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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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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
poverty, n.:
An unfortunate state that persists as long
as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
(Score: 2, Troll) by LVDOVICVS on Monday October 02 2017, @05:20PM (24 children)
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." != fer shootin' up the gubmint.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @05:35PM (2 children)
How can you deny what is obvious?
Having guns with which to form militias is how the people who created the Constitution were able to rise against and defeat the British Government.
What is being protected? Not just any old State, but a free State. The first amendment establishes freedom of thought as a core principle, and the second amendment is there to make explicit the need to be able to continually defend that freedom.
Back in the day, "well regulated" meant "well equipped". It's acknowledging that in order for a free State to be perpetuated, it must be possible to form militias (groups of citizens), and doing so is only possible when the citizenry is well equipped.
Now, add to that the American history of the Great Equalizer and there's no room for anything but reverence of the Second Amendment. Freedom implies the right to defend oneself, especially from the biggest gang of thugs: Government.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:13PM (1 child)
Fricking paranoid pervert ammosexual! Great equalizer, or are you just compensating for "short-comings" in another area?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:57PM
Ah, the great intellectuals on the side of the gun banning anti-technologists. You share some interesting bedfellows [kk.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @05:44PM
Found the tax collector who likes salty tea!
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @06:59PM (4 children)
I find it interesting that gun control folks like to put emphasis on the militia part and then pretend that it alters the meaning of "the people" into "the state". There's not one place in the constitution or any amendment where the two terms are used interchangeably.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 02 2017, @07:23PM (3 children)
Every able bodied male between the ages of 17 and 40 was considered a member of the militia. Each town, and especially each county seat, could call up all of those able bodied males, at any time, for training purposes, or for defense, or even to go on campaign. THAT is the bit that our opponents forget, and when they remember it, they try to parse words into nonsense.
EVERY AMERICAN MALE WHO READS THIS SENTENCE IS A MEMBER OF THE MILITIA BEING TALKED ABOUT HERE!! You didn't get a vote on it. You may never have been ordered to muster for training, but you are still a member. You, me, our sons, grandsons, neighbors, all of us. WE ARE THE MILITIA!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:29PM (2 children)
Was? Still is! Check out 10 USC 246 [cornell.edu].
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 02 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
You must have noticed that the upper age limit has changed to 45. I think the ages have been played with a couple of times, mostly due to the fact that more of us live past age 40. But, we can recognize the law as deriving from the constitution and early law.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @10:16PM
Sweet, I'm about to ETS for the second time here in a couple years then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @07:15PM
Not taking a side here, but I think you may not understand the context of the phrasing. At the time it was written state militias were typical and were tacitly used as protection against the possibility of federal government incursion. The freedom of which that amendment speaks of is not freedom from France or Mexico - it is freedom from the possibility of an over encroaching federal government.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 02 2017, @07:19PM (13 children)
You have apparently not read any of the correspondence of the founding fathers. They most certainly DID intend that if/when the government turned tyrannical, the people should rise up and destroy that government. That was the entire reason and justification for arming the common man. Don't argue, until you have read the letters, journals, diaries, etc of the founding fathers. Start with Thomas Jefferson, please. Tommy was a wild child, for sure!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @08:43PM (2 children)
Except if you try to do that with guns, you end up with Syria. If you do it without guns, you end up with something like Russia in 1990. Because the *ARMY* has much bigger guns than you can ever hope to have. IF the ARMY doesn't switch side away from government, you are fucked anyway. So might as well stop your uprising when you realize the ARMY doesn't want to go against the government.
The point of 2nd amendment was to thwart British invasion. Maybe you guys should realize that the British, they ain't coming!
PS. The Swiss have something similar to 2nd amendment, similar reason. Lots of people are even *expected* to have guns at home. Yet their gun control seems to prevent US style idiots.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Monday October 02 2017, @09:08PM
Machiavelli explains the use and threat of a large standing army very well..
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1232 [upenn.edu]
Admittedly, he's describing it from the perspective of holding power, but opressing people is just the flip side.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:59PM
What does that have to do with the intentions of the founding fathers? Nothing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LVDOVICVS on Monday October 02 2017, @08:45PM (9 children)
It really doesn't matter what the "founding fathers" intentions or desires were. They're dead and it's not their Constitution any more. It's ours.
I believe we've proven yet again that there's no need for people to own these kinds of weapons. I want it changed. If enough other people also want it changed, then the systems designed by the aforementioned fathers of founding are already in place to make this change happen.
Additionally, if you think the weapons you can buy offer a serious challenge to Abrams tanks, Warthogs, and drones with Hellfire missiles, you're delusional.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 02 2017, @08:54PM
The people at Tiananmen Square didn't even have a peashooter rifle - but they made a difference, did they not?
It's funny that so many of us who are familiar with the military and it's weapons are willing to stand up and be counted - but people like you think we are delusional. Often times, all that is required is a warm body. Sometimes, that body must demonstrate his willingness to kill or be killed. And sometimes, bodies actually fall. But, one thing is certain - if you're not willing to make a stand, the opposition wins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @09:23PM (4 children)
I think you might want to have a look back at the 1960s and this place called Vietnam. Technical superiority doesn't go very far when you're fighting guerrilla warfare and all someone has to do to go from a guerrilla to an upstanding citizen is drop their rifle and step around a corner.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday October 03 2017, @01:25AM (3 children)
That advantage is fading away. Surveillance, CCTV, Face recognition, Gait Recognition, IMSI tracking, RFID in everything, the list goes on of the ways they are trying to eliminate anonymity. Drop your rifle and step around the corner just means that now you have no rifle. They still know who you are.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:19AM
Based upon the reaction to and the continuing saga of Ed Snowden, and not even touching on the gaping holes in your assertions (IMSI and RFID OHNOEZ!) you appear to be vastly overestimating the capabilities of US government agents.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday October 03 2017, @05:34PM (1 child)
So we're starting from a hypothetical world which has armed revolutionaries openly carrying and firing rifles through the city streets...yet you expect the government will still be able to maintain a vast surveillance network? Those CCTV cameras and any other tracking nodes would get knocked out pretty damn quick...
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday October 04 2017, @01:48AM
No, that was in response to TMB saying you could drop your rifle and disappear. I think the surveillance state is almost here but society is still a long way from supporting armed revolution.
I don't think you will be able to get from there to armed revolutionaries openly carrying and firing rifles without some sort of apocalypse.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:34PM (2 children)
You can try, but you'll have to get past the huge barrier in your way as explained in the majority opinion of 2008's Heller vs DC case, in which the USSC explicitly acknowledged that some rights do not come from government, and that such rights exist regardless of government. One such right was the one involved before the USSC, of whether or not a gun ban in the capital of the USA was legal. It wasn't.
(Score: 2) by LVDOVICVS on Tuesday October 03 2017, @02:08AM (1 child)
From my very quick reading of the case you site the outcome is based on the existence of the Second amendment. So it would appear that if the Second amendment were to be nullified by another amendment, the right to bear arms could be ended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:22AM
You may want to go a little slower next time.
Repealing the Second Amendment would do exactly NOTHING to revoke the right of individual humans to keep and carry all manner of weaponry.