15 ms·

Supreme Court to Decide First-Ever Gun-Carry Case

42 points by exolymph 6y ago

Grakel 6y ago
This should be interesting. On one hand gun control vehemence continues to mount, and at the same time, and very under the radar of most media outlets, gun communities and interest have exploded in the last few years, largely through veteran led lifestyle social media channels. There are more Americans passionate about firearms and who see them as central to their identity than ever before. And they are more socially connected. When it's not just a revolver in a bedside table, but the AR-15, the custom glock, the pants, the overlanding vehicle, and the body armor that you and your camping buddies turned obstacle course team all have, we're talking about a decentralized militia that is very social, very consumer friendly, and very focused on their natural rights. It's not rednecks with shotguns anymore, it's guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.
- sethammons 6y ago
  FWIW I totally agree. Even my dad wants an AR-15 and he only ever had a gun when we were younger because he had a crazy guy stalking him. So many people have become recent gun owners and ammo hoarders that ammo is really, really hard to get right now. Can’t find target load for anything in my area. More on topic: Montana just decided that you don’t need a permit for concealed carry.
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
    > Montana just decided that you don’t need a permit for concealed carry. FWIW, Montana's recent change means that there are now 20 states that allow concealed carry with no permit (though a couple of them limit it to residents only).
    - stephenhuey 6y ago
      A week ago, the Texas House voted to allow handguns to be carried without a permit: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-constitutional-carry/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-constitutional... The Texas Senate is trying to see if there are enough votes to pass it: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/23/texas-constitutional-carry-senate-dan-patrick/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/23/texas-constitutional...
  - kingTug 6y ago
    What’s the deal with ammo manufacturers not being able to keep with demand? I’ve been hearing this for a long time. Or it was at least the case during the Obama admin.
    - darksaints 6y ago
      Ammunition manufacturing tends to be very hard to scale: it takes large amounts of capital to invest in production and long periods of time to tune that production into a consistent product. The end result is that ammo production capacity is, for practical generalizations, completely fixed. Nobody produces more when prices are high, and only in rare scenarios would they stop production when prices are low. The end result is usually strong swings of price for moderate changes in demand. And we're currently seeing demand levels that have never been seen before.
      - mgarfias 6y ago
        And couple that with riots last year, plus covid shutdowns wreaking havoc on the production lines. They're way way way backed up right now.
      - swiley 6y ago
        That's interesting, I know multiple people who reload so it can't be too hard.
        Ancapistani 6y ago
        It’s not difficult to start, but it requires intense attention to detail to do well (and safely). For instance - I usually a single-stage press instead of one of the fancier turret presses I have, because I like to weigh every ten rounds that come off to ensure consistency. Likewise, I spend the time necessary to choose a powder that fills more than 50% of the case volume so a double charge will overflow and be obvious. That’s even before I start load development, which is often specific to a single firearm, bullet, and even primer sometimes. Speaking of primers... there are none out there for sale, and there haven’t been since very early 2020. Reloading equipment is easy to find, supplies not so much.
- nocommentguy 6y ago
  It was never just rednecks with shotguns. “Redneck” is a political slander as bad as “thug”. Whenever someone says it your alarm bells should go off that someone is trying to emotionally manipulate your political beliefs. “You’re not a science-denying, gun-toting, bible-thumping redneck are you?”
  - atweiden 6y ago
    > “Redneck” is a political slander as bad as “thug”. I enjoy the country lifestyle. And frankly, living somewhere peaceful and quiet with ample acreage and privacy, and little to no air, light or noise pollution is a lifestyle that is in increasingly short supply. I take pride in rocking up to a small town with bits of hay on my dirtied clothes. I’d only live in a city if I absolutely had to. I’ll happily accept the “redneck” badge. It’s up there with “geek” for me.
    - mgarfias 6y ago
      Same. Tho, i'm a mexican so its more "brown neck", but whateveer.
    - nocommentguy 6y ago
      And lots of people would embrace the term “thug”. It’s great if you can embrace it and make it something positive. My point about “look twice when you hear it” still stands, most people that use redneck in political contexts don’t mean well.
      - Ancapistani 6y ago
        > most people that use redneck in political contexts don’t mean well I’d say that most people who use it to describe a group to which they themselves do not belong fall into that category.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tjr225 6y ago
  Meh, we’ve seen how organized and capable these folks are just a few months ago. They don’t inspire much fear in me, nor should they.
  - Bancakes 6y ago
    It turns out there is no corrupted underworld forming to overthrow the government.
