from the founding-fathers-didn't-have-tazers dept.
Massachusetts' ban on the private possession of stun guns—an "electrical weapon" under the statute—does not violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms, the state's top court has ruled.
The decision says ( http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/stungunMA-ruling.pdf ) (PDF) that the US Constitution's framers never envisioned the modern stun-gun device, first patented in 1972. The top court said stun guns are not suitable for military use, and that it did not matter whether state lawmakers have approved the possession of handguns outside the home.The court, ruling in the case of a Massachusetts woman caught with stun gun, said the stun gun is a "thoroughly modern invention" not protected by the Second Amendment, although handguns are protected.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:31AM
I'll be firing up my cauldron of boiling oil while I slurp some potassium nitrate out of all the porta-potties at the construction sites around here. For me fieldpiece, ya know.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday March 11 2015, @09:12AM
Just wait until the judge who writes the decision happens to have dyslexia, and suddenly we've got armed bears everywhere...
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:50AM
Damnit, now I gotta go out and get some tazers and I don't even want them. I see no need for non-lethal weapons. Lethal ones work just fine. Damned if I'll let some fascist judge tell me I can't have something though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:09PM
That's the attitude I had after learning that the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (aka "the Assault Weapons Ban") forbade the sale of newly-manufactured normal-sized (11+) magazines... but not used ones! "That's such a stupid way to write a law if those things are so dangerous", I thought to myself, and promptly went out and bought a firearm and multiple old normal capacity magazines for it. That was the trailhead that led me to what I now believe is the truth about US laws that restrict any aspect of arms (pistols, rifles, knives, swords, tasers, grenades, explosives, and certainly at least each and every other man-portable weapon) for free individuals (to include felons who have "paid their debt" and walk free among us): they are ALL illegal [kingsacademy.com] and ALL void [findlaw.com].
Nice going, half-assed gun control advocates and politicians! While you may ultimately not have gotten away with a complete ban anyway, your illogical compromise approach prompted yet another politically-apathetic person to take notice and ultimately learn that your entire political agenda is illegal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 10 2015, @10:21PM
Sounds like the half baked (which is putting it nicely, and giving too much credit) NY Safe act. My friend owns a Chinese knock-off AK47, an impulse buy after he was discharged from the army. He was oblivious of the NY safe act and its one year grace period for registration. Now it's over two years later and he CAN NOT register his weapon less he face possible criminal charges for failing to register. Huh? If he wants to do the right thing, then why the hell are you punishing him? What is the purpose of a grace period? So we looked into what can be done including selling or giving away the damn thing. He can't sell it since it isn't registered. He also can't transfer it for the same reason. And that even applies to out of state sales or transfers including to a mutual friend in Arizona who is more than willing to take the firearm. So what is he supposed to do? Turn it in and face charges for failing to register? The law is so brain dead it could have only been penned by bureaucrats.
BUT wait! there is a way for him to keep or sell the weapon. If a weapon is modified, it does not have to be registered. So to get around the dumb law he can modify the weapon so it does not qualify as an "assault rifle". How? Well the law states that any weapon which meets two of the following criteria qualifies it as assault: detachable magazine and one military feature. Strike one for the detachable magazine. Military features: flash hider/muzzle brake, pistol grip stock, thumb hole stock, collapsible and/or folding stock, front handle, bayonet mount, magazine with a >10 round capacity and a few more. So we went over the obvious details and found that the only two military features of his weapon are the thumb hole stock and 30 round magazines. The magazines are easy to get rid of. And we came up with a stupid simple fix for the stock: fill in the thumb hole using some sort of resin or epoxy. Now the weapon is legal and never has to be registered. Hurrah! You see, if you modify the weapon, you don't have to register. And there is no grace period or deadline for modification.
The law is so toothless that it's laughable. People who registered get to keep their dangerous "assault" weapons. People who didn't register are flying clean under the radar, they can't hunt them down. And there are people who can simply choose to remove a few features and never have to worry about registering at all. The only thing this law did was incriminate law abiding people and earn a few extra votes. The weapons in my opinion are just as deadly and criminals don't obey laws to begin with. So what's the point again? Oh right, votes. This did nothing for the people and only furthers some clown shoe politician's career. Conclusion: Fuck this system.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 10 2015, @10:26PM
Correction: "front handle" should be "vertical fore grip".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Leebert on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:50AM
Hrm. Let's just apply this logic to a different topic and see how it holds up:
Yep. Seems legit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @12:43PM
This is actually what I thought the article was about from the headline. I legitimately expect this from the US government.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 10 2015, @12:55PM
What do you expect when the Democrats have 85% of the Senate and 78% of the House? The Republican Governor Baker can't stop them if they're united in foolishness.
Local gun groups are surprised this woman sued in State court as opposed to Federal, since the judiciary here is overwhelmingly anti-gun rights.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:22PM
How on Earth is it a "one-party state" when they have a Republican governor, and have had other Republican governors in the past (including, famously, Mitt Romney)?
Here's a clue: a "one-party state" is one in which a single political party is totally dominant in both elected branches of government.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:41PM
When you can override a veto on a whim, it doesn't matter who's in the executive branch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:25PM
They have veto-proof powers in both houses, meaning that the governor can be reduced to an administrator.
It is partly the fault of Republicans, as they do not contest every race.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:34PM
And they run nutjobs as candidates, who want to push ultra-Christian, anti-family agendas. There are quite a few Republicans in our fair state, and the state really isn't as overwhelmingly liberal as it's made out to be. Moderate Republicans tend to do fairly well in many areas. Hell in my town there's a towing company with the confederate flag on all their vehicles that gets to be in an annual parade, which I find so utterly distasteful and disgraceful to our country and our veterans, as it's blatantly un-American. I'm fairly liberal and I've strongly considered many conservative candidates until they start talking about gutting our schools, forcing me to pay for a private pipeline with tax dollars while putting it through public nature areas, or pushing ultra-Christian agendas into schools. I really think a more centrist libertarian candidate who focused on getting the government out of our business would do far better in the state.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:15PM
It's one party in practice because both parties are just two sides of the same coin. They're all hardcore authoritarians who want to scrap the constitution and our fundamental liberties in various ways.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:14PM
It is One Party in the sense that even the Republicans are generally indistinguishable from Democrats in States like CA, NY, MA, IL, etc. See Romney, Mitt. Plus, see the other replies which make good points as well.
Washington DC is pretty much the same. Republicans take the Congress in theory and absolutely nothing changed. One Party rule.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:04PM
I expect the court system to stop unconstitutional laws.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday March 10 2015, @12:57PM
The decision says that the US Constitution's framers never envisioned the modern Internet, first activated in 1969. The top court said the Internet is not suitable for journalistic use, and that it did not matter whether state lawmakers have approved the use of the Internet for journalism.
The court, ruling in the case of a Massachusetts woman caught with a blog, said the blog is a "thoroughly modern invention" not protected by the First Amendment, although newspapers are protected.
Is that really the way you want to go with that analogy? More often than not, it seems like the lawmakers and judges look at the internet as a special entity that has no protections under the Constitution or existing law. Wiretapping law doesn't apply because internet; warrants don't matter because internet; bloggers can't be journalists because internet; etc. It's like a nastier version of the "on the internet!" patent trolling: if an old law ensures a person has rights and you find it inconvenient, that's okay, because it no longer applies if you do that thing on the internet.
If anything, many judges and lawmakers would likely read your revised quote and nod in agreement, rather than see a problem with the logic in the new context. The last line especially sounds like something that would actually come out of a US court. You probably would have done better with a racism analogy.
---
Out of curiosity, and only tangentially related to the article or your comment, I did a brief search for "bloggers not journalists" and it turned up three trials on one blogger's case, two of which came to the same sort of conclusion as your quote. It took three years and two "you are not a journalist" verdicts before a court declared that a blogger is protected by the first amendment, [theatlantic.com] and even then it still reads like "you aren't a newspaper so you don't really count". Another hit on the search led to another case [nj.com] in NJ that decided that bloggers aren't protected by journalist shield law.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:23PM
Very good point. I'd like to point out as well that Massachusetts is the state behind Commonwealth v. Gelfgatt [privacyandsecuritymatters.com], a decision which, contrary to federal Eleventh Circuit precedent, ruled that it's not a violation of the 5th Amendment to force someone to reveal disk encryption keys.
Now, Massachusetts isn't in the Eleventh Circuit, so it's fine for them to rule a different way since the Supreme Court hasn't spoken. But the Eleventh Circuit decision -- correctly cited by the dissenters -- should have been at least persuasive, especially given the merits of the arguments. The Eleventh Circuit argument was "a memorized encryption key is like a memorized safe combination, not like a physical key, and Supreme Court precedent is that memorized safe combinations cannot be compelled", while the argument of the majority was basically, "computers are different, so we can do what we want". Common law says you're supposed to try to follow precedent and not "break new ground" unless you really have to.
