The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

I did the test using the name my town but it produced the UK result of 0 Gun Dealers, 0 Starbucks, whereas there is a Starbucks in town -in fact there were two for a few years but one closed to make way for a restaurant. I think there are more than 20 coffee shops in my town if one includes those inside department stores. And two closed in the last year because the market is saturated, but we have been spared any shoot-outs, although there are times when I ask for a Cappuccino and the Barista asks 'one shot or two?'. And that is before you pass the two entrepreneurs (with Lattes) debating bullet points over their Macbooks...

OK, OK - should we do fish puns now?

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Originally Posted by martin48

OK, OK - should we do fish puns now?

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If you think this is the appropriate plaice to do it, then whenever you have time to do so. And I for one will not carp at your implications or try to knock you off your perch if you take the opportunaty to do it.

The Guardian is running a sequence of five 'Long Reads' on gun control in the US. I find it a richly endowed discussion which moves beyond the knee-jerk reaction to analyse both the causes of gun crime, and the actual or potential remedies. As most Americans know the majority of gun crime is gang-related, yet it appears within this context only a relative few gang members actually do the shooting, just as a relative few Americans with mental health problems engage in 'suicide missions' which take out innocent victims at the same time.
One of the articles suggests that it may not be the weapon that should be addressed, but the quantity of ammunition needed to fire it, just as more severe background checks could weed out those with mental or behavioural problems who should not have access to guns for their own and other people's safety. The articles however do suggest that unless the US can disentangle itself from entrenched -and mostly political- positions then practical solutions may be hard to find.

Just one example from Boston of a practical solution may be cited here:
Cities that have done in-depth analyses of their gun violence problem have found something surprising: the majority of violence is driven by a very small number of young men. In Oakland, for instance, just 1,000 members of a few active street groups were responsible for most of the city’s homicides. The violence was not fueled by turf wars or drug business, for the most part, but by long-running feuds and arguments among loose groups of young men engaged in other illegal activities.

Communicating directly with these young men – and offering both assistance and intense law enforcement attention – led to an immediate drop in violence. This “ceasefire” or “focused deterrence” strategy, first launched in Boston in 1996, requires coordination between police departments, prosecutors and community members in the neighborhoods most affected by violence.
These are not easy partnerships to form, and they often require addressing police departments’ legacies of racism and failed violence prevention strategies. But in Boston, the ceasefire collaboration led to a 63% reduction in monthly youth homicides – a sudden drop in violence dubbed “the Boston miracle”. The strategy has been replicated across the country, but has often struggled to sustain itself as police chiefs and mayors change – or as old funding sources dry up. The strategy’s typical results, according to sociologist Kenneth Rand, are “a reduction in the range of 15% to 35% in total homicides and 25% to 40% in gang or group-involved homicides.” This is a dramatic impact for a local program.
(quote from What could actually work to fix gun violence in America -and what doesn't
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ks-what-doesnt

-the side bar will give you access to all five parts, note the last one appears on Friday 24th June 2016.

What we need is a "nofly no buy" data base

The shooter from the Orlando Terror Attack at pulse who killed 49 and injured 50 was on the BFI watchlist but was taken off

CNN - "The comments centered on Mateen claiming he had family and friends in al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and connections to the Boston Marathon bombers. A year later, the FBI interviewed Mateen again over contact with Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, who went to Syria and conducted a suicide bombing. Mateen and Abu-Salha attended the same mosque in Florida."

But reports show that early this year' these same types of investigations (5,000+ active) were ending due to a lack of federal funding - Obama bucks!

observer - "The budget proposal calls for cutting the funding for the Urban Area Security Initiative, which helps prevent or respond to terror events, from $600 to $330 million—a cut U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said the president’s administration seemed to have no acceptable explanation for over the last several days."

This is a clash of cultures people - Islamic values and Western values simply don't mix (and that doesn't have to be a bad thing) but we have to be smart and vigilant (we can't be the stupid people) whos only defense is to show how tolerant we are. We need to get tough and we need FBI funding in the worse way possible.

http://www.thecommentator.com/system...jpg?1415374645

I totally, 100%, absolutely, support Donalds ban on people coming from parts of the world that celebrate persecuting gays by throwing them off roff tops while chanting Allah Akbar. It's just stupid that we actually allow these people into our society's

http://65.media.tumblr.com/0223de802...rzka8z_400.jpg

Obama and hitlary want to bring more of these people into our societies. So if you were to ask me, I would say: we need the 2nd amendment (personal defense) more than ever. We should seriously consider ending the "gun free zone".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeJ-iv3MOTo

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClG0S_VUgAA3Ca7.jpg

[QUOTE=AshlynCreamher;1701274]

What we need is a "nofly no buy" data base
The shooter from the Orlando Terror Attack at pulse who killed 49 and injured 50 was on the BFI watchlist but was taken off
--This is the position that Hilary Clinton has taken, so why do you refer to her as 'Hitlary' when your position is the same as hers?

