Gun Control thread (merged many)

[Ducimus]

Oh, here's a new one:

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

Oh, here's a new one:

I think that guys sarcasm might go over a few heads.Funny though if you get it.

@CaptainMattJ what is a "no go" mental disorder and what is a "go" then? What if you have depression?

[CaptainMattJ.]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

I think that guys sarcasm might go over a few heads.Funny though if you get it.

@CaptainMattJ what is a "no go" mental disorder and what is a "go" then? What if you have depression?

Well antisocial disorders shoudl be a no go (aspergers, for example), those with schizophrenia, moderate to severe autism, i am unsure about depression though. Would you prefer allowing paranoid schizophrenics to own a firearm, what about those with aspergers, such as a newtown shooter. Personally i do not think that someone in such an unstable condition should be allowed to carry, but the debate must be expanded upon further.

[Aramike]

You're Right, lets give back all the mentally unstable lunatics their right to own a firearm. I'm not saying that everyone should go to a shrink (god knows how that would turn out), i meant that the background checks for previous documented cases of mental instability should be evaluated more closely and thoroughly before giving a go-ahead for the purchase of firearms.

There's a huge problem in your logic that you're missing: the idea of banning any individual from anything due to a "disorder" is that it is highly contingent upon who is DEFINING "disorder" but what criteria.

You're right - I don't want any nutjob neighbor to own a gun anymore than the next guy. But such is the risk of a free society. Do we stop them from owning cars they could drive into a parade as well? Are strong opinions outside of the mainstream a "disorder" or simply an exercise of free speech/thought?

I don't have answers to these questions, sorry. But I can tell you this: we are well past the point of this discussion mattering all that much. We are a gun-prevailant society - the weapons are to be had should someone want them. And should someone "unstable" want them in order to commit some atrocity ... well ... there is little stopping them (even laws, which they are intending to break anyway).

So let's stop trying to enact rules for those of us who follow the rules to acede to, and accept that bad people easily find easy ways to do bad things. Furthermore, let's stop trying to find some arbitrary line for law-abiding citizens to toe even though they aren't the problem in the first place.

Any good discussion on gun control involves a simple quesition we don't ever want to address: we already have laws that control behaviors around weapons use ... if they aren't already working, why do we believe that MORE laws would make a difference?

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

Well antisocial disorders shoudl be a no go (aspergers, for example)

So if I ever became an American citizen and wanted to arm myself I couldn't? LAME.

[Spoon 11th]

Here's another humorous Piers Morgan related video.

[Ducimus]

[tater]

^^^

Yep.

At the time the 2d was written, the US government would happily (in time of war) have written a letter of marque for a privateer that was a 1st Rate line of battle ship had anyone offered up such a vessel. No one would have so much as batted an eye. That's a privately owned aircraft carrier or battleship in modern terms (or boomer, for that matter). The Founders had no sense of limitation at all to what weapons a private citizen could own (and naval artillery was far larger and more powerful than what could be drawn by horses for use vs infantry).

There is a mechanism to correct this, should anyone think that people should not be allowed to own warships, or even artillery. Amend the Constitution, because the 2d protects even that level of armament. It's not about hunting, it's the last of a series of checks and balances put forth by men who believed even having a standing army was tyranny---I can imagine it as a counter to Federalist desires for such a standing army.

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

Well antisocial disorders shoudl be a no go (aspergers, for example), those with schizophrenia, moderate to severe autism, i am unsure about depression though. Would you prefer allowing paranoid schizophrenics to own a firearm, what about those with aspergers, such as a newtown shooter. Personally i do not think that someone in such an unstable condition should be allowed to carry, but the debate must be expanded upon further.

So Jamie Hyneman the guy from Mythbusters that has clearly handled firearms many times and never shot anyone according to you cant own a firearm? Neither can Keith Olbermann or Bob Dylan or Bill Gates or Al Gore or Robin Williams.They all have Aspergers Syndrome. It is believed that Abraham Lincoln also had Aspergers so he cant own one either.

People with Aspergers have difficulty with social inaction they however are not anti social.

