5 ms·

Scalia wrote certain things in dicta in Heller in order to get Justice Kennedy's vote, in a very narrow ruling in a case specifically about handguns. I wouldn'

by jki275 6y ago

Scalia wrote certain things in dicta in Heller in order to get Justice Kennedy's vote, in a very narrow ruling in a case specifically about handguns. I wouldn't read much into that on the constitutionality of "military weapon" bans -- keeping in mind of course that the things gun control advocates like to call "assault weapons" aren't actually military weapons at all, as manufacture of actual military weapons for civilian ownership has been heavily restricted since 1968 and absolutely banned since 1986.

tptacek 6y ago
I guess my counterargument would be that the modern sporting rifle was designed to be a military weapon. I'd be interested in learning more about the technicalities that designate something as an according-to-Hoyle military weapon, but I'm a little dubious that such a definition will cause me to forget the history of the AR-15.
- jki275 6y ago
  Well, I suppose there really aren't any technicalities that designate a weapon as "military style" -- it's really a point that doesn't mean anything. The military has used pump action shotguns similar to what you'd find in a duck blind, they've used Remington 700s (the most common hunting rifle and military sniper rifle), they've used air guns (all the way back to the revolutionary war -- the first semiautomatic rifles were air guns used in the Revolutionary War), they've used Ruger .22 handguns with suppressors on them... The distinction that was made in 1986 was that anything fully automatic was banned. I think that's pretty silly, as I'm just as effective with a semi-automatic AR-15 as with a fully automatic M4A1. It makes no real difference, most military troops never flip the switch to automatic because the weapon isn't really even designed for it (machine guns need to have spare barrels, an assistant gunner, normally belt fed ammunition, etc -- they're ineffective otherwise). But that's the legal "definition" such as it is. anyway, kind of all over the place, but the general point is this -- if you look the history of the time in which the 2nd amendment was written, civilians could -- and did -- own ships, cannon, artillery, etc at the time. Who cares about small arms if you can own a ship of the line with cannon? The concept of civilians being restricted in which types of weapons they could own based on whether or not the military could own them would have been considered ridiculous to the founding fathers. "military weapons" are the most effective weapons, if we have the right to own weapons, why would we be restricted to ineffective ones? Conversely, if you're going to ban weapons, why would banning the most effective weapons have any real impact, when a>there are still millions of them in circulation that are never going to come out of circulation, and b> even "ineffective" weapons can be just as effective as those "military style" weapons in a barely trained shooter's hands? I can literally teach someone in fifteen minutes how to be just as effective with a Glock 19 as with an M4A1 inside of a building. Even with 10 round magazines.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    See, I strongly agree with you about the near equivalence of an AR-15 and an M4 carbine, and I'm glad to get further confirmation of the reading I've done suggesting that fully automatic rifle fire is highly overrated and rarely used professionally. To me, that strongly suggests that the AR-15, even though it has become the "modern sporting rifle", is a weapon of war. It's clearly a military weapon (that's its origin and the intent behind its design). The thing that separates it from the weapon we all consider indisputably military, the selective fire M16, is a trivial amount of metal and additional machining --- and that tiny bit of extra stuff is rarely needed in the field anyways. My claim: the fact that Adolf Hitler chose to describe a rifle with a couple extra pieces of metal in the trigger assembly as a "bad-ass rifle" (my translation) has assumed an outsize role in our policy. I think a rational target for our firearms policy should be all semi-automatic rifles with detachable (or high-capacity) magazines. Doesn't mean we should ban them or even seek to reduce the number of them in commerce today, just that those are the weapons I think we should be talking about.
    - jki275 6y ago
      All small arms are "weapons of war". Clubs and sticks are "weapons of war" in certain societies, and people kill other people with them all over the world. In some places they do so quite effectively. That's really the fact of it. The UK and Japan have banned pocket knives. I couldn't legally possess a Leatherman the entire six years I spent in Japan. We had metal detectors at the brow of the ships to ensure no one LEFT the ships with their every day tools they carried to do their jobs, because they would be arrested and thrown in a hole for carrying them off the ship (yes, this literally happened. 10+ days in a Japanese hole waiting on a charging decision for a junior LT on a ship there because he had a pocket knife in his backpack). The UK is now attempting to ban clubs. The logical extension of this "ban weapons of war" desire is to literally ban sticks. Everything has to be banned in order to have a perfectly "safe" society. But then people will kill each other with their fists. It's the human condition, unfortunately, and attempting to address a meatspace problem with technology bans has never proven to be effective in all of history. Targeting semi automatic rifles with detachable or "high capacity" (another meaningless term) magazines, isn't a useful thing to do. It doesn't make any difference, won't make any difference, and can't make any difference. They were banned from 1994-2004, and that led to literally almost fifteen years of destruction of that political party and made those banned weapons the most popular weapon that has ever been designed. Again -- it's the human condition. The reason gun rights advocates are so set against this is that every time there's a "discussion" it's designed to make something we own illegal. We can talk about it all day, but that at the end is always the goal of gun control advocates. They don't want to talk, they want to make us criminals.

