You seem to have a lot of faith that masked armed robbers are going to behave like predictable perfect gentlemen and not use the guns they are wielding.
Were I there carrying, I would be tempted to let them go away. It worked at a Red Lobster robbery here in Little Rock. Five guys were carrying, and all independently decide not to try and shoot five bad guys before they shot back.
One would sure feel like hell if the robbers began shooting witnesses because one didn’t shoot them, though.
At issue was the Maryland Firearms Safety Act (FSA) which was a feature based assualt weapon ban, specific rifle and pistol ban, and a ban on magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. It exempted retired police from many of the provisions as well. At the district level, the court applied intermediate scrutiny and somehow upheld the FSA. The reasoning was, paraphrasing, because it wasn’t a total ban and other firearms were available, then it was permissible. In addition, the district court concluded that magazine were not firearms and therefore were not covered by the 2nd amendment. The case was appealed to the 4th circuit. From the opinion:
(my bold)
Sent back down to the district level so they can apply the correct level of scrutiny. If this holds, I’m optimistic that the FSA will fall. The ruling could go en banc or go to SCOTUS, but for now this is a big win.
Some of the key ideas the opinion focused on were the concepts of “dangerous **and **unusual” and “in common use”. This court determined that a firearm must be both dangerous AND unusual, else it would fall under the 2nd amendment. In addition, it noted that the AR-15 platform semi-automatic rifle is the most common rifle today:
(my bold)
The court was dismissive of this so called “high capacity” claim.
The court also expressly rejected the argument that other types of weapons were available so the ban was okay. It cited Heller calling this frivalous and chided other circuits for adopting this reasoning that was specifically rejected in Heller.
The court did however uphold the exemption for retired police, defeating the equal protection claim. This part I think was wrong - retired police have no special power or duty that regular citizens have and there is basis to support exempting this class of people from any law.
LOL!! Go ahead and explain how a dictatorship that bans guns to suppress its people is equivalent to a democracy that controls–not bans–guns for public safety. If you can do that, Grasshopper…
Repeating a ridiculous meme doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.
Yeah, better to guarantee that the thieves will start shooting rather than go with the overwhelming likelihood that they won’t. The flimsiest of pretences is a perfect reason to start a gunfight in a closed room with kids.
Maybe your ‘average middle-aged person’ goes to the gym regularly, and had had recent experience in fighting. :dubious:
At any rate, it’s not a matter of ‘energy,’ whatever you mean by that, it’s about being both unfit and unskilled for fighting. I’m pretty fit by middle-aged-guy standards, but the latter factor would mean I’d do little damage in a fight.
Yes. You said some stuff in post #443. I responded in #447. You are apparently upset that in that response, I ignored stuff you hadn’t said yet.
For most of us, the flow of time is still unidirectional.
How many fights that don’t involve the word “school” somewhere in the description have you ever been in? I suspect that it is a very small number and your judgement on who is able to damage an opponent is suspect.