Supreme Court Holds Right to Bear Arms Applies to Individuals 2221
Now.Imperfect writes "In its last day of session, the Supreme Court has definitively clarified the meaning of the Second Amendment. The confusion is whether the Second Amendment allows merely for the existence of a state militia, or the private ownership of guns. This ruling is in response to a case regarding the 32-year-old Washington DC ban on guns." This is one of the most-watched Supreme Court cases in a long time, and Wikipedia's page on the case gives a good overview; the actual text of the decision (PDF) runs to 157 pages, but the holding is summarized in the first three. There are certainly other aspects of the Second Amendment left unaddressed, however, so you can't go straight to the store for a recently made automatic rifle.
Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now we get to hear from a bunch of people who normally bitch about the government taking away individual freedoms try to justify their hypocrisy while they argue for gun control, and how the supreme court wasn't thinking of the children...
Who Goes to the Store for Guns? (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Crime rate high? (Score:1, Insightful)
The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Law abiding citizens will obey the law and revoke ownership of guns. Criminals on the other hand already have a mind to break the law, and having a law against guns won't stop them for a second.
Good; Gun "Control" is bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Gun Control only serves to take guns out of the hands of people that give a shit about the law.
Lets have more law abiding citizens with guns with the ability to defend themselves against criminals.
Police aren't there to defend you, they are there to arrest people (generally after they commit a crime).
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crime rate high? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. We will also hear those for whom the Second is the only Amendment that matters telling us that torture, wiretapping, and disregard of habeas corpus telling us that it's okay as long as we get to keep our guns. IOW, there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around here, spread across the political spectrum.
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, all it means is that criminals carry guns in the expectation that their victims will also.
What a moot issue (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point?
The real intention of the 2nd amendment is to allow citizens to revolt (or at least threaten to). And that is a right that I savor.
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what they say: when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Re:It's about damn time (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the fact that it doesn't say "guns", just "arms"? I want my personal nuclear weapons!
Dissenting opinion - Stevens is an idjit (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently Stevens needs to learn how to read. Of course the framers wanted to reserve the tools for revolution to the people.
ideology behind the gun ban (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sweet (Score:1, Insightful)
Move to Ontario.
"you can't go straight to the store" (Score:2, Insightful)
"you can't go straight to the store for a recently made automatic rifle"
Thanks for spewing more stereotype nonsence and make what is a very serious statement about our freedom into some sort of joke.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us, who favor gun control, do not have any problem whatsoever with this decision. It seems like a perfectly reasonable view of the constitution as written. Trying to say otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
What I question is the constitution itself: Is the right to bear arms really a key element to protest against excessive government control? India didn't gain their independence through guns. Today, we don't need them.
On the other hand, the right of privacy, not clearly stated in the American constitution, is necessary, and should be added. There was no need for it in the 1800s, if just because it was impossible to violate with their technology. It was pretty easy to keep the content of your conversations private: don't talk near a government official. Today, you can be snooped on alone in your home, over a phone, or on the internet. Technology has created a new issue, that deserves a constitutional amendment. Some European countries with constitutions that came after the telephone do cover the right of privacy explicitly. To become a freer country, America must follow their lead.
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:5, Insightful)
So the right to have an abortion is bullshit whereas the right to own a gun is God-given. Nice personal freedoms, there. Way to go with your own intellectual honesty.
What the hell is with the current collection of issues in the present political divide, anyway? How is "the right to own a gun" on the same team as "ban abortions and gay marriage"? This doesn't make any sense to me.
Re:Good; Gun "Control" is bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Crime rate high? (Score:5, Insightful)
In case you don't see the connection, I'll spell it out: "Oh judge, what good are your laws?" They represent the consensus of the governed. The bad man will not follow them but the government will enforce them. This will always be true.
The good man absolutely does need laws, as the laws spell out what the consensus is, and as long as the rule of law exists, where laws are applied equally and fairly to all the governed, then the good man will accept them if they are acceptable, and will work through legitimate channels if they must be changed.
Or would it make sense to say, "Oh Grocery Store, what good are your prices? The shoplifter will not follow them, and the good shopper does not read them." -- no, of course not.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, but the problem is getting enough of the gun owners to agree that things are Bad Enough. As I wrote in a friend's LJ entry (talking about state-by-state differences in gun laws, and how the "Red" areas of the country generally have much more liberal gun laws than the "Blue" areas) not long ago:
The problem, and it's a big one, is that most of the Deep Red gun owners show no motivation to defend themselves against the current most likely form of tyranny in America. UN black helicopters? They're locked, cocked, and ready to rock. But US green helicopters? Peachy keen. Go USA! Get them eeevil terrists!
These are the people who elected Bush. Twice. If you think they're going to stand up for traditional American liberties when freaks like us are being dragged off to Gitmo, you're not paying attention.
Also, while an armed populace that's sufficiently pissed off to rebel may indeed be the final option in the case of governmental tyranny, it's not a solution anyone should hope for. Civil wars are ugly, ugly things, and we should try every possible legal solution before resorting to blood in the streets.
Re:Crime rate high? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, even if the mugger didn't think you had a gun, he may shoot you just to be safe. Then take your wallet and run.
If the mugger is armed, you're screwed either way. (Assuming he's a decent shot.) But if you're armed, (A) you might be able to frighten off the attacker, even if he were armed (cuz he knows he's a bad shot), or (B) you might take the bastard down, saving yourself, or (C) you might take the bastard with you, even if he got ya.
So explain to me again why unarmed is better?
Now, to weaken my argument: a gun is an awful responsibility. One wild round or accidental discharge and you may have killed an innocent bystander. So, for a lot of people, that's too much of a risk. Me, for instance. I may not have any compunction about defending myself with lethal force, if I could assure myself to nearly 100% certainty that only my attacker and possibly myself will suffer. But bullets don't stop when you miss your target, and that's why I won't risk 'em.
That's just me, though. YMMV. FWIW, I think the Supremes got it right.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
India gained independence largely due to the fact that it was more work than they were worth.
The day the Stormtroopers come knocking at your door, you'll wish you had a gun.
The people can only overthrow a tyrannical government if they have weapons which enable them to do so.
Re:Gun Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's rather easy to show you an incident where someone killed another with an illegal gun.
You say some bans shouldn't be a bad idea. You haven't established yet that they are a good idea. Your argument hinges on murderer's compliance with gun control statutes.
The debate really should center on the unknown number of individuals not murdered because a gun was unavailable versus the number of individuals murdered/robbed/raped because they couldn't defend themselves with a gun. Someone in support of control would argue that victims of crimes of passion may be aided by a banning of weapons for otherwise law abiding citizens. Others would argue that they could control who they associate with and would prefer to be able to defend themselves when they can't.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
If owning a gun made sense in 1776, well, that's great. Let's just leave it in there and not ban it.
If there are new protections which we must add, to further limit the government, such as the protection of privacy (unreasonable search and seizure?), perhaps we need a new amendment.
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Hrm. It seems the DC gun ban would have reduced gun crime if criminals were truly that altruistic.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read up on the Deacons for Defense, armed blacks, mostly WW II and Korean War veterans, who used their right to keep and bear arms to stare down corrupt state and local governments which were run by the KKK.
This was 40 years ago.
Now tell me how much more enlightened we are today and tell me how unnecessary the 2nd amendment is.
Re:Crime rate high? (Score:3, Insightful)
"If a mugger knew I didn't have a weapon"
Um, how does he know this? 'Cause it's illegal? Well, it's illegal and *he has one...
Re:Among others (Score:5, Insightful)
That should have read "conservative" justices in the Breyer case, but it's clear what you meant.
It's unbelievably sad that there's currently only one justice on the Supreme Court who supports our Constitution-guaranteed individual rights regardless of the swings of left/right politics.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the only people who would do that are they types who steamroll any political discussion off topic and instead discuss their pet issue. But then, those people get modded to plus 5, and this is going to get modded as flamebait, even though it's the truth.
People (Score:5, Insightful)
Amendment 2.
The term "people" is also used elsewhere in the US Constitution:
Article I, Section 2.
Amendment 1.
Amendment 4.
Amendment 9.
Amendment 10.
Amendment 17.
Anyone having trouble understanding what the word "people" was understood to mean by the writers of the US Constitution, Bill Of Rights, and the Seventeenth Amendment?
More Guns, Less Crime... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, everyone knows that if you make laws prohibiting gun ownership, that only affects law-abiding citizens. The criminals always manages to have guns anyway, thus leaving the law-abider at a severe disadvantage.
Responsible Gun Ownership is the way to go, and will result in less crime, lessen the need for police (which themselves figure into the crime component), and fix a host of other ills.
Many liberals will disagree with me, but I have yet to see a sound counter-argument. And no, I am NOT a conservative -- I am a Libertarian.
John Paul Stevens: Eat a Dick (Score:2, Insightful)
He said such evidence ''is nowhere to be found.''"
WHAT. A FUCKING. DIPSHIT. The WHOLE POINT of the constitution, is that the framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian ANYTHING. The WHOLE FUCKING DOCUMENT is composed of limits on government.
