“The features of modern assault weapons—particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality—along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” the order said.
Accuracy?
edit: I’m not disputing that the fact that an AR-15 is more accurate. I just don’t see how the improvement in accuracy makes the gun fall outside the scope of the second amendment. I mean, if you replace a rifled barrel with a smoothbore barrel on an AR-15, wouldn’t that make it more dangerous because you don’t know where the bullets would go?
That’s great. But they had rifling and accuracy at 300 meters. They had breech loading, and cartridges too. The Army just didn’t want to adopt them.
Accuracy at the level available today is the difference between the Las Vegas shooter’s success and far less damage.
I also find it interesting that “accuracy” became the substance of your criticism rather than the argument as a whole.
E: personally I fully support the idea that that authors of the 2A never, ever thought that guns would have turned out this way. Guns were strictly utilitarian, people had one literally for putting food on the table and an immediate need of defense in an expanding country where there was literally no help for miles if you were lucky in some places. Urban and town life was different. The authors never could have foreseen arsenals in personal possession, never foreseen the ubiquitous use in everything from theft to suicide to school shootings. I’d die on the hill that had they any foresight at all where they thought this were a possibility, they would not have written it the way it stands today. They were shortsighted and myopic in some ways, but they weren’t stupid.
You need to read federalist papers then, if you assume the founders had no idea about technology. Guns of the time were already getting multiple barrels and rounds. You could also own warships privately and people did. That’s the equivalent of owning a nuclear sub these days. To say the 2nd doesn’t apply to modern firearms, means you agree that the 1st doesn’t apply to the Internet.
I’ve read the Federalist Papers in their entirety and I see 0 defense for the modern interpretation of the second amendment among them
The first largely doesn’t. There’s vanishingly few government owned discussion spaces. And Meta/Reddit/Lemmy are not constrained by the first amendment.
Guns were strictly utilitarian, people had one literally for putting food on the table and an immediate need of defense in an expanding country where there was literally no help for miles if you were lucky in some places.
Guns were not strictly utilitarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duelling_pistol
Framing mean anything to you? Just because you don’t find it utilitarian for mean that wasn’t a job they did then.
Accuracy at the level available today is the difference between the Las Vegas shooter’s success and far less damage.
That’s just… No. Wrong.
.223 is not a long-range bullet. It’s “accurate”, sure, but any bullet that’s made with reasonable care care fired from a decently made barrel is going to be consistent. Sure, I can get 1MOA accuracy from a bench rest with my AR-15, but it’s really not very effective past about 500y, and 500y is really pushing it. If I had a gun made in an obsolete caliber like .32-40 or .45-70, with a good barrel, good headspace, and mach-grade ammo, I’d be getting 1MOA performance out of that too, although I’d have ridiculously large holdovers, and a shorter effective range, since they’re lower velocity bullets.
On the other hand, I can reach out to 1000y or more with .338 Lapua Magnum (although IMO that’s too far for ethical hunting), .300 Win Mag, and probably even my 6.5 Creedmoor.
As other people noted, the Mandalay Bay murderer was shooting into a crowd from an elevate position, and he was using bump stocks to get a rough approximation or automatic fire. He could have been using lever-action rifles and murdered nearly identical numbers of people. Especially since what stopped him was suicide, not cops; he had killed himself well before cops managed to breach his hotel room.
Accuracy means nothing when you’re firing into a crowd. You essentially cannot miss and worse accuracy probably would have meant the Las Vegas shooter would have hit more people.
Really… Ever fired a smooth bore gun? I have. They’re plenty of fun, so long as your protection and ability to eat don’t rely on them. The difference in accuracy at range, plus maintaining velocity, is very different.
I’ll offer you this to read rather than me reinventing the wheel.
https://gizmodo.com/the-physics-of-bullets-why-a-modern-gun-shoots-10-time-5944455
I also find it interesting that “accuracy” became the substance of your criticism rather than the argument as a whole.
Would you care to elaborate on this?
If you read my edit, it’s already in there. Just like the judge said, modern firearms fall well outside the scope of weapons available to, and used by, the public at large. Yea, there’s ridiculous arguments of private citizens owning what constituted literally military weapons in the early days of the country, but those argument are devoid of framing.
So, in case you didn’t read the article:
“The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons—specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense,” the order said, and the current restrictions “pose a minimal burden on the right to self-defense and are comparably justified to historical regulation.”
…
“The features of modern assault weapons—particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality—along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” the order said.
Hence my argument in agreement with the assessment.
Okay? But the AR-10’s increased accuracy, muzzle velocity, range, and functionality are fine?
