Sutherland Springs, TX church shooting

I'll put you in the nukes are ok column. (So long as they're portable)

@steve2^4 the answer from the gunnists is obvious: "BECAUSE WE WANNA!!!! And anyone who disagrees is a stupid cunt." /thread

Ever notice how many gunlubbers have anger management issues (the term "hair-trigger temper" comes to mind)?

At what point does the lethality of a gun exclude ownership of it from 2nd Amendment protections? Do guns have a plateau of lethality? Does lethality even enter into the picture?

Oh shut up you old stupid bitch.

No one here wants to own a nuclear weapon and no here except fucking cunts like steve2^4 is arguing that owning such a device is in anyway part of the 2nd Amendment.

People's Exhibit A.

Actually, Forbin deserves a better answer, because he's Forbin.

I find Paladin's definition to be circular. He's using the state of weapons ownership to define what should be allowed. "Weapons that individuals commonly own and carry." It sounds more like fashion law than gun law.

"Use for their own defense, and which are suitable for militia purposes," is pretty open ended, and while nukes aren't necessarily viable for self defence, fully automatic weapons are. Are Paladin and Forbin for automatics for all?

Tell that to someone living in Starship Troopers.

One yob here used to argue for mandatory arms training - and carrying - in preschool.

Something to be said for full-citizenship predicated on military service and training. This could also be requisite for gun ownership. I don't agree with either, but it's as much in keeping with the 2nd and the times it was written as anything.

Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.

Actually, if you go by the strict reading that the amendment suggests personal small arms of the common contemporary soldier suitable for militia use (I think Madison says something like that in the Federalist Papers, but damned if I can find it), then, yes, a fully select-fire M-16 should be covered! But most of us are happy with mere semi-autos.

In the logical place. If the government cannot prohibit people from keeping and bearing arms because the people might need to form a militia, it is logically inescapable that arms that are suitable for militia purposes (at a minimum) are the ones that are protected. See U.S. v Miller (1939).

(1) The militia is formed when there's a need. It's not a regular thing.
(2) Participation in a militia is not a requirement to exercise the right. The right exists even if one never--by choice or circumstance--participates in a militia.
(3) Were there a set of requirements, they would be: weapons suitable for militia use. Military rifles, shotguns, handguns.

So automatics are ok. And when the bugs hit us, small nukes.

Under what circumstances in 2017 can you imagine the people needing to form a militia, without any formal training?

“Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it.”

Because you make a fallacious assumption: that armed citizens are going to fight the U.S. military in a set-piece battle. They wouldn't. They would use insurgent tactics.

If you're going to argue that the 2nd should protect anti-aircraft missiles because the U.S. military has Apache helicopters, I'll say the militia isn't going to engage the Apache helicopters. The militia is going after softer targets.

When you're no longer talking about small arms. When you get into explosives, or WMDs, or missiles, you've left the realm of arms that an individual can keep and bear.

No, because which weapons are protected depends on context. A weapon that was perfectly adequate for a militiaman in 1793 is all but useless now.

Yes, I'd argue fully automatic small arms are protected.

Q.v. the various Bundy standoffs.

Thank you for your honesty.

As a card-carrying gun-grabber I find your arguments specious at best, laughable at worst. The concept in 2017 of private citizens forming militias against some unknown threat to the free state has applicability only to white supremacist militias and nothing more. This is no longer relevant in the modern age. Without the existence (or possibility of forming) well regulated militias, the 2nd becomes meaningless.

I advocate for private arms sales to be limited to non-automatic weapons, revolvers, single shot rifles, and hand sparklers.

Oh, I think the Founders were very fearful of the strong central government having a standing military, and that being able to resist such a thing is what the 2nd is all about. The 2nd doesn't say "to keep law and order" or "to fight crime," it says "to secure a free state." It's definitely has a political dimension.

Sort of. The Founders didn't want standing armies, and figured the militia would be suitable to handle any threat that arose. Indeed, Washington called forth the militia during the Whiskey Rebellion.

Certainly the guarantee of the right to bear arms to all was more democratic than was the case in Europe.

This is pretty clear from the Constitution. Armies were to be raised and maintained (but only for two years at a time) while the Navy was to be permanent.

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

My arguments are perfectly logical. You've offered no basis for YOUR positions. You've stated that the 2nd must have limits, and when I provide what my view of the limits are--limits which flow logically from the text of the amendment--you claim either that the limits should be stricter than the text allows or that there should be no limits at all, in a frankly silly attempt to make the amendment meaningless.

(1) People have the right to keep and bear arms. (explicit in the 2nd Amendment, settled definitively in Heller and McDonald)
(2) The government cannot take that freedom away because people may need to form militias to secure their freedom. (explicit in the 2nd Amendment)
(3) Therefore, people have the right to keep and bear arms that are suitable for militia use. (consistent with Miller)

That's my position.

Your claim that my arguments are specious doesn't hold water. You're the one trying to define arms as either nukes and nerve gas, or nothing at all.

Fine. You should have no problem getting enough popular support to repeal it.

Until then, it is the law of the land.

Fortunately, you are not the final arbiter on 2nd Amendment rights.

And that's pretty much exactly where things are right now, so there ya go. Excepting the sparklers.

There already are background checks when buying from any FFL dealer in the United States - FBI NICS. Private sales do not require a NICS check because there is no way to allow private citizens access to the NICS system for firearms transfers without giving them access to the system for any other purpose.

"Universal background checks" are therefore just another way of saying "private transactions of a certain class of property (firearms) are now prohibited for private citizens," since it would be impossible to securely allow access to a background check system for only legitimate firearms related background checks, and that violates the core tenet of private property ownership: the ability to lawfully transfer that property to another citizen without government interference.

Add to this the fact that restrictions on lawful firearms ownership have always been incremental - restricting classes of weapons, then incrementally restricting conditions under which a citizen is eligible to lawfully purchase a firearm. Gun control measures depend upon gun owners either being too foolish to understand or too weak to oppose incremental measures to restrict Constitutional liberties. Gun registries would enable the government to implement selective gun confiscation rather than wholesale confiscation, in the hopes it would deter organized resistance.

Of course there's a way to allow NICS background checks for private sales. The private seller and buyer simply go to an FFL dealer, pay them a nominal fee, and the dealer does the background check.

The verbiage is in US v Miller. It's probably not where it originated though.

Yeah I don't get it.

Have you ever bought a gun from another state?
Okay, know how ya had to go to an FFL for a Transfer?
Okay, now you do that for intra-state sales.

I don't see how that is hard to understand.