John Paul Stevens: Eat a Dick.
Anthony Kennedy: A big thank you for apparently being the only judge who understands the constitution, the only judge to support both the rights of Habeas Corpus AND the inalienable rights expressed in the bill of rights.
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention, don't forget to thank Bush (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
I always understood it to mean that when the torture, wiretapping and disregard of habeas corpus gets bad enough, we are supposed to bear the arms and water the garden of liberty with the blood of tyrants, or something.
Here in Philly, the murder epidemic is bad enough that they're talking about random "stop and search" in an effort to crack down. Since we have an underfunded police department, city courts and prison system I'm not sure any further restrictions would really make a difference anyway. There's too few cops to enforce too many laws, too few courts to handle too many cases, and too little prison space to house too many criminals.
Regardless of the societal problems that lead to the endemic poverty, drug abuse and crime it doesn't seem like more rulemaking will make a difference.
Re:fuck yes (Score:4, Insightful)
As deplorable as their 2000 political intrusion was, Gore handed the case to them on a silver platter by only demanding a recount in the precincts where he was behind due to Florida stupidity. If he had thought about it for a few seconds, he would have realized he was opening himself up for an equal protection lawsuit.
Re:Eat it (Score:1, Insightful)
TY for your display of idiocy.
Re:BOom. Headshot. (Score:3, Insightful)
... or Rosie O'Donnell can blame her spoon for being fat.
A close call (Score:4, Insightful)
What disturbs me, and deeply, is that "the right to keep and bear arms" was all but ignored by 4 out of 9 people on that bench. I mean they basically reasoned that "well, it says that, but that's not what it really means".
The 2nd Amendment is in two parts... the first part gives a justification for the right, the second part lays out the actual guarantee to the right itself.
Even if you think that changing times has voided the reasoning for the first part, that doesn't actually void the right guaranteed in the second part. The only way you're supposed to be able add or remove something from the Constitution, including rights themselves, is through the amendment process.
But in reality that's not how it works. In reality, a simple 5-4 majority can, with the stroke of a pen, completely null and void not just laws passed by Congress and local governments, but it seems that they can also void parts of the Constitution itself, simply by declaring, in legalese, "never mind what the text of the Amendment says, here's what it means".
This is, in practical terms, a kind of "tyranny of expertise"... the notion that only experts can understand the Constitution, no matter how plainly written its text is, and the rights of citizens are subordinate to these experts, as the flock was subordinate to the rulings of the Priesthood in the old days of the Catholic Church, dependent upon their interpretation of scripture. But I say that if common citizens cannot trust the Constitution to be understood in its plain text... if it doesn't "mean what it says" .... then it's worthless. It is, in that case, not worth the paper it's written on. If the Constitution says "up means up", and a judge can say "no, up really means down in the Constitution", then we don't live in a free country after all. We are in thrall to the priesthood of experts.
Think about that for a moment. 4 people in black robes today voted to essentially null and void a part of the bill of rights, the amendment process aside, by declaring that, despite what is written in it, the right guaranteed in it was never really a right at all. Just kidding, folks. Ignore that "shall not be infringed" stuff. Is this not the kind of thing George Orwell warned of? Is this not Newspeak?
The vehicle of the minority's dissent was the notion of "collective rights". John Paul Stevens' dissent was truly frightening to read, as he reasons that virtually everything in the bill of rights is a "collective right"... not an individual right, but dependent upon the collective as a whole. It was Soviet-lite in its reasoning. What are rights if not for individuals? Isn't the very notion of a right that one man's liberty is not limited to the collective?
Today, I became convinced that the three branches are in fact not equal. I think SCOTUS is more powerful by far than the President and the Congress combined. Neither of those branches have the power to void the Constitution with an opinion, with the stroke of a pen. SCOTUS can null an executive order, or a law passed by Congress. The President and Congress can do nothing to cancel out a ruling of the SCOTUS. If the SCOTUS deems in a ruling that left really means right, then that's it. That's the law. And unless the President and Congress openly defy that ruling (and trigger a national crisis as a result), then "Stare Decisis" indeed makes left into right in the eyes of the law. The issue is settled.
I'm firmly convinced that if the United States ever has another Civil War, it will be the direct result of a Supreme Court decision.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
As affirmed by this decision, part of the reason the 2nd Amendment exists is
Note that last part, the "depredations of a tyrannical government". The 2nd exists to ensure that, should the government devolve into a tyranny, the citizens will possess the means to overthow it, just as the founding fathers overthrew theirs.
The people who wrote the first ten Amendments were not naive and idealistic. They knew very well that power corrupts, so they put in a safety valve. Should the system of checks and balances fail the citizens would retain the power to put it back.
The Executive Branch of the U.S. government has been consolidating power unto itself for a long time. We have "police actions" and "operations" which, while clearly acts of war, have not been declared as such. Instead the president has decided that, as Commander in Chief, he does not need the Senate's approval. We have a degradation of the 1st Amendment, with warrantless wiretaps. The 5th is gone. If you refuse to incriminate yourself you can be declared a terrorist and shipped off to Gitmo to be tortured.
We are all familiar with the list.
If the current trend continues, if presidents continue to subvert the Constitution, gathering more and more power unto themselves while destroying the system of checks and balances, we are going to need those guns. Yes, we all pray that it is never necessary, but we certainly can't preach about how wonderful our "rights" are if we are not prepared to do what is necessary to keep them.
As the saying goes, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've made a mistake. We don't need to convince gun owners to help us, we need to convince the people who have had enough to buy guns. Don't wait for others to save you. Save yourself.
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a country with strict gun control. Its surprising how often we manage to not get robbed by anyone with a gun.
Do we have shootings? Yes, however, there is quite a long way between shootings and usually its the police doing the shooting. Do people get robbed? Yes of course they do, but strangely seldom with a gun - usually its a knife being wielded. The fear surrounding a gunless society is absolutely bonkers.
Re:Eat it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The 2nd Amendment Is Bunk (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Among others (Score:5, Insightful)
States can still regulate firearms, as long as they don't infringe upon the second amendment. Individual rights, in this case, trump state rights.
Re:Not to mention, don't forget to thank Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
By that you mean career politicians, right? To many of them, ideals and standards mean nothing if their careers end because of it. At least the executive and legislative branches are of opposing parties so at least some crazy laws don't go all the way through.
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Among others (Score:3, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? It's almost the exact opposite of the Habeus Corpus decision. The only justice to join with the majority in both cases is Kennedy. The other justices vote along strict idealogical lines when it comes to these kinds of decisions.
So the GP was right, it sounds like 8 of 9 justices need to be cleaned out.
Kennedy didn't join with the majority in both cases, Kennedy *DECIDED* both cases, as his vote decides which ideology gets the majority. We're lucky there is an apparent balance right now, but if we had just one more 'strict ideological justice' EVERY decision would fall according to that ideology, not the constitution.
I greatly admire the supreme courts role in checks and balances. I've never thought it should be done by presidential appointment though. A few justices retire in the wrong administration and that's the end of any balance for decades.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:fuck yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, you can't "just as well argue" that. It would, in fact, be much harder to argue that proposition unless one were not particularly bright and speaking to an audience that was basically stupid.
Let's compare these arguments side by side:
1. SCOTUS lost all credibility after the 2000 election? OK, "all" is hyperbole. The court did not lose "all" credibility. However, the right wing of the court did manage to tarnish their reputation as being strict Constitutionalists by being so eager to jump into this issue.
2. Bush jammed the court with right-wing idealogues? Basically true if you define "right-wing" as equivalent to "Republican party line" as opposed to the traditional definition of Conservative. Neither Roberts nor Alito seem to have Scalia or Thomas's respect for the Constitution but seem to vote along party lines. Basically, both of them will vote according to what the Republican consensus (as reported on Fox News) tells them to vote.
Compare these arguments to your argument:
1. The SCOTUS was in the process of degenerating into a puddle of crypto-marxist Priests of the Temples of Syrinx? I just did a Google search and I was unable to even find a definition of "crypto-marxist". Is that something you just made up? But, if you mean that the pre-Bush appointments were closet Marxists, then it's pretty clear that you are wrong. At least since you can never know the inner thoughts of someone else, one must judge them on their actions. Justice Ginsberg -- referred to as the "most-liberal" of current justices -- is actually relatively moderate by the Segal-Cover [wikipedia.org] ranking with a score of 0.6 on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale. Interestingly, Ginsberg is the richest member of the Supreme Court.
Secondly, it is also almost impossible to argue that any current or former member of the SCOTUS is or was a Priests (or Pristesss) of the Temples of Syrinx since: (a) it's a fictional group that doesn't enter (fictional) human history until at least 2060 according to the band Rush, and (b) go back and read (a) again.
Therefore, in summary, you are wrong and based on your knowledge of the SCOTUS I'm certainly not going to take your advice when it comes to presidential elections.
