I seriously doubt you would. Trump’s wall has been estimated to cost something like $20-40 billion dollars. This doesn’t include the recurring cost of manning and maintaining the thing, just the capital costs of making it. A wall that divides states would be…well, I don’t know, but an order of magnitude more. Maybe 2.
I’m sure you were either just talking tongue in cheek or a whoosh, but realistically I don’t think anyone would pay for a wall like that…or pay for the maintenance and personnel either.
Lewis and Clark were equipped with a few blunderbusses. Basically short barreled shotguns.
Of course this has nothing at all to do with open carry, though it does reinforce the point that the Miller court wasn’t well briefed on the matter before them.
No. Just that most gun murders happen in cities, and urban areas are predominately Democrat. I don’t think the actual political leanings have anything to do with it, again, it is just a tangent on Wolfpup’s choice of words – people support disarming “high-risk demographics” and that “Democrats” are a “demographic” . . . .
Not talking about per-capita stats, just raw numbers and where they occur. Again, “almost 60 percent of U.S. firearm homicides occur in the 62 cities of the country’s 50 largest metros.” Not “my” stat, see; THE GEOGRAPHY OF GUN VIOLENCE
Exactly this. Any attempt to compare to other nations, civilized or not, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd world, developed, high income, or any other way to slice the comparison is worthless. The matter has to do with US law, the US constitution, and US jurisprudence. Everything else is an irrelevant distraction - in this case a distraction from the result in Young.
You just said yourself that being a Democrat has nothing to do with it. People with hair is a demographic as well but noting people with hair shoot more people than bald people do is meaningless.
It depends entirely upon whether the subject in question is 'what does the current interpretation of the law say" or “what would an examination of the arguments of the say if they took into account factors relevant to living and sentient humans.” I think we all understand that under the dubious arguments put forth in Heller that guns are granted godlike glory and there are no circumstances whatsoever by which their removal from the populace can be so much as considered (unless you somehow convicted the populace of crimes, I guess). I recognize that your position is to stand in place and shout “this is the way it is, so shut up”. But the opposing argument isn’t “this isn’t the way it is”. The opposing argument is “the so-called logic behind Heller is shit, and it’s high time some court reversed that bit of judicial activism.”
So what you’re saying is, “Bone’s so I’m wrong rule” isn’t bullshit that you post just to irritate people when you have no better refutation of what they say.
I’m getting a little tired of this and will try to confine myself to the stuff that is not obviously repetitive.
But the whole of the Bill of Rights deals with protection from the powers of the federal government and, by the principle of incorporation, from the powers of the states. So you’ve written a bunch of words which essentially say “the declaratory clause isn’t explaining why the right exists, it’s explaining why the right exists.”
This also marks the first time I’ve ever seen a constitutional principle being characterized as existing for “a political reason”.
Wait, what? You’re quoting this to prove that even though a majority of the people want stronger gun control, they can’t have it? :rolleyes:
It’s perfectly obvious what I mean if you look at the cited poll. The actual substantive matter being discussed is that more than half of Americans (52% according to the cited poll, and other polls are similar) are in favor of stronger gun control, which includes barring guns from the mentally ill and felons. It also includes stronger background checks for all gun sales, and bans on certain types of weapons and high-capacity magazines. These are all things that would be considered no-brainers anywhere else in the world, which has long since moved on. It’s just amazing that it’s not only considered contentious, but that there are powerful lobbies that oppose it.
Well now your puzzlement can cease. A demographic can technically be any group with identifiable traits about which statistics can be compiled, even if the term isn’t commonly applied to such groups or not found in census data. It appears, IOW, that you have this thread confused with the Silly Pointless Semantic Nitpicking thread, which I’m sure must exist somewhere, probably in the Pit. It’s where posters go who have no other argument. The actual substantive matter being discussed was clarified above. But you want to “play along” and suggest that guns should be banned from Democrats. It’s unfortunate that you think gun violence is funny.
