Mass Shooting Las Vegas...

[rogue06]

But there are considerations to take into account when interpreting the Constitution such as the state of affairs at the time when it was written. The Founders had no idea concerning the weaponry of the future, so, that the peoples right to bear muskets "shall not be infringed" still holds holds today. You could amend the Constitution in order to correct for the imprecise language due the Founders ignorance, but the courts I believe found that unnecessary, you do have a right to bear arms, but they obviously didn't have ground to air missiles in mind at the time of the writing.

As I've repeatedly noted the Founding Fathers also had no conception of TV, radio, telephones or the internet but nobody would seriously argue that they shouldn't be covered by the First Amendment. And they didn't conceive of houses built with modern building materials complete with indoor toilets, electricity, air conditioning and central heating but nobody would seriously maintain that such structures aren't covered by the Fourth Amendment's provision against unlawful searches^[1].

And the whole they only had muskets back then nonsense has repeatedly been beaten into a fine pink mist several times so please do try to keep up.

Rifles had been around for a hundred years or so. In fact during the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress authorized the establishment of ten companies of riflemen.

But more to the point, Sparko provided a list of several repeating firearms that were around the time the 2A was written (with at least one coming from nearly a century and a half earlier) and that list was expanded by me to include the 32mm Puckle gun which was patented in 1718 by James Puckle well over 7 decades before the 2A and the high capacity Girandoni air rifle which had a magazine holding twenty .46 caliber projectiles with an effective range of 150 yards similar to the range of a musket (both of these have been mentioned by others since then). I will add to this list a 40-Bore Flintlock 8-shot repeating magazine Pistol manufactured in the first half of the 1790s but used a system invented around 1660.


















1. SOR tried to counter this by declaring that all of those are "tightly regulated industries" but as I pointed out

You think you need a permit or a license to use your TV, radio, phone or go on the internet? How about the toilet (THAT would be interesting), AC or heater?

Sure the manufacture of some of them as well as their instillation are tightly regulated but then so are firearms. But not their ownership and use.

[JimL]

I think that bolded part is a big problem.

Why? The Court interprets the Constitution, and in so doing determined that the regulating of guns did not violate the intent of the 2nd amendment thus leaving no need to amend the clause in order to do so.

And I don't think it's a matter of imprecision here. "shall not be infringed", "no law", "shall not exist" is pretty strong language. If people later wanted to add exceptions, due to factors that hadn't been forseen, that's why the amendment process is there.

My point is that SCOTUS has determined that the regulating of firearms does not infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. And again, the Bill of rights only proctected the rights of the people from the Federal government, not from State governments, State governments could do as the pleased including the outlawing firearms.

[Tassman]

From your post here:From that link: shot The graphic there shows that 'shot' includes injured victims as well as fatalities, and that none of those six incidents they list qualify as mass shootings under the criteria you used for Australia: killing

The definition of mass shooting you cited for Australia (the killing of 4 or more people ) is not the same as the definition of mass shooting you cited for the US (four or more people shot ) because one includes non-fatal injuries and one does not. So when you said you were wrong, because your comparison used non-matching criteria, and so was invalid

Well let's focus on the list of deadly mass shooting in the US, compared to Australia, with its tight gun laws; this is the point of the exercise.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us...cts/index.html

By comparison Australia has had none over the past 21 years.

Got the picture?

[Mountain Man]

And btw, the bill of rights only protected the people from a federal ban on arms, the states could do as they pleased.

False. The states cannot enact laws that contradict the Constitution.

[JimL]

False. The states cannot enact laws that contradict the Constitution.

They could at the time of its writing lamebrain, and for many decades thereafter.

[Terraceth]

False. The states cannot enact laws that contradict the Constitution.

I believe JimL was referring to the Second Amendment at the time of its passing, which did not apply to the states (the whole point of the Bill of Rights was to limit the power of the federal government to appease the anti-federalists). Unless a state included a similar amendment in their own State Constitution, none of the Bill of Rights applied to the states until the Fourteenth Amendment got passed.

To be fair, JimL could've been more explicit that's the period of time he was referring to.

[JimL]

I believe JimL was referring to the Second Amendment at the time of its passing, which did not apply to the states (the whole point of the Bill of Rights was to limit the power of the federal government to appease the anti-federalists). Unless a state included a similar amendment in their own State Constitution, none of the Bill of Rights applied to the states until the Fourteenth Amendment got passed.

To be fair, JimL could've been more explicit that's the period of time he was referring to.

The whole of Bill of rights didn't even apply to the States when the 14th amendment passed, the Bill of rights didn't apply to the States until a SCOTUS decision in the 1920's.

[Mountain Man]

...the Bill of rights didn't apply to the States until a SCOTUS decision in the 1920's.

So what you're saying is, it DOES apply to the states.

Is this another "own goal"?

[One Bad Pig]

The whole of Bill of rights didn't even apply to the States when the 14th amendment passed, the Bill of rights didn't apply to the States until a SCOTUS decision in the 1920's.

Would you mind providing a smidgeon of backup for this? I'll assume you mean that a state could restrict a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights even though the federal government could not (as in, Tennessee, for a random example, could prohibit people from owning arms, but the federal government could not).

[Mountain Man]

To put things into perspective, a truck bomb in Somalia killed over 200.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/the-la...-rises-to-231/

[Teallaura]

The founding fathers were mostly lawyers so they knew what they were writing. Lawyers are very precise with their wording. And they knew the implications of their words for future generations.

Guess again.

That's factually false - only a few had law degrees or were lawyers.

Worse, it's a DUMB point. Of course they worded the thing carefully - but it's insane to believe they could have foreseen the firepower of WWI - the guys that fought that war weren't ready for it. Heck, that was a major issue in the Civil War as well - firepower began to outstrip military theory by a wide margin.

The Founding Fathers weren't soothsayers.

[Teallaura]

The point is to demonstrate the dishonest arguments (that certainly do not address the opponents actual arguments) of the anti gunners. Thus it is not a straw man since it is not in itself an argument.

You offered it as an argument, not hyperbole. It is in fact a straw man.

[Teallaura]

I do not understand what you think you are saying here.

The opposition benefits from the talking point. The error(s) is (are) left uncorrected because gun proponents need the talking point.

Which renders it political hay and not much of an argument.

[Teallaura]

Okay, I did way overstate my point. I just think that any self defense during a riot is justifiable. Innocent until proven guilty.

How can you possibly know that unless there is accountability?

No free passes - that is NOT what 'innocent until proven guilty means.

[Teallaura]

I certainly do not have any guns laying around my house. I am not really a gun person, but if you have your gun locked in your home in a place not visible it is actually secured. Why should I be responsible for the actions of someone who breaks into my home and steals my property? That is irrational.

No, it isn't - it's been part of jurisprudence literally since the time of Moses. See Leviticus. The owner is responsible for properly securing potentially dangerous property - in Leviticus, it's livestock. But the principle is a common one in jurisprudence.