Re:Who Goes to the Store for Guns? (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't mention a "gun show loophole", nor do I like that terminology. As I said I don't see anything wrong with the current system. I was simply stating that it's INCORRECT to state that "every sale at a gun show requires a background check". That's not true, and rightfully so.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on your side of the issue, but it works out better to keep your argument legit. Even a valid argument when using invalid facts to back it up will pickup a negative reputation.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:2, Insightful)
The right to keep and bear arms is in the constitution. The right to terminate pregnancy is not.
Simple facts for your simple mind.
Re:Huge for Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
This will comfort huge numbers of single issue voters that would normally vote simply to protect their gun rights from Democrats.
Had Anthony Kennedy woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, the 2nd Amendement... a key part in the Bill of Rights... could have been voided with the stroke of a pen.
Re:Crime rate high? (Score:4, Insightful)
If people by law are unarmed the robber can safely assume the victim will hand over his or her money.
Personally I will any time give up my money rather than face the option of taking someones life or losing my own - its just money for Christ sake! Remember; when you are being approached your gun is in your holster - his is already out, who do you think gets to shoot first?
And all that crap about taking care of civilians - BS! if you got a gun and start flashing it people will die, even at 15 m. most people will be wildly inaccurate with a pistol - and if they are inexperienced with munition they are likely to have bullets that will go straight through the target and hit whatever is on the other side (hint even the police in several countries have bullets that fail to stop inside the target, and have killed innocent bystanders).
I'll take a gun less society anytime.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet there are STILL parts of the country that are very much like Concord in 1775.
This one thing that whiney liberals in the cities just don't seem to get.
Not everyone in the US of A is in a position to let the goverment be their nanny. It isn't even an option.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of legal gun owners (proper license, clean background, etc) in the US commits a disproportionally lower percentage of the violent crime. You have less to fear from them than the rest of society. Violent, armed criminals almost never own guns in compliance with the law, and so further restrictions won't help stop them from shooting you
Re: Your last point, I'm all for naked tits in public.
Re:What a moot issue (Score:5, Insightful)
If the purpose of the second amendment is to allow for armed revolt against an oppressive government, it is currently outdated and ineffective. Given the weapons available to the general public right now, no such armed revolt could ever succeed.
Really? Ask the marines and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're generally not fighting against an enemy with equivalent arms or training, yet the insurgency has done a very good job keeping the government unstable, and may well force the US (and allies) out. I would argue that while such weapons are not effective in a fair fight, rebellions tend not to fight fair.
Re:The 2nd Amendment Is Bunk (Score:3, Insightful)
The 2nd Amendment is wrong.
Hey thank you random Slashdotter! It's good to hear from someone who has better insight on the Constitution than the founding fathers! And you make a great point, since everything over the last 200 years of 2nd amendment went fine, that means we don't need it! If you take some measure of precaution against something and that this something didn't happen, it doesn't mean your precaution worked, it means your precaution was useless! You don't believe me? So why didn't the Y2K bug catastrophe happen? Really it was quite stupid of the founding fathers to try to equip the civilians with firearms just to invade half an already-populated continent.
And I mean even if it was relevant back then it's not like it's still relevant now. All of our problems with rampant crime could be just solved by repealing the 2nd amendment. Repeal it today and tomorrow you'll see gang members from Detroit to South Los Angeles surrendering their AK-47s, Mac-10s and Tec-9s to the police, let alone the fact that a lot of these weapons came to them illegally from abroad anyways and have little to do with the 2nd amendment to begin with.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "black helicopter" conservatives are a subset of conservatives. "Gun rights" conservatives are a subset of conservatives. The two overlap, but they are not the same. If you actually knew any "black helicopter" conservatives, you would know that they have been predicting this crap for years and they hold no allegiance to Bush or the police state. They believed Reagan was evil, for crying out loud--Look up REX-84, which we seem to be currently implementing (tongue in cheek, sorta.)
What happened to all those militias in the 1990's? I'll tell you what happened, they got infiltrated by the FBI and the groups basically realized they were ineffectual, became demoralized and disbanded. Whether or not you agree with them, this sort of proves that a vigilant and motivated minority of the population stands no chance against the state. So while Democrats may laugh at the poor stupid rednecks, it's a kind of Pyrrhic victory because their "defeat" came about because their worst fear was realized, the government became an overpowering oppressive state. Where are these people today? They were probably Ron Paul supporters, not Bush supporters. For the most part they don't vote because they think the whole thing is rigged anyway.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The 2nd Amendment Is Bunk (Score:1, Insightful)
There is a one-word response to anyone who thinks that guns are responsible for violence.
Africa.
You'd be amazed at the atrocities people can commit with nothing more advanced than machetes and bow/arrows.
You can't stop a bullet ... (Score:4, Insightful)
OR maybe it means that criminals just get better guns. ... but i'm sure your hand gun will protect you.... definitly... right.
You can't stop a bullet with a bigger bullet.
Or with more of them.
The transition from no-gun to nontrivial gun essentially levels the playing field, regardless of the relative size and capabilities of the guns on both sides. A bigger or faster gun is not a shield. It doesn't matter how big the gun is if the guy with the little (but big enough) gun fires his.
A bad-guy in a gun-on-gun confrontation is in a world of disadvantage: Fire (first) and he loses: He's now escalated from armed robbery (or whatever) to attempted murder, and called attention of bystanders and authorities to the confrontation. The ordinary citizen, on the other hand, is in reasonable fear for life and limb and may fire.
Usual result: The bad guy retreats to hunt for less-toothy prey, with no shots fired on either side.
Occasional result: Bad guy makes one more threatening move, good guy fires, police sort it out in a few hours or weeks or courts do after a few years.
VERY occasional result: Bad guy fires. Bad guy becomes subject of manhunt (progressively moreso if he makes a practice of this) and is eventually run down and removed from circulation (either by a victim who did fire first or by the authorities).
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe "Shit, chances are EVERYONE in that store is armed, and that makes it 10 guns against my one gun. Hmm... odds not so good for me. Maybe I'll reconsider and not rob that store after all."
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of laws passed these days target law abiding citizens as a means of control rather than crime prevention. Gun control laws are no different.
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Come to the UK .. Guns are *almost* banned and most criminals do not use them!
UK had 58 deaths by firearms last year .... ..that's 232 times as many per head of population
USA had 11,346 deaths by firearms
A good start (Score:3, Insightful)
Start spending money on domestic security instead of imperialism. Our military budget is nearing 700 billion per year. Even if that was only cut in half, and only ten percent of that was used on traditional police departments, you could open up ten police forces the size of the NYPD.
Or you could even do something crazy like invest in rehabilitation for non-violent criminals, and save our country 40k per year per head for those we're able to return back to society. Halfway houses are a lot cheaper than jail cells, and if they continue to commit crime, you're no worse than when you started.
That's what the populace would prefer. But here in the USA, our opinion doesn't count.
Re:The 2nd Amendment Is Bunk (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe if we required anyone who wanted a gun to have training and regular tests of competence for their guns, and insurance, and register each gun, and get it inspected every year, and require each gun to have safety features the way that cars have antilock brakes, airbags and seatbelts, guns might be dragged back into some kind of safe degree of use.
In Germany prior to WWII they had guns [wikipedia.org] but with very strict restrictions, a bit like what you suggest. Then in 1938 thanks to that neat file with everybody who had a gun's name on it they started disarming the Jews, and when they had done that they could safely proceed with their plans. Yay for registration of firearms!
Why yes, I Godwined myself in the foot, but who cares.
But instead, gun fetishists act like guns don't kill over 29,000 Americans every year.
And anti-gun nut jobs don't realise that the problem isn't law-abiding citizens owning guns but massive organised crime.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of those police and military are also family people. Almost none of them wish to throw away their lives. The threat that every house they go to they might get shot will really make them question if they are doing the right thing.
"The notion that a civilian force could "overthrow a tyrannical government" in the US today is quaint at best."
Sounds like the type of idea that came from the people who said Iraq would be a cake walk.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's back down from the larger and, at this point in time, less likely picture of black helicopters and civil wars. Let's look at what this means for most people:
If you live in DC (and other, similarly restrictive cities soon) you can own a handgun for self-protection and you don't have to have a trigger lock, disassembled or in another manner to make it totally useless. And if someone breaks into your house, you can blow his shit away and not have to worry about being 1) unable to defend your family or 2) arrested alongside the burglar for defending your family.
And that's a good thing.
Let's watch the DC crime rates go down.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
While there are certainly some crummy things going on in the US government right now, it seems unlikely to me that the military would actively fight on the side of the government against a serious uprising of american citizens. From what I've seen, the sorts of countries where the governments are kept in power purely through military force are places where life is generally so meager that being a soldier is one of the only ways to live any sort of privileged or even adequately supported life. You don't go into the army there because you love your country and you love your government and you want to protect your leader. You go into the army because the alternative is to be destitute.
Basically, the way military dictatorships tend to work, there are no other real social institutions or organizations, and so you're either part of that system or your trampled under it. In the US, most of the wealth exists outside of the military. The soldiers have more to lose than they have to gain by supporting the government against its people.