Obama and hitlary want to bring more of these people into our societies. So if you were to ask me, I would say: we need the 2nd amendment (personal defense) more than ever. We should seriously consider ending the "gun free zone".
--The 2nd Amendment does not refer to 'personal defense' as a right to own firearms, and if you want to end 'gun free zones' why are you supporting Donald Trump, most of whose resorts are 'gun free zones'?
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donal...ry?id=39266544

There is a lot of material on gun control for you to think about and I recommend the Guardian articles I linked above which reveal just how complex this issue is in the USA, and that there is a great deal more to it than a few lone nutcases however many people they killed. The murderers at Sandy Hook, Columbine or Charleston were not Muslims, they were different kinds of American -but American nonetheless.

I wonder if Dallas is the graveyard of hope in America -or will the recent events there, as well as the murders in Louisiana and Minnesota mark the moment when the USA engages in a serious -a truly serious- debate on the role guns play in society? From a great distance, I see too many people mired in grief and wonder how much more of this you can take, whoever you are and whatever you look like. If lines are to be drawn in the sand, then the 2nd Amendment must be reviewed, and offer people hope, and belief that there are alternatives to killing that can actually work.
In the long run we are all dead, so enjoy the life you have and encourage others to do so.
Or will Dallas just be another name on the list -Sandy Hook, Denver, Charleston, Orlando...?

Philando Castle declared he had a gun and a permit to carry it. At the mere mention of that firearm in the possession of the black man he just pulled over (for a taillight malfunction) the police officer got so rattled he shot and killed Castle on the spot. I’m sure the officer doesn’t believe he's prejudiced. He’s just scared shitless of black men. Meanwhile white guys openly carry assault weapons, refuse to show ID and cops let them go about their business.

I agree that there should be a serious discussion about how to reasonably restrain the use and possession of firearms in this country, but it’s not happening. No politician or news outlet that I know of has even addressed the issue in relation to these last three horrendous incidents. The first two were perceived as evidence of institutionalized racism within law enforcement and the latter as a tragic reaction to that perception. Indeed, that probably is the main issue here. So at the moment, the gun issue seems to be the farthest thing from everybody’s minds.

The Minneapolis and New Orleans shootings did seem to gain sympathy and outrage even from white, conservative communities - but I’m afraid the Dallas shooting just undid all that. The police will continue to militarize, grow more color-phobic and we’ll all wonder again ‘what the fuck’s going on?’ when we see the next brutal video upload . The clueless keep reciting, “All lives matter,” but fail to draw the conclusion relevant to the spate of racially infused murders committed by the police - and it no longer matters because now there seems to be no moral high ground.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be less pessimistic, but right now...

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Originally Posted by trish

Meanwhile white guys openly carry assault weapons, refuse to show ID and cops let them go about their business.

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It's like the guy who was "a person of interest" in the Dallas shootings: a black guy with an AR-15 strapped over his shoulder. Folks were actually asking why he was carrying such a weapon at a "peaceful" (quotations in their minds) protest. There's a simple answer: BECAUSE HE CAN. Texas is an open-carry state and he was exercising his rights (something ammosexuals have a boner for). Then a few went on to say he shouldn't have had the gun on him. I thought he'd be the "good guy with a gun" these fools have wet dreams about.

Guess not since he's a brotha. But white guys open-carrying at Chitpotle isn't a problem.

Bring on the thumbs-down for stating a fact.

Urging people to be self critical is a LOOP, maybe they made a mistake showing Alton Sterling's eyes on TV.
I hope the Black Lives Matter folks hand out voter registration forms at their protests, and let Hillary and a new Supreme Court redistribute black people's paychecks back into their own wallets, instead of some fat cat's portfolio.


Be very careful what you wish for.

I think there actually is a discussion going on in the NRA whether they are on the side of licensed gun holder Philando Castile or the cop that shot him, I think there is a discussion in the Republican Party whether they are with Trump or Reality, and there even might be a discussion whether Fox News viewers are with Gretchen Carlson or Roger Ailes!!!!!Yikes!!!
I've said before that hitching your wagon to the anti-NRA Star is a loser, .....gun show loopholes and banana clip laws won't change anything, it's a gesture, it has no real teeth. On the street.
While talk is cheap, the medium is the message, and the White Guy in the suit on TV is being replaced by Lester Holt.
Perception is everything??
My first post on this site was asking members if Torrid Tranny Whores carried knives.
I think they do.

If there is one thing that needs to change, and I think we have discussed it before, training the police how to command and control a situation may help reduce police and gun-related deaths. I saw the footage of a 19 year old called Dylan Noble being murdered-there is no other word for it- and from the beginning it is clear to me that as soon as two officers emerge from their car, guns drawn and pointing at the pick-up truck, shouting at the driver, they have lost control of the situation. From there it gets worse as you have a clear example of an officer whose brain has been left in his car: having shot the teenager who collapses on the ground, in a state of shock, the officer continues to yell at him to raise his hands! And when he fails the helpless victim is shot again until dead. All of this because the officers received a call about a man seen with a rifle, it is not as if they had reason to believe the driver of the vehicle -and they presumably could have run a vehicle check to ascertain the name of its owner- was a latter-day John Dillinger or Jesse James. If every police encounter is going to be a confrontation from the start with guns drawn, the potential for the encounter to go badly wrong must be increased by a factor of at least 50%.