  - shard 6y ago
    If you are referring to storming of the US Capitol a few months ago, I don't think that was by guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.
- shard 6y ago
  > guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup That description makes me think of Carnik Con, which is what I imagine if gun loving hipsters made a comedy show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwI9_Q07zxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwI9_Q07zxk
  - sparrish 6y ago
    None of my gun toting friend would be caught dead wearing skinny jeans or watching soccer.
    - shard 6y ago
      I know some skinny-jeans-wearing gun-toting women, as well as gun-toting guys who not only watch soccer but play it as well.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > There are more Americans passionate about firearms and who see them as central to their identity than ever before. [citation needed] Household gun ownership went from 45% in 1980 down to 32% in 2016: * https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html Fewer people own guns nowadays generally, with only one-third only a single gun, about one-third owning 2-4, and one-third owning >5: * https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem... Seems that only a minority of American (households) own firearms, and the ones that do may simply make more noise than the (silent) majority that do not. > It's not rednecks with shotguns anymore, it's guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup. The highest concentration of gun ownership is in the South and especially in rural counties (Table 4): * https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gu...
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6y ago
    Polling gun owners about their weapons is extremely difficult, especially in the current age when one you can be ostracized for your beliefs. Random polling won't give you accurate results as many respondents will, fearing some sort of political trap, deny they own firearms at all, or simply decline to answer.
  - Grakel 6y ago
    I won't argue the data, which I don't have a study to refute, but I wish we could know the change since 2016.
  - voidfunc 6y ago
    Not surprising that gun ownership has gone down as its a major pain in the ass to get a gun in some states. In my state it's virtually impossible in the major metropolitan areas to own a gun without being politically connected. Similarly in the burbs and towns YMMV may vary depending on the local police chief. I would love to own a gun, multiple guns, but some states make it incredibly difficult.
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
flowerlad 6y ago
I just hope sanity prevails in the end. Whatever your political views, I think we can all agree that a world where a single gunman can kill 20 six-year-olds in a matter of a few minutes [1] is not acceptable. Whether the solution is to arm teachers, or to make assault weapons less available, there needs to be a solution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...
- nocommentguy 6y ago
  Your use of the term “sanity” is loaded. It is a complex political topic for a reason. Government should be afraid of its people. Think of the “children” ;)
- Grakel 6y ago
  Some of us believe the government should do less- in general. Terrible things happen. I would strongly prefer the government be limited to the absolute minimum activity.
  - mgarfias 6y ago
    Just wait til some nutter fills up a truck with explosives and blows it up next to a big building.
    - Grakel 6y ago
      That's already illegal, and was illegal when it happened. Not sure what your point is?
      - mgarfias 6y ago
        There’s easier ways to kill mass amounts of people than a rifle. And trying to take guns away from the lawful is like trying cars away from non drunk drivers cuz drunks drive cars.
        deleted 6y ago
jakebasile 6y ago
As one of those vilified "gun extremists", I'm cautiously optimistic here. We'll see what happens when the decision comes out, but maybe we'll get nationwide constitutional carry out of this. It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing still think it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police. Or to say that someone should go to jail and lose the right to vote/own a gun for life because your barrel is 15.9" instead of 16". Or that you should have to wait a year and pay a tax to have slightly less hearing damage.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  I sort of agree with you, except that your conflation of 'people who say we need to massively rethink policing' and gun control advocates seems off the mark. Advocates of institutional abolitionism tend to be well to the left of reform-minded liberals, and supportive of arms-bearing rights on principle.
  - jakebasile 6y ago
    I admit it's a somewhat broad brush - I should've said the _party_ that generally says we need to rethink policing and so on. It is hard to break away from the two-party system in the US.
- krapp 6y ago
  >It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing still think it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police. ... says someone who puts their right to keep and bear arms against the government behind that government's Constitution.
  - jakebasile 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you're saying here. I never stated that the right to keep and bear arms (or any right) is inherently given by the Constitution since that would be false. The Constitution does _protect_ and specifically enumerate some inherent human rights.
cletus 6y ago
