How are gun rights advocates going to be able to debate their way out of gun confiscation now?

A couple of the cities Paddock had visited (or, checked out), had hotel reservations in have "Assault Weapon" specific laws (restrictions placed on semi-automatics based on features & appearances).

Forget about the guns, in NYC just one of those rifle magazines, found in his possession, would have led to him being cuffed & stuffed.
My point still remains he didn't break the law (afaik) until he actually carried out his attack.
 
Sorry, I'll try and be less vague. I meant that in my opinion, the system that the Founding Fathers intended to create is the system we have today. That citizens are able to freely own as many firearms as they see fit, and the government has the power to make and change the laws regarding firearms as they see fit, but do not, and will not ever have the right or authority to attempt to remove people's rights or access to firearms altogether.

I don't know how you can read the 2nd Amendment and decide that it meant the federal government could keep people from owning the same weapons as military and law enforcement. By your thinking, the feds could also tell state governments what weapons they could arm people with.

The "well regulated" part of the Amendment indicates people should be properly equipped. That would mean not being outgunned, which is what you're proposing the Amendment doesn't protect the people against.

What part of the Constitution grants the feds the authority to prohibit firearms at their discretion?
 
I don't know how you can read the 2nd Amendment and decide that it meant the federal government could keep people from owning the same weapons as military and law enforcement. By your thinking, the feds could also tell state governments what weapons they could arm people with.

The "well regulated" part of the Amendment indicates people should be properly equipped. That would mean not being outgunned, which is what you're proposing the Amendment doesn't protect the people against.

What part of the Constitution grants the feds the authority to prohibit firearms at their discretion?

Again the Supreme Court has weighed in on this. The right to bare arms is not tied to military or militia readiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

"The core holding in D.C. v. Heller is that the Second Amendment is an individual right intimately tied to the natural right of self-defense."

"The Court also added dicta regarding the private ownership of machine guns. In doing so, it suggested the elevation of the "in common use at the time" prong of the Miller decision, which by itself protects handguns, over the first prong (protecting arms that "have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia"), which may not by itself protect machine guns: "It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service – M16 rifles and the like – may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home."

So the idea that a militia needs to be adequately equipped with military grade weapons is not part of the second amendment.

....of course you stated you read the decisions, but somehow missed this?
 
That article is what I hate about the far Right. It just quotes random things out of context and doesn't ever know or understand the full context of what it's quoting. Actually read the Posse Comitatus act of 1878. It has to do specifically with the standing Army. It has nothing to do with National Guard Troops. Secondly, the changes he's referring to were entirely repealed and the original language of the act restored in 2008 under that lurking Communist Criminal who is clearly out to get us all, Barack Obama. This is yet another thing I hate. Constantly want to site the Constitution and claim we should adhere to it, gets mad when we do just that and change things according to the rules laid out in the Constitution.

Secondly, the National Guard has been more under Federal Authority, By law mind you, since 1903. The Federal Government is responsible for providing money and equipment for more standardized training and readiness capabilities for the State Militias.

The feds help the national guard (national by the way) not the state defence force or the unorganized militia. The states should have a stronger defence force, more funding and training and training for the unorganized militia. The local community should have much more support for the unorganized militia. Much like volunteer fire departments.
 
Again the Supreme Court has weighed in on this. The right to bare arms is not tied to military or militia readiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

"The core holding in D.C. v. Heller is that the Second Amendment is an individual right intimately tied to the natural right of self-defense."

"The Court also added dicta regarding the private ownership of machine guns. In doing so, it suggested the elevation of the "in common use at the time" prong of the Miller decision, which by itself protects handguns, over the first prong (protecting arms that "have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia"), which may not by itself protect machine guns: "It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service – M16 rifles and the like – may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home."

So the idea that a militia needs to be adequately equipped with military grade weapons is not part of the second amendment.

....of course you stated you read the decisions, but somehow missed this?


Yes, in the Heller decision they reaffirmed the claim that the government can restrict ownership of machine guns. Oddly using the argument they aren't commonly held and in use for lawful purposes while ignoring that that's only remotely true due to federal restrictions. For some reason they also ignore that they are commonly held by law enforcement (which is basically an organized militia made up of citizens).

I always read that part as more a preservation of the status quo than a final decision on the matter since a case for full-auto's has never been presented to the Supreme Court. The arguments are different than in Heller and only the federal government got to present their side in Miller. But hey, I'll concede that at this moment SCOTUS believes the people do not in fact have a right to get together to form a well-regulated militia.

But on the good news front, scary-looking semi-auto rifles aren't going anywhere. AR15's are most certainly commonly held for lawful purposes.
 
They don't need to. If Sandy Hook wasn't enough then this surely won't be. The NRA can easily crush any attempts at gun control, even extremely modest proposals that have popular support.

America has had the conversation and decided, for better or worse, that guns are really awesome and mass shootings are a small price to pay to have shiny toys.