If the message from Louisiana yesterday 'this has to stop' is to mean anything, and if the US cannot or will not do something about its gun culture, then maybe sending police officers back to school would help.

Schooling the cops is all you can do, because as an American, Nobody tells me what to do!!!!
The Police police the guys who don't police themselves, and this Nation of ours literally went to war with itself over slavery and state's rights, The Donald hit a CHORD when he said WALL- PAPISTS- MURDERS,and even though every note he hit was a lie, nothing the Democrats can say will stop the blue collar white Republican voters from humming their COUNTRY TUNE.

I love to stir the pot when things get boring down here, but these shootings, and thousands of leftist guerillas descending on Cleveland .....Jesus, even though you are a Jew and an Arab, we need your help!!
If these Demonstrators wear guns, or toy guns, and see CNN cameras watching, I pray the gun debate does not come to a boil this week.

You might even see Ruth Bader Ginsburg sporting dual Colt .45s
There is no sane way to even imagine Donald Trump as President of the United States.

https://s32.postimg.org/xvmowtd2t/x580wh.gifupload pic

If I’m wrong somebody correct me, but it seems jumping out of the car, guns drawn and shouting, “PUT UP YOUR HANDS” is what police officers are trained to do. I guessing it called something like - using your command voice. What it does is inject emotional energy into a situation where it least needed. If you want to elicit cooperation (in these cases you got to wonder about that ‘if’), you need to diffuse the energy. Ask or (if required) demand calmly, firmly but respectfully. Command is not shouting. Control is not threatening with deadly force.

I fear the spate of recent shootings of civilians and peace officers has only escalated tensions. I beg protestors: do not encourage violence nor react violently. I ask police to do the same. To citizens with guns, don’t be an asshat - leave them at home. If your so stressed over the recent violence, don’t fucking add to it.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

You might even see Ruth Bader Ginsburg sporting dual Colt .45s

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She had two 45’s pointed straight at me... and also a gun.

People are typically very stupid and believe anything they hear from the globalist media. Gun crime is much lower today than it was 20-30 years ago. We have less crime today. This is just another power grab. Take the guns from the people and the powers that be will have total control. Guns offer a last resort for us to protect ourselves when the governments fail.

We also have more police on the streets these days, more modern methods of policing and (for good or ill) also a more militarized police force. Fewer people drink to intoxication and commit violent crimes, and the average income per household has increased over those decades. We do see higher rates of gun related deaths and injuries in regions where these factors are minimized.

On the other hand, we (the USA) also have more gun homicides and suicides than any other western nation - not to mention gun accidents and injuries. Moreover, the rate of mass shootings of innocent civilians has tripled since 2011. This is according to the “globalist media” (whatever the fuck that is) as well as the Pew Research Center, the FBI, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institutes of Health. (Note funding for the CDC relating to public safety and firearms has been cut since 2010 because Congress already knows how the science will pan out.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...tes-heres-why/

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...rvard-research

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Originally Posted by trish

On the other hand, we (the USA) also have more gun homicides and suicides than any other western nation

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However much of those would go away if we could ever move past this failed war on drugs that has been responsible for so much gang & drug related gun violence.

As for the suicides, they can be accounted for in the lack of social safety nets in this country. When the '08 depression hit there was an international surge of suicides. Thousands of lives were ended when people lost everything and found no one was there to help them. A statistical abnormality so high it cannot be explained in any other way.

Take as a similar example how... OD deaths are also increasing as people give up hope and look to find a way out. Sure some of these deaths were not meant to be suicides but were accidental. Nonetheless a striking feature of the OD death stats in the US is who they represent. Overwhelmingly the heroin ODs come from rural, unemployed or underemployed, middle aged, white males.

Why this demographic?

I have a hunch: they're realizing the American dream was a farce. They have no job prospects and never again will. Its easy enough to realize when society has winners and loosers, and then figure out which side you're on. These are people who initially believed they had a chance, not knowing or believing that the game was rigged. Meanwhile the other demographics being pounded by wealth inequality have known the harsh reality all along and therefore can escape the existential crisis.

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Moreover, the rate of mass shootings of innocent civilians has tripled since 2011.

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And we should expect it to get worse and worse, as the global and national quality of life deteriorates as we circle the drain.

A century of bad policies are coming home to roost. Our foreign policies were a failure responsible for radical Islam & its terrorism. Our economic policies are worsening wealth inequality and artificially inventing debt crises that will taken down entire nations. Our intentional ignorance of science and the environment is putting us on track for the worst global warming scenarios. Now throw in peak soil, peak water, peak oil, technological singularity, AI, and unchecked corruption.

