I’m not doing reductio ad absurdam and I won’t pretend to speak for Brain Glutton. It’s just that if you accept that premise, then we do agree that there is a limit to what personal armament private citizens should be allowed to have. We just disagree on where that line in the sand is.
:mad: I know, the spoilsports! And downtown Tampa was practically shut down during the convention and a lot of streets were closed and all the public buildings had their windows boarded up. Apparently they did not want to risk any embarrassing incidents. Why, we might never be asked to host another Republican convention! :eek:
No, I do not have to acknowledge that at all. It is obviously wrong, and it would be absurd to claim it or to acknowledge any validity to such a claim.
What creates harm or the threat of harm is not the inanimate object, but the human being who chooses to use that object in a dangerous or harmful manner. The behavior is already legitimately criminalized. Criminalizing harmless and legitimate possession of an object simply because of the possibility that someone might choose to use it for a criminal purpose, accomplishes nothing useful, in this context.
Of course it accomplishes something useful:
The behavior being criminalized means only that it is punished, not prevented. The barn-door is locked but the horse is gone.
I think there is a valid argument to be made, regarding weapons of mass destruction, that the potential for harmful use is so great, and the potential for any legitimate use so nonexistent, that one’s right to possess such a device is trumped by the right of others not to be subjected to the danger that it causes.
It’d be interesting to see if anyone can come up with any scenario in which a common citizen could legitimately and safely set off a nuclear explosion.
But before there is any point in arguing about whether the Second Amendment even applies to such devices, we need to come to an agreement about devices which clearly fall under the scope of the Second Amendment.
The United States vs. Miller (1939) case, as flawed as it was, established that the Second Amendment applied to weapons which are suitable for use in connection with participation in a militia; and reinstated Jack Miller’s conviction for possessing a short-barreled shotgun,and transporting it across state lines, on the basis that it had not been called to the court’s notice that such a weapon had a military application.
The cases is badly flawed, of course, because nobody was present to argue for Miller’s side. Miller had passed away, after having had his conviction overturned by a lower court, on the basis that it violated his rights under the Second Amendment. The prosecution’s side, alone, appeared to argue its side to the Supreme Court.
Had someone been present to argue for Miller’s side, it would almost certainly have been called to the court’s attention that a “trench sweeper” was a standard-issue weapon in the army at the time, and so, by the logic which the court expressed in rendering its decision, it would have had to uphold Miller’s right to possess it.
It is also likely, had someone been present to argue for Miller’s side, that they would have convinced the court to a broader interpretation of the Second Amendment. As the recent Heller and McDonald decisions have affirmed that the Second Amendment affirms an individual right, independent of any participation in a militia, a consistent ruling would have to hold that a weapon being covered by the Second Amendment would not be dependent on that weapon’s suitability for militia-related uses.
But as it is, we have this precedent which clearly establishes that the weapons most (if not exclusively) protected by the Second Amendment are those that have a military application. In modern context, this would be a modern assault rifle, such as the M-16, such as is issued to every common soldier. Ironically, the very same law that the Sullivan ruling upheld makes it nearly impossible for any common civilian to “legally”possess exactly this sort of rifle. The controversy over the fraudulently-defined “assault weapons” is not over any application for which they may or may not be suitable, but for no other reason that that they bear a cosmetic resemblance to genuine military-suitable assault rifles. So not are we only not allowed to possess the very rifles most protected by the Second Amendment, but our right to possess other rifles is being threatened because of their cosmetic resemblance to the rifles which we most ought to be allowed to possess.
Before it even makes sense to start arguing about whether we should be allowed to possess weapons of mass destruction, we need to get to the point where we are allowed to freely possess the weapons which the Second Amendment most obviously was intended to allow us.
Oh, that’s easy: Swords and flintlock muskets. That’s a good, sound, originalist interpretation. 
As I’ve noted before, I think we should pass a law making it a federal crime to post anything on the Internet (or via broadcast or cable TV or radio) suggesting that the right to keep and bear arms should only apply to “swords and flintlock muskets”. (People would of course still be free to make such arguments by standing on a soapbox in the town square, or printing up some handbills on a printing press and passing them out to people on street corners or posting them in public places.)
Kudos to the gun nuts for getting worked up enough about a political issue to make something happen. I’d be more impressed though if it didn’t involve shutting out mail-in ballots. Can the right win anything in this country without somehow tampering with the voting system? Let’s see, there are voter ID laws, limiting registration and voting hours, gutting the VRA, setting up inconvenient polling places in minority districts, taxing parents of college students who vote on campus, and I’m sure I’m leaving some out.