If you have a problem with AR, then replace that with “any modern semi-auto hunting rifle”. Because there is no functional difference.
Just for a minute I wish the gun control lobby would actually learn about guns. They’d be far more effective. And the for the record, I want them to be more effective.
They used to line up both armies in a field and all fire at each other at the same time with the hope of some musket balls hitting the other side. The invention of rifling increased accuracy greatly but was very difficult to do at the time. The muskets they used during the American revolution were very in-accurate, soldiers loaded inconsistent amounts of powder, the bullets were inconsistent sizes and density, and the barrels were limited by manufacturing methods.
It’s weird that high rate of fire and large magazine capacities aren’t mentioned because that is by far the deadliest aspect of modern firearms. Hand guns have both of those and are responsible for much more violent crime. Muzzle velocity, range, and accuracy describe most hunting rifles. I’d rather someone shoot 1 round of 50 cal per second from a 5 round magazine than 10 rounds of 9mm per second from a 30 round magazine.
While I applaud the fact that Massachusetts residents have protons (EDIT: protections! That should have said protections!) the federal government was not able to provide, this feel like the beginning of the end.
If anything not literally written in the constitution is really up to the states, you are not really a country. You are a bunch of separate countries that happen to have an identical constitution.
If anything not literally written in the constitution is really up to the states, you are not really a country. You are a bunch of separate countries that happen to have an identical constitution.
That’s literally the idea.
No it’s not.
Ninth Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
That’s not a GOOD idea though. Jettisoning 150 years of precedent and returning to the actual text of the constitution and nothing else means that you guy effective lose the ability to act like a modern state. It’s only a matter of time.
How is not everyone freaking out over this?
You guys worked really hard to get here. I can’t believe everyone is on board with “fuck being the greatest country in the world, we’ll just be a loose federation of constantly squabbling middle powers.”.
How is not everyone freaking out over this?
Because you’re wrong. Massachusetts is not throwing out all amendments to the constitution. They’re just adopting a saner interpretation of one of them, one more in line with a modern and civilized country.
Oh that’s easy. The education system completely whitewashed the real issues of the civil war. In the North they teach it was about slavery and in the South they teach it was about State’s Rights. And yes part of it was the right of states to be slave states.
But the actual core dispute was the balance of power between the states and the federal government. The South left because they didn’t think they could get anything out of the federal government. And rather than accept the national attitudes on Slavery were changing, they decided their local rule was more important.
So here we are 150 years later, slowly dismantling the federal government because one side is captured by lost cause ideologists who want the early 1800’s weak federal government back. The other side has been captured by wealthy libertarians who think rich people shouldn’t have any duties or burdens to their country.
Neither side wants a strong federal government beyond a military that’s banned from domestic operation. And the people are too busy arguing over statues to notice the house is unified in dismantling itself.
And don’t forget the neutrons. The Switzerland of subatomic particles.
(Thanks, i really didn’t notice the autocorrect snafu)
10th amendment specifies exactly what you’re saying, that nothing explicitly written is up to the people or states.
Well that’s exactly my point. It’s gutting 150 years of precedent making you guys a country.
It’s not a good thing. A war was fought over this.
The 1st 10 amendments have been there since nearly the beginning. We’re not losing anything, it has always worked like this.
What exactly do you think changed? MA said that within their borders, only certain guns are allowed. You still have the right to bear arms there (even if you more not part of a well-regulated militia, which I think should absolutely matter), just not the ones that can sweep across and kill a large crowd from far away.
I fail to see a downside.
EDIT: Removed hyperbole regarding presence of Bill of Rights vs length of existence of the USA
Firstly I agree
Secondly
You are a bunch of separate countries that happen to have an identical constitution.
How is that any different than the european union
It’s part of why so many things here in the good old u. s. of a. are backwards compared to other “modern” countries. It was founded by people who were trying to escape a “big” tyrannical government. So they put it into law that small government would have more power than the federal one. The USA then grew into one of the biggest governments in the world but the American ideals of distrusting large government is still there.
The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) and the 10th Amendment clearly state that the federal government has more, read: supreme, power over the states. You may be misremembering that the phrase “nor prohibited by it to the States” exists in the amendment. Basically, a federal law today will immediately and automatically nullify a 200 year old state law - precedence nor time of the state law will survive a Supreme Court review even if all 9 Justices are Federalist Society lackeys.
If anything not literally written in the constitution is really up to the states, you are not really a country.
is acceptable under a recent change to Second Amendment precedent from the US Supreme Court,
When Originalism backfires spectacularly!
This presents an interesting dilemma for conservative SCOTUS justices. How are they going to uphold a (stupid) adherence to original interpretations of laws and modern conservative judicial goals?
