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Right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. You could own cannons and warships when 2a was passed. The real criminal in this case is feds depriving fu
by ty6853 2y ago
Right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. You could own cannons and warships when 2a was passed.
The real criminal in this case is feds depriving fundamental civil rights under color of law. The failure to register short barrel rifle pretext in particular is based on faulty precedent that military did not use short barrel arms thus the NFA stamp was 'constitutional'. ( then, lol, gov obliviously sold a bunch of surplus rifles to public breaking this same law on accident which is why rifles have lower limit now than shotguns).
- Hnrobert42 2y agoYes. How dare the government of today decide to regulate firearms when the government of 250 years ago already did?! /s
- 15155 2y agoYou're welcome to amend the Constitution and there's a prescribed process for doing so.
- Hnrobert42 2y agoThe current interpretation of the second amendment is the issue. It has been completely severed from the "A well regulated militia" clause.
- adolph 2y agoWas there some previous interpretation that was utopian?
- giantg2 2y agoEven if that clause was tied to it, how would that affect things given US Title 10 ss 246? I've always wondered if they would enforce those restrictions - disarming disabled people, disarming people over 45, and disarming most women (not in the national guard). Likewise, would that mean I'm then able to own the same weapons individually that the organized militia uses for their duties? It makes for an interesting thought experiment.
- solidsnack9000 2y agoIt's interesting to me that people who make a big deal about that clause don't ever seem to know much about how the militia system actually worked. It was based fundamentally on arms and ammunition that were privately owned, widespread and extremely ubiquitous in society.
- 15155 2y agoEven Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't make this tired, poorly-designed argument: the prefatory clause isn't a limitation, merely a justification. The jurisprudence surrounding the "militia" prefatory clause is long-since settled. Even if you do the mental gymnastics to rework the English language to make this mean what you want it to mean, the militia is composed of all able-bodied men between 17-45 per 10 U.S. Code § 246. At the time of this country's founding, private individuals owned cannonry, ships, and ordnance far beyond small arms. What purpose would letters of marque and reprisal serve without weapons?
- m2f2 2y agoHow about building some government you trust, check on their actions, ousting madmen from politics, and strictly regulate this 2a nonsense once for all? Unless, of course, you really trust Trump less than any random wacko....
- jiggawatts 2y agoRight wing 2A nuts immediately called the guy who tried to “stop a tyrant” by exercising his rights to bear arms against Trump a “Democrat terrorist”. If he hadn’t been fatally shot, they would have demanded he be executed. There is no consistent logic here to debate.
- 15155 2y agoWhere does the right to keep and bear arms become the right to kill? This is a meaningless non-sequitur, not the "logic" you think it is.
- bdangubic 2y agoyou said 2A nuts and logic in the same sentence… :)
- ty6853 2y agoTrump is an 80s dem at best. Right wing 2A nuts generally consider Trump a tyrant exemplified by 'take the guns first and due process later' and banning bump stocks. Trump won the hard right nuts votes merely by being seen as slightly not as bad on core issues as the other main candidate.
- 15155 2y ago> strictly regulate this 2a nonsense once for all Best of luck getting 34/50 state legislatures to agree!
- wat10000 2y agoI don’t think I’ve encountered anyone who thinks there should be a right to privately own nuclear weapons. Basically everybody agrees there should be limits on the Second Amendment, the only real disagreement is where.
- ty6853 2y agoYou can amend the constitution to allow infringing on nuclear arms. Not super difficult if everyone agrees. Elon Musk has far worse than these explosives just by deorbiting at the appropriately scary trajectory.
- wat10000 2y agoIf you think anything Elon Musk has would even come close to holding a candle to a W88, you’re out of your mind.
- throwaway173738 2y agoHe could just put a bunch of metal rods in space and then drop them on his enemies, Bond-villain style. I’m not totally convinced he would though.
- Aloisius 2y agoThe Constitution also says the courts interpret the law and the Supreme Court has interpreted it to mean there are limits. You can amend the Constitution to forbid the Supreme Court from interpreting it to allow for unhindered access to weapons of mass destruction. Not super difficult if everyone agrees. Moreover, Elon Musk can not launch anything with enough mass to come remotely close to the yield on even a small nuclear weapon. Kinetic bombardment of say, a 200 Mg tungsten rod from orbit, impacting Earth, would have a yield equivalent to only ~350 tons of TNT.
- neilv 2y ago> The real criminal in this case is feds depriving fundamental civil rights under color of law. The allegation is that this person made a veritable arsenal of pipe bombs and other explosives, with plausible domestic terrorism intent or inclinations. The Second Amendment technicality you mention might come up in a legal defense, but I don't understand fixating on that as "the real criminal" here -- on a story of securing a very dangerous-sounding cache of pipe bombs, mishandled explosive material, etc.
- ty6853 2y agoThe actual charge here is a tax violation (failure to buy a stamp for a short barrel rifle). Not paying $200 in NFA taxes. The precedent is based on a lie the gov itself accidently violated during surplus sales to the public. The precedent exists because the Supreme Court took up a case against a dead guy with no representation, as a poison pill. The state argued the military didn't use short barrel arms, which was a lie. No defense was there to contest it, and this it is now binding on total fiction. Of course the most hilarious part is 'short barrel' anything was just a measure to ban pistols, which congress changed their mind on last minute and allowed pistols while forgetting to nix the law on creating pistols from long arms. This guy is charged for essentially violating a historical vestigial accident upheld by bogus precedent against an undefended dead guy.
- neilv 2y agoThere could be an interesting meta discussion here, of the kind that doesn't usually happen recently. IIUC, you're focusing on that 2A aspect because it's a topic that you know and care about, and think needs to be mentioned? And the other aspects of the story were already being discussed, and you had nothing to add on those? If so, did you say "the real criminal" only as a figure of speech? Or do you think that nothing about the pipe bombs, etc., was criminal?
- snypher 2y agoJust to be clear, he was charged with a single firearms offense, and is presumed innocent of that. If other charges appear then they should be discussed. >do you think that nothing about the pipe bombs, etc., was criminal? Seems like the FBI don't, for now. Just like when someone is reported as having "an encrypted messing app" - fear mongering nonsense.
- bediger4000 2y agoA well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ....
- magic_smoke_ee 2y ago[flagged]
- solidsnack9000 2y agoWhat makes you say that? How do you think militia worked? It was a system based fundamentally on privately owned arms and ammunition; the point of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the militia by protecting the armed citizenry.
- DFHippie 2y agoI think you're overlooking the word "explicitly".
- solidsnack9000 2y ago"...the right of the people to keep and bear arms..." This is, pretty plainly, a right of people and not of governments, &c, &c. Some people say that, well, there is the militia clause, to try to support a reading where "the people" refers to their states or communities; but they rely on an incorrect understanding of the way militia worked to support that. Militia is not a synonym for army or gendarmerie.
- magic_smoke_ee 2y agoThere's still ambiguity there that doesn't specify private persons individually, because it appears to read as "the people" collectively as part of a regulated militia, not as private persons. The 2a wasn't written explicitly enough, but it's kind of moot at this point because the interpretation and convention equates to largely unhindered private ownership of all but automatic, compact, and/or explosive weapons of war that can also be privately-owned in some jurisdictions with additional costs and hurdles.
- whoitwas 2y ago[flagged]
- magic_smoke_ee 2y agoThere exist private ownership of artillery field pieces and Bofors L/60 40 mm autocannon in America. The thing though is that any sort of exploding shell requires a DD NFA tax stamp for each.
- giantg2 2y ago"The real criminal in this case is feds depriving fundamental civil rights under color of law." Which part is this?