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"U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin in Charleston found Wednesday that the law was not consistent with the United States' "historical tradition of firearm regul

"U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin in Charleston found Wednesday that the law was not consistent with the United States' "historical tradition of firearm regulation," the new standard laid out by the Supreme Court in its landmark ruling." I was waiting to see the exciting places this precedent would take us. Though I have to admit, I was expecting the "AR-15's aren't muskets" argument to get out there first.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I wonder if any regulation of fully automatic weapons is constitutional now.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  If you take the Second Amendment literally as written, even regulation of personal nuclear weapons is unconstitutional.
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    We all know, the only way to stop a bad guy with a nuclear weapon is with a good guy with a nuclear weapon.
    - kbelder 4y ago
      That does seem to be the case.
      - otikik 4y ago
        He said "a good guy".
        treeman79 4y ago
        The constitution assumes the government will be run by bad people. Hence all the limits it imposed on government.
        hotpotamus 4y ago
        The founders of the US, among them some authors of that Constitution, would disagree. George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.” Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” James Madison stated: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and … their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice … These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.” Samuel Adams said: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue.” Patrick Henry stated that: “A vitiated [impure] state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.” John Adams stated: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Virtue ennobles individual character and lifts society as a whole. Virtuous principles eschew prejudice and discrimination, confirming that “all men are created equal.” Virtue encompasses characteristics of goodwill, patience, tolerance, kindness, respect, humility, gratitude, courage, honor, industry, honesty, chastity and fidelity. These precepts serve as the cornerstones for both individual happiness and societal governance.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I suppose the real question is how far the current supreme court is willing to go then?
  - filoleg 4y ago
    Sure, but posessing some of the materials needed for producing such a weapon is indeed illegal due to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Here is an article about some tangentially related recent events that mentions it (and explains as well)[0]. Owning a personal nuclear weapon might not be technically illegal. However, producing it and transferring it is illegal. Which, seems to be almost functionally equivalent to being illegal to possess. This is just purely my thoughts on how that hypothetical could play out, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't stupid curious about it myself. 0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/19/weapons-grade-uranium-offer-probed-by-fbi/44d65d33-5390-433d-b5b9-b44843a9a80e/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/19/w...
    - shantbefringed 4y ago
    - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
      You can't point at a law to contradict a constitutional right, so presumably a "right to bear ICBMs" argument would hinge on the law being an unconstitutional restriction of their 2nd Amendment rights. It would be mildly amusing if the ultimate decision worked out to "you can own nuclear material, but ONLY for the purpose of weaponizing it. No energy allowed!"
    - spoonjim 4y ago
      That's a weird logic. So it would be constitutional to outlaw gunpowder?
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    When have nuclear weapons ever been considered "arms"? Infantry don't carry nuclear weapons.
    - nautilius 4y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devic...
    - glial 4y ago
      I'm not a lawyer, but development of nuclear weapons is called an "arms race".
- dublin 4y ago
