Haven’t seen a politician dumb enough to write a law saying you do not have a right to defend yourself. Just sit there and let someone kick your ass. Despite this the SCOTUS saw fit to find a right to self defense.
I give you credit for recognizing that the Justices are today entirely political players rather than upholders of strict Constitutionality. (I almost said “unabashed political players,” but there does remain enough abashment that both Kagan and her Senatorial questioners are pretending there’s a principle at stake.)
However, I still put the chance of a SCOTUS ruling in favor of a handgun ban at pretty near zero in the remaining lifetime of the republic.
Which I fear does not entirely answer the question…
This was known as the “hand grenade strawman” argument back in the USENET days. A hand grenade is an area weapon and a high explosive , not an individual weapon. Just as dynamite and blasting caps must be regulated heavily, thus high explosives such as hand grenades. I don’t even know why this is open to question.
I see. So no in-between, either everyone (which you emphasized by italics) in the entire United States does it, or you can’t support it?
Looks like I’m still hanging here. You do what the gun control folks want (registration, fingerprinting, photographs, as many background checks as a cop, written training, practical training, mental health records checked), and it’s still not good enough. And folks wonder why pro-gun people fear the slippery slope?
That depends on who that “someone” is. There’s an obvious and foreseeable incentive for a corrupt government to forbid you from defending yourself from them.
Ya never know. I bet there were some slave owners once upon a time who would have deemed the current state of affairs as regards race as an impossibility in their republic.
I doubt it will happen in my lifetime (if ever) and I don’t think the SCOTUS would “ban” handguns. Rather they would allow such laws to be written (or make laws restrictive enough as to be nearly a ban).
Stranger things have happened.
I do not have a problem with the items you listed.
You have the right to bear arms. Arms is defined as a weapon*. A hand grenade is a weapon.
I don’t even know why this is open to question.
It’s not good enough because not everyone is required to do it. Those are loopholes so large as to make what you went through mere window dressing. As such it is not surprising that you having gone through that provides zero impact on gun violence. Great that you did it. Wish everyone else who purchased a gun did too.
Pretty sure you cannot defend yourself from them today.
If cops start to beat on me to arrest me I doubt I will get far if I turn around and kick their asses (assuming I could which I doubt) then claim self defense.
Ask the Branch Davidians how that worked for them. If the government wants you they will get you. No amount of “self defense” claims will save you from them.
To clarify further:
You noted that you have a right to “effective” means of self defense and noted that stun guns and such were not sufficient to meet the “effective” criteria.
So, if you are heading down that road where does it stop? Why not hand grenades and/or machine guns? They can be even more effective as a means of self defense than your handgun and you have the right to effective means right? Stun guns can be effective. Handguns more so, machine guns even more.
Again, it is a straw man. Or it would be in the hands of people educated enough about weaponry to know what an utterly silly argument it is.
Throw a grenade in your house and you destroy the house and likely kill yourself. Rifles, besides the size and handling issues for self-defense purposes, also tend to fire rounds that are going to over-penetrate your target (and your wall, and your neighbors house, and your neighbor, etc). Machine guns are supression weapons. Other than in World War I trench warfare where thousands of men conveniently walked right into the maw of death, they tend to be used these days to keep heads down in combat and scatter the enemy. Hell, the standard infantry weapons are not “machine guns” - they don’t do automatic fire - because it not only isn’t necessary, it wastes too much ammo that soldiers have to carry around.
But my friend, you would certainly agree that the rights outlined in the Constitution are not absolute, yes? Can you fraudulently yell “fire” in a crowded theatre? Have the concepts of libel and slander been stricken? What about hate speech?
I’ve never, ever argued that the 2nd was a sweeping right with no limits. It like many (all?) other rights must have limits. And in the context of the 2nd, “arms” will be what the USSC says it is.
OK, OK, you tagged me making a generalization. Mea culpa. My definition of “arms” would be "individual weapons which are not inherently high explosives which are intended to be used against an individual. So machine guns are allowed (and they are allowed today under the NFA), but not hand grenades, land mines, rocket launchers, tanks. We must also exclude “weapons of mass destruction”, such as nuclear, bacterial, and chemical weapons.