The closest parallel in history is the end of the 19th century when industrialization decimated the value of human labor while simultaneously setting most of the 3rd world up for famines. The holocaust killed a little over 7 million people. Making the 3rd world bid against the first world on a global market for food killed three times the amount of people that WW2 did. In a 30 year span the first world saw more than two dozen world leaders assassinated including two US presidents.

This is how the SHFT starts.

.....

Well...in most places its officially January 20th, 2017. Obama has until 9:00am PST to take everyone's guns. If he's going to do that - as the right have been saying for the last eight years - he'd better hurry the fuck up.

If he doesn't, I expect folks to just admit they were hoodwinked. They won't though.

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Originally Posted by Ben in LA

Well...in most places its officially January 20th, 2017. Obama has until 9:00am PST to take everyone's guns. If he's going to do that - as the right have been saying for the last eight years - he'd better hurry the fuck up.

If he doesn't, I expect folks to just admit they were hoodwinked. They won't though.

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Accorrding to the nominee for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, you need guns in school to protect children from 'grizzlies'. Not in Canada -but maybe California?

I posted a couple of comments on the Las Vegas murders in the Dipshits thread in General Discussion, but I wonder what more can be said about this incident that concerns gun ownership and gun control that has not already been said. There was a weariness in the reporting last night and the exchange of views on the news programmes, but I still wonder how it is possible for one man to legally obtain (assuming this is how he obtained his weapons) the kind of weapons that kill and injure so many people in minutes, not hours. Surely at some point if you cannot limit gun ownership, you can at least take military grade weapons off the streets? But we have been here before, and I suspect it will happen again. And again.

At the very least, I would like to see the Assault Ban reinstated. But given that Congress did nothing after Sandy Hook, it's not likely this Congress will do a damn thing about gun control - except pass the current proposal to deregulate silencers.

It's obvious that guns need to be more tightly regulated. But unfettered gun ownership has become a part of right's cultural identity. Any move to strip away that crucial part of their identity now will only re-enforce it. Identity trumps reason (pun intended). Every week a toddler shoots somebody with a gun. Right now, Congress would rather ban toddlers than regulate guns.

Because of the Vegas shooting, gun stocks have spiked in anticipation of increased sales. Why would sales increase? Gun 'enthusiasts' will tell you it's for protections against shooters just like the one in the Mandalay Bay - as if arming the crowd of concert goers would've lowered the body count. The real reason gun sales will spike is that the 'enthusiasts' know - on a subliminal level - a good argument for regulation when they see one, and the spate of shootings across our nation, like the one in Vegas, is as solid an argument as nature can provide.

Seems that all there is on the various talk radio shows in the UK are interviews in which American pro gun activists (from a country with very little gun control and the biggest problem with mass shootings in the world) tell interviewers from the UK (a country that after mass killings in 1984 and 1986 implemented strict gun laws and has since had 1 mass killing in the last 20 years) that their is nothing that can be done to stop the killings and that gun control will not help at all.
Sometimes there just aren’t enough face-plant emojis in the world.

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny.

GUNS, I WANT them!
I'm an AMERICAN, you've got no goddamned right to tell me i can't have them.

And at the same time, backing the idiot who's telling North Korea they can't have nuclear arms!

i read recently that 3% of the US adult population owns half of the guns, with an average of 17 guns each. That suggests about 8 million people have an arsenal similar to that of the Vegas killer. Yet half of the country seems to want to believe this madness is normal and even healthy. Thank god I don't live in the US.

The most recent second amendment case, which I think has been brought up here a bunch of times is Heller v. DC. It was a 5-4 decision so the parameters of the second amendment might change if the composition of the court does, but it allows quite a bit of regulation. While a state cannot have a blanket ban on handguns or require all weapons be kept unloaded, it leaves open a ban on assault style rifles, and allows the state to prevent the mentally ill and felons from owning weapons. Do not let a second amendment proponent bamboozle you into believing any of these things are off the table. The opinion was written by Scalia, so unless Gorsuch writes a majority decision in the future, the court is unlikely to view the second amendment right any broader.

Since it was in the dictum of the opinion it doesn't define mentally ill but would probably at least include any condition that involves a psychosis. It does not say anything about licensure procedures but since the Court has also said women have a fundamental right to have an abortion, we can use the regulation of abortion as an analogy. In that case, the woman has a fundamental right to get an abortion countered by the state's right to protect the life of the unborn child. In the case of guns, there is a fundamental right to own them, but this is countered by the state's duty to protect people from unlawful shootings.

What about requiring people to take safety tests or to own their gun contingent on maintaining a license which will require periodic renewal? What about waiting times to ensure they are not purchasing on impulse and that they are doing so for legitimate second amendment purposes, to protect themselves or fend off government tyranny? I do not follow the current laws closely enough but does anyone know what kinds of regulations short of bans are in use and could be helpful in cases where someone wants to stockpile weapons or get them quickly?

