^^ it's a perversion of the original intent, but it's not what the courts have subsequently ruled... absent a new ruling, it's what we have to accept.

12/17/2015 12:32:28 PM

what is a perversion of the intent of the second amendment?

12/17/2015 3:51:59 PM

uh oh JCE2011....cars don't kill more people than guns anymore

what's the new talking point?

12/21/2015 8:51:54 AM

I'm impressed you tried to initiate a political discussion without a baseless accusation of racism. You are making progress!

However you did reference a straw man argument as I have never made that claim. Hang in there, you will get the hang of it.

12/21/2015 10:29:40 AM

12/21/2015 10:35:00 AM

lol

12/21/2015 10:37:17 AM

^^^^ if you include suicides! then yes. Random acts are still nowhere close....

12/21/2015 6:38:04 PM

Quote :

"cars don't kill more people than guns anymore"

The resulting narratives have been awful.

"We regulated autos and auto deaths dropped. Therefore gun regulation should work too!

12/21/2015 6:55:09 PM

^ that's not a narrative, that's a fact. We know banning guns would significantly reduce deaths from crimes, especially in the long run but this is incompatible with our ideals and constitution. We know we need some regulation because we've been regulating guns forever. The question is what regulations make sense technologically, and for society and politically.

Obama pretty much can't succeed in any gun control legislation because the NRA has convinced people he wants to steal their guns. But the next president will most likely pass universal background checks and something that "stops terrorist from buying guns".

It's reasonable to speculate Background checks and waiting periods have a chance at reducing gun deaths.

12/21/2015 10:13:53 PM

^ we actually don't know that. But you can believe what you would like.

Let's regulate cars like guns: felons are not allowed to posses a vehicle. No gas tanks larger than 10 gallons.

12/22/2015 6:04:23 AM

also no drivers license required, no training required, no insurance required, no registration, illegal for the government to study if its dangerous, doctors can't ask if you drive, etc...

[Edited on December 22, 2015 at 8:39 AM. Reason : .]

12/22/2015 8:38:42 AM

Quote :

"if you include suicides! then yes. Random acts are still nowhere close...."

ah good, you got the Wayne LaPierre email, too?

If we exclude suicides, then we should also exclude all single car accidents that result in death. We should also remove all instances of multi car accidents where the driver died as a result of the crash. Heck, we should also remove any instances of someone dying and then causing an accident (heart attack at the wheel, anyone?).

But let's go further. How about we we eliminate any accidents with deaths that were caused by a failure of equipment and not driver error? So if a truck blows a wheel and swerves in to oncoming traffic, that's not really an auto accident death. After all, cars don't kill people, people kill people.

How else can we manipulate the data?

12/22/2015 9:24:54 AM

^^^
What don't we know?

--------

Virginia ending concealed carry reciprocity with some other states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-attorney-general-mark-herring-delivers-blow-to-gun-rights-advocates/2015/12/21/d72ce3d0-a821-11e5-9b92-dea7cd4b1a4d_story.html?tid=sm_tw

12/22/2015 10:55:57 AM

Quote :

"The move also means Virginians with a history of stalking, drug dealing or inpatient mental-health treatment cannot obtain a permit in a state with comparatively lax laws and carry a handgun legally at home."

I'm sure all the drug dealers are really disappointed.

12/22/2015 11:11:39 AM

^ it doesn't really make sense from a wholistic point of view to treat the symptoms (gun violence) rather than the disease (poverty and gang culture) but in the absence of political will to fight poverty and solve gang violence, you're going to see politicians go after low hanging fruit of attacking symptoms.

If the NRA really wants to stop the "gun grabbers" they'd use their political clout to go after these root causes, but as shills for gun manufacturers, they would prefer to keep people in fear and buying up weapons.

12/22/2015 12:21:57 PM

I've got a solution to automobile deaths... make everywhere that isn't the road a "Car free zone" that way when people are crashing, instead of flipping off the highway into a tree to die, they will see the "car free zone" sticker on the tree, and know not to crash into it.

If we could just add some common sense car-legislation, we could stop the epidemic of car deaths.

Did you know there are large assault cars, called trucks, that weigh several tons more and can kill tons of people? Why can't we just pass common sense car laws that prohibit people from driving these?