Maybe I'm wrong, and all our soldiers are just blood-thirsty drones, but most of the individuals that I've met have been reasonably intelligent and decent people. It'd take some really serious injustices to get any sizeable portion of our citizenry to take to the streets with guns, and I think that whatever argument led to that would be just as convincing to most of our military.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
March on the white house to storm it ? Or what exactly ?
What is the point of those "freedom protecting" guns all the US people are supposedly so fond of ?
Yes. This isn't something you do casually. It's for when things are so bad you're willing to die to make them better and so are most of the people around you. The people who wrote this amendment had done exactly that. They fought in a war. They were willing to get themselves killed to be free of British rule.
Don't think George W. Bush and a few hundred terror suspects at Gitmo. Think Stalin's gulags and Hitler's gestapo. That is what the second amendment is there to prevent.
Ban Handguns. Period. (Score:2, Insightful)
I know down in the states that have that wacky Amendment. Hell up here in Canada we tried a gun registry which hasn't really worked so well.
To me it makes very simple sense. Ban handguns. I try and think of legitimate users of handguns, and I can think of two.
1) Law,
2) Target and collectors, but really they make up, what, part of one percentage point of the population?
The only other two users are criminals, and those people that think owning a hand gun will protect them from said criminals.
Of course there are the whack jobs who say they want them to overthrow the government should they get all tyrannical on their ass. To which I saw 3 things:
1) That boat has sailed my friends, and people fight, not guns.
2) Last I checked I have not seen a successful civil war, or any war for that matter that was decided with handguns. and
3) While having guns in the 1800's may have made some difference, wars are typically fought with like tanks, and planes, rockets and shit like that now. So maybe it is your constitutional right to bear those as well. Heck I know I want a tank, might be a tad expensive, particularly with the cost of oil these days!
The thing with handguns is that you can conceal them. So criminals love that shit. Make it illegal to have one, and all you have to do is catch them with one to arrest them. Also take enough out of circulation, and it will become very hard to obtain one.
This isn't to say ban long guns, no not at all. A rifle is good for hunting and for you wackos a staple of war and uprising. You just can't conceal them. Sure you can cut the barrel down, but it is illegal, again instant arrest if found. A criminal is gonna look mighty suspicious walking into a store with a rifle. Also for those wishing to protect your home, well I think I would find a shotgun a bit more intimating than you standard 9mm pee shooter. Besides what does a home owner need with a small concealable fire arm? Hide it from the kids? These are all supposed to be in a locked gun case (at least in Canada) anyway.
Anyway thats my take. Get rid of 'em. I have never fired one, nor will I, for what use do I have for one? Heck if you want to, have a program to trade in your handgun for a rifle or shotgun. Just get rid of them.
Be reasonable and do some research first (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't agree with the CW on Slashdot that everything Bush has done is bad. And most of my disagreements with Bush come from the conservative side of the spectrum, not the radical, civil libertarian, the-Constitution-is-a-suicide-pact perspective that is so pervasive on Slashdot. But many here suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome, or less elegantly, are haters. If Bush rescued kittens from a burning building, many here would have something snotty to say. That just isn't reasonable. Anyone who is happy with the Heller decision simply must recognize that without Bush in the White House appointing two justices, gun rights would have taken a serious hit today.
But if you suffer from BDS and don't care about a civil liberty so important that the framers listed it above search and seizure and right to counsel, then of course you are not interested in an objective, fair view of the 43rd president. Besides, it is much easier to call me names than to be reasonable and admit to something that flies in the face of your ideology. It is so much easier - and takes so much less thought and introspection - to just label Bush evil, with no redeeming qualities.
the fact that the so-called "originalists" on the court basically reversed about a centuries worth of decisions previously decided), but that doesn't matter.
Nonsense. Miller is the *only* 20th-century SCOTUS gun rights case that even addresses the Second Amendment, and only touched on taxation and registration of sawed-off shotguns, not the issue of individual gun rights in general. In fact, Heller upheld DC's licensing schemes.
Moreover, you have no idea what judicial activism means. It does not mean that a court is "active" in reversing precedent - especially if it is reversing case law inconsistent with the Constitution or statutory law (i.e., overturning activist cases is not activism). Activism means judges legislating from the bench, ignoring the Constitution or statute for their own public policy ideals. And "originalist" philosophy has nothing to do with upholding precedent (i.e., stare decisis); it is about judging consistent with the original understanding of the framers' intent, which this decision certainly does. You might disagree with the author of the Bill of Rights, but clearly he was talking about an individual right.
"(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison, The Federalist Number 46
For the record, I am a law professor, so I am not just talking out of my ass here, as most jailhouse lawyers here do. You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts or law.
But since you are lamenting activism, I am sure that you are upset that, thanks to a recent SCOTUS decision, for the first time in American and world history, POWs/unlawful combatants now get access to civil courts. Now that's activism.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are four boxes to be used in the defense of freedom, in the following order:
Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo.
Kill the drug trade... (Score:5, Insightful)
you could open up ten police forces the size of the NYPD.
Not necessarily a good option. While I'm sure there are areas that could use more police protection, there are already a good amount where additional police would simply result in more speeding tickets(because they're easy).
No, my solution would be to legalize, regulate, and tax the currently illegal drugs. Killing the illegal drug trade would drop our violence levels to near european levels overnight.
Re:Oh great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Great minds at slashdot (WTF?)
yes, most people who pull a gun to rob a store aren't gun owners.
yes, funny things are often interesting. The comment was obviously meant as a joke. The GP said (my emphasis):The vast majority of legal gun owners (proper license, clean background, etc) in the US commits a disproportionally lower percentage of the violent crime.
The criminals got them by stealing them, by buying them from thieves who stole them, and buying them from people who smuggled them from states without background checks. That's what criminals do.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Founding fathers were just dudes... (Score:4, Insightful)
why do some people think that 'the founding fathers' were space aliens with more wisdom than anyone who has lived since?
We had some old white men write important documents in UK history too. Most of them were maniacs or bloodthirsty freaks, and we don't cling to some fantasy that what they wrote down was THE LAST WORD.
In fact, we overturned their views many times, regarding votes for women and homosexuality, abortion etc etc.
Just because people wrote a document a long time ago doesn't make what they wrote magically wise.
Re:More Guns, Less Crime... (Score:2, Insightful)
Er, because there are more guns? You need to compare the overall crime rates, and then you need to factor everything else in as well. You can't just look at those two statistics and draw anything accurate out of them - your on another freaking continent with completely different social groups - there's just too many variables, variables that by no means have small impact.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't mistake compromise (Score:2, Insightful)
And when it comes to.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, sure.
Angry rebels could never hold off the combined might of the US Army. Unless it's in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Lebanon...
Not all soldiers are highly trained commandos.
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Yay Politics!
Sorry for using harsh terms above- Mod flamebait if ya like. But the scientist in you probably agrees that it's true verbiage.
And for the record, so you know my bias I'm for gun ownership (I own and shoot guns) and reasonable gun control (they are registered and I am not a felon). I like babies and think pregnancy is fascinating. I'm against abortion and am appalled at the selfish arguments I run into when people try to defend it as a "right". Killing people isn't a Right (with guns or forecepts), and birth canals don't bestow magical personhood dust upon those who pass through.
Cheers, Ed
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of my pet peeves. What is the difference between a hunting rifle and an assault rifle?
Hunting rifles are brown, assault rifles are black. If I am shot, the color of the gun would be the last thing on my mind.
Assault rifles have an upper gas tube. Once again, if I am shot, I would not care.
Assault rifles may have a place to put a bayonett. If I have a gun pointed at me, I would probably not notice a knife on the end.
Assault rifles have a pistol grip. Yup, that would make anybody shot with a hunting rifle feel better that at least there was no pistol grip.
Also, just for the record, let's look at the most popular "assault rifle" out there -- the AR-15. It shoots a .223 cartridge. If I was told that I was going to be shot by a center-fire rifle, and I could choose the cartridge, the .223 would be near the top of the list. The AR-15 was designed mostly to injure (not kill) the enemy. Also, with smaller bullets, you can carry more ammo. The humble 30-06 cartridge (extremely popular for hunting) does a LOT more damage.
The Washington Sniper used a .223 AR-15, and some people lived. If "assault weapons" were illegal, and he chose to use a bolt-action 30-06, there would not have been any survivors.
Basicly, some people want to ban "assault rifles" because they look scary. If we painted them day-glow orange and had pictures of kittens and unicorns on them, they would be OK.
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, about half the army will likely defect. Civilian targets? Marshall law? Blow up towns?
Second, you have guns so when the Nazis march into your town to start yanking you out of your houses, you're fuckin' armed. It worked for Hitler, it won't work here; Hitler collected up all the guns, if we have them all still then when the gestapo wants to take us they can take us through the bullet spray.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, while an armed populace that's sufficiently pissed off to rebel may indeed be the final option in the case of governmental tyranny, it's not a solution anyone should hope for. Civil wars are ugly, ugly things, and we should try every possible legal solution before resorting to blood in the streets.
The best deterrents (an armed populace in this case) are the ones which you end up not having to use. Although one should be prepared to shoot a burglar if necessary, it's best if the burglar runs away, and even better if the burglar never breaks into your house in the first place because they think you may have a gun. Similarly, it's better to have the possibility of having to deal with an armed revolt keeps a government's actions in check, rather than have an actual revolt.