Based on these two cases, it would seem Massachusetts is prone to "computers-are-different-so-we-can-do-what-we-want" syndrome.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:26PM
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.
This seems to imply, as the judgement says, that constraints on weapons that would not be useful to a body of citizens wishing to form a militia (i.e. those not suitable for military use) could be banned without constitutional issues. The corollary for this, of course, is that banning weapons that do have military uses (e.g. the assault rifle ban) should cause constitutional problems.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:56PM
This seems to imply, as the judgement says, that constraints on weapons that would not be useful to a body of citizens wishing to form a militia (i.e. those not suitable for military use) could be banned without constitutional issues. The corollary for this, of course, is that banning weapons that do have military uses (e.g. the assault rifle ban) should cause constitutional problems.
Where is this implication? I don't see it. "Because we want X, we do Y." has as its legal content "we do Y". "Because we want X" is justification which can and should be ignored - especially when it's misused to block slight innovations and such.
Also, if we're going with weapons suitable for military use, that means we ought to be throwing less obstacles in the way of acquiring things like fully outfitted tanks, machine guns, missiles, land mines, bayonets, and so on. I'm confident the court won't suddenly decide those weapons deserve the protection of the Second Amendment.
Finally, this is a broken basis because tasers do have military use (Military Police training with tasers [army.mil]).
I think this is just a typical sophist argument. The court didn't want to legalize tasers so they constructed a legal argument for precluding tasers from the Second Amendment protection. Similarly, they won't want heavy military gear to fall under Second Amendment protection, so they'll construct another argument for that. That the arguments are contradictory doesn't matter. It's the outcome they want. I don't think that should be the role of the courts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:06PM
No, they have police use, not military. That the policemen are military does not make their tools military tools. Everyone in the military is a rifleman first, their MOS second, not a policeman first and a rifleman second.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:18PM
No, they have police use, not military. That the policemen are military does not make their tools military tools. Everyone in the military is a rifleman first, their MOS second, not a policeman first and a rifleman second.
No, the two aren't exclusive. And to the contrary, if the policemen are military, then the tools are military tools. As I noted, we have an example of military use for a taser. Case closed as far as I'm concerned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:30PM
So you think MRI machines, CAT scanners, the Bible, Quran, Torah, gasoline, pens, pencils, paper, gavels, computers... No, wait, this will save time - the military uses pretty much everything, nearly every job that exists in the civilian word has a military equivalent, so you're saying every tool and every thing are "military tools". The point of using descriptive adjectives is to narrow down the meaning of the word. If "military tool" is used a synonym for "tool", then you saying "[they] are military tools" is the exact same as saying "[they] are tools", and the phrase "military tools" is meaningless.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:30PM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday March 10 2015, @08:38PM
The text of the second amendment is probably one of the most fiercely debated subjects in constitutional law.
The militia angle has been thoroughly debunked as the principal and primary justification, by constitutional scholars researching the writings of the conventions as well as those demanding a bill of rights.
Most of these recognize that the amendment had nothing to do with militia service, and was designed to allow the active resistance to a run-away government. Having just overthrown a king, the country was well aware of the need for arms. Militia also does not mean military. A militia was always a STATE force, never a federal army. Those writing the bill of rights didn't want to appear to be blessing the overthrow, so they dialed it back to what might be needed to form or serve in a state militia, seemingly eliminating cannon, etc. But remember, the primary intent was to prevent a dictatorial government.
The 2nd never mentioned "firearms". It just mentioned "arms".
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday March 11 2015, @03:44AM
The text of the second amendment is probably one of the most fiercely debated subjects in constitutional law.
Only by the dishonest. Any High School English teacher worthy of their position (well ok, maybe not these days, but twenty years ago) can diagram out the one sentence composing the 2nd Amendment and tell you which parts are which. The SCOTUS itself did a pretty definitive job of it themselves in their recent decison in Heller. The quality of the scholarship in the two opinions wasn't even close. One side was basing it's opinion in the clear text of the Amendment as written in the English Language understood at the time, the Law as written and understood at the time, etc. The other was 'guns are scary and we don't give a damn what old white guys wrote two hundred years ago.'
So I'd have written that as "The text of the second amendment is probably the most subject to cheap demagoguery in all of Constitutional law." As you wrote it you were implying the other side was arguing in good faith. They weren't.
A militia was always a STATE force...
That line of argument still leads to a reading of the 2nd where the government is granting itself the right to have weapons. No, the 'militia' encompasses every able bodied male capable of being mustered into military service. The word by itself encompasses both the organized militia (at the time including a lot of private militia companies, often employer based) along with the 'unorganized militia.'
The 2nd never mentioned "firearms". It just mentioned "arms".
Yup, amazing how few gun banners (and even some 'gun nuts') seem utterly convinced the 2nd is protecting the right to own guns. Nope, ALL arms. Private militia companies of the day owned cannon. I'd be willing to compromise though, just to prove how willing I am to reach across the isle and meet the other side half way and all that. How about crew served weapons must be held in a licensed militia company's armory which must meet standards of security, etc. but any personal arm is Constitutional Carry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:15AM
So one side was reading the amendment clearly as it was written, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."
And the other side, despite being all "guns are scary", decided to ignore literally half of the amendment as written, which is how the "well regulated Militia" part ended up being completely ignored?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:44PM
This ignorant and illiterate argument? Really?
Lets just keep the argument simple here on a dead thread. Do you know the difference between an army and the militia? The men who wrote the 2nd Amendment did. The militia is every able bodied male capable of bearing arms, expected to appear when called armed and trained to defend their homeland. An army is a permanent military force trained and armed by the State. The Founders knew armies to be dangerous to liberty while a well regulated (not so much regulated in the modern sense, a dictionary is your friend) and well armed militia was both a defender and a friend of a Free People.
But if you were taught English in school you also know the expository clause doesn't limit the very clear final phrase. Also finally, remember that the entire Bill of Rights must be read in the sense they were proposed and ratified, as additional limitations on a Federal Government that some thought had been given too much power in the original Constitution. The status quo at the time was the possession of arms was universally agreed to be a basic human right and there is zero historical evidence that anyone who wrote the 2nd Amendment or that a single legislator who voted to ratify it meant to in any way limit the inherent Right of Free Men for self defense, a Right that goes back into English Common Law a long way before the Revolution. If you read the 2nd in the same way as the other nine, as limits of the power of the Federal Government to infringe the Rights of the People, there is only one way to interpret it.
Please spend the hour or so needed to go actually read the SCOTUS's actual decision in Heller, it is an argument ender unless you are a Progressive and thus heedless of any argument because you simply reject the premise of the argument, that we are living in a Constitutional Republic and the Rule of Law.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 11 2015, @09:11PM
And the other side, despite being all "guns are scary", decided to ignore literally half of the amendment as written, which is how the "well regulated Militia" part ended up being completely ignored?
English working as intended. There's no point to this argument.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday March 11 2015, @10:33AM
That line of argument still leads to a reading of the 2nd where the government is granting itself the right to have weapons.
Minor quibble, but the constitution is not about the government granting itself any rights, it is about the people granting the government some rights.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Aichon on Wednesday March 11 2015, @04:20AM
Much as I don't like the law, it's not necessarily contradictory to begin with.
Let M be "has military use"
Let B be "is banned"
What the court said was:
If not M then B
What the previous poster is arguing is that we should be able to infer the following is true:
If M then not B
But that logical implication clearly doesn't hold true. After all, as you pointed out, military stuff may be banned for other reasons that they invent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:47PM
Oh, you just found out about 'net neutrality'?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 10 2015, @12:49PM
the US Constitution's framers never envisioned the modern stun-gun device, first patented in 1972
They probably never envisioned school massacres or gun nuts, either.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:21PM
Lets not forget they didn't envision cellphones, the internet, TV, or radio either.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:29PM
The founding fathers were, to a man, gun nuts. Only recently have people decided the best way to be safe was to give up every tool they might protect themselves with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:42PM
They probably never envisioned school massacres or gun nuts, either.
No their gov was doing it for them. The constitution does 2 things. It says here is explicitly what the gov does. It also limits things to protect the rights of the people. They saw first hand how all 10 of the bill of rights (they had a few more) were abused daily by the 3 govs they had to deal with (spain, france, and england).
Its not that they wanted everyone to go around mowing people down. It was they wanted to limit the illegal search and seizure and suddenly finding a gun because you spoke out against someone in charge. The idea was this. You spoke up about someone. They could then hold what religion you were, pick you up with no warrant, search your house and 'find a gun' (because everyone had them anyway), suddenly you were a subversive, and they could torture whatever confession they wanted out of you, then lock you up and maybe in a few years get around to a trial that convicted you anyway because of your confession.