[Edited on December 22, 2015 at 1:18 PM. Reason : .]

12/22/2015 1:15:28 PM

There are ~212 million licensed drivers in the US
Drivers drive an average of 16,550 miles each year
Assuming a 60mph average rate of travel (it's Christmas, I'm generous) that would be....
58,476,666,667 man hours of driving each year.

~1/3rd of the US owns guns, ~106.3M people
Those 106.3M people would each have to be using a gun for 550 hours a year to have gun usage at the same rate of car usage.
That's 34.4 days of 16 hours either hunting or at a target range. For each of the 106.3M people who own guns.

Even if we control for police and military, and say they all spend 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year using their guns, that number only gets reduced to 31.8 days per year.

But we can go further. Let's assume every cop and military person uses their gun round the clock for every waking hour (8 hours of sleep a night). That could shave off 12.4 billion man hours.

That drops the need from the general population down to 27 days per year.

So all we need is every gun owner in the US to be either hunting or shooting at targets continuously for 27 straight days to equal the car usage in the US.

Seems legit to compare the two.

[Edited on December 22, 2015 at 2:04 PM. Reason : .]

12/22/2015 1:58:15 PM

Quote :

"If we exclude suicides, then we should also exclude all single car accidents that result in death. We should also remove all instances of multi car accidents where the driver died as a result of the crash. Heck, we should also remove any instances of someone dying and then causing an accident (heart attack at the wheel, anyone?)."

That's silly. All of these things are examples of unintentional deaths. They're in no way analogous to suicide by gun. Suicide by car is analogous to suicide by gun.

12/22/2015 5:29:14 PM

Quote :

"read his post as the 2nd amendment protects guns for self defense. my response was that interpretation is a perversion of the intent of the amendment to protect guns for regulated militias. apologies"

No, you should apologize for your inability to read and understand simple English. The militia clause, while it gives some background for the reason for the amendment, is in no way binding on the rest of the statement. The 2nd Amendment could just as well say "Because the moon is made of cheese, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and it would have the same effect. The key, imperative statement, is "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There are zero qualifiers on the purpose for which the people are bearing arms placed on the prohibition against infringement. A look at how the 2nd Amendment was understood around the time of the Civil War, as freed slaves were having their weapons confiscated by white mobs, clearly shows this meaning to be what was understood and accepted. Usage of arms in a militia has never been, and should never be, a requirement for 2nd Amendment protection, as such a requirement is simply nowhere to be found in the 2nd Amendment.

Now, had it been rephrased as "The right of the People to keep and bear arms for use in a militia shall not be infringed," then you would have a point. However, it does not say that. It says "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It's a shame that English reading and comprehension is so low at this point that people cannot see the simple, self-evident truth in the structure of a sentence which is less than 30 words in length.

^^ You're actually making a perfect argument for why it makes sense to regulate cars far more than we regulate guns. Even then, for the most part, we don't really regulate cars; instead, we regulated their usage. This might seem like a trifling distinction, but it's not. You can have a car sitting in your driveway all you want, and assuming the vehicle itself isn't a hazard in its own right, nobody is going to bother you. You can have a car that doesn't meet inspection or emissions requirements, park that bitch in your driveway, or maybe even drive it on private property, and you are fine. But take that car onto a public road, use it, and it's a different story. I'm all for regulating the usage of a multi-ton piece of metal, flying down the road at 60 miles an hour, especially when done on publicly-funded roads. Compare this, though, to those who want to ban the mere existence of various guns, and you see the difference. We already regulate the usage of guns pretty heavily, and I think that's reasonable (you can't murder someone with it, you can't fire it randomly into the air, you can't even generally point it at someone). And absent an explicit Constitutional prohibition against infringing upon gun ownership rights, I could see merit in regulating even the existence of some weapons. But, that prohibition actually exists, it's explicit, and it's clear. Likewise, no such prohibition exists for vehicles. If you don't like it, amend the Constitution to remove that prohibition. Don't sidestep it and ignore it. Amend it.

12/22/2015 11:22:49 PM

Yeah, but amending the constitution is hard. It's much easier to just put SC justices on the bench who will interpret it out of existence or take all the teeth out of it like they've done with the 4th, 5th, 9th, and 10th amendments.

12/22/2015 11:30:22 PM

Yup, and it's that view, unfortunately held by far too many people these days, of all political persuasions, which will destroy the nation.

