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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 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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(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".
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(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.
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(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.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by BasilBrush on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:12PM
The 200 year history of your constitution is pitifully short.
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 10 2015, @04:19PM
Um, i guess that is something we'll work on then?
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(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.
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(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.
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(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.
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(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!
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(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_