You seem to be thinking of a person with an Antisocial Personality Disorder this type of of person truly lacks a moral compass and would have no issue murdering someone or many people.

I agree that people with certain issues should not have access to any form of weapon just not what you suggested.But it is a touchy issue because what is or is not "dangerous" not so easy to say.And still a person must have acted in an alarming manner and have been diagnosed.People can hide how they truly feel and not get on a list for a metal illness the they commit their act and you did not know anything was very wrong until it happened.Or people close to that person never notice or don't feel that the person in question is becoming a danger.

The Sandy Hook kid something else was going on with him that did not get noticed or maybe he was just a POS. People like to say when something happens X person was "nuts" maybe just maybe that person was just a jerk at the maximum level and they knew what they where doing and knew it was wrong.

[tater]

"... shall not be infringed." (my emphasis).

Infringed is a pretty GD low bar. Not so much as a speed bump, and that applied to warships and artillery as written, when written.

[Ducimus]

(He makes a good illustration about how silly the Assault weapon criteria are, though I would maintain "Assault Rifle" is a classification as defined by the US armed forces - A selective fire rifle using an intermediate cartridge, feed from a box magazine. Of which a rifle derived from the civilian model AR-15 platform is not)

[Stealhead]

In my opinion the only "assault weapon" ever named as such is the STG.44 named the "Sturmgewehr"(Assault rifle) by Hitler (or Joseph Goebbels some say) it was given this name purely for political reasons. The weapon had another name and was changed to Sturmgewehr.


In western military vernacular you will not find any weapon being called an assault rifle you will hear the term rifle and in it description it will say
"Selective fire" if that weapon has such a feature.Selective fire means more than one mode of operation when the trigger is pressed "safe" is not a mode of operation.
I never once heard the term assault rifle used in the military I don't know anyone else that served use the term in relation any military weapon either.

Description page from the M16 manual;http://archive.org/stream/OperatorsM...e/n27/mode/2up

I would rather point out that the term is not even used by the military this better points out it origins and current use (by some).

AK47 (the evil gun) its name is Avtomat Kalashnikova Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle.

Assault Rifle (Weapon) started as a purely political term and will remain so in my eyes though interestingly enough the term was originally coined by fascists.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by tater

"... shall not be infringed." (my emphasis).

Infringed is a pretty GD low bar. Not so much as a speed bump, and that applied to warships and artillery as written, when written.

You are correct, the words "shall not be infringed" is included in the Second Amendment, when it was written. But it is also necessary to recognize that the scope of the Second Amendment (and the Bill of Rights as a whole) has changed.

When the founding dudes wrote it, the Second Amendment (actually all of the Bill of Rights) only applied to the Federal Government. The states were still sovereign and were not bound by the Bill of Rights in any way.

So a state could establish an official religion, could ban free speech and could certainly restrict weapons according to the state's constitution and the state's legislation. The federal government could not.

Even the 14th amendment (1868) still recognized that the bill of rights applied to the Federal Government only. As late as 1883 (Barron v Balitmore 32 US (7pet) 243) the SCOTUS ruled that the bill of rights only applied to the Federal Government.

Then in the 1900's things started to change. Slow at first but soon we had what is called the "Incorporation Doctrine". There were a series of court cases and appeals that slowly changed how the courts interpreted the Constitution. It was not a sudden single decision but a series of decisions over about 20 years.

What that meant is that the courts up to and including the Supreme Court, made the decision that the restrictions on the Federal Government that were in the Bill of Rights and other amendments also restrict the State Government.

That's a pretty big deal.

Whether the Incorporation doctrine is good or bad, can and is debatable, in addition to the question whether the Incorporation doctrine is even constitutional in itself is debatable. But the fact is that it is with us.

This means that it is difficult to go back to the original (federal only interpretation) constitution and make the claim "well those dudes wrote this back then and therefore it must apply to current (federal and state interpretations of the constitution) issues.

