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1) I agree you'd have to include that in the weighing of pros vs cons. I think many people who argue that this weapon should be illegal for the average person

1) I agree you'd have to include that in the weighing of pros vs cons. I think many people who argue that this weapon should be illegal for the average person would concede that it would make sense to legalize it for people with a disability. 2) Come on, seriously? You say "even every day items". It makes less sense to ban every day items than it does to ban extravagant items that very few people, if any, need or even want. I can kill someone with a fork. More people have been killed with forks than with this weapon. Are you willing to (digitally) stand here and suggest to all of us that it doesn't make sense to ban this rifle until we ban forks? And where is your line? Every rational person has a line at which they say "X weapon clearly should be illegal for every day people to own." So where's yours? Do you not feel high explosives should be regulated? If farmers decided sarin gas (since it was mentioned elsewhere in this conversation) was a good pesticide, would you be all for it? Wherever you draw your line, it's just as arbitrary as anyone else's. 3) I'm simply not seeing any novel technology here. Motion tracking? It's been done. Servos being controlled by a microprocessor? It's been done. Distance gauging? Trajectory adjustment? Where is the new technology that we'd all miss out on? Regarding the note about the bill of rights, what a horribly conceived piece of writing is the second amendment. It asserts the right to "bear arms" but doesn't give any hint as to the definition of "arms". An H-bomb classifies as an "arm" just as perfectly as this firearm does. We've outgrown that short-sighted text.

bmelton 14y ago
You might feel that way, but I doubt if the Founders would, considering that the majority of firearms, munitions, warships and cannons used to win our independence were provided by civilians. In short though, I don't have to draw that line, as the Supreme Court has effectively already done so, as they define arms being man-portable and "in common use" as a protected class of firearms for the purposes of this debate, though as I recall, Atonin Scalia did make a casual reference to rocket launchers as being too exotic for protections to apply. US v Miller, another landmark case regarding the second amendment, defines protected weapons as those being of use to a militia. Before we go down that rabbit hole, a milita is defined by 10 US Code § 311 as all men aged 17 to 45, and has been expanded by the Supreme Court to include women as well. As for the tech, I agree that the individual components are nothing new, but the aggregate of the parts is something new and noteworthy. For what it's worth, I also consider the Gibson robot tuner as noteworthy, as well as the Raspberry Pi, though clearly neither was exactly groundbreaking on the grand order of things.
- abraininavat 14y ago
  So, this firearm and its particular technology not being "in common use", it would then seem reasonable to argue that it should be illegal. You may not think the automation this gun provides is exotic enough to warrant being illegal, but surely you can agree that reasonable people could interpret "in common use" in that way?
  - bmelton 14y ago
    I acknowledge that it very well could be read that way, but Alan Gura (the attorney of record in DC v Heller) held in his argument (which was confirmed by SCOTUS) that it can't be circular reasoning -- e.g., you can't ban a weapon to take it out of common use, then argue that it is not in common use because of the ban to prevent it from being unbanned. That was, effectively the case in Heller, because DC had banned all handguns completely, making them clearly NOT in common use, which they felt allowed them to perpetuate their ban. DC's law was overturned on that logic. That said, how do you prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever if the claim is that "Well, it's never been sold, so it's obviously not in common use, so it can't be bannable?" In reality, this isn't even really a gun at all, but a complicated aiming system. The gun it's attached to is the Surgeon equivalent of a Robot tuner on a Gibson guitar (which is why I brought it up elsewhere). According to the ATF, the lower receiver of a gun like this is the only part that is the 'gun'. What this means is that I can buy the lower receiver by itself, with no firing group, no barrel, no butt stock, etc., and that constitutes the sale of a firearm. As such, as it seems that all the tech for this thing is basically in the reticle (except for the trigger group, which is still not technically part of the gun), this is really just an accessory.
    - abraininavat 14y ago
      How do I prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever? Easy. If I'm the dictator the first thing I do is throw out that sad excuse for an amendment. It's much too vague to be useful. People hold up the Bill of Rights as if the amendments were etched in stone by God. Whether any given weapon should or shouldn't be legal depends on a lot of things, including the state of the country at any given time. The idea that the right to bear firearms (some arbitrary invention) belongs on the same document as eternally useful rights like the right of free speech is silly and was a huge mistake.
abraininavat 14y ago
Downvoting well articulated arguments because they disagree with your own? Cowards.
- bmelton 14y ago
  All I can say is, wasn't me. And in fact, I've upvoted your arguments since the one accidental downvote.

bmelton 14y ago

You might feel that way, but I doubt if the Founders would, considering that the majority of firearms, munitions, warships and cannons used to win our independence were provided by civilians. In short though, I don't have to draw that line, as the Supreme Court has effectively already done so, as they define arms being man-portable and "in common use" as a protected class of firearms for the purposes of this debate, though as I recall, Atonin Scalia did make a casual reference to rocket launchers as being too exotic for protections to apply. US v Miller, another landmark case regarding the second amendment, defines protected weapons as those being of use to a militia. Before we go down that rabbit hole, a milita is defined by 10 US Code § 311 as all men aged 17 to 45, and has been expanded by the Supreme Court to include women as well. As for the tech, I agree that the individual components are nothing new, but the aggregate of the parts is something new and noteworthy. For what it's worth, I also consider the Gibson robot tuner as noteworthy, as well as the Raspberry Pi, though clearly neither was exactly groundbreaking on the grand order of things.

abraininavat 14y ago
So, this firearm and its particular technology not being "in common use", it would then seem reasonable to argue that it should be illegal. You may not think the automation this gun provides is exotic enough to warrant being illegal, but surely you can agree that reasonable people could interpret "in common use" in that way?
- bmelton 14y ago
  I acknowledge that it very well could be read that way, but Alan Gura (the attorney of record in DC v Heller) held in his argument (which was confirmed by SCOTUS) that it can't be circular reasoning -- e.g., you can't ban a weapon to take it out of common use, then argue that it is not in common use because of the ban to prevent it from being unbanned. That was, effectively the case in Heller, because DC had banned all handguns completely, making them clearly NOT in common use, which they felt allowed them to perpetuate their ban. DC's law was overturned on that logic. That said, how do you prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever if the claim is that "Well, it's never been sold, so it's obviously not in common use, so it can't be bannable?" In reality, this isn't even really a gun at all, but a complicated aiming system. The gun it's attached to is the Surgeon equivalent of a Robot tuner on a Gibson guitar (which is why I brought it up elsewhere). According to the ATF, the lower receiver of a gun like this is the only part that is the 'gun'. What this means is that I can buy the lower receiver by itself, with no firing group, no barrel, no butt stock, etc., and that constitutes the sale of a firearm. As such, as it seems that all the tech for this thing is basically in the reticle (except for the trigger group, which is still not technically part of the gun), this is really just an accessory.
  - abraininavat 14y ago
    How do I prevent the banning of every new type of gun/handgun/rifle/taser/whatever? Easy. If I'm the dictator the first thing I do is throw out that sad excuse for an amendment. It's much too vague to be useful. People hold up the Bill of Rights as if the amendments were etched in stone by God. Whether any given weapon should or shouldn't be legal depends on a lot of things, including the state of the country at any given time. The idea that the right to bear firearms (some arbitrary invention) belongs on the same document as eternally useful rights like the right of free speech is silly and was a huge mistake.

abraininavat 14y ago

Downvoting well articulated arguments because they disagree with your own? Cowards.

bmelton 14y ago
All I can say is, wasn't me. And in fact, I've upvoted your arguments since the one accidental downvote.