One might think that individual rights in the U.S. are encroached upon quite a bit, but just compare it to someplace like the U.K. (where gun rights are essentially non-existent) and you'll notice quite a difference.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
"There comes a point when the military stops obeying orders."
That may be so, but you should NEVER EVER count on that. The Milgram experiment and further experience proves that.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
They believed Reagan was evil, for crying out loud
How does selling crack on the streets of America to buy guns for terrorists in direct violation of Congressional orders not count as evil?
Seriously, get a sense of perspective for crying out loud.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, by that point, it'd be too late anyway. No matter how many guns you've got, the US military has more, not to mention the training and tactics to deploy them effectively. The best you'd be able to hope for is a Iraq style guerrilla insurgency, but even that wouldn't work, since the troops you're fighting against would be from a similar cultural background as you.
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, maybe, and given an all-out civil war like that, I think you may have something there.
But how do we get from the point of "secret police rounding up dissidents" (think Rex 84) to "supply lines are vulnerable"?
Nobody objected to rounding up Japanese during WWII. Only about 1/2 the population objects to Guantanamo.
Re:Ban Handguns. Period. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the United States, handguns are used for self defense purposes tens of thousands of times each year, typically without a shot being fired.
"3 . . .having guns in the 1800's may have made some difference, wars are typically fought with like tanks, and planes . . .maybe it is your constitutional right to bear those as well."
I fully believe that the intent of our Founding Fathers in writing The Constitution was that every citizen had the right to own military style weaponry. That was 1787. Today, most firearms owners, and the NRA are willing to accept the federal firearms laws of 1938 and 1968 as well as the NICS (National Instant Checks System). It is outrageous laws like a total ban on handguns, and laws requiring citizens to keep their rifles and shotguns either locked and unloaded or disassmbled in their OWN HOME that are in question here.
"The thing with handguns is that you can conceal them. So criminals love that shit. Make it illegal to have one, and all you have to do is catch them with one to arrest them . . ."
Criminals also love knowing that their potential victims are not armed. Furthermore, criminals are people who, by definition, don't obey the laws. Therefore, they are as unlikely to obey a handgun prohibition as they are to obey laws against assault, theft, murder, etc. Therein lies the fundamental flaw in most gun control laws. They only affect the law abiding.
" . . . for those wishing to protect your home, well I think I would find a shotgun . . ."
Agreed. With #6 or #7 birdshot. Lethal at short range, but unlikely to penetrate walls and cause unintentional damage. Unfortunately, with laws like those in DC, your shotgun would have to be either disassembled, or unloaded and secured with a trigger lock. Not much good for a typical home defense situation.
"thats my take. Get rid of 'em. I have never fired one, nor will I, for what use do I have for one?"
To each their own, but I'd caution you against allowing your government to ban things on the basis of "need" or "usefulness". There are plenty of things which I have no use for, but I don't think they should be banned.
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:5, Insightful)
it seemed to work pretty well for the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Mujaheddin. The entire point of guerrilla warfare is that it almost completely eliminates the military advantage that large standing forces have. Artillery and other massive weapons are only useful against other standing militaries. Cruise missiles are only useful against infrastructure and other persistent targets. Attack helicopters are no use at picking one soldier out of a crowd of civilians. Aircraft carriers are useless against someone poisoning your barracks' food supply. ICBMs don't frighten someone who lives 2 miles from your own military base. Stealth fighters can't protect you from roadside bombs.
Of course, your argument is pointless anyways. As the decision states, whether resistance is a practical option in the 21st century has no bearing on whether it is a protected right. You don't say that the freedom of speech is no longer protected just because Rupert Murdoch can easily speak louder than any protester, you don't say that the fourth amendment is no longer valid since the police can easily find out tons of information about you without entering your home. I don't think there's any risk that the government will want to quarter soldiers in private homes to save some money, that doesn't mean the constitutional prohibition against it ceases to be the law of the land.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
You are assuming those in the military would think with one mind during an assault on US citizens. If the worse were to come, I suspect there would be plenty of weapons available to both sides, courtesy of members of our own military who disagree with the action.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed! I am considered a liberal by many, madman by others. But you come in to my home uninvited (that means me telling you to come in... don't bring open WIFI type logic into this anyone!) you are going to see me holding my shotgun, my wife with a 9MM and my four cats with friggin' laser beams attached! MEOW BITCH!
On a more sensible note; the fact that a million citizens would probably lose against a few tank divisions is irrelevant. It takes a single man, with a rifle and scope to take out a politician who has been naughty. The fear of guns from oppressive government types is not about you beating the US Military, it is about you getting a lucky shot on them and theirs.
Tes
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:5, Insightful)
The military is our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our fathers and mothers -- they do not want to shoot a single US citizen. Most will follow orders so long as they do not include shooting and harming US citizens, and that's exactly why we need the guns; more than likely only a few minor incidents would be needed, because the aftermath would further ignite public outcry and also dampen military resolve to use weaponry on its own citizens.
Re:The melacholy of gun control laws (Score:4, Insightful)
How about this, then? "There are ten people in there. None, some, or all of them may have legal firearms. I have a gun. If I rob that place, what are the odds that I am outgunned? even worse, what are the odds that I am LOOKING at the ONE guy drawing a gun on me out of ten in the place?"
Once upon a time, the James-Dalton gang managed to forget that most everyone had guns, and that many of them were willing to use them (and skilled in doing so, since most men of the day were veterans of the Civil War). They rode into town, and were shot to ragdolls.
The uncertainty about possession of firearms has a strong deterrent effect - I'd rather rob someone who is unarmed than someone who IS armed. The possibility that ANYONE may be armed is enough to convince me to take up a new hobby, like identity theft, instead of armed robbery.
Note: I am usually fairly rational. It's quite possible that the average criminal is irrational, and doesn't take such considerations into account. But don't bet your life on it.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you do miss the point. Allowing the entire citizenry to own guns is like the getting involved in a cold war. It establishes an uneasy armed truce between the citizens and the leading class (politicians), with the ideal situation being that leaders do not take away freedoms, and in turn, the citizens don't take their lives. Sort of like Mutually Assured Destruction, only with the weight placed much more on the ruling class, because they are few, and the mob is legion. I think many of the founding fathers understood this, just like most of the ruling class understands this today, if somewhat unconsciously.
Sure, it's true... A single hunting rifle will be, and always has been utterly ineffective against an army. Still, I think people underestimate the power a few small chunks of lead could have. Devices which effectively poke holes in game animals will continue to be effective at poking holes in (much more frail) humans. I.E. You can hide some of the politicians all of the time, but you can't hide all of the politicians all of the time. This explains why our rights are slowly eroding. It makes the changes less tangible, less dramatic... Then the doublespeak begins.
Re:Right, because POWs have always gotten trials (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush himself has used the "not at war" tactic to justify circumventing the Geneva Conventions, claiming our prisoners are not POWs but "enemy combatants." This despite the fact that
FDR and Truman were wartime presidents. We declared war in WWII.
"Police action" was invented to circumvent the Senate. It was invented to take advantage of the ambiguity in Article 2 of the Constitution, which simply states that the president shall act as Commander in Chief. Presidents use this to order troops to war, without having to get the Senate to actually declare war.
Yes, war is hell. But we are better at killing our enemies than they are at killing us. That does not mean we should debase ourselves to use their tactics, tactics which we have agreed are illegal when we signed the Geneva Conventions. It certainly does not mean we should willingly sacrifice our core values because they are inconvenient. If we do that, we have already lost, because that is exactly what the enemy wants.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's what'll happen.
Because as anyone who has ever lived in a large city knows the main form of crime is armed assailants killing innocent grandmothers in their bedrooms...
It's not as if violence between family members and gang violence accounts for the majority of violent crime. This is a very good thing, because if guns were inserted into relationships where people who know each other or are members of violent gangs are trying to hurt each other, one might expect the rate of homicides to go up...
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think you've ever lived in East TN.
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:3, Insightful)
Makes as much sense as the fact that most who are pro abortion are also anti death penalty. So, it's ok to kill the innocent but not the guilty...interesting logic.
Re:Among others (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:3, Insightful)
>>"So let me get this straight: Individual citizens armed with handguns and rifles and shotguns are going to go up against government forces, who have artillery, cruise missiles, and attack helicopters?"
Yes. As an unfortunate example, look what is occuring in Iraq right now. The average citizen cannot withstand a toe-to-toe battle with an overpowering occupying army and they don't need to either. History has shown time and time again that a large army is incredibly susceptible to being stalled out or ground away by guerilla warefare.
Further, understand that many governments have been overthrown by people armed with handguns and rifles and shotguns. Armies show a reluctance to kill their brothers and countrymen, especially when thousands and thousands of them congregate, united in a common cause against a tyrannical government.
A thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
seatbelt argument (Score:3, Insightful)
When wearing seatbelts became mandatory, people were (and some still are!) arguing against it because "if you have an accident you are trapped". This reminds me a lot of this discussion where people say that if they don't own a gun then crime will be higher. How come this argument isn't true in many other countries? Plenty of countries where gun ownership is extremely restricted and funnily enough they have a lower crime rate (especially on gun crime) than the US. Just look at most European countries.
Gun ownership is in the constitution, so, fine, people should be allowed to own them and I think the decision of the Supreme Court is correct on that account. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea at all and the "but but but it reduces crime"-argument is flawed in my opinion.
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, but there is no formal constitution-level document declaring that a police force must exist. That, too is Our responsibility. That's big "O" our, as in "we, the people". The statutes that create the police forces across the nation are not written in stone and may be changed. We, the people, created them and we must pass rules to control them.
Right again. But honestly, unless you have a whole lot of people with a whole bunch of fire power neither the police nor the military will be stopped. They might be slowed but not stopped. And the type of firepower that would be needed to stop even a squad of government solders tends to attract the attention of the FBI who frown on that sort of thing, for obvious reasons. So although you are technically correct, the point is moot.
Couldn't agree more. And going on you can say the point of power is to maintain the power of those who have it. Any type of power. Let's be honest here, the point of all those bullets and bombs the government has is to maintain and increase their power. Those can and have been used on citizens. It used to be that the military would be called in to "put down riots" or "maintain the peace". Now its to "stop terroists". It amounts to the same thing; the people in power stopping the people without power from taking power away.
In short, your Second amendment rights are meaningless except to allow you to hold a weapon. These days that just makes you fair game.
Re:Among others (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:3, Insightful)
So the right to have an abortion is bullshit whereas the right to own a gun is God-given.
The Supreme Court interprets the Constitution. They do not decide what is right, moral, ethical, or proper. They decide if laws are Constitutional. Hopefully, the Constitution has the moral stuff in it--of course, it fails in some places. For example, it is weak on protecting privacy and it did not address control over our own bodies, like abortion and right to die stuff.
The decision on abortion was correct, Constitutionally speaking. Abortion isn't protected in the Constitution, therefore, laws can be made restricting it. I do not like the result, but it is consistent with our system of law. The law just happens to suck.
The gun decision was made not because Americans today value guns more than abortion rights, but because the legal framework the laws were written into--the Constitution--had something to say about one, and not the other.
When you ignore the law and make decisions that "feel" right, you open the door to abuse of power. You don't like how judges act now? After a few decades of judges doing what "feels" right and pandering to part of the public, things would be worse. After all, isn't that what the President is doing?
The price we pay for living in a society of laws is that some of those laws are going to suck because the process of change is difficult. The alternative, less respect for the law in government, would make everything suck more because the powerful have more power.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. I am against guns. But, the cat's out of the bag. So, while I am "against guns", at this point I'm only against guns to the extent that I'd like to see them all gone - and that includes hunting rifles, hand guns, guns that criminals have, AND guns that law enforcement carry.
I'm even more against the government having guns and the people not having guns, if you get where I'm going.
~W
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gurrilla insurgencies work well regardless of cultural backgrounds. If things started to go socially bust in the US, there would be a massive number of police and military personnel joining the "rebels" and bringing their weapons and tactical knowledge with them.
I agree, too, the concept of stockpiling is questionable. It seems like an easy target to take out, as all it takes is for one person with knowledge of it to be caught, then the "rebels" lost a large supply. It seems much more effective for the majority of people to obtain a few firearms, even sports models of AR/AK assult weapons, deer rifles, etc. This way the weapons are likely to be maintained, and in the hands of people comfortable with the upkeep and usage of said firearm. Not so effective on a large scale war scenario, since ammo resupplies would get complicated since you aren't just supplying millions of 7.62x39mm rounds, which would work in literally everyone's gun in Iraq.
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Killing welfare, special interest funding, and 'help' groups for people that willingly fuck up their lives - might go a long way too.
Basically, reinstate accountability.
'Gee, if I don't go to school, I'll be working at McDonald's forever.' Tough break kid.
One would think its a lot easier to make a bad decision if your fairly sure that someone will help you out if your REALLY in it up to your neck.
Its pretty hard to 'keep it real' when your starving because you have no visible source of income.
Yes,yes, you can turn to crime, but (and this is an honest question) HOW many people are actually going to go to hard-core crime ? I mean, you have to really turn off the 'this is not right' warning light in your head - and while its possible, you would have to be raised in a moral vacuume to do that easily.
I mean, its a hell of a lot easier to get a job, than it is to become a hard-core 'gangsta' with assult weapons, knocking over banks.
Re:A close call (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a scary person, ya know that?? good insights, and frighteningly, I think you're right. When it only takes 5 people to nullify a basic Right, that makes them the most powerful people in this country.
Note to future Presidents: Choose your SCOTUS Justices with care. Your grandchildren will live with the consequences.
Military != automatons (Score:2, Insightful)
As I recall, the US military is also composed of private citizens, many of which are probably private gun owners themselves. Having a military comprised of private volunteers is probably a great deterrent against tyranny.
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, about half the army will likely defect
Precisely why they wouldn't use the army. Think Blackwater gleefully plying their trade for very fat bonuses. They won't give a second thought about you.
Re:Good; Gun "Control" is bad (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with any discussion of US gun laws is that the two sides talk about completely different realities.
Those is favour of gun control cite countries with strict gun control, and how few the gun death are; even the criminals tend not to use guns, and when they do they use guns that are quite tame compared to those commonly used by criminals in the US. (its not that the criminal "give a shit about the law" that stops them, its because its enough of a pain for the criminals to get a hold of a gun that most are willing to do without; and with none of their victims being armed, there is almost no incentive for criminals to seek guns)
Those against gun control tend to cite area of the US that have imposed some sort of limits on gun ownership, and how those limits always fail.
Both are flawed arguements. US is a country with hundreds of millions of guns, and no change in law will instantly make it otherwise. But the attempts that have been made to control guns in the US have been incredibly underwhelming, and to call their failure proof that gun control does not work is to not understand what gun control actually is.
Any attempt at real gun control in the US would require a great amount of time, effort, and a political will that certainly is not in sight right now; but if those conditions were met, then it could be done, and fewer Americans would die as a result.
Re:Surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"weapons in common use at the time" (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that 230 years ago,
1. a musket was the best any army had. Civilians even had the equivalent of sniper rifles, see the minutemen.
Heck, you could make a musket and ammo in a local smithy or in your shed. It was a simple weapon where the tolerances were _extremely_ generous.
Artillery? Sure. Anyone who could make a bell, could make a cannon just as good as the royal armourers in England.
Shock troops? That still meant cavalry. Any rancher who had a horse could be the equivalent of what today is a tank or a gunship.
2. Tactics were also more... lacklustre. Armies were trained to just march to 100 yards of each other and stand tall, shooting volley after volley at each other, until one looks like it's breaking. Then the other would do a cavalry charge or bayonet charge to finish it all. The only difference between a fully trained army and a militia was that the army was trained to stay in formation longer.
The Brits essentially did little more than pout when the rifled guns of the minutemen just sniped their officers in the first volley.
Modern infantry tactics and indeed combined arms tactics are a bit more effective than that. A militia whose claim to glory is shooting a few vermin now and then, and a bit of penis-size posturing at the shooting range on sundays, would sustain heavier casualties even if they had the exact same weapons the army had.
3. While willy-waving about the independence war is good and fine, let's not forget that it was mostly won because there was an ocean in between _and_ because France went bankrupt supporting you guys against the Brits. The whole French navy, as much as there was of it, fought hard to make that ocean a bigger problem for the Brits than it already was. And there was military help on the ground too from the French and from the northern indian tribes they had worked hard to befriend.
In fact, if you look at the French Revolution, soon there after, and at the king getting beheaded, that's what started it: eventually the peasants and burgeoisie had enough of paying the debt for a war that wasn't theirs and gained nothing for them. But I digress.
At any rate, you fought, only a fraction of the English army and you didn't fight it alone. And yeah, you repeated it a few years later, when the Brits were busy with Napoleon and made little more than a token show of force to keep you from trading with Napoleon. And gave up as soon as Napoleon was no longer a threat, and they had no more reason to keep you from trading with France.
Don't let it go to your head. Just a few rag-tag militias against the full might of England, _could_ have went a lot differently.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh great... (Score:5, Insightful)
All those places are a long way from home. The rebels know the land while the US army doesn't, and the rebels have massive popular support while the US army doesn't.
It's a very different scenario from a hypothetical military action within the USA, in which it's very likely that the majority of the population would believe that the rebels were traitors. The best you could hope for would be for a significant portion of the army to refuse to take up arms against fellow Americans. However, I doubt they'd go so far as to join the rebels and take up arms against their own military comrades either.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the crux of the problem with gun laws in general. Criminals, by definition aren't interested in following the law, therefore, the stringent gun laws only hamper law abiding citizens.
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the right not to be aborted? Why should a human being have no rights whatsoever until they're out of the womb?