And speaking of chemical weapons, I’d define "arms"further but I must quit tonight as I’ve been sort of temporarily blinded by camphor doing a chemistry experiment for Cecil and need to rest my eyes. I yield the floor to the Gentleman from…Whack-a-Mole land. 
You are allowed to have hand grenades. If you can afford one, you must go through the registration process entailed within the National Firearms Act of 1934, grenades legally defined as a Destructive Device. Any weapon covered by that Act is strictly controlled, and anybody using one would be almost immediately found out.
And it is utterly silly how gun advocates incessantly nitpick the minutiae and say, “Well, in X situation that would be absurd so you are dumb and know nothing!”
While it may be true that in X-situation a given weapon is absurd in Y-situation it may make a world of sense. That is why we have the variety of weapons we do. Each fits a particular role well that others do not.
Do you know when you will need a weapon to defend yourself? What the situation will be?
It was said earlier a stun gun is ineffective. Actually they can be effective. Depends on the situation. A stun gun may suffice just fine where a handgun would be overkill.
If it is the government coming after you Gestapo style and you want to resist I’ll bet you’d want something more than a pistol (as some in this thread seem to actually be concerned about…indeed in many of the gun control threads it comes out that gun advocates feel the real reason for the 2nd Amendment is protection from the government).
Portland, Oregon does not have regulations in place requiring dumpsters to be bear proof. Vail, Colorado does have bear-proof trash can regulations, but they still have problems with bears coming into town. The only conclusion I can draw is that bear-proof trash can regulations make the bear problem worse.
A rigorous study of data with reasonable arguments is not the same thing as a slapdash, “I got my cite from this fringe, wacko blog” study. That’s not new information. You could give that self-same quip in every single thread in GD where someone linked to a study or presented a graph. That’ll allow you to walk away feeling like you’ve won the thread, but really all you’re doing is using a blanket dismissal rather than suffer the cognitive dissonance of giving credence to real data.
If someone has presented something that is faulty, point out the methodological flaws; point out the questionability of the data source. You’ve been on this site for 9 years, you can’t pretend like you don’t know how to critique a cite. So why aren’t you doing it?
No. And that is exactly the point.
Lost in all of the nonsense about “suitcase nukes” and “missiles” and the usual rhetoric (all of which is already defined here, for your personal edification) is that people have an inherent right to self-defense, and thanks to this decision they now will eventually have the right to determine what measures they will take in pursuit of that.
It’s not for me to say what I need, because I don’t know. I can’t be expected to know the circumstances of any and every eventuality. It is for me to decide based upon my own judgment.
But on the other hand, it’s not for you to say, either, because you know even less than I do about what my circumstances are. if I say I want a handgun, who are you to say no based on some capricious opinion? You decide for you, I decide for me. That’s how it is supposed to be, and now that’s what it is.
Because you decide for you that you need a handgun and it is your right to have a handgun then that means most every yo-yo in the country can have a handgun.
That affects me.
Sorry but like it or not I do have a say in it because your demands do affect me. This is national policy/law and the consequences are something I bear every bit as much as you do. It’s called society, we need to balance conflicting viewpoints/desires and so on. Not really happening here though is it?
That’s what I have been saying all along in this thread.
You may think you’re affected by your neighbors being black or gay or Muslim, too. And maybe you are. Just like you are possibly affected by your neighbors having a gun. The answer is still “too bad” because this is not an issue of democracy or “balance.” That’s why it’s a right.
My neighbor being black or gay cannot be used against me. At least I have never heard of anyone mugging someone by saying, “I’m gay! Give me all your money!” as their threat.
Guns are used against other people (and animals). Homosexuality/skin color/gender/etc is not.
Except that some times your argument is ridiculous, and needs to be ridiculed to highlight that. As I tried to say earlier, the problem of gun violence is much more complex than just gun ownership vs homicide.
So using a country with high gun ownership / low homicide as proof of anything is ridiculous, since from your graph there are countries in all four quadrants.
Going back to the car comparison: as a society we have a problem with vehicular deaths, and by problem I mean a lot of people die in car accidents. Should we dismiss them by saying, “meh, some people die.” Or do we seek to eliminate the most egregious, recognizing that cars have some use.
If cars were in the 2nd amendment, would we be allowed to post speed limits, require that they have seat belts, prohibit intoxication, and limit who is allowed to drive?