The gun proponents' arguments consistently rely on fatalism. If you cannot prevent the most deliberate, premeditated form of mass murder there is no point in regulating them. Yet it's clear even from Heller that quite a lot is allowed....what else would be helpful other than background checks, limits on weapons stockpiling, banning certain groups of people from owning weapons, banning assault style rifles and high capacity magazines???

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Originally Posted by broncofan

and allows the state to prevent the mentally ill and felons from owning weapons.

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One interesting facet of that part of Heller is that a couple of jurisdictions extended Heller's reasoning to misdemeanor domestic violence convictions. The fourth circuit and the seventh circuit split on whether a state can prevent someone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from owning a gun. The fourth circuit said it's unconstitutional and the seventh circuit said the ban was directly related to the state's interests in protecting its citizens. There has been a lot of discussion about the connection between domestic violence and gun violence...it will be interesting to see if this specific type of law eventually reaches the Supreme Court.

The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the chance of homicide by 500%.
https://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

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Originally Posted by broncofan

While a state cannot have a blanket ban on handguns or require all weapons be kept unloaded, it leaves open a ban on assault style rifles, and allows the state to prevent the mentally ill and felons from owning weapons....
Since it was in the dictum of the opinion it doesn't define mentally ill but would probably at least include any condition that involves a psychosis.

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I wonder if there is a procedural weakness in the 'mental illness' argument? I looked up the repeal of the Obama Presidency's ruling that attempted to make it harder for people with a 'mental illness' to purchase firearms -in fact it never came into force because it was due to take effect in December 2017 but the revenge process began shortly after the inauguration. But in fact there already exist mental health provisions making it illegal to sell guns on the following basis:

(a) A determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease:
(1) Is a danger to himself or to others; or
(2) Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs.
(b) The term shall include—
(1) A finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and

(2) Those persons found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a and 72b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 850a, 876b.

Under the Obama rule, information from the Social Security Administration regarding mental disability benefits would be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check database for use in firearm background checks.
http://www.snopes.com/congress-gun-legal-mental/

I am not saying the system is flawed, but if an individual is not on medication, has not been arrested or detained during which his or her mental state became an issue, or been reported by a family member or someone who knows them, how can a gun shop know if the person looking at weapons is, underneath their calm and reasonable exterior and with the right paperwork, seething with rage sufficient to slaughter innocent people?

If the answer is 'you never can tell', or if someone normally placid flips because of one or a sequence of unfortunate incidents, there are no mental health safeguards. What this does is put the weight of the argument back on the nature of weapons, and whether or not it is easier to ban certain types of weapon rather than weapons themselves, if as we are told, owning a gun is as American as Apple Pie and Baseball. On this basis a weapon that can fire multiple rounds a second ought really to be in the military not the mansion, and there is no justification in hunting either. I guess if you need to fire a thousand rounds at a deer to kill it you should probably stay home and play Warcraft rather than pretend to be a hunter.

The problem is that on BBC last night a resident of Mesquite stated candidly that any attempt at gun control that took guns away from Americans would be the basis for a civil war. I don't know how far one can go with this, it may be a division that is as deep as race and class, the division between that 'coastal' and 'flyover' America, and I don't know if this is a division that can be healed.

Critical analysis of the Constitution is futile, it no longer matters what the word 'militia' means either in its original context, when Washington wanted to resist the formation of a standing army, or today, when it endows every citizen to own a gun regardless of the existence of armed law enforcement, the National Guard and the armed services. If the Supreme Court were to offer an alternative judgement to Heller -v- DC and limit gun ownership, the party of the King would probably seek to abolish the Supreme Court, but it would raise the question -how would it be enforced? And, even if it reduced the volume of new gun sales, there are already a staggering number of weapons at home, waiting to be locked and loaded. Scary!

It is difficult to implement a ban on weapon ownership based on mental illness because as you say it requires that the person has sought help or there's been some sort of intervention. If gun ownership is really important to people and it could be forfeited by seeking help, they may not do so which is a consequence worth considering. Those provisions are useful, and it's possible that states can pass their own restrictions.

At least three of the last several shooters had severe mental illness that could have prevented them from owning guns if their state legislature had passed an appropriate law. James Holmes, the movie theater shooter in Colorado, was seeing a psychiatrist and was taking antipsychotics for what was probably a psychotic disorder. Aaron Rodgers, the LA shooter, was prescribed an antipsychotic for schizophrenia but refused to take it for reasons of his own. And Jared Loughner, the guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords, had a more severe psychosis than the previous two but I don't think was seeing a doctor. If there were good mental health guidelines in place, the first two maybe would have been flagged as unsafe to own a gun and their information could be put into some registry, but not Loughner if he hadn't seen a doctor.