This is what's wrong with the abortion debate in this country: neither side can even understand what the other side is talking about. "Life" and "choice" are not antonyms; the labels "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are a clear indication that we're not on the same page here. People on the left can't understand how those on the right (especially women on the right) could oppose a woman's right to make choices about her own reproductive health, while people on the right can't understand how those on the left could oppose the rights of an unborn child to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The pro-life people aren't against women, against women's health, or against a woman's right to make choices about her own body. They just don't see the life of an unborn child as having anything to do with the mother's rights. If you can't legally murder your own child after they've been born, why should you be permitted to do so before?
The pro-choice people aren't against the rights of children, they just don't believe that a fetus is a human being. It's not really alive, it's not an individual, until it's out of the womb - before then, it's just a heap of tissue and stuff that's part of the mother's body. It's not illegal to amputate your own hand, so why should aborting your pregnancy be against the law?
Re:Crime rate high? (Score:4, Insightful)
A friend of my Mom's had this happen to their family.
They came home from a trip, came upon armed buglers in their home. The bad guys already had the drop on them.
The father went for the gun in his briefcase. He was shot dead. His son was injured in the same incident.
You might think you can sort all this stuff out and make the right decision when it happens. Or you might get
angry or scared or overcome by the desire to protect your family and wind up dead.
Maybe you think you are smarter and would be able to trick the guy with the gun on you. Hey, it happens a lot
in the movies. Let's hope you never find out.
Also by having guns in your household, you run the risk that one of your household becomes so distraught that
they would use the gun on themselves or someone else in your family.
Let's say that your wife decides you are cheating on her and sobbing and finds your gun just before you get home.
What might have been an argument can instantly turn into someone getting killed.
So on the one hand, the gun might make you safer. On the other hand it might make you less safe. The way the
US constitution is today, you get to choose. I choose not to have guns. You might choose differently.
Re:Sweet (Score:2, Insightful)
IIRC, it is not unlawful to wander around completely naked in Vermont. Oddly, it is unlawful to get that way in public.
Last I checked, Vermont was still within the United States.
Re:Realistically, guns as a self defense mechanism (Score:2, Insightful)
'Unnecessary Murders'
Careful how you word that, bub; frankly, I think the moment you threaten me with unprovoked lethal force (ie. armed robbery), you should expect just as much in return. Self-Defense is not murder, and I object to you implying that. There are more choices than just victim or criminal.
So do two friends of mine who survived a carjacking by killing the other guy first. They sure as hell were not looking for a reason to shoot someone, but they're alive, and still in therapy for it, and shitheads like you throwing the word 'murder' around for what they had to do is just small-mindedly gauche, thank you very much.
Re:Oh great... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not missing the point at all. While gang members may already have guns, your average joe wifebeater won't. Either way with the lifting of the ban gang members will have more access to more guns, and those prone to commit violence to their relatives will have access they wouldn't.
This says nothing of the constitutionality of the ban. While I'm all for gun owners being well trained not having a gun at all is still safer for the would-be gun owner than having one. The quickest way (statistically) to increase your chance of being shot - buy a gun.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's actually a bad thing for the government. In all of those cases, the US Military has had safe haven well away from the enemy. They have had a ready industrial base to produce the weapons and equipment it takes to fight a modern war.
If we ever have need of a home grown insurgency, those advantages will be gone. Politicians will be sniped regularly. For example in recent times, JFK was shot, and Regan was shot, both while under the watchful eye of the Secret Service. Also, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed. It doesn't take an army to kill one man, it takes a gun and a bit of luck.
And the industrial base which a modern military relies on would be in shambles. Simple explosives are not hard to make. Delivery is also trivial. The insurgency in Iraq have proven these two statements time and again; Timothy McVeigh also demonstrated this locally. Tanks need fuel, howitzers need shells. Such a war is not going to be fought and won by overwhelming force, it could only be won through attrition and propaganda. The Government would be relying on the majority of the populous being against the insurgency. And such an insurgency would only work, and hopefully only ever be started, because the abuses of the Government are so great and obvious that the people are ready to fight over it.
I don't think such a fight is as cut and dried as you would have people believe. I am not going to say that the people would necessarily win. However, I would rather have a fighting chance and die trying to fight tyranny than to roll over and accept it, because it would be a hard fight. Our country was founded on the ideal that liberty is worth fighting for; that our rights as people are worth fighting for; and that, should it come to it, it is better to die fighting a free man, than to accept tyranny.
I cannot say it any better than the great Patrick Henry: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!""
Re:This is a monumental and historic decision (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh huh, you tell 'em, Sparky.
Re:Dissenting opinion - Stevens is an idjit (Score:3, Insightful)
You're the idjit who needs to learn how to read. And you got a Score 5 Insightful for it, a total joke.
The Stevens Opinion (and of 4 of the justices) was exactly that "the framers wanted to reserve the tools for revolution to the people". The Stevens opinion would absolutely maintain the right to gun ownership, but would for example have upheld the part of the D.C. law requiring guns in the home to be stored unloaded and/or under triggerlock.
You have it competely backwards. It was the Scalia opinion that rejected the "framers wanted to reserve the tools for revolution to the people". The Scalia opinion that explicitly said the second amendment "unconnected" to the issue of reserv[ing] the tools for revolution to the people. Whether a gun in the home has to be stored with a triggerlock has absolutely no connection to possessing the tools for revolution.
Note that I am not even arguing either side here. I am merely pointing out what the actual issue is and what the Justices actual said, and that you are the one with the problem reading/comprehending.
All to often people jump on one side of a case or the other, or make vicious attacks against a ruling, based on "teams" and PR slogans without the slighted understanding of what is actually at issue. For example my personal pet peeve of this are the school prayer idjits. Such idjits go on rants about religion being under attack and students being forbidden to pray in school, rants that are at best gross ignorance and at worst outright lies. The reason the ACLU wins almost ever such case is because they are right. Reading the actual court cases (which I have done), in every case one side is arguing that students *do* have the right to pray in school and that the force of government is forbidden to be used against students to promote or oppress such religious practice. The other side is always some government official(s) attempting to the powers of government against students for exactly that unconstitutional purpose.
So yes I'm argue one side of the school prayer issue, no I'm not I'm not arguing either side of this gun issue, but mainly I'm bitching about "idjits" who rant on court rulings or rant against on stupid evil and "activist" judges - when they are totally clueless on the actual issue was in the case and they do don't understand what Justices actually saids. Far too many people simplistically categorize court battles as "pro-X vs anti-X", and they expect and demand that the case be forced to come in a certain direction regardless of what the actual legal issue was, and regardless of the fact that they would demand a ruling on the exact same issue go in the opposite direction the next time it comes up in slightly different circumstances with different people on the two sides. "Ohh gee, this is a court case against the Boy Scouts, so therefore I am going to rant and crusade that the result must be in favor of the Boy Scouts, regardless of the actual issue at hand and regardless of the fact that ruling that way would screw over Churches or other groups that will inevitably face the exact same issue themselves from the opposite side".
I wish humans could get over so much of this team psychology. Court rulings turn on specific legal issues, and if you pick sides without any clue of the actual issue being ruled on then it would be no more than pure dumb luck if you manage to be rooting the correct result more than half the time.
Now, I'll admit I enjoy some blind schadenfreude when for example I hear the RIAA lose a case. However I don't argue it was the right or wrong legal decision unless I have some idea of the specific legal issue being ruled on. And I don't blame or insult judges who rule in favor of the RIAA, again, unless I have some idea what the specific issue involved was.
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Lies, damned lies... (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, that was from the New England Journal of Medicine and it classified "family" as anybody you knew, including rival gang members.
When it came out a very liberal columnist in Playboy (Scheer?) was screaming anti-gun with it as evidence. The next issue was a huge mea culpa as he exposed the lies of the study that had apparently been pointed out to him.
Re:It's about damn time (Score:4, Insightful)
What a dreadful idea. More firepower to whoever has the most money, as if power in the US wasn't already dangerously concentrated into the hands of a few, very wealthy people.
Re:Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
I was asking the AC who said:
It is clear that he is manipulating the representation of the statistics. Obviously households of law abiding citizens in areas were firearms are not legal will not have firearm related intra familial deaths, because they can't have firearms to have intra familial deaths with.
To then say that there will be "A lot more (than zero)" in areas were firearms are allowed is a gross misrepresentation of statistics.
Absurd logic (Score:2, Insightful)
The crux of your problem is the tautological "laws only hamper law abiding citizens"(emphasis mine) as a key part of your "argument". Of course they do! This is exactly the point of laws: to control the behavior of those that abide by the law!
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
You're too kind to our elected leaders. Stringent gun laws get people killed. Maybe if a few of these errant officials were put up on negligent homicide charges they'd think twice about this unConstitutional poppycock. So far as I'm concerned, every time a law-abiding citizen is killed because he was unable to legally acquire a firearm with which to defend himself, the people who prevented him are partly responsible for his death.
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:3, Insightful)
So let me get this straight: Individual citizens armed with handguns and rifles and shotguns are going to go up against government forces, who have artillery, cruise missiles, and attack helicopters?
