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A gunman fired upon thousands of people attending a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night, in a brutal attack that is blamed for at least 58 deaths, police say. In the mass shooting and panic that ensued, 515 people were injured. At least one of the dead is an off-duty police officer who was attending the concert.
Editorializing: Interesting how media always emphasize ISLAMIC terrorists, but downplay domestic terrorism as psychologically disturbed individual lone-wolfs.
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Over 50 dead in mass shooting in Las Vegas
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(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 03 2017, @08:59AM (6 children)
It also defines a process for amending the Constitution. If your argument is primarily a legal one that the government does not have the right to implement gun control, then would you reverse your opinion if a constitutional amendment were passed banning private ownership of firearms?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:35AM (2 children)
You didn't read my post, the one you replied to.
In the case that I'm wrong, in that you did read but simply did not comprehend, here are two other [soylentnews.org] posts [soylentnews.org] I wrote that spell out the problem with your suggestion succinctly.
(Score: 3, Touché) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 03 2017, @12:49PM (1 child)
I've reread your post and your replies, and I have previously studied the US constitution. You are correct that it does not grant rights, however it does grant power to the government, including the power to remove freedoms from individuals (which it does regularly, for example removing the right to liberty from people conviced of crime, removing the right to free movement by enforcing land ownership rights, and so on). Prior amendments to the constitution have never removed text, they have only added additional amendments that supersede them. For example, the 21st amendment both repealed the 18th (which remains part of the document, but now one with no legal force) and added an additional term relating to state and city laws. An amendment that repealed the second amendment would do something similar, specifically granting the Federal government the right to pass laws that restricted gun ownerships.
This is a hypothetical, because stricter gun laws have been dropping in popularity in the USA since the '90s [gallup.com], so it's unlikely that such an amendment would pass, but that's irrelevant. My question is whether you actually believe that a civilised country needs individual ownership of firearms (when the US is a great case study of the fact that they do nothing to prevent abuses of power by the government), or whether it is purely a legalistic argument (the government of the USA may not remove any rights from the people unless the people explicitly, via the constitution, permit it to do so). If it's the latter, presumably you would have enthusiastically backed the right to own other humans as slaves, right up until the point that the thirteenth was passed.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @09:16PM
Based upon this latest reply, filled with straw men about slavery and rights government can revoke, no, you did not comprehend the core issue of "powers not possessed cannot be delegated", which renders any so-called law that violates said principle void.
If I'm again wrong, and you merely disagree, fine. State that and your reasons why. Trying to feign lack of comprehension as disagreement is telling.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 03 2017, @12:30PM (2 children)
Or they might drop altogether their support for the Constitution and government. After all, how is it going to happen that this amendment passes? The current pro-gun control strategy right now is to latch onto every high profile shooting. That's just not working because there aren't enough such shootings. Without public support for the amendment, how is it going to happen? Answer: political chicanery. At that level, you're speaking of manipulating the basic framework without democratic input. That delegitimizes the framework fast.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:37AM (1 child)
Give it a few years. The rate of mass shootings in the US is increasing over time. Though I agree that if Sandy Hook wasn't going to change hearts, there is a little way to go yet.
Though I would've thought that just one mass shooting would be "enough". Australia suffered a mass shooting in 1996 which led to stricter gun controls*. In the 21 years since, we have not had a single mass shooting. The total number of gun deaths (minus suicides) per year has kept dropping and the total for 2016 was less than just this one event in Vegas.
*some higher-powered weapons were outlawed and there was an amnesty on unregistered firearms. People can still purchase and own firearms with an appropriate license
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 04 2017, @11:02AM
It would just due to population growth - supposing it actually is increasing over time.
Wikipedia listed [wikipedia.org] four mass shootings since.
There appears to have been 10 such attacks in a similar duration period before 1996, so those gun control laws may have reduced the frequency of the attacks somewhat. But as usual with these things, it probably wouldn't have done a thing for the Port Arthur massacre itself which is very similar to the Las Vegas attack (wealthy guy covertly acquiring firearms that he couldn't legally be kept away from, and employing relatively intelligent tactics).
Finally, why should one emergency or one massacre be sufficient to take freedom away from millions or hundreds of millions of people? You're walking into a classic police state trap. Just because there are stupid and/or evil people doesn't mean the rest of us have to be punished as well.