Florida High School Massacre

[rareboy]

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Did we finally get an answer as to why civilians need ar15s? I've been running with the assumption that they have enemies in the mafia or anticipate a zombie apocalypse.

 

[gsdx]

Did we finally get an answer as to why civilians need ar15s? I've been running with the assumption that they have enemies in the mafia or anticipate a zombie apocalypse.

Only that it's their constitutional right, and the constitution says only that they can carry them. It says nothing about which ones they can carry. So, AR-15s could be unconstitutional.

It's a sad day when weapons of war are more important than children's lives.

 

[Kulindahr]

worth a read..

What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns (The Atlantic)

Well, this line has no basis in reality:
" removing high-velocity, lethal weaponry and high-capacity magazines from the market, which would drastically reduce the incidence of mass murders."

And this one is a false equivalence:
"Every constitutionally guaranteed right that we are blessed to enjoy comes with responsibilities."

Responsibility is exercised by individuals, not imposed on them.

The problem is that Congress doesn't have the guts to actually use the authority plainly given in the Constitution and implement "militia control", which is the only authority it's given on this matter. A decent case could be made that rifles as potent as the one that made these wounds belong in an armory -- and had Congress not shut down thousands of National Guard armories across the nation a few decades ago, we'd have the facilities in place to do that. The Second Amendment doesn't allow banning any arms, but Article I Section 8 grants Congress the power to impose discipline on the militia.

A good case can also be made that Congress could make a distinction between the "armed militia", which would mean all citizens with weapons, and the "unarmed militia", and establish requirement the armed militia would have to abide by -- such as the above.

 

[Kulindahr]

Assault weapons are NOT a right. CARRYING them is. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that you have the right to weapons. Nowhere.

If the government can tax the hell out of cigarettes and gasoline, they can tax the hell out of assault weapons.

It doesn't say "the right to carry arms", it says "the right to keep and bear arms". "Keep" means "have", which means "own".

And we know from the ratification debates that the intent of the Amendment was that "every man be armed".

Your argument is like those advanced to get around the prohibition against a poll tax by establishing educational requirements on voters, something SCOTUS shut down.

 

[Kulindahr]

It's a sad day when weapons of war are more important than children's lives.

They're not "weapons of war", and the people making them "more important than children's lives" are those opposing teachers being armed. That only encourages the next shooter, and the next.

A couple of instances in a row where a teacher or staff stopped a shooter in his tracks would cut down on future instances drastically, especially if the pictures with the articles only showed the shooter under a sheet on an ambulance gurney. These people want "fame", and getting stopped quickly and not having their faces shown crushes that.

The U.S. has a virtually unchecked press that has lost all sense of responsibility. When they help these barbarians achieve their goals, there should be restraint. How we impose that is a tough question -- though the president could achieve a lot merely by saying that any news organization which continues to make these barbarians famous just lost its White House privileges; if the Senate stood with him, that would pretty much cover it.

 

[gsdx]

^ Brick wall.

Enjoy your next slaughter.

 

[KaraBulut]

Did we finally get an answer as to why civilians need ar15s?

Only that it's their constitutional right, and the constitution says only that they can carry them. It says nothing about which ones they can carry. So, AR-15s could be unconstitutional.

Originalists- those recently-incarnated conservatives who try to convince everyone that the Constitution must be interpreted in the way they believe it was written back in the 18th century- usually don't mention that the Founding Fathers were working with pretty primitive single-shot ball-and-gunpowder weapons. Bullets as we know them weren't invented until the 1830s. Semi-automatic weapons weren't invented until a century after the Second Amendment was drafted.

Is there anyone who really believes that the Founding Fathers would have been okay with the current situation of people being mass-slaughtered?

Even the Originalist of the Originalists- Antonin Scalia- didn't buy into this argument that the Founding Fathers wanted a country with unlimited access to weaponry. And the courts have consistently supported government's ability to regulate weapons. WaPo recently summed

Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.

 

[gsdx]

Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.

So, I was right?

 

[gsdx]

Is the second amendment a hoax?

I read an article quite some time ago about how the amendment was created, that it was written and rewritten a number of times until the final text was ambiguous enough to satisfy everybody. It has been twisted now so that the word 'militia' is non-existent.

I found this historical tidbit. I didn't make this up:

So clearly and unequivocally held was this worldview that no less a liberal squish than Richard Nixon Supreme Court appointee Warren Burger said after his retirement in 1991 that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” This reading was based on precedent. The Supreme Court had clearly agreed with Burger’s interpretation and not that of the special interest groups he chastised, perhaps most famously in a 1939 case called U.S. v. Miller. That ruling said that since the possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” had no reasonable relationship to the “preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” the court simply could not find that the Second Amendment guaranteed “the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Period, full stop. And that was the viewpoint adopted by the courts for years.