I haven't thought about the 2nd amendment's purpose that carefully but I think that unfortunately Scalia wrote in Heller that the prefatory clause to the second amendment did not limit it. In other words, even though the text mentioned one purpose of the 2nd amendment to be the formation of a militia, that is not the only permissible purpose according to the court! So, as of right now, the second amendment allows people to own guns for self-defense, to potentially fight government tyranny, and to form a militia. It does not leave a ton of room for regulation...the entire idea that owning a gun should be placed alongside civil rights like speech, right to a trial by jury, equal protection under the law is unusual to me and seems obsolete in most ways. The truth is that we no longer have a society where people act as their own police force, as their own revolutionaries or form ad hoc militias...it may seem like a vulnerability to those who are afraid of various forms of tyranny, but it is also the consequence of having institutions we have developed some faith in.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

But in fact there already exist mental health provisions making it illegal to sell guns on the following basis:

(a) A determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease:
(1) Is a danger to himself or to others; or
(2) Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs.
(b) The term shall include—
(1) A finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and

(2) Those persons found incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility pursuant to articles 50a and 72b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 850a, 876b.

Under the Obama rule, information from the Social Security Administration regarding mental disability benefits would be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check database for use in firearm background checks.
http://www.snopes.com/congress-gun-legal-mental/

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I did not know about these regulations but they are a bit procedurally weak in the sense that they require a determination by a court or commission. They are somewhat weaker in substance in that they require that a person is insane, lacks capacity, or has a condition that makes him a danger to himself or others (the last of which is useful but requires an individual determination). It is possible that someone has schizophrenia and would not necessarily meet this threshold. The hallmark of psychosis like schizophrenia is that someone has lost touch with reality in some way. We are wary of having people forfeit rights based on mental infirmities, but I think when it comes to handling dangerous weapons, the protections need to be more robust.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

It is difficult to implement a ban on weapon ownership based on mental illness because as you say it requires that the person has sought help or there's been some sort of intervention. If gun ownership is really important to people and it could be forfeited by seeking help, they may not do so which is a consequence worth considering. Those provisions are useful, and it's possible that states can pass their own restrictions.

So, as of right now, the second amendment allows people to own guns for self-defense, to potentially fight government tyranny, and to form a militia. .

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Interesting points. If someone is aware that a person with a problem may have access to firearms, should they be morally obliged to inform on them where the law is lenient, and would the law prevent the person having access to lethal weapons? It is curious that morals are taken to be crucial in the conservative argument against abortion, should the same argument not apply to someone who, on a bad day, may take someone else's life, perhaps their own too?

Are you sure the Constitution gives someone the right to own firearms to potentially fight government tyranny? If the original fear was of another British invasion -as indeed happened in 1812- the absence of a standing army would justify the deployment of a militia, but did the founding fathers have such little faith 'in their own' that they agreed if 'they' stepped out of line, 'the people' could attack them militarily? I thought the whole point about the separation of powers and checks and balances within the system was designed to prevent tyranny. Has the inauguration of the .45 changed the rules?

Number of Americans killed by firearms since 1968 stands at 1,516,863 !
Source Richard Bacon. Works for BBC & lives in LA

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Originally Posted by yosi

Number of Americans killed by firearms since 1968 stands at 1,516,863 !
Source Richard Bacon. Works for BBC & lives in LA

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Essentially meaning that the NRA have been hundreds of times more successful at killing Americans than Al-queda, The Taliban, ISIL, etc all put together.

God bless them and their god given right to kill them selves and each other more effectively than terrorists ever could. (I was tempted to add a Yee-hah, but didn’t want to appear offensive)

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Are you sure the Constitution gives someone the right to own firearms to potentially fight government tyranny?

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I'm not sure. Here is the quote I was basing that statement on from the intermediate court's decision in Heller, saying that the right to bear arms is "premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad)."

I assumed this was part of the basis of Scalia's opinion since he agreed with the intermediate court on the outcome. I will take a look in the next day or so to see if the Supreme Court adopted this reasoning as well.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I assumed this was part of the basis of Scalia's opinion since he agreed with the intermediate court on the outcome. I will take a look in the next day or so to see if the Supreme Court adopted this reasoning as well.

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Scalia's opinion indicates that the right to bear arms is one that extends beyond an organized militia and can be used for personal defense. At one point he seems to indicate that if it only applied to an "organized militia" then it could not protect against tyranny, which does not even achieve the purpose that prompted the second amendment's codification. In other words, a militia that requires express authority from Congress is not really the kind of people's militia the founding generation was concerned with.

Dispiriting I know. And remember not necessarily the correct opinion, but his opinion.

Here is an excerpt from his opinion:

Besides ignoring the historical reality that the SecondA mendment was not intended to lay down a “novel principl[e]”
but rather codified a right “inherited from our
English ancestors,” Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275,
281 (1897), petitioners’ interpretation does not even
achieve the narrower purpose that prompted codification
of the right. If, as they believe, the Second Amendment
right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as
a member of an organized militia, see Brief for Petititioners
8—if, that is, the organized militia is the sole institu tional beneficiary of the Second Amendment’s guarantee—it does not assure the existence of a “citizens’ militia” as a
safeguard against tyranny. For Congress retains plenary
authority to organize the militia, which must include the
authority to say who will belong to the organized force.17
That is why the first Militia Act’s requirement that only
whites enroll caused States to amend their militia laws to
exclude free blacks. See Siegel, The Federal Government’s
Power to Enact Color-Conscious Laws, 92 Nw. U. L. Rev.
477, 521–525 (1998. Thus, if petitioners are correct, the
Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to use a gun in
an organization from which Congress has plenary authority
to exclude them. It guarantees a select militia of the
sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people’s
militia that was the concern of the founding generation.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Are you sure the Constitution gives someone the right to own firearms to potentially fight government tyranny? If the original fear was of another British invasion -as indeed happened in 1812- the absence of a standing army would justify the deployment of a militia, but did the founding fathers have such little faith 'in their own' that they agreed if 'they' stepped out of line, 'the people' could attack them militarily? I thought the whole point about the separation of powers and checks and balances within the system was designed to prevent tyranny. Has the inauguration of the .45 changed the rules?

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The U. S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, states:

“The Congress shall have Power ... 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;”

Many of the founding fathers were wary of standing armies, which they saw as a potential instrument for military dictatorship. What I find interesting is that the 2nd amendment says "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", yet it's generally interpreted nowadays in way that completely ignores the first half of the sentence.

Ironically, the US has ended up with both a large standing army and lots of arms in private hands, but certainly not "well-regulated". I'm sure the founding fathers would have regarded that as the worst of both worlds,

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Scalia's opinion indicates that the right to bear arms is one that extends beyond an organized militia and can be used for personal defense. At one point he seems to indicate that if it only applied to an "organized militia" then it could not protect against tyranny, which does not even achieve the purpose that prompted the second amendment's codification. In other words, a militia that requires express authority from Congress is not really the kind of people's militia the founding generation was concerned with.
Dispiriting I know. And remember not necessarily the correct opinion, but his opinion.

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Although I thank you for the opinion, I am still confused by Scalia's interpretation of the Constitution.

In the first place, I am surprised that he would argue the roots of the 2nd Amendment "codified a right “inherited from our English ancestors,” and in particular "It guarantees a select militia of the sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people’s militia that was the concern of the founding generation."
The Stuart Kings and Queens did not create a standing army, but relied on the Earls and Dukes of the Kingdom to raise the armed forces as and when they were required. Although young farmers might welcome the 'adventure' of war/battle as a exciting break from the tedium of farm labour, they had no choice in the matter, other than specific causes, these were not voluntary militias and if they were in the earlier Wars of the Roses, the outcome was devastated communities in both Lancashire and Yorkshire. Britain did not begin to organize an army until Cromwell and Fairfax created the New Model Army that defeated Charles I and became the template for the British Army that Charles II embarked on later in the 17th century.

Surely the whole point of the American argument is that the militia be a spontaneous and voluntary group of armed men and women? I just don't see where the Stuart angle is relevant, except as how not to do it.

Again, I am not sure what it is we are talking about when the word tyranny is used. I assume the original meaning referred to the tyranny of the British Crown and its desire to either roll back the revolution or at least punish the Americas for going it alone and, in the case of the Canadian wars, preventing Americans from denying the Crown its sovereign rights north of the border.

It becomes more problematic in the contemporary age where the 2nd Amendment gives to individuals the right to own weapons they could use as a militia when confronting the US Federal Government, claiming that IT is a tyrannical force in the USA. One could I assume argue that the Branch Davidians in Waco stockpiled weapons to defend themselves against what they saw was a tyrannical government seeking to intervene in their private affairs-? And I assume the Bundy Clan could, by designating the 'Feds' to be a tyranny, claim their right to arm a militia to 'liberate' Oregon -? The objective standard by which one judges a government to be a tyranny could be established by a perusal of election results, and one cannot dismiss a government as 'tyrannical' just because one's party lost the election. But if this settles the argument that only Congress can assemble or give legal right to the formation of a Militia, it does not settle the vexing issue of individuals, who by definition are not a militia, nor does it touch upon the precise question of what sort of weapons an individual should be allowed to purchase freely.

I feel, as I have stated elsewhere, that a Constitutional right is being conflated with the implementation of the right, and that by dismissing attempts to control the purchase of specific weapons -semi-automatic rifles with or without add-ons- as a threat to Constitutional rights, organizations like the NRA are impeding attempts to improve public safety. As has been shown, when it wanted to, the NRA supported State and Federal laws limiting gun ownership or the right to publicly carry them, so this near religious fidelity to the 2nd Amendment is bogus. What I see here is not a debate on public safety, but part of the wider debate that has engulfed the USA since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It is about 'Our America' and 'Their America' in which the ownership of guns becomes welded to the playing of the National Anthem at football games, not just standing, but standing and placing your hand over your heart as you sing, and so on.

But when six year old's massacred at school are dismissed as if they were 'collateral damage' then you wonder if 'their America' is worthy of the praise they claim for it, indeed, demand.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Although I thank you for the opinion, I am still confused by Scalia's interpretation of the Constitution.