Strangely enough, exactly the same kinds of comments have been made about health care, regarding the outrageous off-the-chart costs, the millions of uninsured, the millions of claim denials, and the myriad other problems. The general name for that line of argument is “American exceptionalism”, and what it really means is “I don’t give a flying crap what all other countries are doing, or why they’re doing it, or the results they’re getting, because for unknowable mystical reasons none of that applies to America.” It’s evidence of how powerful ideology can be.
Fine, we all have our opinions and our ideologies. But understand that this line of thinking leads to – among other things – a perverse state of affairs where you will never have a guaranteed right to health care, but will always have the guaranteed right to get shot. It’s a particularly unfortunate combination, when you think about it.
It’s my understanding that to a large segment of the population this is a feature, not a bug. They don’t want there to be a right to have health care, and they do want there to be a right to get shot. Or more specifically they want other people be left to fend for themselves and they want to have the right to be poised at all the times to shoot other people.
I have little to add. I just wanted to repeat this because how true it is.
Anyone who says Europeans (and other countries with low violence and high standard of living) use solutions that don’t apply or wouldn’t work in America is admitting that Americans are just too fucking stupid to understand the answers that other countries have already demonstrated to WORK.
So which is it? Is America really so radically different that known solutions are inapplicable? Or are other countries just that much smarter than us?
Because looking at America’s recent history, I’m inclined to think most Americans are just abject dumbfucks who would let their children die rather than implement a solution that has bee PROVEN to work.
I call it staying on topic. The thread is about Young v. Hawaii and open carry. The jurisdiction is the 9th circuit, in the United States. A thread about US law, a US court case, and US policy doesn’t concern other nation’s policies or practices in any way. If the thread were instead about how countries around the world craft their gun policy, then you’d be right at home with talk about which nations are civilized, developed, or 1st world. But in a thread about a US law, that’s just noise.
Wolfpup, you seem to be hung up on the prefatory militia clause. Linguistically speaking, though, is a “because X, therefore Y” clause mean than Y only happens if X happens? My understanding of grammar was that it was not so limited.
As I said upthread, the phrase “Because reading is important, the right of the people to free eyeglasses shall not be infringed” does not condition free eyeglasses on the ability to read, it merely informs the overarching purpose of free eyeglasses but does not limit it. Do you agree?
Fair enough, and I do have a tendency sometimes to expand a conversation beyond the original scope. But OTOH, sometimes that’s helpful in establishing context or a larger truth. For example, one might acknowledge that Young was technically the right decision in light of Heller, but surely there’s value in pointing out that there is a substantial body of opinion that Heller itself was misguided and wrong. That seems like an informative perspective in terms of what it might portend in the longer term.
Sure Heller is settled law, but settled law isn’t always permanent. Roe v Wade is settled law, too, and there’s been no end of argument and lobbying to get it reversed, to the point that many probably voted for Trump based on his promise to do just that. And when one looks at the longer term and the direction that things might go, a very clear consistency in what the rest of the world is doing is surely of at least some informative value.
Maybe you can help me, and I’m not being snarky and mean this in all seriousness. How can someone look at the Constitution and find a right to abortion or same sex marriage, yet see a clause which clearly, right in the words of it, declare a right to keep and bear arms, but hand waive it away?
I mean, you’ve made an extraordinary effort in this thread to say that the right of the people to keep and bear arms does not mean that, even if the people are the militia. Fine, we can argue about that. But how do you find those other rights in the Constitution when it is silent about them, and those things are not at all part of the history and traditions of the nation?
I can find all kinds of founding quotes about bearing arms, but none about two guys marrying each other. I wish that your side would just admit that you have this jurisprudence because you personally agree with same sex marriage and abortion, and disagree with private citizens owning guns.
I don’t read it as a cause and effect statement, but rather as a statement of the purpose for which a right is being enumerated.