If I'm a liberal politician right now I wouldn't waste a single second of my time on gun control. That ship has sailed.

Agreed.

There is a popular saying that freedom isn't free. Many people use it in reverence of the soldiers that have died for the country over the centuries.

But soldiers are not the only people that die for the countries right to bear arms. Bewteen 10K-15K people are murdered in the US by firearms every year. More than 2/3 of all murders in the US involve a gun. And that does not include suicide by firearms, which is almost twice as much as the homicides.

I am not passing judgement on it one way or the other. I am simply stating the admission price. That is our cost of doing business.

Generally the country is happy to pay that bill. Because the vast majority of the people murdering and getting murdered with guns are criminals.

When law abiding citizens start getting waxed in similar numbers, I suspect attitudes will change.
 
The feds help the national guard (national by the way) not the state defence force or the unorganized militia. The states should have a stronger defence force, more funding and training and training for the unorganized militia. The local community should have much more support for the unorganized militia. Much like volunteer fire departments.

There are 50 seperate National Guards. One for each State. They're the State's militas.
 
I don't know how you can read the 2nd Amendment and decide that it meant the federal government could keep people from owning the same weapons as military and law enforcement. By your thinking, the feds could also tell state governments what weapons they could arm people with.

I said it gives the Government the ability to regulate laws. The Constitution is an agreement. It isn't the people dictating to the Government what will happen and telling it it has no power. If it where, there would be no need for a constitution or a Federal Government to begin with.

The "well regulated" part of the Amendment indicates people should be properly equipped. That would mean not being outgunned, which is what you're proposing the Amendment doesn't protect the people against.

It also gives the government the ability to oversee that. That is literally what "regulate" means.

What part of the Constitution grants the feds the authority to prohibit firearms at their discretion?

No part of it. I just said that. The cannot take away firearms. They can make laws regarding what types of firearms you can and cannot have. That's again what "regulate" means. To control and supervise the types of firearms people can have. Since it's your own position that everyone is part of the militia, either organized or unorganized, the very first part of the 2nd Amendment says that the Governent has the right to regulate, in a pretty vigorous manner, actually, the types of firearms that the milita can and cannot have. "A well regulate militia being essential to the security of a free state".
 
There are 50 seperate National Guards. One for each State. They're the State's militas.

They are shared with the fed and the feds have the final control of them. Not what the founding fathers had in mind when the wrote the second. What they wanted was very local in control.
 
It also gives the government the ability to oversee that. That is literally what "regulate" means.



No part of it. I just said that. The cannot take away firearms. They can make laws regarding what types of firearms you can and cannot have. That's again what "regulate" means. To control and supervise the types of firearms people can have. Since it's your own position that everyone is part of the militia, either organized or unorganized, the very first part of the 2nd Amendment says that the Governent has the right to regulate, in a pretty vigorous manner, actually, the types of firearms that the milita can and cannot have. "A well regulate militia being essential to the security of a free state".


Not sure how you can believe the 2nd gives the feds control over people's arms. The rest of the Bill of Rights are prohibitions on federal power, but not the 2nd? It really makes sense to you that people wouldn't ratify the Constitution unless it was spelled out how the federal level of government dictated the terms of personal and common defense?

In Heller it seems clear that regulate does not mean what you think it does and that the militias were independent of the federal government, except when called into service.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the militia, stating that “[m]ilitias are the state- and congressionally-regulated military forces described in the Militia Clauses (art. I, §8, cls. 15–16).” Brief for Petitioners 12. Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assumption that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and the Second Amendment , we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia. Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise … Armies”; “to provide … a Navy,” Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” §8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence, ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force. That is what Congress did in the first militia Act, which specified that “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia.” Act of May 8, 1792, 271. To be sure, Congress need not conscript every able-bodied man into the militia, because nothing in Article I suggests that in exercising its power to organize, discipline, and arm the militia, Congress must focus upon the entire body. Although the militia consists of all able-bodied men, the federally organized militia may consist of a subset of them.

Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. See Johnson 1619 (“Regulate”: “To adjust by rule or method”); Rawle 121–122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights §13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms”).
 
Not sure how you can believe the 2nd gives the feds control over people's arms. The rest of the Bill of Rights are prohibitions on federal power, but not the 2nd? It really makes sense to you that people wouldn't ratify the Constitution unless it was spelled out how the federal level of government dictated the terms of personal and common defense?

In Heller it seems clear that regulate does not mean what you think it does and that the militias were independent of the federal government, except when called into service.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

Some of them are. The Constitution, as I've said over and over, is a contract. You're again ignoring the historical context under which this document was drawn. More than a few founding fathers were totally against any form of central government, and were against the Constitution in any way. The Constitution is written to appease both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.
 
More than a few founding fathers were totally against any form of central government, and were against the Constitution in any way. The Constitution is written to appease both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.

For sure.
 
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