The ACLU, Prior Restraint, Stalking, and Guns

Great Debates
101

There’s no clear US guarantee of Taiwan’s security, and it has been decades since the island received foreign aid – much of which was in the form of loans, all since paid back. Not only does Taiwan (reasonably enough) have to pay US arms suppliers, but the US government forbids the suppliers from selling Taiwan their strongest products. See:

No New F-16’s for Taiwan

Taiwan’s biggest defensive strength isn’t the US, but its own forces, and the Taiwan Straits in which many PRC ships would be sunk.

Taiwan, like the dangers of gun ownership, is a subject I fancy myself to know a bit about, and I would be glad to discuss it more, probably in another thread.

If the US adopted the unusual and extreme gun ban you mention, demand for SWAT team services would rise, and thus the supply.

I don’t know where they are heading. A lot may depend on who wins the presidential in 2016. And I think their power is a bit exaggerated.

Having yesterday finished The Brethren, I’m not too impressed with their party line voting pattern. And that pattern is even clearer today than when the book was written.

I’m not a big fan of using courts to solve social problems – that should be the last resort. While I do support truly universal background checks, I’d gradually reduce prison time for most gun crimes, and start to treat gun toting as a public health issue somewhat analogous to smoking.

Correct. If they meant guns, or small arms, the founders would have said it. That’s why the federal government taking arms from our modern-day militia, the national guard (see #90), is more clearly a second amendment violation than the difficultly of getting a handgun permit in New York City. I note you say something similar happened with Katrina. Are you claiming that the US government disarmed the militia then? If so, why did the supposed 2nd amendment lovers complain so much about private gun confiscations at that time and, AFAIK, ignore the clearer violation which occurs when the national guard is disarmed? Clearly, they only care about the 2nd amendment when it affects them. This is obviously human nature, but doesn’t entitle people to pat themselves on the back for being principled.

Except for Ben Franklin, wasn’t everyone at the constitutional convention against democracy?

102

Direct democracy or representative democracy?

103

OK, if by militia, you meant “Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense” then sure. I guess I thought you were talking about some sort of organized militia lie the national guard. I don’t see how a context that includes everyone (assuming you think women should now be part of the militia as well) is relevant at all.

If your point is the that the individual right applies to all who are physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense, then I don’t see the point in making the distinction you seem to be making above.

“Individual WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF MILITIA MEMBERSHIP? Whatever. Individual REGARDLESS OF MILITIA MEMBERSHIP? Nope.”

I think we might be talking past each other. I already said:

“they might be OK with banning (or heavily regulating) handguns as long as we could own shotguns and rifles”

When I hear people interpreting the second amendment through the “militia” context, I think they are talking about the national guard or something. You are apparently not talking about that. I was talking about the dissen’t recognition of an individual right in the second amendment

104

I know nothing about Taiwan. Heck I thought there was some sort of implicit guarantee of Taiwan’s independence by America, kinda like Fannie Mae.

Assuming that all law abiding citizens cheerfully turned int their weapons, why would you think the demand would rise?

They have determined the outcome of presidential elections and how they can be financed. Its really hard to overstate their power, its not raw naked power but there is a lot of power in being the last word on the law in a nation of laws.

Maybe I’m not reading the article correctly but it seemed to be about some budget problems, not disarming the national guard. The federal government doesn’t have a second amendment obligation to provide funding to the national guard does it?

105

Franklin was for representative democracy.

AFAIK, the rest of them at the constitutional convention opposed democracy. They were for rule by white men of substantial property, with layers placed between a limited electorate, and the representatives, in hopes of blunting the power of the masses. Examples include the Supreme Court, the electoral college, and having state legislatures elect US senators (since changed by constitutional amendment).

106

Interesting that you left off the very next sentence of Miller:

Why’d you leave that out?

107

Would you be cheerful?

Maybe you will say you would obey the law while trying to get it changed back. But the logic of the position that gun ownership is an essential freedom, and the frequent invocation of the American Revolution I hear, mean that lots of Americans would fight to keep their guns. So I’d say that while Japan’s near-ban on gun ownership seems right for them, something similar here would greatly increase violent confrontations between citizens and police.