No handgun is going to stop an attack helicopter. But I think you'll find it's pretty effective against the 2-year-old daughter of the guy whose job it is to put gas in the tank of the attack helicopter. Kill enough babies and wives and parents of ground crew, and gassed-up helicopters will be pretty hard to find.
What, you thought guerilla warfare against your own government was going to be polite?
Re:hopelessly outgunned... (Score:3, Insightful)
The National Guard, composed of people a lot like ushas fired on unarmed US civilians on several occasions. Same goes for the police. Why should we assume the military would be any different? It would be miraculous if there were a 5% desertion rate, let alone 50%.
Look, they're killing hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians now in Iraq-- they'd kill you and me too if someone pointed them in our direction.
Americans are just like the Germans when the Nazis took over, only more docile. Consider your coworkers and neighbors. They talk a lot about individuality but are more like a breed of unusually loud-mouthed sheep.
Chaos (Score:3, Insightful)
No, don't worry, we're not descending into chaos just yet.
If I understand it, the argument in favour of the right to own lots of guns goes something like this: "It's so common folks can rise up against a bad government". Presumably the assumption is that "common folks" will stand united in their cause, in complete agreement about how the country should be run afterwards.
However, seeing how people on this list argue and assuming that the opinions here are not that far removed from what is common in the US, I think it is highly unlikely to work that way. Isn't it more likely that that there will be 5 - 10 small, but violent groups fighting it out against each other, all the while killing indisciminately? It is certainly the way things have happened in all other countries throughout history. And who will come out on top in the end? Are we guaranteed a better society after a revolution? History again seems to show that what you have after a revolution is quite often a government that is more restrictive, not less, which is hardly surprising. After all, they have just been through a vicious, civil war, and have seen first-hand what happens when "common folks" are well-armed.
The American revolution was pretty unique, I think, in that after the English had been thrown out, the people in charge were fairly decent and idealistic. But those are not qualities that win the war each time; the victors will normally be ruthless people, low on the softer human qualities such as tolerance and decency.
I would be all for people being armed, if it made good sense, but I don't think it does. As far as I can see, all the argument in favour are weak, based on wishful thinking and the invocation of something high and holy, such as "The right of all men...", whereas the arguments against seem basically to be common sense. I know there is a lot of hysteria on both sides of the debate, but that's what I see, if you try to peel away all of that.
But how about a sort of compromise, then. Am I right in assuming that in the US you have the right to own a gun, even if you haven't got the faintest idea about how to use it? To my mind that is somewhat similar to owning a car without knowing how to drive safely. It would probably be a lot safer if you could only own a gun, if you not only learned how to use it properly, but also had to join the territorial army and spend time every week, not just on military drills, but also on the ethical side of gun ownership.
Gun crime (Score:3, Insightful)
12000 at the peak in UK [bbc.co.uk] Same statistic for the US : 500000 victims [usdoj.gov]
UK population : 60 million. So to get a similar figure to the US we need to multiply by 6. 60K handgun crime in the UK , compared to 500K. Unless I missing something, handgun crime in the US is still 8 time higher than in the UK. So even if there was a rise from 6K to 12K at peak (it went down to 9K recently for 2007), the rate of handgun crime is still way higher in the US, so it ain't really utterly convincing that handgun really help fighting crime, or a ban thereof is REALLY the reason the number of crime related to handgun, or even homeowner invasion rose. PS: to the guy citing a 2001 statistic , nice try. How about citing a recent statistic ? It took me 10 seconds to enter handgun crime statistic UK and clicking the first links.
One interessant fact is that in the US, handgun crime dropped by 50% since 1993. Now I would like to know if really during that time MORE city imposed handgun restriction or LESS (yes I know correlation would not imply causation, but that would certainly be a good angle to research , no matter on which side of the issue you feel yourself).
Re:Oh great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, it's true... A single hunting rifle will be, and always has been utterly ineffective against an army.
Well, just one rifle, sure. Hunting rifles are by no means ineffective military weapons. Snipers have had increased roles in the military over the years because of their effectiveness, using weapons that are more similar to hunting rifles that regular force's automatic rifles.
habeas corpus (Score:3, Insightful)
So for Scalia with his twisted understanding of history and the "true" meaning of the constitusion, habeas corpus can be thrown under the bus while hand guns are sacred. I personally find habeas corpus to be much more important than guns flowing on the streets in poor neighborhoods.
Re:Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
See, that's the part I don't get about gun control... Liberals -KNOW BETTER- than to trust the police, so why is it when the discussion turns to gun control do the police all of the sudden become some shiny-armored knight, trusted with the awesome power of destruction above all others? What about that piece of tin on their chest makes them more moral, or more humble (arrogance + the only gun allowed = professionalism?!?), or more reasonable? I've known cops, and there's nothing NOTHING about them at all that makes them any more capable of using a firearm correctly, in fact many of the cops I've known were aggressive bully types, precisely the kind of people you DON'T want getting access to arms.
I really don't get it. I'll be in favor of gun control when it's UNIVERSAL, including the tin-shielded overlords.
Re:Oh great... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll dispute it. source [homeoffice.gov.uk]
p23p9
Oh, and then there's this: p72
So even if we grant that there has been a increase in reported handgun usage in crimes since the ban, we have to consider that it was merely a difference in reporting methodology. Also gun violence decreased between 2004-2005 and I would suspect that were the methodology consistent the UK would be below 1997 levels of gun violence.
Re:Sweet (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a sweet spot, of course. Banning firearms in a single are when penned in on all sides by legal gun trades is nuts. It's like trying to dig a hole in the ocean. Gun nuts have managed to turn your whole situation on its head so logic doesn't apply anymore. The US on firearms is like a junkie trying to justify his addiction. "It feels worse when I don't shoot up (ha, ha, "shoot up"), so it must be good for me!" Yes, it does feel better now, but it ain't good for you.
The fact is, by allowing guns you are putting other people's lives into your own hands. Surely, if there is anything in the world that needs to be licensed, it's guns? Hell, we license driving, and that's not even designed to kill (it's just an unpleasant side effect). Can you honestly tell me that the general population is rational and responsible enough to handle practically unfettered access to firearms? Moreso than driving? But, I have a feeling I'm wasting my time, because like the pathetic junkie, the science takes second place to immediate gratification. We anti-gun lobbyists may have the blood of several people on our hands, but it's a drop in a red ocean compared to what the founding fathers and every pro-gun person since has pooling around their necks.
Re:Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
You should change that to "I don't mind reasonable licensing of guns"...
I was a good law abiding concealed weapons permit carrying American on the East coast of thee US. Sometimes I'd carry my gun. Usually it would be left locked away somewhere safe. The only real "action" it saw was the shooting range.
I moved to Los Angeles. In driving across the country, every state I passed through was listed as respecting my concealed weapons permit, although I left it tucked safely away in the trunk.
When I got to LA, I investigated getting a valid local permit. That's when I found out that pretty much no one, including most law enforcement, had concealed weapons permits. In good areas, cars were stolen, and houses were broken into frequently.
Over a few years, I got to know people, and could acquire weapons if I wanted. None were that interesting to me for the price, but I could have bought a rather large selection. I'm looking for an AR-15, PS-90, and AK-47. I was offered others ranging from ancient to full auto.
Because home owners could not defend themselves, the criminal element had no real fear of retribution if they did their acts quickly. If you know you have a 5 minute window to get in and out, do it in less than 5 minutes.
I'm back on the East coast now, knowing every other homeowner has a loaded gun at home, and about 1 in 4 drivers have guns in their car. The worst thing I've seen in a similar class neighborhood, is a kid knocked over two mailboxes. I've gone as far as forgetting that I put my car keys on top of my car, in the driveway, and remembering in the morning, where the car hasn't been disturbed.
Rights, Liberty, and Definitions (Score:2, Insightful)
Individual LIBERTY (the freedom to do as we please) can only be restricted insofar as, when enacted, they restrict the RIGHTS (an individual entitlement) of other individuals (ie, I have the RIGHT to life, thus, you DO NOT have the LIBERTY to take my life).
It is much easier to take away LIBERTIES than it is to grant them; thus, LIBERTY must only be infringed upon with extreme caution and prejudice.
My owning of a gun in no way restricts another individual's rights, therefore there is no basis of justification to take that liberty away from me.
Liberty is what allows us to protect our rights. Example: my liberty of owning a gun allows me to protect my right to life. Thus, anything that limits our liberties also inherently limits our rights. However, rights ALWAYS come before liberties (see murder). Liberties should be restricted to the point of protecting rights, but no further.
I oppose anything that restricts our liberties, except as stated above (in cases where said liberty infringes on another's rights). Therefore, I commend the Supreme Court's decision.
Another matter at hand is the definition of "arms". I believe there are two facets to address when considering this: purpose, and potential.
A rifle has many purposes (hunting, sniping, etc), and the potential of misuse, while detrimental, isn't necessarily severe on a large scale. Same with pistols. Now, nuclear warheads have very limited purpose (last-line defense/deterrent, mass killing), and very serious potential (wipe out human race).
When considering "arms" available to the public, these are the two questions that should be asked and addressed.