12/22/2015 11:36:36 PM

Quote :

"No, you should apologize for your inability to read and understand simple English. The militia clause, while it gives some background for the reason for the amendment, is in no way binding on the rest of the statement. The 2nd Amendment could just as well say "Because the moon is made of cheese, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and it would have the same effect. The key, imperative statement, is "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." There are zero qualifiers on the purpose for which the people are bearing arms placed on the prohibition against infringement. A look at how the 2nd Amendment was understood around the time of the Civil War, as freed slaves were having their weapons confiscated by white mobs, clearly shows this meaning to be what was understood and accepted. Usage of arms in a militia has never been, and should never be, a requirement for 2nd Amendment protection, as such a requirement is simply nowhere to be found in the 2nd Amendment. Now, had it been rephrased as "The right of the People to keep and bear arms for use in a militia shall not be infringed," then you would have a point. However, it does not say that. It says "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It's a shame that English reading and comprehension is so low at this point that people cannot see the simple, self-evident truth in the structure of a sentence which is less than 30 words in length. "

This is bullshit.

The statement was put there for a reason, it wasn't put their for giggles. It is absolutely not the same as saying "if the moon was made of cheese." It was meant to be non-binding, as you suggest, but it wasn't meant to be meaningless, as you are suggesting.

It's not entirely relevant anymore because the supreme court has set the precedent here, but it wouldn't be outlandish for a new precedent to be set, given the realities of our present day situation, where slaves aren't having their guns removed, for the militia clause to be reinterpreted.

12/22/2015 11:45:19 PM

^^The term is learned helplessness.

[Edited on December 22, 2015 at 11:47 PM. Reason : Dh]

12/22/2015 11:46:21 PM

Quote :

"The statement was put there for a reason, it wasn't put their for giggles."

Totally-- it was put there to guarantee an individual right to fighting weapons. Without the justification clause one might think we have a right to bear arms for hunting only. This is the core of Miller v. US.

To interpret the clause to mean that the following clause actually means the opposite of what it states is crap.

Quote :

"it wouldn't be outlandish for a new precedent to be set, given the realities of our present day situation, where slaves aren't having their guns removed, for the militia clause to be reinterpreted."

What would that new interpretation be?


[Edited on December 23, 2015 at 1:08 PM. Reason : ]

12/23/2015 1:00:18 PM

a new court could interpret that it's not an individual right

12/23/2015 1:09:49 PM

I can see it now:

"What the drafters really meant to say was 'the right of the militia to bears arms...' but they were trying to save ink!"

"Look-- there's 'people' and then there's 'people'.

"Yes, we should interpret the 2nd Amendment in such a way as to limit rights. No, I've never read the 9th Amendment-- why do you ask?"



[Edited on December 23, 2015 at 2:01 PM. Reason : ]

12/23/2015 2:01:18 PM

[Edited on December 23, 2015 at 2:37 PM. Reason : dbl]

12/23/2015 2:36:38 PM

According to the majority opinion in Heller, "militia" and "people" were pretty much the same thing to the folks who wrote 2A.

Quote :

"The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved."

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-290.pdf

12/23/2015 2:37:35 PM

I find it ironic that the people who argue for gun restrictions are the same people who argue that voter ID laws are unconstitutional and felons should be able to vote again after repaying their debt to society. They may as well wish to decide for everyone which right is more important than the other.

It goes the other way as well since conservatives want to preserve the second amendment yet see no infringement upon the right to vote with voter ID laws

12/23/2015 6:06:02 PM

Yes, Republicans and Democrats are two turds in the same pile of shit.

12/23/2015 6:46:49 PM

Quote :

"Yes, Republicans and Democrats are two turds in the same pile of shit."

12/24/2015 12:57:00 AM

On top of that, republicans are quick to save a baby from abortion but also quick to save capital punishment while democrats are content with the right to choose abortion but generally oppose the death penalty. Normally people would be banding together depending on the size of their wallet but find themselves morally attached to one party or the other that has us perfectly divided with these odd pairs of values and beliefs.

12/24/2015 12:58:54 AM

yes, we could go on forever about the incongruities in the platforms of both the Democrats and Republicans

12/24/2015 1:54:04 AM

This just in, politicians are shitheads

12/24/2015 8:53:01 AM

^^^^^^
I'm not sure what gun restrictions and voter ID laws have in common.