We're almost in the era of minority rule in the United Stated. The only bright spot here is we're in the death throes of conservative exceptionalism. But still the undue influence that group has due to gerrymandering, systemic voter suppression and disproportionate state representation is depressing. The Supreme Court is meant to be one of the safeguards here. To his credit, while the conservatives were 5-4 John Roberts actually tried to fight the appearance of partisanship by the Court because faith in the institution matters. But now? The Conservatives have long put off taking up Second Amendment cases not because they weren't important but because they might not go their way. Now with a solid 6-3 majority, they seem prepared to foist that world view down our collective throats. If you want an analog of this, look at how the Redeemer court effectively dismantled post-Emancipation protections in the decades following [1]. There's so many problems with the Second Amendment zealots it's hard to know where to begin. First, the "right". Well, it's not absolute. If it was, it wouldn't be denied to felons and there wouldn't be background checks or waiting periods. Nor would there be a restriction on what "arms" the citizens could "keep and bear". Why not fully automatic weapons? Surface to air missiles? Nuclear weapons? Nerve gas? Biological weapons? As soon as you concede the right isn't absolute you're just debating what limits there should be. There's also the Second Amendment specifically noting a "well-regulated Militia". That nuance has been conveniently forgotten about. The US had 45 mass shootings in a month recently [2]. 45. The disastrous War on Drugs created the drug cartels. What do those cartels fight with in their territories? Guns easily obtained in the US. That's how the drug trade works: drugs into the US, money and guns out. What's amazing is the US has collectively thrown its hands up saying "there's nothing we can do" to a problem literally no one else has. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption-court/566963/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-month/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-mont...
- jakebasile 6y ago
  > First, the "right". Well, it's not absolute. If it was, it wouldn't be denied to felons and there wouldn't be background checks or waiting periods. You're using circular reasoning here. Just because the right is currently infringed doesn't mean the right doesn't exist. That's like saying that if some people's right to vote is infringed, there really isn't a right to vote. > There's also the Second Amendment specifically noting a "well-regulated Militia". "well regulated" meant "in good working order" at the time the BoR was written. The operative clause is "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", which is a pretty strong statement. > The disastrous War on Drugs created the drug cartels. What do you think a new "war on guns" will do? > Guns easily obtained in the US. That's how the drug trade works: drugs into the US, money and guns out. Sometimes the US Government gives guns to the cartels which are ostensibly illegal for US civilians to own! [1] > a problem literally no one else has. The US isn't even close to the most violent country per capita. Other countries with less recognition of the right to keep and bear arms just resort to other forms of violence [2]. The "assault weapons" people are very concerned about are used in less than 300 homicides per year. More people are killed with hands and fists than all rifles (a subset of which are deemed "assault weapons") [3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country,_region,_or_dependent_territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... [3]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-20 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
hpkuarg 6y ago
New York's carry laws in particular, and how they play out in practice, is ripe for corruption. In places near the city (i.e. applicable to the majority of the state's population), you basically have to know the police chief or the sheriff to get a carry permit; this should be unacceptable for a Constitutionally-protected right. If on no other basis than this, their laws should be revised. This can probably be generalized to every may-issue jurisdiction.
- agogdog 6y ago
  Much of NYC is SO dense that it seems absurd that anyone, even police, should be able to fire a gun there. It's almost impossible to do safely in any context. I understand that people feel compelled to protect constitutional rights, but it often seems to defy some situational realities of the modern world? Are we really expected to forever carry this rule from a time when there were fewer people in the entire country than a single borough in a modern city?
  - Grakel 6y ago
    Consider the war on drugs- not just a complete failure, but actively harmful, especially to minority communities, while rich white users continue about their business largely unmolested. You can get anything you want your first time in a visit to any American city inside of an hour. Just stop by a restaurant kitchen. Banning firearms would be about as successful. So the argument is, why criminalize a huge number of people who aren't criminals just because some criminals and mentally ill people use guns? It would lead to another drug war situation.
    - agogdog 6y ago
      So I guess if you swing it the other way, the popular rhetoric around drugs is that they'd be better off legal and heavily regulated. Pro-drug proponents are all for this. Why are pro-gun proponents against more regulation, especially lobbyists?
      - 6y ago