They were dismantling the very core of how the gov worked at the time to bully people at the time.
People mistake the bill of rights as something given to us. It is not. We already have them. It is something taken away from our government to stop them from harming us. They are supposed to work for us. Not the other way around.
The thing is, the bullies found new and more interesting ways to do it. Using such things as 'that the US Constitution's framers never envisioned'. That is subverting the very fabric of the constitution. It is putting words in their mouths to meet their agenda. Some of the framers *may* have agreed with that reasoning. But it is a slippery slope and can easily be applied to every part of the constitution. Just simply because of progress in the sciences. I can just as easily say a computer is not considered 'papers' as it clearly did not exist then so therefor it gets no 4th amendment protection. I would say most people would consider a tazer a weapon. Much like most people do not consider pizza a part of a balanced diet. Just because some political wonk says it is true does not make so.
This judge seriously is saying that Benjamin Franklin who had a heavy influence on the constitution would not have owned a tazer. The man who according to folklore 'discovered' electricity. Yeah right pull the other one... He probably would have been selling the things if he could and trying them out on his friends.
(Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:21PM
The idea was this. You spoke up about someone. They could then hold what religion you were, pick you up with no warrant, search your house and 'find a gun' (because everyone had them anyway), suddenly you were a subversive, and they could torture whatever confession they wanted out of you, then lock you up and maybe in a few years get around to a trial that convicted you anyway because of your confession.
Nowadays of course that treatment is reserved for Middle Eastern gentlemen.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:26PM
*eyeroll*
... AND those people who like/have [networkworld.com]:
Criminal activity by government actors is not just about [insert your pet social-justice issue/minority/news event here].
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:04PM
Those eyes aren't rolling, they're popping out of your head.
This:
"they could torture whatever confession they wanted out of you, then lock you up and maybe in a few years get around to a trial that convicted you anyway because of your confession."
Applies to extraordinary rendition from Iraq and Afghanistan. It does NOT apply to domestic libertarian loons suspected of being potential terrorists.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:19PM
Extraordinary rendition wasn't mentioned; why bother with all the work to transport someone when you can violate them right here at home? My reply does not contradict your claim that "Middle Eastern gentlemen" have been subject to criminal actions by US government agents; it instead opens the door to reveal more of the wide array of victims. People from every single walk of life have been victimized by US government criminality; the point to be made about what I perceived to be an attempt to make such rampant criminality a rallying point around a single racial minority is that doing so takes something everyone should be interested in and makes it a divisive wedge issue.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:06PM
Extraordinary rendition wasn't mentioned
"they could torture whatever confession they wanted out of you, then lock you up and maybe in a few years get around to a trial that convicted you anyway because of your confession." was.
an attempt to make such rampant criminality a rallying point around a single racial minority is that doing so takes something everyone should be interested in and makes it a divisive wedge issue.
It doesn't happen in the US mainland. It happens supposedly outside the reach of the US legal system, in Cuba. To gentlemen from the Middle East.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:23PM
"Extraordinary rendition" is a specific term that has a specific meaning: agents of one country's government seize a person and transport them to a different country where rights violations are easier to get away with. All the quoted text above can be accomplished with or without extraordinary rendition... and has.
A few examples of varying completeness that come immediately to mind:
Al-Marri [hotair.com]
Bradley Chelsea Manning [thedailybeast.com]
Jose Padilla [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:07PM
You seem to be concentrating on the term "extraordinary rendition", which I dare say everybody here understands perfectly, whilst missing the word "torture".
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:24AM
I have been focused on that term because you kept bringing it up like it was the ultimate qualifier to the world's most horrific crime. (It is horrific.) Torture can and has been performed without extraordinary rendition, and at the very least, all individuals I mentioned have been kept in solitary confinement for very long periods of time (up to six years, I believe).
You might try to define "torture" narrowly to only include things such as breaking on a wheel, spinning on a Judas chair, or having a car battery hanging off your testicles, but I'm quite certain you'd not appreciate being waterboarded (the US executed Japanese soldiers for using this "water torture") or locked away in a tiny box from all human contact for years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:35PM
That is subverting the very fabric of the constitution.
I do find the importance placed by Americans on their constitution to be quite quaint. It's like it was another holy book, equal to the Bible, the Quran or the Torah. Like a secular religion practiced mostly by those who claim to have an actual religion.
There are orthodox Jews who sit in darkness on Shabbat because or their opinion that some ancient desert dwellers would have interpreted flicking a switch as work. And so here we have people trying to second guess what some 200 year ago people with no knowledge of the modern world would have thought of an electrical device.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 4, Disagree) by tibman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:27PM
It has reigned as ruler longer than any other King/Queen, Emperor, or Pharaoh. If i had to pick a supreme power to rule my nation i would want it to be something like the US Constitution.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:12PM
The 200 year history of your constitution is pitifully short.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:19PM
Um, i guess that is something we'll work on then?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:20PM
I do find the importance placed by Americans on their constitution to be quite quaint.
I know. The government should just be able to do whatever it wants, completely ignoring the social contract.
There's nothing religious about wanting the government's powers to be limited. If you don't like the constitution, it can be changed by going through the proper procedure. You can't arbitrarily allow the government to extend their powers simply because the founders couldn't have envisioned technology X. The spirit of the constitution must be taken into account, and courts should always be in favor of freedom. If the government wants more power, then it'll have to try to amend the constitution.
(Score: 1, Troll) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:06PM
All you are saying there is that you too believe in the religion.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:21PM
I see you're fond of snarky straw man arguments.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:11PM
No. It's just that your religion looks very different from the outside than within it. With telescopes we can look at other galaxies and see them for what they are - Their thick centre, their spiral arms. But from within it, the structure of the Milky Way is impossible to make out.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:14PM
You're describing yourself. Your religion is redefining religion to mean whatever you want it to mean, which conveniently also allows you to ignore the arguments at hand. It's hard for you to tell, but outsiders can tell easily. Clearly this is the case, and not more irrelevant garbage.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:12PM
You're describing yourself.
And the majority of the world who are similarly able to see America for what it is. A perspective that American's themselves don't have.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:21PM
And the majority of the world who are similarly able to see America for what it is.
So you're admitting you're part of a religion, then? And apparently you can simply decide that other people are part of this religion too. People who decide how other people feel are part of yet another infamous religion.
Everything is a religion, you see. I like to use butter; that's a religion. Like to play baseball? Nice religion you have there.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:14PM
I do find the importance placed by Americans on their constitution to be quite quaint. It's like it was another holy book, equal to the Bible, the Quran or the Torah. Like a secular religion practiced mostly by those who claim to have an actual religion.
Who cares what you think is "quaint"? It'll be hard to find four pages of a written work with greater importance.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:10PM
Hallelujah! Brother! Hallelujah! Praise be to the Good Book!
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:28PM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:26PM
That's pretty much exactly what happens today, except instead of 'find a gun' its 'find drugs' or 'find kiddie porn', and once either of those are found its goodbye rights and goodbye being treated as a human being by everyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:23AM
Benjamin Franklin [...] who according to folklore 'discovered' electricity
That's the illiterate's interpretation.
Franklin discovered that lightning is electricity.
He went on to invent the lightning rod, which prevented a lot of buildings being burned down due to a lightning strike.
He also duplicated other people's designs for static electricity generators and played around with those.
Galvani is generally credited with discovering electricity in a dead frog's leg.
Volta put electricity on the road to usefulness by inventing the Voltaic Pile (the battery).
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:41PM
such as during the protestant reformation. The reason we have separation of church and state is not to keep religion out of government, but to keep all the christians from murdering each other.
British Redcoat Colonel William H. Crawford (quite likely an ancestor of mine) was captured by the Indians, tortured then burned at the stake. I don't know what he did to deserve that but I expect he fucked up but good.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:19PM
The top court said stun guns are not suitable for military use
This isn't the first time [wikipedia.org] such an argument was made and ruled on by the courts. What I find interesting is that with this ruling the court has basically stated that a firearm suitable for military use is perfectly allowable for individual ownership. So if people are up in arms about AR and AK ownership just imagine the issues with ownership of an M249 [wikipedia.org], M203 [wikipedia.org], M2 [wikipedia.org]. And before people start believing that I am some gun nut I am not but do find rulings like this interesting due to the potential unintended consequences.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:32PM
Those are actually intended consequences. The military was never meant to be better armed than its citizens. The second amendment was specifically crafted in case of the need to violently overthrow the government with private arms. You can tell by how the founding fathers had just finished doing exactly that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:41PM
No it wasn't. It was crafted to allow a militia to oppose repel invasions and insurrections. You can tell by how the founding fathers actually wrote that.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:48PM
Tell us that again?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tathra on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:31PM
this
does not mean this
because the US wasn't supposed to be allowed to have a standing army in the first place. the militia was intended to be the army.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Spook brat on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:40PM
Tathra wrote:
this
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
does not mean this
The military was never meant to be better armed than its citizens.
because the US wasn't supposed to be allowed to have a standing army in the first place. the militia was intended to be the army.