The founding dudes may have intended that all infringement of arms would fall to the state. The only thing they made clear (back then) was that the Federal Government could not infringe. Remember, they also wrote the 9th and 10th Amendment also so they recognized a difference between what the Federal government could or could not do and what State governments could and could not do. Basically, what the states could not do was left up to the state to decide through their laws and courts.

This is one of the many problems with the Incorporation Doctrine. We were just a bit over 100 years old as a country, when we started moving away from being the United States of America to become the United Federation of America.

Either being a confederation of sovereign states or a federation of incorporated states has its advantages and disadvantages. But the move from a confederation of sovereign states to a federation of incorporated states needs to be made deliberately and with the consent of the people.

I do not believe this has been done.

So we find our country somewhere between a confederation of sovereign states and a federation of incorporated states with, to quote Archie Bunker, "a little too much of both and not enough of neither".

This is a bad thing. We need to be one or the other with clear delimitation of authority.

And this makes interpreting the constitution not only necessary but also difficult.

My opinion? It is necessary to interpret the constitution as environments change (That's why the Founding Dudes made a SCOTUS)

BUT

Such interpretations need to be taken with care and with due diligence as to unintended, unexpected, undesired, consequences that may come from the interpretation in the future. I lean more to following the restrictions of the constitution, but recognize that a bunch of guys in the early 1800s can not be expected to have thought about issues in the 2000's.

Of course, if I had the answer, I sure would not be writing bombastic posts on a video game fan forum.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Then in the 1900's things started to change. Slow at first but soon we had what is called the "Incorporation Doctrine". There were a series of court cases and appeals that slowly changed how the courts interpreted the Constitution. It was not a sudden single decision but a series of decisions over about 20 years.

What that meant is that the courts up to and including the Supreme Court, made the decision that the restrictions on the Federal Government that were in the Bill of Rights and other amendments also restrict the State Government.

That's a pretty big deal.

Whether the Incorporation doctrine is good or bad, can and is debatable, in addition to the question whether the Incorporation doctrine is even constitutional in itself is debatable. But the fact is that it is with us.

This means that it is difficult to go back to the original (federal only interpretation) constitution and make the claim "well those dudes wrote this back then and therefore it must apply to current (federal and state interpretations of the constitution) issues.

The founding dudes may have intended that all infringement of arms would fall to the state. The only thing they made clear (back then) was that the Federal Government could not infringe. Remember, they also wrote the 9th and 10th Amendment also so they recognized a difference between what the Federal government could or could not do and what State governments could and could not do. Basically, what the states could not do was left up to the state to decide through their laws and courts.

This is one of the many problems with the Incorporation Doctrine. We were just a bit over 100 years old as a country, when we started moving away from being the United States of America to become the United Federation of America.

Either being a confederation of sovereign states or a federation of incorporated states has its advantages and disadvantages. But the move from a confederation of sovereign states to a federation of incorporated states needs to be made deliberately and with the consent of the people.

I do not believe this has been done.

So we find our country somewhere between a confederation of sovereign states and a federation of incorporated states with, to quote Archie Bunker, "a little too much of both and not enough of neither".

This is a bad thing. We need to be one or the other with clear delimitation of authority.

My thoguht has always been that issues like Gun control, should be left to the state, NOT the federal government. Why?

Each state is different. Has its own demographic, their own cultural values, their own prominent religious or political beleifs, it's own economy, etc etc, the list goes on.

What's good for California, is not good for Utah, and vice versa. The problem with Federal laws that are on the scope of gun control, or abortion, or whatever, is it's trying to make a square fit into a round hole.

The fact that a Senator like Fienstien (who would never have been elected to office in Utah in the first place) can instigate legislation that is counter to what the people and culture of what Utah want, is angering to say the least.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Even the 14th amendment (1868) still recognized that the bill of rights applied to the Federal Government only. As late as 1883 (Barron v Balitmore 32 US (7pet) 243) the SCOTUS ruled that the bill of rights only applied to the Federal Government.

Good post, but I would disagree slightly with this one point. Both the 13th and 15th amendments created new limitations that were specifically designed to make the States follow Federal guidelines, concerning slavery and voting rights respectively.