42 points by exolymph 6y ago

This should be interesting. On one hand gun control vehemence continues to mount, and at the same time, and very under the radar of most media outlets, gun communities and interest have exploded in the last few years, largely through veteran led lifestyle social media channels. There are more Americans passionate about firearms and who see them as central to their identity than ever before. And they are more socially connected. When it's not just a revolver in a bedside table, but the AR-15, the custom glock, the pants, the overlanding vehicle, and the body armor that you and your camping buddies turned obstacle course team all have, we're talking about a decentralized militia that is very social, very consumer friendly, and very focused on their natural rights. It's not rednecks with shotguns anymore, it's guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.

sethammons 6y ago
FWIW I totally agree. Even my dad wants an AR-15 and he only ever had a gun when we were younger because he had a crazy guy stalking him. So many people have become recent gun owners and ammo hoarders that ammo is really, really hard to get right now. Can’t find target load for anything in my area. More on topic: Montana just decided that you don’t need a permit for concealed carry.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  > Montana just decided that you don’t need a permit for concealed carry. FWIW, Montana's recent change means that there are now 20 states that allow concealed carry with no permit (though a couple of them limit it to residents only).
  - stephenhuey 6y ago
    A week ago, the Texas House voted to allow handguns to be carried without a permit: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-constitutional-carry/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/15/texas-constitutional... The Texas Senate is trying to see if there are enough votes to pass it: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/23/texas-constitutional-carry-senate-dan-patrick/ https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/23/texas-constitutional...
- kingTug 6y ago
  What’s the deal with ammo manufacturers not being able to keep with demand? I’ve been hearing this for a long time. Or it was at least the case during the Obama admin.
  - darksaints 6y ago
    Ammunition manufacturing tends to be very hard to scale: it takes large amounts of capital to invest in production and long periods of time to tune that production into a consistent product. The end result is that ammo production capacity is, for practical generalizations, completely fixed. Nobody produces more when prices are high, and only in rare scenarios would they stop production when prices are low. The end result is usually strong swings of price for moderate changes in demand. And we're currently seeing demand levels that have never been seen before.
    - mgarfias 6y ago
      And couple that with riots last year, plus covid shutdowns wreaking havoc on the production lines. They're way way way backed up right now.
    - swiley 6y ago
      That's interesting, I know multiple people who reload so it can't be too hard.
      - Ancapistani 6y ago
        It’s not difficult to start, but it requires intense attention to detail to do well (and safely). For instance - I usually a single-stage press instead of one of the fancier turret presses I have, because I like to weigh every ten rounds that come off to ensure consistency. Likewise, I spend the time necessary to choose a powder that fills more than 50% of the case volume so a double charge will overflow and be obvious. That’s even before I start load development, which is often specific to a single firearm, bullet, and even primer sometimes. Speaking of primers... there are none out there for sale, and there haven’t been since very early 2020. Reloading equipment is easy to find, supplies not so much.
nocommentguy 6y ago
It was never just rednecks with shotguns. “Redneck” is a political slander as bad as “thug”. Whenever someone says it your alarm bells should go off that someone is trying to emotionally manipulate your political beliefs. “You’re not a science-denying, gun-toting, bible-thumping redneck are you?”
- atweiden 6y ago
  > “Redneck” is a political slander as bad as “thug”. I enjoy the country lifestyle. And frankly, living somewhere peaceful and quiet with ample acreage and privacy, and little to no air, light or noise pollution is a lifestyle that is in increasingly short supply. I take pride in rocking up to a small town with bits of hay on my dirtied clothes. I’d only live in a city if I absolutely had to. I’ll happily accept the “redneck” badge. It’s up there with “geek” for me.
  - mgarfias 6y ago
    Same. Tho, i'm a mexican so its more "brown neck", but whateveer.
  - nocommentguy 6y ago
    And lots of people would embrace the term “thug”. It’s great if you can embrace it and make it something positive. My point about “look twice when you hear it” still stands, most people that use redneck in political contexts don’t mean well.
    - Ancapistani 6y ago
      > most people that use redneck in political contexts don’t mean well I’d say that most people who use it to describe a group to which they themselves do not belong fall into that category.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tjr225 6y ago
Meh, we’ve seen how organized and capable these folks are just a few months ago. They don’t inspire much fear in me, nor should they.
- Bancakes 6y ago
  It turns out there is no corrupted underworld forming to overthrow the government.
- shard 6y ago
  If you are referring to storming of the US Capitol a few months ago, I don't think that was by guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup.
shard 6y ago
> guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup That description makes me think of Carnik Con, which is what I imagine if gun loving hipsters made a comedy show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwI9_Q07zxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwI9_Q07zxk
- sparrish 6y ago
  None of my gun toting friend would be caught dead wearing skinny jeans or watching soccer.
  - shard 6y ago
    I know some skinny-jeans-wearing gun-toting women, as well as gun-toting guys who not only watch soccer but play it as well.
throw0101a 6y ago
> There are more Americans passionate about firearms and who see them as central to their identity than ever before. [citation needed] Household gun ownership went from 45% in 1980 down to 32% in 2016: * https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html Fewer people own guns nowadays generally, with only one-third only a single gun, about one-third owning 2-4, and one-third owning >5: * https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem... Seems that only a minority of American (households) own firearms, and the ones that do may simply make more noise than the (silent) majority that do not. > It's not rednecks with shotguns anymore, it's guys with skinny jeans who watch the world cup. The highest concentration of gun ownership is in the South and especially in rural counties (Table 4): * https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf https://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gu...
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6y ago
  Polling gun owners about their weapons is extremely difficult, especially in the current age when one you can be ostracized for your beliefs. Random polling won't give you accurate results as many respondents will, fearing some sort of political trap, deny they own firearms at all, or simply decline to answer.
- Grakel 6y ago
  I won't argue the data, which I don't have a study to refute, but I wish we could know the change since 2016.
- voidfunc 6y ago
  Not surprising that gun ownership has gone down as its a major pain in the ass to get a gun in some states. In my state it's virtually impossible in the major metropolitan areas to own a gun without being politically connected. Similarly in the burbs and towns YMMV may vary depending on the local police chief. I would love to own a gun, multiple guns, but some states make it incredibly difficult.
- Turing_Machine 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