According to Federal Law, the Militia consists of all Male citizens ages 17-45 (10 USC sec. 311). [cornell.edu] Given that, your statement above reads that the citizens and the army were supposed to be exactly equally armed.
I like that idea, can we please make 3-round burst and auto modes legal now on modern firearms?
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:49PM
no, it reads that they're supposed to be the same thing, which is what i said.
US Constitution, Section 8 - Powers of Congress
from the Federalist Papers [foundingfathers.info]
plus many other warnings against having standing/permanent armies; in other words, having funds for a permanent army is outside of the powers granted to government, meaning the army is only meant to be the militia conscripted into federal service for limited periods of time. they're supposed to be the same thing, thus no distinction of "equally armed" can exist because they have to be different in the first place before "equally armed" means anything; "the Militia and the Militia should be equally armed" is kind of a meaningless statement, especially since the militias that were to be conscripted were either State or even more Local, so it would be on the State or below to ensure their Militia was armed and trained equally to other States'/Localities' Militias.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:53PM
. . . no distinction of "equally armed" can exist because they have to be different in the first place before "equally armed" means anything; "the Militia and the Militia should be equally armed" is kind of a meaningless statement . . .
Yep! In other news, longcat is long, and the first rule of Tautology club is... [xkcd.com]
I believe we are dangerously close to being in violent agreement =)
Your assessment is correct, the current state of the armed forces and arms control legislation is far afield from what the Founders intended. I worded the comment the way I did because there's odd talk on the 'Nets; on one hand people talk of citizens not needing military equivalent weaponry, and on the other (as in today's discussion) that citizens have no need of a weapon that has no military function. I like your assessment of the situation, because if citizen == militia == military then all of that odd talk I mentioned is incorrect; being equal, neither is greater than the other and citizens should have access to whatever they can afford in order to defend their families, their homes, and their homeland.
In my ideal America every citizen would have access to the main battle rifle adopted by the Armed Forces, and could be ready to serve at a minute's notice. We'd just need a catchy name for people who do that so it would catch on and become the trendy thing to do... ;^)
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:44PM
Funny how it's the constitution and the amendments that are all important, till you show the gun nuts their interpretation is wrong, at which point it's time to comb everything a founding father ever wrote. Actual constitutional documents be damned.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Leebert on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:03PM
That's funny. I look at the ACLU and wonder how THEY can find the US Constitution and its amendments all important, until they come across the second amendment. Because they don't like firearms, they go through mental gymnastics to make it somehow, contrary to all of the other amendments, a limitation on the people and not the government.
Actual Constitutional documents be damned.
You might not LIKE what the second amendment says (I personally think it removes too much discretion from the government to limit private ownership of firearms that can be excessively risky in many contexts), but that doesn't mean you pretend that it doesn't say what it says. It means you change it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:26PM
The main problem with the constitution is that it gives the government too much power as it is. The fourth amendment could be better written to make the "reasonable" exception far more strict and not allow the government to invade people's privacy arbitrarily based on how 'severe' they think the situation is. And obviously, we need to clarify many things so that authoritarian judges don't have any wiggle room, but that's not so much a fault of the constitution itself. No mass surveillance, no FCC censorship, no DUI checkpoints, etc. There are many thing that could be clarified or improved about the constitution, but limiting people's ability to own guns is not one of them.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:04PM
I'm in agreement with most of your other statements, but I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The second amendment, as written, doesn't provide any qualifications about the types of arms that one can keep and bear. That, in my mind, quite literally means that I have a constitutional right to own a thermonuclear weapon, which is absurd. There is a practical upper limit to the destructive power that an individual citizen should be allowed to wield. How you define that is, admittedly, somewhat problematic. Especially since the attendant risk can vary from situation to situation. It's not really a big deal if I keep a cache of grenades in my kitchen if live in some desolate area in the desert Southwest with nary a soul for miles; it's a completely different affair if I live in a densely populated apartment building in Manhattan.
It is also not unreasonable to have SOME degree of limitations on who can own firearms. It's no problem that, say, a mentally retarded person has a right to free speech; it's a completely different thing to allow them to keep and bear an Uzi. Which, again, I believe that the second amendment allows.
The second amendment DOES need the concept of reasonableness integrated into it somehow, just as much as the fourth amendment. And, as you so aptly observed, in a manner that limits the wiggle room of a partisan judiciary. (In my mind, a starting point would be something along the lines of: "keep and bear arms of sufficient power to counter weapons at the disposal of the government which could be used, lawfully or not, against the citizen.")
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:35PM
The second amendment, as written, doesn't provide any qualifications about the types of arms that one can keep and bear. That, in my mind, quite literally means that I have a constitutional right to own a thermonuclear weapon, which is absurd.
That is not absurd. Don't like it? Try to amend the constitution to get weapons of that scale banned. I don't want the government arbitrarily placing limits on our rights just because you think it's "absurd" that we have them.
It is also not unreasonable to have SOME degree of limitations on who can own firearms. It's no problem that, say, a mentally retarded person has a right to free speech; it's a completely different thing to allow them to keep and bear an Uzi. Which, again, I believe that the second amendment allows.
Where the fuck does the second amendment allow you to oppress the mentally retarded, or more accurately, people arbitrarily declared to be mentally retarded? You're pulling this out of nowhere, much like people who say that convicted felons and the mentally ill have no second amendment rights.
There are lots of mentally ill people who would never harm anyone, and I do not want you to decide that they are undeserving of rights. Not to mention that mental illnesses are mostly completely arbitrary, courtesy of pseudoscientific 'social science.' Even were such a constitutional amendment proposed, I would oppose it.
The second amendment DOES need the concept of reasonableness integrated into it somehow
Well, guess what? It doesn't say or imply anything about "reasonableness," and certainly not your standard of "reasonableness" in particular. I'd rather not have the government able to arbitrarily declare what is and is not reasonable so that it can extend its powers.
Don't like the constitution as it is? Try to get it amended. I'm tired of people thinking it's okay for the government to simply ignore it. There is an actual procedure for getting the constitution changed, and you'd best advocate that the government follow it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:16PM
Its funny, I keep suggesting to people that the second should be amended to remove the "well-regulated militia" clause in order to prevent a future interpretation of it from enforcing exactly that, that guns could only be owned by people in the militia. Apparently people are more terrified of their pet interpretation not holding up on further examination and/or not holding up when voted on by the population since its the one currently in vogue, than preventing future tyranny and actually having their guns taken by government if it ends up being interpreted exactly as its written. I guarantee that if it were interpreted a different way they'd all be all about amending it.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:22PM
I guarantee that if it were interpreted a different way they'd all be all about amending it.
The problem is that even when the constitution is clear, the courts often just ignore it in favor of giving the government more power. All sorts of random exceptions are made to the first amendment and fourth amendment (among other things) that the constitution mentions nothing about, and the commerce clause is of course used to give the federal government nearly unlimited power to regulate nearly anything, even things that merely could potentially cross state borders.
It doesn't seem to matter how clear you are. There are no real punishments for any politician or judge who outright ignores the constitution, and they're often cheered on anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:40PM
There really are, they're just never enforced:
18 U.S. Code § 1918 [cornell.edu]
By choosing to ignore the constitution or subverting it or suggesting to ignore or subvert it they are advocating the overthrow of our constitutional form of government, and anyone who does and accepts or holds a position in the Government should be fined or imprisoned for up to 366 days or both.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:39PM
That we would allow J. Random Idiot to own and keep a thermonuclear weapon in his midtown-Manhattan apartment is absurd. Sorry, I don't really see that as arguable.
You must have missed earlier in the conversation where I said [soylentnews.org] "You might not LIKE what the second amendment says (I personally think it removes too much discretion from the government to limit private ownership of firearms that can be excessively risky in many contexts), but that doesn't mean you pretend that it doesn't say what it says. It means you change it."
I said exactly what you said: The Constitution allows it currently, and if we think that shouldn't be the case, we shouldn't just ignore the Constitution, we should use its built-in update mechanism to fix it.
It doesn't. That's my point. But hey, don't let your lack of reading comprehension keep you from ranting about things I didn't say.
The Constitution is a collection of limitations on our individual rights. They're not arbitrary; they're carefully considered tradeoffs. The Constitution is the result of a risk decision. For example, in the fourth amendment the framers considered the risk of allowing the government carte blanche search and seizure authority to exceed the risk posed by the crime that might otherwise be prevented or punished by such authority.