In the first place, I am surprised that he would argue the roots of the 2nd Amendment "codified a right “inherited from our English ancestors,” and in particular "It guarantees a select militia of the sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people’s militia that was the concern of the founding generation."
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I actually think that these two provisions of Scalia's opinion contradict each other. If Scalia acknowledges that the 2nd amendment only codified a right that already existed in England and is not something newly established by the American founders, then how can that right be re-purposed based on the revolutionary aims of the colonists? Legal commentators believe Scalia is saying this right is a right to have weapons in case insurrection were ever justified.

But he does not explain how the English right entailed anything of the sort...Scalia was probably far too much of a xenophobe to actually consult an English historian to answer this question and instead resorts to a method of interpretation that requires him to analyze information extrinsic to the Constitution and far outside his competence. But did the English have a right to bear arms that was essentially a charter for insurrection against their own government?

As you say above, it's completely inconsistent with the aims of our form of government, which has institutional safeguards that are designed to protect against tyranny in ways that are much more effective than guns. Separation of powers, the power of judicial review, impeachment process, and federalism are all embodied in our Constitution and make such a right obsolete. How can a document that establishes a nation of laws include a provision that seems designed to overturn that order?

Personally, I think the best interpretation of the second amendment is that the prefatory clause Filghy mentions in his post is intended to state a purpose for which that right exists. It is a limit or a parameter for the right to bear arms and not something general to be ignored. Scalia treats it as a floor (or as something to be disregarded), when it might be the only purpose for which the second amendment exists.

Anyhow, at least Scalia's opinion seems to say that the right to have weapons for either an organized militia or alternatively a citizen's militia does not include the right to have military style weapons. It only allows people to purchase weapons that are commonly owned, which is a somewhat circular standard since the legislature can fix what is commonly owned by banning everything not commonly owned at this point, like automatic weapons and assault weapons. I wonder what would happen if the legislature waited until ar-15s were commonly owned household items....then their prohibition would be barred by Scalia's interpretation.

If we can agree that there are existing mechanisms in the US political system that make tyranny difficult to achieve, the deeper question over gun rights must relate to the rights not of the individual but the State, by which I mean in the US context both Federal and State authorities. When RedVex challenged my definition of the state as having the legitimate monopoly of violence, she did so in (I assume) a libertarian context where the State is the problem and the Individual the solution, so the logic of owning a gun is the outcome of a free person living in a State which no longer constrains his or her freedom.

But the point I was trying to make, one derived from common sense, as well as Hobbes, Locke, Weber and others (whom she appears to dismiss as irrelevant), is that the modern state exists as a functioning structure and whether or not one approves of extent of state power, the alternative would be anarchy, if there is no justification for the State to defend citizens who can defend themselves, no need for laws when people can make agreements among themselves, and no justification for taxation, which is immoral and simply theft. But for me and most others, I believe, the justification for the modern state is that it should benefis the people who live in it, at least as an ideal project (no state is perfect and most of the daily politics is focused on good and bad management).

And, just as crucial, it is because it is the agencies of the state that protect the public from random or organized violence, that it provides a system of justice and law enforcement. In that context, an armed militia can not be justified, and, indeed, its presence, would challenge the right of the state to be the sole source of legitimate violence, a legitimacy it derives from the process of democracy. Thus, by extension, there can be no justification for a citizen to own a weapon of any kind, as every citizen has the right of protection by the state, and in addition, also has the right to be protected from the State. It may true that these arrangements don't work perfectly, but the basic principle is sound.

A good example of what happens when an armed militia challenges the authority of the State is the US Civil War, in which a fair proportion of people in the South became anti-American to the extent that they no longer wished to be part of the Union and were prepared to fight for their independence. Clearly this marked a breakdown in US politics, and it might be argued that having seceded from the Union, the Confederacy was no longer bound by the Constitution, but the secession was not recognized by the rest of the US which continued to believe the southern States were indeed part of the Union and should remain so.

The point is that a Constitutional provision for an armed militia is based on a scenario where the authority of the State is under threat, it was not intended to give citizens the right to bear arms if this resulted in an armed militia or even a citizen undermining or even threatening the rule of law and thus, by extension, the State -this would be an attack on the USA, not the defence of it. Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon Martin is a clear example of a citizen who repudiated the existing authority of local enforcement to impose it himself, while the Branch Davidians and the Bundy Clan by arming themselves with substantial weapons either took on, or threatened to take on the legitimate forces of the State. The Constitution might have had in mind an armed militia fighting the British attempting to overthrow the independent government of the USA, it can only thus exist today to serve a hypothetical scenario in which local law enforcement has broken down, which seems unlikely, or local law enforcement joins a revival of the Confederacy which would make its actions anti-American and illegal, which means incidentally that it must surely be anti-American to display in public the Battle Flag of the Confederate Army?

The 2nd Amendment was designed to protect the USA and its citizens, it appears now to have become a threat to citizens, and the authority of the State. It should be repealed, and a round-up or amnesty of weapons take place across the USA as a celebration of democracy and the freedom of the individual. The National Rifle Association is a terrorist organization and should be banned.