This is true, but one should remember that both decisions were 5-4 and that the Court is merely our greatest legal authority in the technical rather than moral sense, with the potential for both error and reversal. This should be reassuring if you are a gun control advocate, but slightly worrying if you are a gun rights advocate. It implies that the Court is perhaps as little as one appointment away from a new legal status quo.
So what's you're point? That because it was only recently declared, it's invalid? Would you apply the same logic to any other law?
I edited my original post, because to understand my argument, you end up going down a rabbit hole of what the Constitution actually is, and get into heavy political/legal theory about federalism which is highly relevant, but exceedingly boring and beyond my desire to go into at this time.
Yes, I agree with that, and I think there are several other reasons the second amendment is important. I was merely pointing out that a lot of the people put the cart before the horse in regards to constitutional amendments, like the Constitution and the amendments are the end-all be-all source from where human rights come from.
So, on the topic of the 2nd amendment, I have a question. The 2nd amendment is... Section 8 of the constitution says... I mean it almost looks like the 2nd amendment could have been written to enforce tyranny, not to fight back from it.
You have to understand, in America after the Revolution, and before the Constitution, there were the Articles of Confederation. Basically, it made a loosely aligned overarching government to deal with foreign policy, trade, etc. But it was a very weak (intentionally so) governing body of the states. In fact, it was so weak, there were two major rebellions, most notably Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts. Under the Articles, Massachusetts could ask for help in putting down the rebellion, but no states were required to provide any help. The Rebellion went on for two years. This was one of the main reasons the Founding Fathers met in order to reform the Articles - which ended up leading to the Constitution. So more to your point, the Founding Fathers did not want another Rebellion like Shay's, and hence, you have Section 8. The Second Amendment was there because there was no standing army. Hence, if Congress needed an army, they called ordinary citizens. Which is generally who fought the Revolution in the first place. My only point here is that having a standing army was not really contemplated by the Constitution and leads to some legal difficulties.
I would like to add that also when the Constitution was written, the limitations prescribed by the Bill of Rights only applied to the Federal Government, not individual state governments. It wasn't until the Fourteenth Amendment that the Bill of Rights was also binding to the states. So technically when the Constitution was originally written, if individual states wanted to pass laws prohibiting private ownership of firearms (or any other law that conflicts with the Bill of Rights), it was within their rights to do so.
Just something for discussion... <a class="postlink" href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... fact-check</a> Some good things in there, and a few ridiculous things as well.
It says something about the power of the NRA and gun owners in this country when they are able to pressure one of the most liberal presidents in the history of modern politics to release a picture of him firing a rifle.
Give the site create for citing some actual studies and linking to them. I think it is interesting to point out, maybe telling in many different regards, that the oft quoted 40% of guns are bought without background check (ie private sales) statistic. Is from a telephone survey done in 1994.
My favorite part about links like that isn't really introducing them into reasonable conversations, as much of this one has been. My favorite part is sending those kinds of links to frothing idiots and/or bringing them up in the "hurrr, MOAR GUNS" discussions and watching their heads spin off into orbit, since it refutes most of the common ten-second-soundbite talking points with actual statistics. Interesting point about the background check statistic, I hadn't gotten through all of the sources yet (just enough to make sure the article wasn't completely full of shit). I suppose the difficulty with tracking/updating that kind of statistic is that phone surveys are no longer useful, so how do you have a nationally representative survey now?
I think this whole gun control debate is just a distraction to keep us from being focused on the shitty economy.
The link you provided doesn't really address many points that most rational people have, it targets fringe elements of the gun community who live in denial who use arguments that have unfortunately been blown up by the media. Most of the points are basically saying more people with access to more guns mean more people are going to be killed with guns. Consider me shocked, next thing you'll be telling me that areas that are closer to large bodies of water have more drownings than land-locked areas too. Myth #4: That is impossible to quantify. Plenty of shooters have been stopped by being confronted by someone else who is armed before the situation got out of hand, we don't really know how bad some of these could have been. Problem is all mass shootings take place in "gun-free zones" where almost all of the time law-abiding citizens aren't taking their guns, Myth #8: No one actually fucking believes that video games cause people to be violent, not even the NRA, they're just trying to divert attention away from guns and it worked because fuck tards are too dumb to see what's happening and the media will run a story on anything and call it news. Myth #10: Uhh, this person's own fact check kind of supports the "myth" that they are trying to "fact check", we need to do a better job of enforcing the laws we have because all he does is point out that they aren't being enforced. Also, there were a few points in this person's argument where the guy threw out statistics and studies that were unrelated to the point he was trying to make.
Good grief: http://news.yahoo.com/official-semi-automatic-used-kill-ex-navy-seal-201818801.html You hear that gun-nuts? Semi-auto pistols are The Devil. Clearly, they need to be outlawed for everyone's protection. Seriously, who needs more than a single-action for legitimate use anyway?
Have you heard of double-action? THEY HAVE TWO TIMES THE AMOUNT OF ACTION THAN SINGLE ACTION, CLEAR THESE DANGEROUS WEAPONS FROM OUR STREETS. I hate it when news articles put the type of gun in the header. Like knowing that it was a dangerous semi-automatic gun is so pertinent, not like semi-automatic guns are anything new or that much more dangerous than their counterparts.
That article was especially stupid. It was about nothing other than the fact that the weapon was a semi-auto pistol - which in my conservative estimate consist of probably 99% of all pistols in common use. It's like saying, "car that killed pedestrian had four wheels."
The all caps part could be an argument straight out of Always Sunny, bravo sir. From what I've read it sounds like this particular crime could've been carried out with a muzzle loader.
I was gonna say "or a knife", but then I remembered we're talking about an ex-SEAL who's killed more people than the Cholera and whose enemies nicknamed him "The Devil", so, probably not. Guess it's true that God made men but Samuel Colt made them equal. Speaking of DA/SA/muzzle-loaders, I find it ironic that in the UK, I'm prohibited from owning 99% of small-arms, but I'm perfectly, legally entitled to buy one of these: But hey, 6 .44 slugs are totally not gonna murder anyone, right? And it's not like you could convert that to fire cartridges in about 10 seconds by buying a replacement hammer, loading gate and cylinder over the internet. Or pack 3 of them à la Josey Wales if you fancy going on a spree. Sure, having a muzzle-loading revolver is going to decrease your efficacy somewhat, but in a country where 90% of police go unarmed, you could wreak a serious amount of havoc. It's the lack of coherence that pisses me off.