The second amendment is a similar risk equation, but the potential damage from unrestricted weapons ownership is arguably much greater today. It's not unreasonable for society to revisit that risk decision from time to time as society and technology evolve. I think it's a fair question to ask if the possible damage to society from the ownership of certain weapons outweighs the possible damage it prevents from an out-of-control government.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @10:36PM
But hey, don't let your lack of reading comprehension keep you from ranting about things I didn't say.
"It is also not unreasonable to have SOME degree of limitations on who can own firearms. It's no problem that, say, a mentally retarded person has a right to free speech; it's a completely different thing to allow them to keep and bear an Uzi. Which, again, I believe that the second amendment allows."
I thought you were saying it allows the government to place those restrictions. Apparently not.
The Constitution is a collection of limitations on our individual rights.
Irrelevant to what I said. According to what some people suggest, it would be the government arbitrarily deciding that the founders couldn't have envisioned technology X, and then deciding that they have constitutional authority to ban it on that basis. That is completely arbitrary, as well as unconstitutional.
The Constitution is the result of a risk decision. For example, in the fourth amendment the framers considered the risk of allowing the government carte blanche search and seizure authority to exceed the risk posed by the crime that might otherwise be prevented or punished by such authority.
That's too safety-oriented for my liking. Freedom should prevail over safety a grand majority of the time. It's not just a matter of X being more dangerous than Y for me.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:45AM
Fair enough; I'll concede that my wording was ambiguous. I was saying that I believe the second amendment does permit them to own an Uzi.
Anyway, we're clearly in agreement that the current state places no restrictions on ownership of "arms". We do seem to disagree as to the wisdom of such a position. My only point is that, to me, there is some level of "too much" for individual weapon ownership. That "too much", IMO, falls somewhere between "pistol in my house" (what, to me, is the bare minimum definition of "keep and bear arms") and "thermonuclear weapon in my house" (which, to me, is a clearly over the top activity that still fits the definition of "keep and bear arms"), and I don't think that should be a controversial position among advocates of the right to keep and bear arms.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:43PM
You have just highlighted the difference between a nation of slaves and a nation of free indviduals. In a free nation, a government's authority is a mere derivative of the authority that free individuals already have. You can't gather any number of free people together to justify the group's decision to kidnap and enslave a victim human; neither can the US government justly exceed its originating authority which was that of one single individual among a group that voted to send representatives to the Constitutional Convention [wikipedia.org].
Does such an idea seem scary? Yup, and it'll get scarier [wikipedia.org] as technological knowledge increases. All the more reason to pile onto the technology train so humans can choose to vacate Earth and colonize other places to help ensure the long-term survival of the species.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:23PM
You can't gather any number of free people together to justify the group's decision to kidnap and enslave a victim human; neither can the US government justly exceed its originating authority which was that of one single individual among a group that voted to send representatives to the Constitutional Convention.
That's perhaps not the best example to cite. Quite a few of those folks did plenty of enslaving under the aegis of law. It's all well and good to put The Constitution up on a pedestal now that we have something like universal suffrage, but that's been there for a minority of our history.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:51PM
The Constitution's predecessors were (perhaps wisely) silent on the matter of human slavery, while the Declaration was quite clear that ALL men (and, yes, women) are created equal and with certain unalienable rights, including life. (A right to life absolutely requires exclusive ownership of a human body by its lone inhabitant.) Slavery was a reality in the colonies/nation (and world) at the time.
You'll note I'm not holding up the US Constitution as some sort of perfect law; I am in fact attacking several pieces of it (e.g. 16th Amendment) by pointing out the historical details of its creation, specifically that its authority ultimately rests upon that of a single individual human.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:40AM
A right to life absolutely requires exclusive ownership of a human body by its lone inhabitant.)
Speak for yourself, please, about that "lone" part! _Me
_the other Me
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:20PM
no, it's not absurd. you just don't believe in actual freedom. you believe peolple are free as long as they do what their overlords say.
now you're advocating for thermonuclear weapons! why you so crazy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:06PM
bullshit, you dumbass troll. read the founders' letters to each other.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:46PM
I doubt that the statement of the judge was the intended consequence although it may have been the intended consequence of the founders. Given the rest of the things the judge mentions I get the feeling that they are fairly anti arms for individuals.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:00PM
The military was never meant to be better armed than its citizens.
And who is the military composed of if not the very citizens of a nation? If you have to fight the military, all you end up is a civil war like in Syria. Not recommended.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:23PM
And yet, sometimes necessary.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday March 10 2015, @01:55PM
What I find interesting is that with this ruling the court has basically stated that a firearm suitable for military use is perfectly allowable for individual ownership.
Ok, I Am Not An American, but I thought the intention of the Second Amendment was to stop the Fedaral Government disarming local militias and that empowering everyday folk to routinely walk around with guns in their purses* was just an unintended consequence of the definition of "firearm".
*Not sure why people want to do this unless muggers in the US are very polite and wait patiently for you to get out your gun and remove the safety, and then let you step back out of their reach so you can safely raise it. Perhaps they also help you choose the best Clint Eastwood quote for the occasion? Or do they take the gun and leave your wallet? Sorry, but if you can reach your gun quickly enough to react to trouble, so can the professional pickpocket standing behind you in the crowd. However I run the scenario in my head, it ends up either with me being held up with either with either my own gun or the one the mugger stole from their last victim.
Not sure Tasers are any better, but at least if I accidentally tase myself it might cure my atrial fibrillation for a couple of days.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:15PM
The militia, according to us law and tradition, is every man old enough to fight. So, no, that is not an unintended consequence. It is very much an intended consequence. To poorly quote some Japanese general or other, "We cannot invade the United states, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:40PM
So, in other words, the "militia" is everyone registered for selective service (the draft), which means only men meet the requirement of the 2nd's "A well regulated militia" clause, which means women are not constitutionally allowed to own or carry firearms.
The 2nd needs to be amended to remove the "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" clause so that it just says "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". The people who claim thats what it says already are by definition cherrypicking which parts they think should apply and which shouldn't.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:40PM
So, in other words, the "militia" is everyone registered for selective service (the draft)
The selective service didn't even exist at the time. Private individuals owned weapons from the beginning of the country, draft or no draft. Your interpretation ignores historical documents, as well as long legal precedent that has long held that the 2nd amendment guarantees private individuals the right to own firearms (precedents which correctly take into account historical document). You instead choose to focus on wording, using a modern understanding of the language. That's a recipe for disaster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:58PM
Which is exactly why it should be amended, so that the wording can't be used to justify different interpretations in the future. Although the specific wording is already used to say the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to the internet, etc, because they didn't exist at the time it was written. So either the spirit applies or the wording does, choose one; you cannot say the spirit applies for the 2nd but the wording applies for the 4th and other amendments, which is what we have going on now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @08:42PM
Which is exactly why it should be amended, so that the wording can't be used to justify different interpretations in the future.
And then language will change and people will misinterpret it again. Then we'll need another amendment, which will take a long time.
you cannot say the spirit applies for the 2nd but the wording applies for the 4th and other amendments
I don't say that. The government violates the 4th amendment with mass surveillance, etc. The spirit applies to both.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:19PM
Which is the entire point of having the Constitutional Amendment process in the first place, to update the Constitution when necessary due to changes in times or meanings of words.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:28PM
Not really. I know it excludes women. I however am not a woman and thus it is not my problem.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:48PM
If it wasn't already well known that you were a sociopath, it would certainly be clear now. Worse still, anyone who fights for equal rights for all gets derided and attacked as an "SJW". Not doing anything about it personally is fine, but actively attacking people who want to do anything about it makes you the same as bigots.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:52PM
Sweet cheeks, I have no problem with equal rights but SJWs never ask for Equal, they demand Special and call anyone who disagrees a sociopath. Well, we're not sociopaths. See, normal human beings care to a diminishing degree about family, friends, their town, their state, their nation, and the rest of the world. SJWs care in the reverse order to a degree so irrational that they see equality as oppression and become absolutely maddened when the world doesn't agree with them. Tell me again, who has mental issues here?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:34PM
A few extremist nutjobs having mental issues doesn't mean you don't. If anything, so-called "SJW"s are a response to your brand of extremism since people like you have been around for far longer. And don't act like other people's bad actions somehow absolve you of your own - they don't. The correct counter to extremism and hatred is not more extremism and hatred.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:39AM
Nothing wrong with my actions, spanky. I stand by every word I've said. And if you really think my views are extreme, you should get out more. The only things I'm extreme about are equality and liberty. If you're not extreme about those, you really should ask yourself why you aren't.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @05:10AM
lol
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @10:52PM
You COMPLETELY overlook the US Constitution's purpose, and take Buzzard's lack of personal concern over women being included in the militia , and assume that the purpose of the US Constitution is to tell We the People what we may or may not do.
Wrong. Completely wrong.
