear to be single-fire bolt-action rifles, which need to be manually reloaded after every shot. The remaining two have magazines, meaning they can be fired multiple times in much more rapid succession (and many, many times with extended magazines). Scopes mean they can be fired much more accurately at long range, which is the literal definition of a sniper rifle, yes. And is that a prohibition-on-automatic-fire-bypassing bump stock on the last one, or just a non-bump-stock-y shock absorber? I don’t give a shit if they all fire the same ammunition and are technically the same “model”. They have different behaviors and use cases, and should be regulated accordingly.
Gun reform is coming. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but it is coming, because the current environment of mass shootings every other day is completely unacceptable and unsustainable. The NRA and its supporters have a choice to make. They can continue to scream that any reform is a slippery slope to a tyrannical government assault on our freedoms, and that libruls will have to pry their guns from their cold dead hands, OR they can act like fucking grown-ups and contribute their expertise to crafting policy that isn’t dominated by the hysterical know-nothings they’re so deathly afraid of.
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