One difference is that gun restrictions are an attempt to to solve an existent problem, whereas voter ID laws are an attempt to solve a nonexistent problem.


^^^
There's an authoritarian/anti-authoritarian variant to an individual's political perspective in addition to the left/right variant.

From an anti-authoritarian perspective, there's nothing incongruous with supporting a women's right to choose and opposing capital punishment.

12/24/2015 11:20:15 AM

Good guys with cars. Post them here:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/driving-shouting-allahu-akbar-runs-down-11-french-pedestrians-n272866

12/24/2015 1:13:02 PM

Quote :

"On top of that, republicans are quick to save a baby from abortion but also quick to save capital punishment while democrats are content with the right to choose abortion but generally oppose the death penalty. Normally people would be banding together depending on the size of their wallet but find themselves morally attached to one party or the other that has us perfectly divided with these odd pairs of values and beliefs."

One party protecting the rights of the innocent while advocating for the punishment of the guilty, and the other protecting the rights of the guilty while advocating for the punishment of the innocent.

12/24/2015 2:24:18 PM

Quote :

"I'm not sure what gun restrictions and voter ID laws have in common."

Both are protected rights. If you look at the arguments the left makes against voter ID laws, they will look pretty similar to the arguments made to protect the 2nd amendment. Voter ID laws forces people to take time and money to go through the system in order to make sure people who shouldn't vote aren't voting. A vote in the wrong hands is not dangerous like a gun in the wrong hands but infringement is infringement and I wouldn't want anyone telling me one right is ok while the other isn't.


The difference between the two for me is a permit to purchase a gun or concealed permit cost a lot more money and takes a much longer time than getting an ID which also happens to be required for the 2nd amendment.

12/25/2015 12:38:47 AM

the hell?

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local/georgia-clears-way-for-mentally-ill-to-buy-guns/nppWY

12/28/2015 5:18:28 PM

that makes no sense to me

12/28/2015 9:59:45 PM

Should be widened to 10 years, if they had no incidents.

12/29/2015 1:59:06 AM

I'm all for reinstating rights when conditions permit, but just to remove records based on time only? Nah.

[Edited on December 29, 2015 at 10:26 AM. Reason : .]

12/29/2015 10:26:16 AM

Quote :

"Should be widened to 10 years, if they had no incidents."

you're a medical professional?

12/29/2015 10:46:02 AM

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/31/461615381/president-obama-preparing-to-take-executive-action-on-guns?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2058

1/3/2016 1:11:31 AM

I'd probably do the same thing as Obama if I had the power and was fed up with not getting what I wanted. Because who knows better than yourself? Though I do not believe in restricting any of our rights, I would be ok with some common sense regulation that does not cost me more money to exercise my right.

And this will just cause more people to buy more guns.

1/3/2016 9:32:09 PM

These executive actions aren't going to do jack, he is extremely limited in what he can do, all it will accomplish is rallying the 2A supporters and increase gun sales.

1/4/2016 8:10:58 PM

^and...?

People can buy all the guns they want as long as they don't skirt their background checks.

1/4/2016 8:35:56 PM

And this isn't changing jack shit. You can still bypass a background check as long as you don't sell enough guns to be considered a dealer. Even with his executive actions passing I could go sell a gun to joe blow down the street without doing anything differently. No one actually reads what it is he can pass and just reads the headlines and assumes.

1/4/2016 9:39:57 PM

The most useful part of this executive action is to add more ATF agents to conduct background checks 24/7 to keep up with all the extra gun sales the executive actions are creating in the first place

1/4/2016 10:08:45 PM

^^ so you're mad this doesn't go far enough?

Seems like the rules are meant to target sales at gun shows that skirt the bg checks, which I recall that the community college shooter for his gun through, and possibly others. We have studies that demonstrate already that a large number of gun sales that end up in gang member hands originate from the private sales loophole.

If you're suggesting all private sales should be screened too, which doesn't seem unreasonable if you're selling on Craigslist, then ask congress to assist. That seems outside the purview of the executive branch.

[Edited on January 4, 2016 at 11:05 PM. Reason : ]

1/4/2016 11:04:49 PM