flowerlad 6y ago

I just hope sanity prevails in the end. Whatever your political views, I think we can all agree that a world where a single gunman can kill 20 six-year-olds in a matter of a few minutes [1] is not acceptable. Whether the solution is to arm teachers, or to make assault weapons less available, there needs to be a solution. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s...

nocommentguy 6y ago
Your use of the term “sanity” is loaded. It is a complex political topic for a reason. Government should be afraid of its people. Think of the “children” ;)
Grakel 6y ago
Some of us believe the government should do less- in general. Terrible things happen. I would strongly prefer the government be limited to the absolute minimum activity.
- mgarfias 6y ago
  Just wait til some nutter fills up a truck with explosives and blows it up next to a big building.
  - Grakel 6y ago
    That's already illegal, and was illegal when it happened. Not sure what your point is?
    - mgarfias 6y ago
      There’s easier ways to kill mass amounts of people than a rifle. And trying to take guns away from the lawful is like trying cars away from non drunk drivers cuz drunks drive cars.
      - deleted 6y ago

jakebasile 6y ago

As one of those vilified "gun extremists", I'm cautiously optimistic here. We'll see what happens when the decision comes out, but maybe we'll get nationwide constitutional carry out of this. It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing still think it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police. Or to say that someone should go to jail and lose the right to vote/own a gun for life because your barrel is 15.9" instead of 16". Or that you should have to wait a year and pay a tax to have slightly less hearing damage.

anigbrowl 6y ago
I sort of agree with you, except that your conflation of 'people who say we need to massively rethink policing' and gun control advocates seems off the mark. Advocates of institutional abolitionism tend to be well to the left of reform-minded liberals, and supportive of arms-bearing rights on principle.
- jakebasile 6y ago
  I admit it's a somewhat broad brush - I should've said the _party_ that generally says we need to rethink policing and so on. It is hard to break away from the two-party system in the US.
krapp 6y ago
>It's bizarre to me how many of the same people that say we need to massively rethink policing still think it's a good idea to put the right to defend yourself from people attempting to do you harm behind a piece of paper given out by the police. ... says someone who puts their right to keep and bear arms against the government behind that government's Constitution.
- jakebasile 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're saying here. I never stated that the right to keep and bear arms (or any right) is inherently given by the Constitution since that would be false. The Constitution does _protect_ and specifically enumerate some inherent human rights.