  Read the Bruen opinion - it's well-written and actually pretty clear that recent (really, meaning the last two centuries) gun restrictions are unconstitutional. Any restrictions have to be ones that would have been commonly in place when the Constitution originated, so generally, no later than 1791. It's likely (and a really good thing for liberty and Constitutional rights in general) that Bruen will invalidate both the heinously unconstitutional 1934 National Firearms Act (which was never allowed to face a court challenge), and also the 1968 Gun Control Act, so yeah, full auto will likely be confirmed to have always been protected by the Constitution once the current slug of cases challenging these laws makes it through the courts. Once the NFA falls, firearms manufacturing of all kinds will be opened up to every citizen. This is already starting a renaissance in the 3D printed guns community. (Current 3D printed guns are still a very poor substitute for their machined counterparts, but they now work well enough now to be the equivalent of really cheap, bad guns, and have the advantage that they do not require registration, which is really just a database for confiscation or harassment.)
  - glial 4y ago
    I can accept that Bruen's arguments have a certain internal logic. What I don't understand is how we have decided weigh the "right" of having guns vs the "right" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. According to the Declaration of Independence, the latter is what the government is for, and everything else -- even and especially the bill of rights -- is an implementation decision designed too further those aims. Given that the US 22x more per capita gun deaths than the EU, perhaps we missed the mark. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like gun proliferation is in practice harmful to life.
    - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
      Well, better round up a referendum for a constitutional amendment then.
    - 15155 4y ago
      > Declaration of Independence A document penned before the United States Constitution which has zero legal authority - a letter to King George III.
barbazoo 4y ago
Is the US in any way special that makes this process of regulating weapons so difficult? Do other countries not have 2A-like legislation?
- daveslash 4y ago
  Gun ownership is baked into our founding documentation (The Constitution); as such, it's part of the very premise of our governmental foundation. All other laws, regulations, and everything else about our government is built from and traceable to The Constitution. As far as I know, only 2 other countries in the world have something similar in their Constitution: Mexico and Guatemala. Countries that don't have that baked into their foundational documentation have an easier time actually putting regulations into place and enforcing them. Because the right to guns is in our charter, it makes regulation much more difficult to implement and enforce (not to mention, much more unpopular because to many folks it feels like a betrayal of the charter). That's what makes the US different than most other countries in that regard.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    > Because the right to guns is in our charter, it makes regulation much more difficult to implement and enforce (not to mention, much more unpopular because to many folks it feels like a betrayal of the charter). There are some debates, however, that the first clause of the second amendment actually is meaningful and not just meaningless flavor text. The interpretation of the second amendment therefore has undergone a lot of change over time, and is now interpreted way more broadly than it was in the early years of the country (i.e. when many of the founding fathers were still alive). An interpretation where the militia clause was largely meaningless didn't really come into vogue until the 1970s, and the NRA has a version of the 2nd amendment on its headquarters that edits it out.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      my understanding is the exact opposite. how odd. >A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Well regulated means well armed. Militia means citizen army, and the people means the people. It is hard to come to a different understanding of the amendment without redefining these terms. My understanding is that those favoring a living constitution focus on the purpose or why of the amendment was there, and and that a citizen militia is not longer necessary.
quantified 4y ago
Interestingly, the boundary between "recent" and "tradition" is not at all clear. If a 1968 law is not old enough to be traditional, what law is? It's certainly not "ancient tradition". Is there a fixed year that demarcates "traditional" from "recent", or is it a distance back from the present? Apply the same logic to all the clauses of the constitution, and we're going to get super weird pretty quickly.
- feet 4y ago
  Many justices were probably born around then. How can something originating in their lifetimes be considered a tradition by them?