To be an accurate analogy, your reading analogy would be better stated as "Because reading is necessary … " rather than “important”.
This seems to me to have several implications. One is that the necessity being stated is so compelling that it justifies the associated right being enumerated for special protection. Second, unlike the First Amendment which is treated as self-evident, with no such prefatory clause, it implies that the associated protection would never have been included at all were it not for that compelling reason.
So, no, I don’t agree with your conclusion that the prefatory clause is not limiting. This is the core of the scholarly argument against Heller*. Any edict that says “Because “x” is necessary to the security of a free state, “y” must happen” has no reason to exist at such time as “x” is no longer necessary, because the statement is no longer true. It should be abolished and thrown out. And if it so happens that “y” is dangerously counterproductive, it should be abolished and thrown out at the earliest possible opportunity.
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From Justice Stevens’ dissent: The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia … Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.
The 2nd does not say a militia is important. It says a “well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”. That is not the same thing as saying, “we think a militia is important”. They are telling you why citizens should have guns and that they should be well regulated. A more close phrasing would be, “A well regulated reading room, being necessary to writing book reports, the right of the people to eyeglasses shall not be infringed.”
Your example does not contain any tension between two disagreeing sides. To make it equivalent you need to postulate that there is a substantial section of the population who think glasses should only be used for reading and for no other purpose. With that in mind then yeah, you could read the amended bit I mentioned just above and say that glasses are not a guaranteed right for other purposes. Maybe they can be allowed for other purposes but the door is open to regulate their use.
You chose that innocuous example because opposing glasses is just unreasonable and equating that to guns to make them seem just as innocuous and silly to oppose. How about, “A well regulated zoo, being necessary to a diverse civic experience, the right of the people to keep leopards shall not be infringed.”
You appear to be trying to advance the view that any rights which constrain or obligate the actions of courts or legislatures have to be explicitly enumerated in the constitution. Of course they don’t. This is a bogus argument that we often hear from conservatives in respect of actions they don’t like (“where does it say in the constitution that the government is responsible for health care?”). What is necessary is that such rights and judgments be deducible from the fundamental rights that do exist in the constitution.
In the case of same sex marriage, as you know the right is deduced from the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment and specifically relates to “personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs”. Rather remarkably, this is very similar to rulings made by the Supreme Court of Canada years earlier on same-sex common law relationships and then SSM, deduced from the fundamental rights of a completely different constitution, on the grounds of basic human rights and the dignity of the person, and that forbidding the important social custom of marriage to SSM couples demeaned them and effectively reduced them to the status of second-class citizens.
The abortion issue was a bit more convoluted in Roe v Wade, as you know, but still derived from the fundamental right to privacy. The corresponding ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada was much broader in scope (all laws banning abortion at any time were invalidated) and were based on the fundamental right to security of the person, and thus a woman’s right of self-determination.
The difference with guns is that though you may feel that there’s some kind of “tradition” there, the only fundamental right from which to draw is the 2nd Amendment, and the argument that’s been made repeatedly, whether you agree with it or not, is that the militia clause is paramount and, regardless of one’s view on the archaic obsolescence of the amendment, as it stands it should not prohibit legislation on the civilian possession and use of guns (per the Stevens quote in my previous post).
Securing rights from the whims of the majority is absolutely a reason why they were enumerated.
The poll uses the term correctly (not on the page you linked to but in section 1).
OK, you can’t explain why you used the word in the context of rights disablement after due process.
The disingenuous and purposely obtuse arguments of anti-gunners is what’s funny . . .
Case in point:
You are heralding the value of second generation rights while denigrating first generation rights as “the guaranteed right to get shot”. I understand you need to dismiss the foundational rights theory that recognizes and secures pre-existing rights so you can demand the granting of “rights” that have no constitutional foundation, but if you don’t want to be responded to with raillery, try not to be so ‘funny’. . . It’s easy to dismiss you as a joke when it is so obvious you don’t care to be serious.