If a woman wants to own a bazooka, all she has to do do to lawfully acquire one is head down to True Value Hardware And Bazookas and pay for one. (All laws repugnant to the Constitution are void; all laws restricting or forbidding the keeping or carrying of any type of arms are completely null and void [findlaw.com].)
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:28PM
Not sure why people want to do this unless muggers in the US are very polite and wait patiently for you to get out your gun and remove the safety, and then let you step back out of their reach so you can safely raise it.
There are many confrontations that occur at a reasonable distance, or give you a reasonable time to prepare. You lose in other situations, no matter how well you might be armed and trained.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:03PM
The Firearms Act actually does provide a framework for private citizens to own Actual Machine Guns. They have a paper trail much like car titles, and your local Sheriff's Dept needs to be notified in-person when you recieve ownership. As there are no crimes being committed with Actual Machine Guns, I often think that model might be a good one for reasonable regulation of arms generally. It's a minor hassle when a legitimate user buys, sells, or gifts a weapon, but wouldn't prevent legitimate uses. It would however put the kabosh on the straw buyers who funnel weapons to criminals and arm the civil war in Mexico.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:19PM
If you have to ask permission, it is not a right. And since it most assuredly is a right...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:55PM
That sort of absolutism leads to our current "Tens of thousands of Mexicans shot with guns bought in the US." situation. I have no problem with people owning firearms for hunting, sport, home defense (though I think the value there is overrated), and so on. However, the current setup prioritizes a fear of a possible-but-unlikely scenario (some sort of authoritarian crackdown mass seizure) over something that is actually killing thousands of people right now (our lax regulation facilitating large-scale smuggling into the war-zone next door).
I don't suggest that someone should have to go play "Mother may I?" with Barney Fife to own a weapon, but deliberately erasing purchase records like we do now gives carte-blanche to smugglers. Ignoring that reality and refusing to even consider common-sense solutions makes us all a little complicit in their crimes, and I hate that.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:16PM
Personally, I'd be more worried about the ones the government sells to the Mexican cartels [wikipedia.org]. Smuggling there and violating Mexican law should have no meaning to an American unless they are caught in Mexico; we're meant to be free to do what we like both in commerce and with firearm ownership.
As for the rest, there is no valid argument to regulate anything you do not wish to control and private firearms were specifically meant to be off limits to government control. Safety? I'd rather have liberty every single time. Me and Patrick Henry, we're funny that way.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:11PM
Speaking to the belief that the automatic weapons the drug cartels are using originated from legal US purchases. The thing is that those firearms that were bought in the US and used to kill Mexicans were all legal hunting and sporting firearms when they were purchased in the US. Despite what the law says it really isn't difficult to turn a semi auto AK type weapon into one that can fire semi auto or fully auto as well. I don't know about the AR type weapons as I have never looked at one in any detail but I would imagine that a similar hack would be possible. Granted this would require fabricating some new metal to attach but anyone who has any skill in metal working could do it easily. I highly doubt that someone would go through the effort to purchase an exceedingly expensive fully automatic weapon, with the background check and fingerprinting, only to hand it over to some Mexican drug cartel. Seems like a really quick and easy way to end up in prison as those are tracked very closely.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:16PM
. . . it really isn't difficult to turn a semi auto AK type weapon into one that can fire semi auto or fully auto as well. I don't know about the AR type weapons as I have never looked at one in any detail but I would imagine that a similar hack would be possible. Granted this would require fabricating some new metal to attach but anyone who has any skill in metal working could do it easily.
You are correct. Most civilian gunsmiths could make the conversion given the appropriate plans for the parts, resulting in a permanently full-auto rifle. In practice, people do exactly what you suggest: there are a couple of ways to add aftermarket components to the firing mechanism. The new parts trick the firing mechanism into thinking you released pressure from the trigger after firing, making the rifle effectively full-auto. At least one of these methods is easily removed and hidden, making proof of the violation tricky (compared to a permanent modification, anyhow).
Friendly reminder: performing these conversions makes you a felon, and the BATF takes keen interest in prosecuting violators. Please don't be stupid.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:19PM
While I did figure out how to modify an AK type weapon in fairly short order (can a semi-auto firearm get much simpler than one of these?) you are correct in that one would be a fool to actually proceed with any such modifications for the exact reasons you cite. My impression of the AK was that it wouldn't even take a skilled gunsmith just someone who can use a hacksaw and files to fabricate something of reasonable quality. The modification I thought of would not have been permanent so the fact that others have likely had similar thoughts and implemented them shouldn't be a surprise. Also full auto is good for expending copious amounts of ammo but not much else. Granted with an AK that would only come out to about $7 per 30 round mag but that still gets expensive quick. Then again I am someone who follows the law and if I get a desire to waste some money one of the gun ranges nearby well rent you one and you don't have to deal with acquiring (legal or otherwise) and maintaining the thing either.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:47PM
That sort of absolutism leads to our current "Tens of thousands of Mexicans shot with guns bought in the US." situation.
You cannot say, "That interpretation leads to undesirable thing X, so it's wrong." If you want to change the constitution, you have to amend it. You can't have the government ignoring it because you don't like the consequences.
As for me, I'll take freedom over safety. Get rid of the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, DUI checkpoints, protest permits, stop-and-frisk-like policies, free speech zones, unjust asset forfeiture, unfettered border searches, unconstitutional wiretapping of all forms, and the countless other violations of our liberties and constitution.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:50PM
None of our rights are absolute, they all are subject to tests of reasonableness based on the trade off between the freedom of the individual and the harm to others that individual can cause in the exercise of that freedom. I tend to think that keeping track of ownership of dangerous things is not an infringement on one's right to keep and bear them, and could mitigate a lot of harm. It's fine if you disagree and have good reasons for thinking that particular line should be drawn elsewhere, but don't pretend that an absolute interpretation of our rights is the only valid one, or even the norm.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:01PM
The phrase you're looking for is "prior restraint [wikipedia.org]", and the concept applies just as much to other rights as it does to free speech.
You may well be correct in a nation where those in government own the rest of the people. In a nation where the government's authority originates from and is limited to that of ultimately a single individual, you cannot be correct. Rights are absolute, with the only boundary being those absolute rights of other humans. Protip: there is no right to "feel safe".
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:29PM
None of our rights are absolute
In the US, if the constitution says they are, then the government has no legitimate authority to claim otherwise.
they all are subject to tests of reasonableness
As defined by the constitution. Sometimes there are no tests of "reasonableness" at all.
There is no reason a right couldn't logically be absolute. That the government chooses to ignore the constitution is a different matter. Some rights are absolute if you apply a logical interpretation of the constitution, rather than modifying it with invisible ink so you can include restrictions you believe are 'reasonable.'
I tend to think that keeping track of ownership of dangerous things is not an infringement on one's right to keep and bear them
Nonsense. What happens if you don't allow yourself to be tracked? You will be punished for keeping and bearing arms in a way the government did not like, which obviously violates your rights.
but don't pretend that an absolute interpretation of our rights is the only valid one, or even the norm.
Whether it is valid or not depends on the issue; sometimes it is. As for being the norm, I don't care what is the norm; most people are both ignorant and unintelligent. Plenty support the NSA's mass surveillance, after all.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:42PM
Yes people are allowed to own machine guns in the US but owning one is expensive (typically start at $15,000 and go up from there) as they have to have been made before 1986 so the supply is rather limited. Also if one owns a machine gun the feds can supposedly come and check up on your machine gun at any time. It is more than just notifying your local sheriff to get one since to buy one requires, living in a state that allows you to own one, passing an intensive background check (done by the FBI IIRC), submitting fingerprints, as well as paying a tax for the privilege of owning one.
At one point I looked into what it would take to get one since I was moderately curious and thought it would be neat to own but apart from wasting copious amounts of ammo at the range it really wouldn't be useful. Besides if I get the urge to shoot a machine gun the range offers rentals and I only have to pay for ammo and not deal with the maintenance.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:25PM
Machine-guns are useful for pinning down an enemy while your riflemen advance on them.
This is why it IS effectivly illegal for mere peon civillian pieces of shit like oursleves to have such things: our rulers wish to deny us that tactic.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:48PM
Caveats:
1) The current law requires that transferable Actual Machine Guns were made before May 19, 1986. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act [wikipedia.org] - See the section on Registration, Purchases, Taxes, and Transfers) The guns sell in price exponentially higher than their original sale value because of this.
2) They must be legal in the state where you live.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:14PM
Erm, like Eric Holder?
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tibman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:49PM
I was in the US Army and was issued a "stun gun" for a few weeks. It seemed perfectly suitable for that job. I also had a shotgun with various less-than-lethal rounds. I had a compressed air gun (like a paintball gun) that shot fin-stabilized rounds. I had assorted less-than-lethal rounds for my m203 (a shotgun-like 48x 48cal pellet round and a foam projectile round). I had a pepper spray like devices, one that shot streams and one that shot fog. I had pepper spray grenade things. They landed, self-righted, then popped up into the air before exploding pepperspray down onto people. There were some mounted systems ones too, like the LRAD (long range acoustic device). I was also issued a stick (they called it a baton).