hotpotamus 4y ago

I wonder if any regulation of fully automatic weapons is constitutional now.

spoonjim 4y ago
If you take the Second Amendment literally as written, even regulation of personal nuclear weapons is unconstitutional.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  We all know, the only way to stop a bad guy with a nuclear weapon is with a good guy with a nuclear weapon.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    That does seem to be the case.
    - otikik 4y ago
      He said "a good guy".
      - treeman79 4y ago
        The constitution assumes the government will be run by bad people. Hence all the limits it imposed on government.
        hotpotamus 4y ago
        The founders of the US, among them some authors of that Constitution, would disagree. George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.” Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” James Madison stated: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and … their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice … These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.” Samuel Adams said: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue.” Patrick Henry stated that: “A vitiated [impure] state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.” John Adams stated: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Virtue ennobles individual character and lifts society as a whole. Virtuous principles eschew prejudice and discrimination, confirming that “all men are created equal.” Virtue encompasses characteristics of goodwill, patience, tolerance, kindness, respect, humility, gratitude, courage, honor, industry, honesty, chastity and fidelity. These precepts serve as the cornerstones for both individual happiness and societal governance.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I suppose the real question is how far the current supreme court is willing to go then?
- filoleg 4y ago
  Sure, but posessing some of the materials needed for producing such a weapon is indeed illegal due to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Here is an article about some tangentially related recent events that mentions it (and explains as well)[0]. Owning a personal nuclear weapon might not be technically illegal. However, producing it and transferring it is illegal. Which, seems to be almost functionally equivalent to being illegal to possess. This is just purely my thoughts on how that hypothetical could play out, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't stupid curious about it myself. 0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/19/weapons-grade-uranium-offer-probed-by-fbi/44d65d33-5390-433d-b5b9-b44843a9a80e/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/19/w...
  - shantbefringed 4y ago
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    You can't point at a law to contradict a constitutional right, so presumably a "right to bear ICBMs" argument would hinge on the law being an unconstitutional restriction of their 2nd Amendment rights. It would be mildly amusing if the ultimate decision worked out to "you can own nuclear material, but ONLY for the purpose of weaponizing it. No energy allowed!"
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    That's a weird logic. So it would be constitutional to outlaw gunpowder?
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  When have nuclear weapons ever been considered "arms"? Infantry don't carry nuclear weapons.
  - nautilius 4y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devic...
  - glial 4y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, but development of nuclear weapons is called an "arms race".
dublin 4y ago
Read the Bruen opinion - it's well-written and actually pretty clear that recent (really, meaning the last two centuries) gun restrictions are unconstitutional. Any restrictions have to be ones that would have been commonly in place when the Constitution originated, so generally, no later than 1791. It's likely (and a really good thing for liberty and Constitutional rights in general) that Bruen will invalidate both the heinously unconstitutional 1934 National Firearms Act (which was never allowed to face a court challenge), and also the 1968 Gun Control Act, so yeah, full auto will likely be confirmed to have always been protected by the Constitution once the current slug of cases challenging these laws makes it through the courts. Once the NFA falls, firearms manufacturing of all kinds will be opened up to every citizen. This is already starting a renaissance in the 3D printed guns community. (Current 3D printed guns are still a very poor substitute for their machined counterparts, but they now work well enough now to be the equivalent of really cheap, bad guns, and have the advantage that they do not require registration, which is really just a database for confiscation or harassment.)
- glial 4y ago
  I can accept that Bruen's arguments have a certain internal logic. What I don't understand is how we have decided weigh the "right" of having guns vs the "right" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. According to the Declaration of Independence, the latter is what the government is for, and everything else -- even and especially the bill of rights -- is an implementation decision designed too further those aims. Given that the US 22x more per capita gun deaths than the EU, perhaps we missed the mark. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like gun proliferation is in practice harmful to life.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    Well, better round up a referendum for a constitutional amendment then.
  - 15155 4y ago
    > Declaration of Independence A document penned before the United States Constitution which has zero legal authority - a letter to King George III.

barbazoo 4y ago

Is the US in any way special that makes this process of regulating weapons so difficult? Do other countries not have 2A-like legislation?

daveslash 4y ago
Gun ownership is baked into our founding documentation (The Constitution); as such, it's part of the very premise of our governmental foundation. All other laws, regulations, and everything else about our government is built from and traceable to The Constitution. As far as I know, only 2 other countries in the world have something similar in their Constitution: Mexico and Guatemala. Countries that don't have that baked into their foundational documentation have an easier time actually putting regulations into place and enforcing them. Because the right to guns is in our charter, it makes regulation much more difficult to implement and enforce (not to mention, much more unpopular because to many folks it feels like a betrayal of the charter). That's what makes the US different than most other countries in that regard.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  > Because the right to guns is in our charter, it makes regulation much more difficult to implement and enforce (not to mention, much more unpopular because to many folks it feels like a betrayal of the charter). There are some debates, however, that the first clause of the second amendment actually is meaningful and not just meaningless flavor text. The interpretation of the second amendment therefore has undergone a lot of change over time, and is now interpreted way more broadly than it was in the early years of the country (i.e. when many of the founding fathers were still alive). An interpretation where the militia clause was largely meaningless didn't really come into vogue until the 1970s, and the NRA has a version of the 2nd amendment on its headquarters that edits it out.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    my understanding is the exact opposite. how odd. >A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Well regulated means well armed. Militia means citizen army, and the people means the people. It is hard to come to a different understanding of the amendment without redefining these terms. My understanding is that those favoring a living constitution focus on the purpose or why of the amendment was there, and and that a citizen militia is not longer necessary.

quantified 4y ago

Interestingly, the boundary between "recent" and "tradition" is not at all clear. If a 1968 law is not old enough to be traditional, what law is? It's certainly not "ancient tradition". Is there a fixed year that demarcates "traditional" from "recent", or is it a distance back from the present? Apply the same logic to all the clauses of the constitution, and we're going to get super weird pretty quickly.

feet 4y ago
Many justices were probably born around then. How can something originating in their lifetimes be considered a tradition by them?