What changed? As Cass Sunstein and others have explained, what changed things was a decades-long effort by exceptionally well-organized, well-funded interest groups that included the National Rifle Association—all of whom “embarked on an extraordinary campaign to convince the public, and eventually the courts, to understand the Second Amendment in their preferred way.” It’s rather miraculous, if you stop to think about it: In a few short decades the NRA’s view of the Second Amendment became the law of the land. By 2008, writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, Antonin Scalia enshrined this view for first time that: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rverted_the_meaning_of_the_2nd_amendment.html

 

[72-Jay]

There was an article I saw in the paper awhile back that here in Colorado, the city of Denver has banned 'Bump Stocks' like the one used in Las Vegas last year.
But it also sounds like they already have a ban on semiautomatic rifles anyway.

(ofcourse that all only applies to anyone living or going within the city limits of that one city...)

 

[smokeshadow]

There are also those who claim that the 2nd Amendment was written to help slave holders control slave uprisings and to help preserve slavery (similarly to the 3/5 counting of slave vs. free for census purposes):

http://factmyth.com/factoids/the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery/

 

[gsdx]

^ Here's he history of the amendment. (Sorry. Nothing about slavery.)

It was actually written to allow individual states to protect themselves from government oppression. Very interesting read:

http://www.history.com/topics/2nd-amendment

 

[opinterph]

I'm sorry, but that is the most heartless thing you've ever said here. Those kids watched their classmates being slaughtered in cold blood and to say that their emotions are not real is disgusting. That's as bad as that asshole who said they were paid off. But it certainly says volumes about you.

I think the underlying concept to what Kulindahr posted is more like, “[Kids’ emotions] have been pumped up by anti-gun teachers and politicians.” He is denigrating “the kids” by suggesting that they are incapable of formulating their own group consensus and activism. But I read his bigger point as an intention to demean “anti-gun teachers and politicians.”

 

[Kulindahr]

Semi-automatic weapons weren't invented until a century after the Second Amendment was drafted.

Not true -- the Austrians had them at the time of the Revolution.

And the Founding Fathers were familiar with machine guns as well.

 

[opinterph]

Since there are only a certain amount of these weapons still in circulation, the prices continue to rise as each year passes.

Does that same concept of future scarcity bolster the current sale of new AR-15s? (ROI)

 

[Kulindahr]

Even the Originalist of the Originalists- Antonin Scalia- didn't buy into this argument that the Founding Fathers wanted a country with unlimited access to weaponry. And the courts have consistently supported government's ability to regulate weapons. WaPo recently summed

Does the Second Amendment really protect assault weapons? Four courts have said no.

One of those rulings was based on a blatant lie:

“Put simply,” King wrote, “we have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision excluded from such coverage.”

Heller didn't exclude anything, and it only addressed one aspect of the Second Amendment.

The other decisions were based on a lie as well, that the Second Amendment is only about self-defense. In fact, it wasn't meant to include self-defense, because everyone back then thought it so obvious that the choice of means of self-defense was a natural right that they saw no need to include it! And any judge who has cracked a book on SCOTUS precedent knows that the Court has previously ruled that it is precisely military weapons that are protected.

This is why those four cases need to go to SCOTUS, which at the least ought to reprimand them for lying about what SCOTUS has said.

 

[opinterph]

The AR-15 happens to be one of the most popular hunting rifles in the country.

It can function as a single shot rifle.

 

[Kulindahr]

Originalists- those recently-incarnated conservatives who try to convince everyone that the Constitution must be interpreted in the way they believe it was written back in the 18th century-

Originalists aren't new -- that was the standard practice of the Court up until about the 1940s. And it isn't "the way they believe it was written", it's the way the people who wrote it and ratified it said it was written.

Jonathon Turley, the second-most-cited law professor in the country and top constitutional scholar says:

"More important, the mere reference to a purpose of the Second Amendment does not alter the fact that an individual right is created. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press. The statement of a purpose was intended to reaffirm the power of the states and the people against the central government. At the time, many feared the federal government and its national army. Gun ownership was viewed as a deterrent against abuse by the government, which would be less likely to mess with a well-armed populace."

It's supposed to be a "deterrent against abuse by government" -- which ought to be obvious, since that's what the entire Bill of RIghts is about.

 

[Kulindahr]

Is the second amendment a hoax?

I read an article quite some time ago about how the amendment was created, that it was written and rewritten a number of times until the final text was ambiguous enough to satisfy everybody. It has been twisted now so that the word 'militia' is non-existent.

I found this historical tidbit. I didn't make this up:



http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rverted_the_meaning_of_the_2nd_amendment.html

An opinion piece.

And it also lies: the NRA's position on the Second Amendment arose from examination of every mention of the Amendment by the Supreme Court and the discovery that every single time it is mentioned it is listed as an individual right. And when the ratification debates are examined, the most common reason mentioned for ratifying it was that it was a bulwark against the federal government.

So the NRA's position isn't new, it's the position the Framers and those who ratified the Bill of Rights held.