All of those things are completely over-sensationalized and optional. Children are in far more danger traveling to school than being shot. They are also in more danger of suffocation or poisoning. Yes all schools should have better security since a few schools have become the targets of a few homicidal crazy people, but bulletproof bookbags, really???
Realistically not much, because there isn’t a big push for it and I suppose not many people protested when they were banned. But yes I think they should be legal and responsible citizens should be trusted with them.
Of course there have to be some limits, like I said explosives and biological weapons can indiscriminately spread harm even with no one is near them. They are a danger just by existing, but a rifle or a chainsaw is not.
I will agree that when more weapons exist, they’re used more. That’s just common sense. Same is true of vehicles, vehicles exist and people will be harmed by them. If you get a swimming pool, your chances of drowning go way up. I don’t see how that’s an argument against firearms.
I fully believe the 2A does include individual rights, due to the statement “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” “The people” are you and me, and are the same people mentioned in the preamble of the Constitution.
I have no idea what you mean. Of course everyone has a right to life, assault and murder are highly illegal. I believe you also have a right to defend your life and the life of your loved ones and that is what the 2A guarantees.
We both want the same thing, us and our loved ones to be safe. The approach of gun grabbers is to disarm us and trust the police, who are always X minutes away and may shoot you if your skin is the wrong color or they distrust something about you. My approach is to be my own first responder and protect myself and my loved ones, then call the police for backup or to report what happened. The police have no legal obligation to protect you, the supreme court has ruled that: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
On a different note (as we never seem to get anywhere in these threads because we just keep talking past each other) prior to the 1994 “assault weapons” ban, I don’t recall them being much of a big deal. Most of them were cheap and poor quality, but it was fun to unload a magazine on something.
But it seemed that at least around 1994 when the talk was of banning them, meaning that one could no longer buy new ones or the price would go up, they became the “in” thing to have among gun owners. First, because one should “get 'em while the gettin’s good” and second as more of a general fuck you to people who were going to tell us we couldn’t or shouldn’t have them.
Same with “high capacity” magazines. If a gun held 7, 10, 12, 15, or 30 rounds, that was just a feature that you took into account with everything else. But once 10 became the magic number, then everyone wanted the highest capacity magazine available for the same two reasons.
And even though the AWB expired in 2004, that was another reason to go buy a bunch of these guns in case the ban came back and the prices went up again (although they stayed somewhat high, much higher than before, because of the popularity).
Today it is a line in the sand whereas before the ban, not many people actually cared about the scary looking guns. It’s almost like Coors beer east of the Mississippi. When it was illegal everyone was smuggling Coors from out west and talking about how it was the greatest thing ever. Now that it is legal, nobody cares.
So I don’t really have a position on that, just an observation.
That’s not really a sound argument either. Explosives that don’t detonate aren’t an existential danger. Explosives in the general population in the hands of someone who intends to cause mass casualties are - like, you know, AR-15s.
It is statistically very unlikely that a child will be killed in a mass-murder school shooting, but the overall risk of children being shot is quite substantial.
False. Poisoning, including drug overdose, accounted for slightly over 1000 of those deaths and suffocation, including SIDS, for about 1500. Even taken together, that’s still fewer deaths than those caused by firearms.
It’s an argument against having a constitutional right to firearms. Firearms, like vehicles and swimming pools, are dangerous but sometimes useful objects. I have nothing against most people owning firearms or vehicles or swimming pools if they want them and abide by the legal regulations governing them, but that doesn’t mean that their ownership should be a constitutional right.
No, the Second Amendment says nothing about “defending your life and the life of your loved ones”. It simply declares a right to keep and bear arms. To the extent that it explicitly associates any purpose with that right, the purpose is to support “a well regulated militia”, not individual self-defense.
Now, if you have a right to firearm ownership, then of course you are free to use your firearms to defend your life and the life of your loved ones. In practice, of course, a whole lot of gun owners use their firearms to endanger their lives and the lives of their loved ones, which as you noted is a common-sense consequence.
It’s fascinating how other developed countries with more restrictive gun laws are far more successful at actually achieving that safety than the US is.
I agree with you that that was the Founders’ rationale for including the Second Amendment in the Constitution, as also for their opposition to a standing army. That is, they wanted state forces and citizen groups to have approximate parity in armed conflict, to facilitate resistance to state tyranny.
Given the modern situation of weapons technology and access, however, that 18th-century strategy has become completely obsolete. For all intents and purposes, the modern government does have a monopoly on weapons, at least to the point of having a guarantee of victory in armed conflict with citizen groups.
Although I recognize the downsides to the government having, effectively, a monopoly on weapons, I think it’s by far the lesser of two evils when compared to the alternative: namely, citizen groups having anything like parity with state forces in modern weaponry. Individual ownership of weapons like tanks and missiles, not to mention nuclear bombs, is a recipe for civil disaster.