cletus 6y ago

We're almost in the era of minority rule in the United Stated. The only bright spot here is we're in the death throes of conservative exceptionalism. But still the undue influence that group has due to gerrymandering, systemic voter suppression and disproportionate state representation is depressing. The Supreme Court is meant to be one of the safeguards here. To his credit, while the conservatives were 5-4 John Roberts actually tried to fight the appearance of partisanship by the Court because faith in the institution matters. But now? The Conservatives have long put off taking up Second Amendment cases not because they weren't important but because they might not go their way. Now with a solid 6-3 majority, they seem prepared to foist that world view down our collective throats. If you want an analog of this, look at how the Redeemer court effectively dismantled post-Emancipation protections in the decades following [1]. There's so many problems with the Second Amendment zealots it's hard to know where to begin. First, the "right". Well, it's not absolute. If it was, it wouldn't be denied to felons and there wouldn't be background checks or waiting periods. Nor would there be a restriction on what "arms" the citizens could "keep and bear". Why not fully automatic weapons? Surface to air missiles? Nuclear weapons? Nerve gas? Biological weapons? As soon as you concede the right isn't absolute you're just debating what limits there should be. There's also the Second Amendment specifically noting a "well-regulated Militia". That nuance has been conveniently forgotten about. The US had 45 mass shootings in a month recently [2]. 45. The disastrous War on Drugs created the drug cartels. What do those cartels fight with in their territories? Guns easily obtained in the US. That's how the drug trade works: drugs into the US, money and guns out. What's amazing is the US has collectively thrown its hands up saying "there's nothing we can do" to a problem literally no one else has. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption-court/566963/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/redemption... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-month/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-mont...

jakebasile 6y ago
> First, the "right". Well, it's not absolute. If it was, it wouldn't be denied to felons and there wouldn't be background checks or waiting periods. You're using circular reasoning here. Just because the right is currently infringed doesn't mean the right doesn't exist. That's like saying that if some people's right to vote is infringed, there really isn't a right to vote. > There's also the Second Amendment specifically noting a "well-regulated Militia". "well regulated" meant "in good working order" at the time the BoR was written. The operative clause is "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", which is a pretty strong statement. > The disastrous War on Drugs created the drug cartels. What do you think a new "war on guns" will do? > Guns easily obtained in the US. That's how the drug trade works: drugs into the US, money and guns out. Sometimes the US Government gives guns to the cartels which are ostensibly illegal for US civilians to own! [1] > a problem literally no one else has. The US isn't even close to the most violent country per capita. Other countries with less recognition of the right to keep and bear arms just resort to other forms of violence [2]. The "assault weapons" people are very concerned about are used in less than 300 homicides per year. More people are killed with hands and fists than all rifles (a subset of which are deemed "assault weapons") [3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country,_region,_or_dependent_territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... [3]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-20 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

hpkuarg 6y ago

New York's carry laws in particular, and how they play out in practice, is ripe for corruption. In places near the city (i.e. applicable to the majority of the state's population), you basically have to know the police chief or the sheriff to get a carry permit; this should be unacceptable for a Constitutionally-protected right. If on no other basis than this, their laws should be revised. This can probably be generalized to every may-issue jurisdiction.

agogdog 6y ago
Much of NYC is SO dense that it seems absurd that anyone, even police, should be able to fire a gun there. It's almost impossible to do safely in any context. I understand that people feel compelled to protect constitutional rights, but it often seems to defy some situational realities of the modern world? Are we really expected to forever carry this rule from a time when there were fewer people in the entire country than a single borough in a modern city?
- Grakel 6y ago
  Consider the war on drugs- not just a complete failure, but actively harmful, especially to minority communities, while rich white users continue about their business largely unmolested. You can get anything you want your first time in a visit to any American city inside of an hour. Just stop by a restaurant kitchen. Banning firearms would be about as successful. So the argument is, why criminalize a huge number of people who aren't criminals just because some criminals and mentally ill people use guns? It would lead to another drug war situation.
  - agogdog 6y ago
    So I guess if you swing it the other way, the popular rhetoric around drugs is that they'd be better off legal and heavily regulated. Pro-drug proponents are all for this. Why are pro-gun proponents against more regulation, especially lobbyists?
    - 6y ago