The best weapon to use for a less-than-lethal situation was ALWAYS the stun gun. OC/Pepper spray stays around afterwards and basically continues to attack the subject even after they are complying. Rubber pellets and torpedos can kill (saw an X-Ray of a rubber round inside someone's skull). Compressed air gun can kill, like the shotgun. M203 could kill. The glue that holds the foam dart to the plastic casing could melt. Firing it would cause the foam dart to veer off target. The weighted plastic part stays on course. Not good. I never fired the massive m203 48 pellet grenade and TBH was afraid too. Shit was huge and barely fit into the breech. LRAD was like lasers and shrill sirens had a baby. It was a good deterrent but worthless to control any situation. Stun gun was the best less-than-lethal weapon. That "top court" is stupid.
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(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:22PM
<sarcasm>Don't worry this case like the old one I linked to are not about a judges understanding of what are useful to the military and in actual use but about their personal feelings on ownership of arms.</sarcasm>
The issue in the first case was around the ownership of a sawed off shotgun and there the government argued that there was not military purpose for one of those. Even though during WWI sawed off shotguns were very effective and even had a name for how they were used and they were very effective in trench fighting. One thing of note in the old case is that the defendant was black and there seemed to be a lot of racism at play in that one and in this new case I wonder if a similar thing is going one. I have no way to tell as the defendant's race isn't mentioned and I can't find a picture of her but it wouln't surprise me to find out the defendant is a minority.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:41PM
Stun gun was the best less-than-lethal weapon.
The fact that you were trained with them, yet apparently believe that they are not in the 'can kill' category that you put some other less-lethal weapons in is slightly alarming. They're likely to be fatal to anyone with a heart condition or pacemaker and can be lethal to otherwise healthy people depending on where you hit them and a few other factors. There is no such thing as a 'less-than-lethal weapon' there are only less-probable-to-be-lethal weapons.
One of the problems with giving the police Tasers is that they are far more likely to fire a 'non-lethal' weapon at someone than a gun (though the police in the USA seem to be redressing this) and are often not aware of how likely that weapon actually is to be lethal.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:37PM
You are actually mixing terms. Non-Lethal means that it cannot kill. Less-than-lethal means that it is designed to be non-lethal but can result in death. Lethal is a weapon intended to kill. I was never trained with a non-lethal weapon.
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(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:53PM
I've been tazed four times, each time by Clark County, Washington Sheriff's Deputies. The last time I grabbed the wires and yanked them free of the tazer.
Note that these were law enforcement tazers, they have a much higher voltage than the public is permitted to use.
The effectiveness of a tazer has a lot to do with that it is frightening. There's not a whole lot that frightens me, with the exception of security cameras everywhere I go.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:59PM
I think you are both right and wrong :) Yes, it is intended to be frightening. But you were only able to pull the wires out after the tazing was done (or it was dialed down). My buddies and i tazed each other while attempting to perform simple duties (like tying a shoe) and it is impossible. I can do it while holding the electrodes in one hand, or if the electrodes did not penetrate my skin. But if those electrodes bury themselves in you like intended then nothing short of pliers are going to get them free of your body. Those wires are over 10 meters long too. So "yanking them free of the tazer" would require pulling several meters of wire towards you. But maybe you are different and can perform actual tasks. That's far better than myself and buddies ever managed.
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(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @10:40PM
Nah. You can watch federal agents taser one man multiple times [youtube.com], and each time he's mobile (which, yes, depends on where the electrodes hit) and has them pulled out almost immediately by himself or by other bystanders. Later photos show him bloody [nydailynews.com] in spots, but pliers are absolutely not required. There have also been several news reports I've read (but cannot remember enough details to quickly find) that give accounts of lone individuals being tasered and pulling out the electrodes themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @02:20PM
I can think of several parallels in military service. Dazzle, or flash bangs for example. It is highly unlikely that off the shelf stun guns or tazers haven't been used in snatch operations by military persons on at least a few occasions. Even more likely if you include paramilitary organizations. Not all military endeavors are lethal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:47PM
Those are concussion grenades, FYI, not "electrical weapons".
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zinho on Tuesday March 10 2015, @03:29PM
I think the judges have a poor understanding of how these things work given this quote:
It is difficult to detect clear signs of use and misuse of stun guns, unlike handguns. Stun guns can deliver repeated or prolonged shocks without leaving marks.
-emphasis added
Seriously, have they never been briefed on how a Taser operates? There are barbs that penetrate the skin! How is that not going to leave a mark? Even the non-barbed stun guns leave burn marks; how could they not at 50,000V? Hey, judge, let me google that for you. [lmgtfy.com]
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:20PM
They'll keep doing this till they're dead.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:24PM
"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."
I know literacy is at all time lows for the modern era but really. That isn't exactly the most challenging sentence ever put to paper. So we have two theories:
1. A majority of Justices on the MA Supreme Court are illiterate savages.
2. They can read it, they simply do not care.
I'm going with #2 because they know they can get away with it and they are Democrats. By definition a Progressive Democrat rejects the notion of a Constitutional Republic, the Rule of Law and every other basic American doctrine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:40PM
Dial back the rabid political slant please. We get it, you dont like the word/label democrat. Please keep the absurd redefinition to yourself, it adds nothing to the discourse.
It is easy to say it is an absurd ruling without throwing shit all over the place.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday March 10 2015, @06:46PM
So you are going with the illiterate savages theory?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:01PM
Thats a pretty ironic statement considering how many people deliberately choose to ignore half of the words written in the second amendment.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:06PM
Ah, an illiterate posting here. Sad. Truly sad. Our Republic was designed for educated and moral people, now having neither it has failed.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:35PM
Not at all - I *am* in the militia. So are most USian males. Please refer to 10 USC 311 [cornell.edu]. ("... The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except [for officers and National Guard members], under 45 years of age ...")
This is supported by the Founders' statements, of which one such example was provided by George Mason [constitution.org]: "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:55PM
That's fine and all, but the amendment specifically states "a well regulated militia" and not just any ol' militia. All you're doing is even more cherrypicking by ignoring the words "well regulated".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @07:58PM
To further prove my point, the USC you link to even separates the militia you're in - the unorganized militia - and "organized militias", which would be the "well regulated" ones.
So no, you do not count as part of a well regulated - organized - militia simply by being an able-bodied male of the appropriate age.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @08:13PM
That's mere speculation on your part. Members of the unorganized militia turned up in Athens [jpfo.org], Bunkerville [youtube.com], and places all throughout the South [wikipedia.org]. Seemed to work pretty well regardless of your opinion of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:24PM
If that's speculation, then your premise that the unorganized militia counts as a "well regulated" one re:the 2nd Amendment definitely is. Since its not explicitly spelled out (well, it is, otherwise the law wouldn't differentiate between "organized" and "unorganized", but I digress), we'll just have to agree that we're both speculating and we'll never agree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:54PM
It's absolutely not speculation on "unorganized being well regulated", but it is a statement that the government is once again derelict in its duty to equip the militia, etc., as you referenced in your other post [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:46PM
So what you're saying is that a militia must be directly under the control and guidance of the government to be a "valid" "well regulated" militia, since you're saying its the government's fault the unorganized militia remains unorganized, which means you're saying "well regulated militia" means "official government militia". I disagree with you there, the militia does not necessarily need to be an official governmental entity, but only needs the government's 'blessing' and must actually have regulations and training, which is the commander's responsibility to organize and enforce not the governments.
At any rate your statement makes it clear we agree that a bunch of Joe Sixpacks with shotguns is not a "well regulated militia".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:55PM
I can entertain the correctness that the official, well-regulated militia of nothing but willing volunteers spoken of operates under the command structure of government and that Joe Sixpacks and shotguns is not necessarily a well-regulated militia.
However, none of that changes the fact that the US Constitution was created at the Philadelphia Convention and rested ultimately upon the delegated authority of the single individual American human, of which many voted to elect representatives to the Convention and yet none of which could give any one of themselves nor any subsequent creation of law more authority than any one of them individually had.
If Joe Sixpack wants a bazooka to go with his shotgun, the Constitution has no authority to deny him one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:58PM
Except for that whole pesky "well regulated militia" clause. It needs to be amended to remove that clause and then I'll agree 100%.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:08AM
You sure do like to ignore the parts of posts that destroy your argument. I let it slide the first time, but not this time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:23AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law [wikipedia.org]
It has already been decided for us that the letter of the law has priority over spirit, so pointing out that the spirit conflicts with the letter means either the letter needs to be changed or that all laws need to be interpreted by spirit instead. The former, amending and updating laws and amendments to better encapsulate the spirit, is actually possible while the latter I'm not so sure about.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:42AM
... or we can act like free people and remind government agents of what they have ignored or forgotten: a law repugnant to the Constitution is void. Government agents initiating force against others under color of a void law are literal criminals. If idiots in black robes say something stupid [wikipedia.org], that doesn't make it so.