Indeed, a much stronger case can certainly be made that the great men who authored the Bill of Rights could never have anticipated the technological advances that would occur with regard to communication and information processing, and that the First Amendment should therefore not cover any modern media such as telephony, radio, TV, or Internet; than can possibly be similarly made about technological advances in firearms.
They certainly knew that firearm technology had already progressed a great deal. They knew of a time when there were no firearms. They knew of the most primitive hand cannons, and of the progress from those to matchlocks, and from there to wheellocks and flintlocks. They knew of the development of rifled barrels. I have no doubt that they anticipated that in their future, there would be firearms that would be easier to load, and which could be fired at a faster rate and with greater accuracy; just as the firearms of their period were easier, faster, and more accurate than those of earlier times.
Modern firearms, while more technologically advanced than those of the late 18th century, operate on the same basic principle, and do not offer any features that would have been difficult for a late 18th century man to imagine. If the authors of the Second Amendment intended that there should be a limit to how far the technology could progress and still be covered by it, then they surely would have included language to this effect.
Franklin had done some experiments with electricity. Perhaps he had figured out enough about it to understand that it might some day make long-distant communication possible, on the scale of an electric telegraph. Could he have imagined that voice and sound would be able to be transmitted this way, as in a telephone? That’s a bit of a stretch. Could he have imagined radio or television? Probably not. Could he have imagined the Internet?
Could he have imagined that one day, any common man would be able to use a common, pocket-sized device to take a picture of something taking place, and within seconds, have that picture seen by people all over the world? I very much doubt it.
Will anyone who argues that the Second Amendment does not apply to modern firearms also argue that the First Amendment does not protect my right to take a picture with my cellphone, and post it on the Internet?
Certainly the FFs never envisioned sexting and none (save perhaps Benjamin Franklin) would have approved of it, but that’s the kind of trap originalism leads you into, so think carefully about it.
I think you’re misapplying the term originalism. Most of the Bill of Rights has been consistently held to refer to fundamental principles a free society should not abrogate. Pro-gun people include the 2nd Amendment in that broad interpretation- that a democratic government shouldn’t disarm the people. The point of Bob Blaylock’s example was to show how outrageous the logic of dismissing the 2nd Amendment is when applied to other articles of the Bill of Rights.
Now it is legitimate to ask whether a freedom can be taken to a reductio ad absurdam length (publishing classified documents in wartime, private ownership of nuclear weapons, etc.). But no one would argue that because the Bill of Rights doesn’t confer a boundless libertarian immunity from government authority, that it’s provisions can be violated whenever the government decides it would be convenient. Pro-gun people simply expect 2nd Amendment cases to fall under strict scrutiny, whereas the gun control crowd doesn’t seem to even recognize that a fundamental right is involved at all.
All true. However, it is also true, as I posted in this GD thread:
Good for you. Here’s your gold star.
First, let’s pass a law banning the practice of self-congratulatorily referring to one’s own previous posts as if anyone else remembers or cares.
Beyond that, would you also pass a law requiring one to be consistent in one’s reading of the Constitution, i.e. allowing modern meanings of words in some senses and requiring late-17th-century meanings in others? That would, perhaps, reduce the endless stream of tiresome insistence that “well-regulated militia” does not really mean the National Guard, and that the Holy Founding Fathers meant arms to be more than, yes, swords and flintlock muskets (deal with it).
One gets much farther on this board by presenting and defending actual arguments than by merely dismissing others’, and themselves personally too. By now you should have realized that.
Someone with a weapon can cause more harm than someone without one in the same state of mind. That should not require explanation, but apparently for you it does.
IOW, the same tired old argument that you have to wait for someone to be dead first for you to be willing to do anything about it. Sad.
Saying the Second Amendment should only apply to “swords and flintlock muskets” is not an argument. It’s a quip, and a tired one at that.
You think the Second Amendment is obsolete? Fine. Work to have it repealed.
Well of course it doesn’t mean that-- the National Guard isn’t a militia. Despite the Second Amendment assuring us that militias are essential to the security of a free state, we haven’t had any in decades.
I wonder why nobody’s up in arms about this blatant violation?
Really, though, that’s similar to what they meant. A formal local group training together at the local level.
Ready to assist other states, or in national defense, if needed, but the Founders didn’t figure anybody could get anywhere quick enough to be useful.
It’s used only in response to those who insist on a 17th-century reading of one half of the single-sentence amendment, and a 21st-century reading for the other half.
Speaking of tired quips. :rolleyes:
tl;dr could you summarize your impression of the Dick Act?