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Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: How can we regulate guns ... ? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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Are you're hoping you can sideline the material debate into a pointless definitional squabble? Laws have to be based on definitions, or else the result is like TSA security, where they confiscate nail scissors from pilots even though there's an axe in the cockpit. In other words, arbitrary and pointless. Getting your definitions right so they actually interdict the activity you wish to interdict and don't impose useless inconveniences and deadweight loss isn't a "sideline", it is the material debate. And it's not something you can just sidestep out of a misguided urge not to just stand there, but do something, won't somebody think of the children, and so forth.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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But silly arguments about what is and what is not an assault rifle is merely a distraction strategy. Not if you propose to enact a ban on assault rifles.
It's not rocket science. Then why do you keep getting it wrong?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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Given that I've never attempted a definition myself because that just leads to deliberately distracting and futile arguments like this one Yes, but that's what you're wrong about - the idea that you can regulate something you can't define. I mean if we can just handwave and leave stuff to the "experts" who will, by definition, get it right, why even bother talking about policy? Why don't we just say "well, let's have whatever policy to reduce murders the experts know is best" and boom, done? No murders at all?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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The Constitution guarantees the "right to bear arms." It does not say what those arms are, or limit Congress from making laws limiting the types of arms that can be owned. The Second Amendment does, however, specify the purpose of the individual right to bear arms - the necessity of being able to call the general citizenry up into an ordered and self-provisioned militia in a time of national defense. To that end, the Second Amendment preserves an individual right to own weapons that are appropriate for light infantry soldiers; that's why the Second Amendment preserves semi-auto battle rifles but not squad-grade weapons like RPG's. A tank is not arms, because it can't be carried and operated by a single soldier.
It would be perfectly fitting within the Constitution to ban all guns and limit the arms that can be borne to escrima sticks. No, it wouldn't be, and areas and municipalities that have tried to ban all guns have had those laws overturned by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution can be altered, limited, or even replaced given sufficient public and political support for doing so. Sure. But you can't simultaneously adopt the position that we could and should amend the Constitution to allow the sort of gun reform you advocate, and then assert that we don't need to amend it to allow the sort of gun reform you advocate. The Second Amendment is an obstacle to sweeping gun bans, because your understanding of the Amendment is deeply at odds with how it has been interpreted by basically everybody else.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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I know you're desperate to distract the conversation off into the undergrowth of magazine size, barrel length and calibre, I don't think those are qualities that define how dangerous a gun is or what constitutes an "assault rifle", so your insistence that I want to have a conversation about those irrelevancies is a misrepresentation.
it's obviously possible to define the kinds of weapons that you wish to ban as it has been done successfully in other countries. In what country has it been successful? Yours? Not so:
quote: http://www.thesun.co.uk/...ns-on-sale-legally-in-the-UK.html Semi-automatic "military-style" weapons with accessory rails such as these were used in spree killings as recently as the 2010 Cumbria shootings. The firearms license for "hunting" guns such as shotguns and rifles (section 1) would allow the ownership of such a gun as this, as well.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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Haven't we already done this in the form of a standing military? The point of the Second Amendment isn't to make it possible to arm the military. The military doesn't need a Constitutional amendment to have guns; they get to have guns simply by virtue of being the military. The point of the Second Amendment is to maintain a deep reserve of armed citizens who can be called up if the standing army proves insufficient. We can debate the wisdom of that, but that's what the amendment was put in there for. If you asked me to vote on repeal I don't yet know how I'd vote. But currently the Second Amendment is the law of the land, and gun control legislation has to be consistent with it or the Supreme Court will overturn it.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I'm more than happy to add .22 repeating rabbit guns to the list. Well, ok, but you didn't.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
But we've since done away with that and have a standing military equiped with the best weapons our money can buy necessary to the security of a free state. We haven't "since" done away with that, Oni. There was a standing Federal army when they drafted the Constitution. If the need for a "well-regulated militia" was something you could meet with a standing, regimented army then why didn't the Framers of the Constitution think the standing regimented army they had obviated the need to write the Second Amendment?
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Yeah. The right of the people. Not the right of the people in the army, who don't need a Constitutional amendment to be armed by the United States.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Yes, but that's the point of the legislation, it can be amended whenever necessary - and has been. Amended how? Amended to what extent? "People can go back in and fix it if we fuck up" isn't a reason to do something.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Well no, the Federal army didn't come about until the Civil War. Ok, technically you couldn't have a "Federal army" before the constitution since before the constitution there was no federal anything. It was the Continental Army to which I was obliquely referring.
Which is why you get the need to write the Second Amendment. I don't see the need, though. They had a Continental Army. If they had thought that a national army would be sufficient to protect the rights of a free state, then they would have had no reason to draft the Second Amendment since they already had a national army.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
If you read the link to the Act you can see exactly how the last (1997) Act was amended. That's not what I asked.
Correct, the reason to do it is independent of the fact that it can be updated once done. Once what is done? Remember, we're still at the point where your proposal for new legislation is "{placeholder for what unspecified experts will determine 'best' meets unspecified goals.}" Handwaving everything off to the "experts" is all very well and good, but I think we can stipulate that "have experts figure it out" is, broadly, the solution to all problems.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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The idea of the second amendment isn't arming people to assist the Federal army but arming people to resist the Federal army. Can't it be both? Wasn't it both?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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The 2nd amendment prevents the federal government from disarming the militia. But the Second Amendment doesn't outline a right for the militia to be armed. It outlines a right of the people to be armed, justified by - but not subject to that justification - the necessity of an armed militia to the security of a free state. The Second Amendment is just not properly construed as an amendment about militias. That interpretation is contrary to the plain sense of the words and to the purpose of the Bill of Rights as a document that constrains government power to the benefit of the people. Like Jon says, the bizzarre backbending you have to do not to see an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment is just something no reasonable person can support. You're engaged in motivated reasoning based on your desire to see an America with strong laws against the private ownership of powerful firearms.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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Thus it is logical that the properly organized and regulated militias would be armed by the federal government (as the National Guard is) with arms that could be used in modern warfare -- without needing citizens to own or bring such weapons. But of course they would have no need of the Second Amendment for that, so clearly the Second Amendment is not an amendment about arming government-operated militias. It's an amendment about an individual right to bear arms that applies to people, even absent any connection to any government militia or army.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1496 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined:
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No matter how relentlessly you assert otherwise the availability of tools designed to kill efficiently What do you mean "kill efficiently"? I don't follow that. It's not at all obvious what you could mean. If you mean "people killed per rounds fired", that seems like you're talking about accuracy, that is, does the round go where you're aiming the gun. But accuracy is a function of a weapon's safety, not it's danger. Inaccurate, random weapons are far more dangerous than accurate ones. If you mean something else - that is, if you perceive the phrase "kill efficiently" as actually having meaning as opposed to just being an empty scare-phrase then I'd ask you what design elements of a firearm contribute to "kill efficiency" in your view, particularly among those classes of weapons broadly labeled as "military-style" or "assault rifles." My understanding is that militaries determine which battle rifles to outfit their troops with on the basis of the weapon's accuracy, weight, reliability particularly under harsh conditions, and versatility in terms of meeting the requirements of different missions and battlefields. Accuracy, reliability, and versatility don't strike me as particularly dangerous qualities. In fact they strike me as qualities that make guns safe. Why would we all be safer with only unreliable and inaccurate firearms?
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