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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: 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?