The federal government took away their best fighter planes and gave them to the standing central air force, as documented in my earlier link. And now they are going to take away all their Apache helicopters. And, although only a proposal, now the feds are threatening to strip away the entirety of Idaho’s ground attack air power. This will majorly infringe the rights of Idahoans to keep and bear, as members of the Idaho national guard, the types of arms which could actually be effective in standing up to federal tyranny – should Obama prove as dangerous to liberty as some there believe. Budgetary? It does involve that, because the feds don’t allow modern military arms to purchased by anyone other than themselves. My point here is that the supposed friends of the second amendment will ignore those violations because arms which keep our national guard/militia strong are not the type of arms they personally love to play with. Fine, but don’t anyone claim to be a principled supporter of the second amendment while ignoring our modern-day militia.

108

AFAICT, those attack helicopters and other things don’t actually belong to the national guard. The constitution may not have envisioned a standing army but it always envisioned a navy and there was no requirement that militias have enough naval power to stand up to the federal navy either.

I haven’t thought hard about it but I don’t think the second amendment requires that states have to have access to nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, stealth bombers, or even tanks.

109

The ACLU was founded by Communists for the defense of Communist subverters, using Communist lawyers. It’s not an opinion, it is a documented fact. The ACLU’s fundamental purpose is to weaken America by making laws against sedition and subversion unenforceable.

So anything the ACLU thinks is a good idea should be scrutinized very carefully.

110

There, now you’re a Communist. This post has been Communized by the Communizer. They were also involved with Jehovah’s Witnesses. How do I Witnessize a post? Remove all the lowercase "t"s?

111

…America being of course the country founded by slaveowners with slavery built into its founding documents. If you’re gonna reason that way, you’ve just offered the most rousing recommendation for Communism I’ve heard in a really long time.

112

I’ve heard they like pizza.

113

So are you saying that the second amendment only applies to the national guard?

114

Are we playing questions? I don’t play questions. Here’s the answer to your question: No, of course not, and if I’d meant to have said that I would have said that. Now please answer mine.

115

So basically, gun-owners are psychotic and we need to capitulate, letting them keep their guns so they are less likely flip out and start murdering people.

I hope you don’t believe this–and if you believe it, I hope you aren’t advocating it.

116

The mistaken idea that militia can stop standing armies is AKA the myth of the militia. It is still a common misconception – just think of all the US gun rights folks who think that if only they had rifles, eastern Europe’s Jews could have stopped the Nazi war against the Jews.

So what does this have to do with navies? Well, the inability of militia to project naval power is one of many reasons why an armed populous, acting as an effective means of protecting us against tyranny, is a myth. But just because the second amendment is based on a myth doesn’t change what it says as law.

By the way, I’m not accusing the founders, who put the second amendment in place, of believing in a myth. They didn’t include it in the original constitution, and only threw it in to gain ratification from North Carolina and Rhode Island. There is no evidence that the majority of delegates anticipated this actually being enforced.

Today’s conservatives, who are big second amendment supporters, tend also to be strong advocates of federalism, known less formally as states rights. The second amendment was never meant to be a restriction on the right of a state to regulate gun carrying. Only an expansive reading of the fourteenth amendment – something US legal conservatives tend to abhor – can get you there. But when the federal government takes away first rate arms from a state militia – now there’s something that should actually get federalism-loving constitutional conservatives hot and bothered about – if they really cared about the constitution being followed.

117

I never said, and do not believe, that gun-owners are more likely to be psychotic than any other segment of the population.

As for capitulation, I would try to avoid the rhetoric of winning and losing. America has this strong gun culture that, for many, is a big part of their core national identity. Many gun owners would regard shooting back at people trying to disarm them not as murder, but as defense of liberty. Maybe in a couple centuries, this gun culture will go away on its own. But I think that, under 21st century American conditions, gun confiscation would be self-defeating.

118

The same reason I left out the other 300 sentences of the opinion. It didn’t seem relevant. Do you think it is?

As far as I can tell, the relevant sentence is the one I quoted.

119

I agree that the defense against tyranny stuff is mostly bullshit (especially in this day and age) but there is good evidence to support the notion that defense against tyranny was at least one of the rationales behind the amendment.

I’m a big second amendment supporter and I don’t think I would be considered conservative anywhere outside of the SDMB and I don’t mind at all that the federal government is taking what is theirs. I don’t see how anybody could.

120

Very weird. The sentence I quoted was one of several elaborations of “militia” in the same paragraph. Again, it elaborates that a “militia” is “a body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.” This does not specifically and solely mean the national guard. However, it also isn’t, as you suggest,

A militia is, again, “a body of citizens enrolled for military discipline,” in whatever form that takes. I know for a fact that I’m not enrolled for military discipline. I therefore think that the second amendment does not cover me.

Of course that sentence is relevant.