And the current compromise of allowing individual citizens to own “junior” or “lite” versions of real military arsenals, in the form of multiple automatic weapons and so forth, may prolong and exacerbate the bloodiness of citizen/state armed conflicts, but won’t actually change their ultimate outcome. In the long run, the US Real Military is always going to be able to outgun and outfight citizen groups’ Junior Lite Military organizations. We will have to come up with other ways to resist state tyranny effectively.
That’s why I support repealing the Second Amendment. It no longer achieves the purpose its authors designed it for, and it serves no other useful purpose. Mind you, I’m in favor of continuing to permit legally regulated gun ownership just as we permit legally regulated car ownership, but neither of them has any business being enshrined as a constitutional right in this day and age.
It is nearly impossible to own a automatic weapon in the USA. I wish people would learn something about guns before they spout off opinions. This is like saying “people shouldn’t own rocket cars” with the assumption being such things are common.
Home defense and hunting were also reasons, and they was such a given that hardly anyone bothered to mention them. Home defense is now the single most important need.
And you dont need a permit to own a car. Just to drive it on the public highways. Just like you dont need a permit to* own* a gun, but you do need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public.
I presume you’re referring specifically to fully automatic weapons? AIUI, other types of firearms such as semi-automatic ones are also correctly described as “automatic”, which is why I used the term. But not everybody seems to agree on that.
AFAICT, the idea in gun-rights rhetoric is to keep the use of ordinary terminology sufficiently flexible that any statements by supporters of gun regulations can be nitpicked for technical inaccuracy or ambiguity of one sort or another. Then you can always complain that those damn gun-grabbers don’t even know what they’re talking about.
So? There were a whole lot of things in colonial society that were likewise “given” necessities of life, but most of them didn’t get a write-up in the Constitution. The reason that firearms ownership was uniquely made a constitutional right was because of its perceived importance, in the context of “a well regulated militia”, in protecting the citizen against the state, as I said.
Fine; like I said, I have nothing against reasonable and law-abiding people choosing to own guns, for whatever reason, in a legally regulated fashion. I just think it’s nonsense to suggest that gun ownership in this day and age should still be a Constitutional right.
Who said you did? Did you perhaps misread my verb “permit”, as in “permit legally regulated […] ownership”, as meaning “require a permit to own […]”?
A few second’s thought shows three obvious flaws in your simplistic argument:
Not all borders are equally porous, obviously. The border around cities and states* within the US is nonexistent. The borders at the north and south are porous but monitored, particularly at convenient roadways. The border around england is a goddamned ocean. These things are not the same, which will lead to flaw 3 shortly.
If the gun control laws were enacted EVERYWHERE, the porous nature of the ill-defined borders around cities and states wouldn’t matter, would it?
England, yo. Just reiterating. It’s right there. Just sitting there. Lurking. Watching. Destroying certain absurd arguments by its mere existence.
Okay, there’s some variance. Hawaii has a somewhat more solid border around it than, say, Colorado, for example.
Seriously, why did you say something so obviously absurd? Did you think it was actually a compelling argument in any way?
And I wish people would become engineers before having an opinion on automobile safety.:rolleyes:
Okay, fine, it’s not an “automatic” weapon – what’s your friggin point? I honestly don’t care to know about guns and you know what? I don’t have to - that’s not a necessary condition to participate in the discussion. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the kinds of weapons that allow one person – one individual – to kill 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 people in under 2 minutes are widely available and easy to purchase legally. The point is, they should not be.
No, automatic, unless talking about a pistol, means fully automatic, not semi-automatic. Since pistols are rarely fully auto, it can be shortened.
Yes, that was what was debated- the need for a militia vs a standing army. Which is why the militia clause is there- it was added on. However, just because that’s all that was debated doesnt mean that’s only what the 2nd meant. Most of the First wasnt debated.
You said "regulated"- in most states the ownership of a car is not regulated.
But gun control laws wont be enacted* everywhere. *
England is the size of a state. And a island.
People wont to pass gun control laws. When the laws are passed and they turn out to have no significant effect on violent crime, they then say either the laws werent strong enuf or the laws were made useless by guns coming over the borders. The thought that gun control laws (at least in the uSA) as simply useless wont occur to them.
So, since your argument seem to be we have to get 48 states all on board with the same gun control laws- or they are useless- and since 48 states will NOT ever do so- then you are agreeing that gun control laws are useless. Why do various states pass laws that do nothing but annoy and harass their law abiding citizens if we all agree they are useless?
Total gun confiscation is impractical and unconstitutional and you know it; the only people who have proposed total gun confiscation are in fact the people who have an extremely liberal view of gun rights. It’s a fake “slippery slope” and imaginary issue that has been concocted by gun rights advocates in response to what the overwhelming majority of this country, many of who are gun owners or occasional recreational gun users, want to see.
I don’t know what you think you mean by “regulated” here, but obviously there are legal regulations, in all states, governing the purchase or transfer of title of an automobile. Are you trying to say that legal ownership of a vehicle doesn’t necessarily require a legal authorization to operate said vehicle? Because that is true, and nobody’s been disputing it.
Of course everyone has a right to life, assault and murder are highly illegal. I believe you also have a right to defend your life and the life of your loved ones and that is what the 2A guarantees.