Resisting such criminal government actors has already happened in Tennessee [jpfo.org] and throughout the South [wikipedia.org], and is happening today in New York [dcclothesline.com], Connecticut [americanthinker.com], Nevada [youtube.com], Washington [patrickhenrysociety.com], and elsewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:15AM
All of those are for the 2nd, where are similar marches and protests for our lost 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, and 14th amendment rights? If the "second amendment is what protects the other amendments", why do we continue losing them and why does nobody care that they're gone? Those are anything but "resisting such criminal government actors" or "remind[ing] government agents of what they have ignored or forgotten". The constitution is far more than just the second amendment; the second will be meaningless when the entire constitution is rendered void, which is exactly where we're headed when nobody cares about anything but a single sentence in it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:31AM
I can only assume you are resorting to desperate misdirection. This story and thread deal with arms and individuals (inside and/or outside of militias). If you had bothered to take the time to actually read my replies to you, you would have read...
... that the underlying principles I wrote about apply to the entire width and breadth of the US Constitution, and address the lawlessness of government agents' conduct with all the amendments you just mentioned. And, no, the principles espoused in the Second Amendment will never be meaningless, as evidenced by the multitude of links previously posted, several of which document armed individuals successfully resisting the criminal conduct of government agents, conduct that covers violations beyond just the Second Amendment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:54AM
[Citation Needed]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:59AM
Read, you idiot [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:09AM
Allow me to say this too: I am all for interpreting the constitution by the spirit rather than letter, that would be far preferable since then encryption codes for your computer would be covered by the 5th, the internet and email would be covered by the 4th (thankfully SCOTUS agreed that phones are covered, but nothing else yet), the NSA's obvious spying on citizens along with the DEA and TSA would be immediately shut down, "free speech zones" / "constitution-free zones" and using the government to enforce religious laws would never fly, etc. Unfortunately for us, laws and the constitution depend on the letter rather than the spirit (unless and until it gets before the SCOTUS, which isn't even a power granted to them by the constitution), so the letter takes priority over the spirit. Either this needs to be changed or the wording needs to be changed. Since I don't think we'll ever get lucky enough to get the spirit to take precedence over the letter, its our responsibility to ensure the letter is as clear as possible in describing whats intended by the spirit.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Tuesday March 10 2015, @08:03PM
You're right, to an extent. I'm personally taking steps to ensure I transition into the best militia member I can practically be, should/when my rifle and I be needed somewhere for militia service. As for the equipment problem, well, you'll have to forgive me for significant lapses there, as the members of the BATFE and FBI will want to kill me [wikipedia.org] if they think I've outfitted myself properly.
You wanna try to help get such criminals off our backs so we can make our shoddy militia into one in good functioning order?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:39PM
I'm with you on despising our rogue government and the criminals comprising it, but the constitution is pretty clear that the militia is to be at the beck and call of the federal government - Article 1, Section 8:
As such, any "organized" militia won't necessarily be run by the government, but it will be a governmental/quasi-governnmental entity, blessed by the government and run with its cooperation, the smallest being, what, township? And thats how it is today - there are State Militias beside the National Guard, but they are run with the state's blessing and cooperation, an example of which being the Indiana Volunteer Militia. [indianavolunteermilitia.com] This is an example of a "well regulated" militia. A township militia would be a similar entity, just at the township level instead of state. A bunch of guys sitting around with guns who never train or have regulations calling themselves a militia is not a "well regulated" militia for sure. I'm pretty sure militias like the Indiana Volunteer Militia and are the kind of militias the Founders had in mind when they wrote "militia/well regulated militia".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @09:59PM
Only in as much as any one free human is at the beck and call of another, which is to say with the willing consent of the first or not at all. (Referencing the primary source of government authority, which is ultimately that of a single human individual as evidenced by the mechanics of the Philadelphia Convention.)
Your example of the Indiana Volunteer Militia is a poor one, as it appears that even though they have the physical training down, they lack such equipment as full-auto squad machine guns, Javelin missile systems, and Stinger anti-air systems. Remember that "shall not be infringed" part?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 10 2015, @11:54PM
The second amendment says "well regulated" not "well armed". "Well regulated" means the regulations and training, including weapons training, it does not mean "armed to the teeth". As for "Shall not be infringed", it means just that, "shall not be infringed" not that the government is to supply weapons to anyone who asks for them; with regards to well regulated militias it would mean that the government cannot take the militia's weapons, but requiring a certain level of proficiency and training in order to use them would not be infringing; requiring somebody to demonstrate they know how to drive or aim a tank's main cannon before allowing them to be used is just common sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:05AM
Now you're starting to squirm like a worm on a hook. Even with conceding to you the point for the sake of argument that the militia must be "well regulated", such a well-regulated militia has absolutely no limit on the type or quantity of arms its members choose to obtain, as evidenced by the phrase you now try to change the meaning of: SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. You cannot have a right of any sort that is governed by a test of any sort.
Sorry, mate - liberty and responsibility are scary. Deal with your fear. Fear is the mind-killer, and, frankly, it's showing in this discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:16AM
Yeah, totally squirming by pointing out that words have meanings and making up definitions for words as you see fit in order to support your argument is not a valid method for supporting an argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @12:51AM
You tell me: can the keeping and bearing of arms of a well-regulated militia be infringed?
Hurr durr, gee, a restriction on the exercise of a right? That's not an infringement, no, no! Hurr durr. You sure you want to keep acting this brainless? I'd much prefer an honest discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:24AM
Yup, restrictions on rights have been ruled perfectly valid by SCOTUS. See "Free speech zones, [wikipedia.org] "Constitution-free zones", [aclu.org] etc, which nobody seems to be protesting, so it seems citizens have accepted restrictions on rights as perfectly valid. The brainless and dishonest one in this discussion is the one intentionally ignoring the legal framework already in place that allows exactly that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:39AM
Your precious collection of blackrobes has also stated that black people aren't human [wikipedia.org]. Are you sure you want to hold them out as the ultimate arbiters of reality?
Once again, as recognized - but not established - by your precious blackrobes, " a law repugnant to the Constitution is void [cornell.edu] "; " an unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed [findlaw.com] ".
If you bother to read the Norton decision linked above, you will note that the blackrobes' argument was that the illegal law was void upon its passage - it was not made void at a later time when the blackrobes gave their ruling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @01:52AM
Strawmen and ad hominems are how idiots admit they can't support their argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2015, @02:07AM
"Strawmen" involves setting up an unrelated point to attack; YOU brought up the SCOTUS.
Ad hominem is attacking the messenger, and I attacked the messages of the SCOTUS.
Of course, I will use ad hominem to point out the obvious in this case in that you are behaving like a literal moron [thefreedictionary.com], jumping about from one point to another like jell-o that doesn't want to be nailed to the wall.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fadrian on Tuesday March 10 2015, @05:37PM
What the hell? OK. I am not a gun nut. I am a semi-staunch Socialist who thinks that income/social inequalities are rampant in our society and I am a firm believer that firearms in the hands of most individuals in urban areas is a bad idea and makes us less safe... um kay? I state my liberal bona fides to make sure that everyone knows that this is an incredibly stupid and counterproductive ruling.
Although it is (relatively-) settled constitutional law that weapons can be classified and controlled, and the judge is within his rights to make this ruling, I am not sure that placing a normally defensive weapon under the same restrictions as a normally offensive weapon is a good thing. I understand that the judge wants to keep any new weapons off the street, as electric stun devices can be used offensively as well as defensively, but a knife be used that way, too - slippery slopes make both good (and bad) law. But when you get right down to it? There are always going to be people who are afraid. I'd hope that the availability of non-lethal weaponry would keep more firearms out of more folks hands (an assumption that might be false) - just as harm reduction seems to be the way to go with drugs, I'd say it's the way to go with our weapons addiction, as well. I'd rather face a taser than a metal slug coming out of a barrel because I know which one I'm more likely to survive.
All said, though, I expect an appellate court to kick this back down - not because I think that this judge doesn't have the (relatively-) settled question of government's right to make this ruling (judges have the constitutional right to make all sorts of stupid decisions and then occasionally have them overturned by other constitutionally appointed judge sitting above them), but because there's not enough differentiation between a firearm and an electrical stun weapon in potential use and abuse to be sufficient for a separate interpretation under current law (i.e., just find that a stun gun is the same as any other handgun), because, basically, if the populace must have weapons, it's better that they be non-lethal (or less-lethal).
That is all.