by jki275 6y ago

tptacek 6y ago

I guess my counterargument would be that the modern sporting rifle was designed to be a military weapon. I'd be interested in learning more about the technicalities that designate something as an according-to-Hoyle military weapon, but I'm a little dubious that such a definition will cause me to forget the history of the AR-15.

jki275 6y ago
Well, I suppose there really aren't any technicalities that designate a weapon as "military style" -- it's really a point that doesn't mean anything. The military has used pump action shotguns similar to what you'd find in a duck blind, they've used Remington 700s (the most common hunting rifle and military sniper rifle), they've used air guns (all the way back to the revolutionary war -- the first semiautomatic rifles were air guns used in the Revolutionary War), they've used Ruger .22 handguns with suppressors on them... The distinction that was made in 1986 was that anything fully automatic was banned. I think that's pretty silly, as I'm just as effective with a semi-automatic AR-15 as with a fully automatic M4A1. It makes no real difference, most military troops never flip the switch to automatic because the weapon isn't really even designed for it (machine guns need to have spare barrels, an assistant gunner, normally belt fed ammunition, etc -- they're ineffective otherwise). But that's the legal "definition" such as it is. anyway, kind of all over the place, but the general point is this -- if you look the history of the time in which the 2nd amendment was written, civilians could -- and did -- own ships, cannon, artillery, etc at the time. Who cares about small arms if you can own a ship of the line with cannon? The concept of civilians being restricted in which types of weapons they could own based on whether or not the military could own them would have been considered ridiculous to the founding fathers. "military weapons" are the most effective weapons, if we have the right to own weapons, why would we be restricted to ineffective ones? Conversely, if you're going to ban weapons, why would banning the most effective weapons have any real impact, when a>there are still millions of them in circulation that are never going to come out of circulation, and b> even "ineffective" weapons can be just as effective as those "military style" weapons in a barely trained shooter's hands? I can literally teach someone in fifteen minutes how to be just as effective with a Glock 19 as with an M4A1 inside of a building. Even with 10 round magazines.
- tptacek 6y ago
  See, I strongly agree with you about the near equivalence of an AR-15 and an M4 carbine, and I'm glad to get further confirmation of the reading I've done suggesting that fully automatic rifle fire is highly overrated and rarely used professionally. To me, that strongly suggests that the AR-15, even though it has become the "modern sporting rifle", is a weapon of war. It's clearly a military weapon (that's its origin and the intent behind its design). The thing that separates it from the weapon we all consider indisputably military, the selective fire M16, is a trivial amount of metal and additional machining --- and that tiny bit of extra stuff is rarely needed in the field anyways. My claim: the fact that Adolf Hitler chose to describe a rifle with a couple extra pieces of metal in the trigger assembly as a "bad-ass rifle" (my translation) has assumed an outsize role in our policy. I think a rational target for our firearms policy should be all semi-automatic rifles with detachable (or high-capacity) magazines. Doesn't mean we should ban them or even seek to reduce the number of them in commerce today, just that those are the weapons I think we should be talking about.
  - jki275 6y ago
    All small arms are "weapons of war". Clubs and sticks are "weapons of war" in certain societies, and people kill other people with them all over the world. In some places they do so quite effectively. That's really the fact of it. The UK and Japan have banned pocket knives. I couldn't legally possess a Leatherman the entire six years I spent in Japan. We had metal detectors at the brow of the ships to ensure no one LEFT the ships with their every day tools they carried to do their jobs, because they would be arrested and thrown in a hole for carrying them off the ship (yes, this literally happened. 10+ days in a Japanese hole waiting on a charging decision for a junior LT on a ship there because he had a pocket knife in his backpack). The UK is now attempting to ban clubs. The logical extension of this "ban weapons of war" desire is to literally ban sticks. Everything has to be banned in order to have a perfectly "safe" society. But then people will kill each other with their fists. It's the human condition, unfortunately, and attempting to address a meatspace problem with technology bans has never proven to be effective in all of history. Targeting semi automatic rifles with detachable or "high capacity" (another meaningless term) magazines, isn't a useful thing to do. It doesn't make any difference, won't make any difference, and can't make any difference. They were banned from 1994-2004, and that led to literally almost fifteen years of destruction of that political party and made those banned weapons the most popular weapon that has ever been designed. Again -- it's the human condition. The reason gun rights advocates are so set against this is that every time there's a "discussion" it's designed to make something we own illegal. We can talk about it all day, but that at the end is always the goal of gun control advocates. They don't want to talk, they want to make us criminals.