Nah, this judge based the ruling on the principle that the banned weapons were unsuitable for self defense use. SCOTUS will just say that the 2nd Amendment says nothing about self-defense and that it clearly intended that every American should be entitled to own weapons of war so that they can be part of that well-regulated militia that they imagine exists. To celebrate, they will then overturn all laws banning the ownership of full machine guns, artillery, and missiles.
P.S. I’m really just being absurd here but I cannot honestly say I would be surprised if it turned out I was right.
You expect they intend to apply their interpretations consistently. They do not.
Justice Scalia, the OG textualist, based on nothing in any statute or the Constitution, extended governmental sovereign immunity in tort to defense contractors.
When they claim to be adherents of any consistent interpretation of the Constitution, they are lying, and they know they are lying. The only consistency in conservative “jurisprudence” is handouts to corporations and police, churches and baseball.
There is no reason to assume they’re operating in good faith. Duplicity is a core feature of the modern day “conservative” party, whatever the fuck that means.
Do you really want courts reinterpreting established law on a whim for the sake of “modernism”? That sounds fashy to me, really stupid easy to abuse. If you don’t like the Constitution, change it. It has instructions on how to do that.
Do you really want courts reinterpreting established law on a whim for the sake of “modernism”?
That’s precisely what originalism does for the sake conservative political goals. Established law gives originalism its rhetorical force—“We’re just interpreting the law as it was intended to be!”—but makes little sense in any other period of American history. For example, somehow the Supreme Court of the mid and late 1960s justified the federal government’s interference in state affairs. But the modern Supreme Court, armed with its interpretations based on the original interpretation of the Constitution, find it suspect and support dismantling it?
The Constitution was supposed to be a living document, to evolve over time. There’s no justification for trying to not only roll back modern gains, but then freeze the law at the founding forever into the future.
That’s not to say that courts should reconsider “established law on a whim for the sake of “modernism””. There should be strong legal justifications for doing that as there were during the mid-late 1960s.
Also, I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “fashy”. I get you mean fascist, but…how is interpretation of the law fascist? Fascists are largely unconcerned with the law, and if they are, it’s in the service of power, not modernism. That’s why I’d argue that the Supreme Court justices, as conservative as they are, aren’t fascists specifically, though they might enable it by abdicating their judicial duties. Even Thomas, the corrupt motherfucker he is, cares about the law for more than power…he really just hates everything.
The Constitution was supposed to be a living document, to evolve over time. There’s no justification for trying to not only roll back modern gains, but then freeze the law at the founding forever into the future.
That’s why there’s a process for changing it built right in. That process does not include the judiciary taking on the role of the legislative branch.
how is interpretation of the law fascist?
You’re not suggesting interpretation of the law. You’re suggesting reinterpretation of the law. Changing it without changing it, implying that the actual words mean nothing, or whatever a judge decides they mean this week.
Fascists are largely unconcerned with the law, and if they are, it’s in the service of power, not modernism
Fascists love the law, it’s one of their most powerful weapons. Luckily for them, they’re never targeted by it, they simply interpret it in a way that it can be used against their enemies.
Is it remotely possible that other states will fall in line with this sort of thing? Sometimes there’s a domino effect with regards to controversial laws passed… for example, legalizing marijuana, gay marriage, etc.
Could something like this be what we need to start culling the senseless murders committed by people that can’t conduct themselves appropriately in society?
I don’t think you’re going to see Texas falling in line with this one. Other restrictive East Coast states might.
I keep looking back to Australia for comparison of lowing gun related crimes as a whole.
I think people not conducting themselves in society has been a trend ever since greed and power where invented. Whether you’re a biblical history person, or a cave man history person, someone has been hitting someone else in the head with a stick since we learn how to use thumbs.
Edit: oh you’re the disgruntled one from earlier. Hi there
Oh! My favorite online topic. Let’s make this more fun.
Without reading the comments yet, here’s my guess:
- At least one person calls another stupid (got it)
- People say other people are wrong instead of having differing views (yep)
- There’s arguments about the physical properties of guns like what = assault rifle, how many bullets it holds is too much, or physical size (oddly specific to historical weapons which I don’t see a lot, but yep)
- Someone over simplifies a complex idea or problems
- Someone says they or their rights are more important than someone elses (got it)
Nah, I’m sure all the comments will be well thought out and articulated, considerate, and inspire reflection instead of eliciting defensiveness…
Edit: added comments to my list.
You forgot to add the one about how someone will arrogantly complain about what people comment without ever intending to discuss the contents of the actual article.
😉, arrogant…matter of perspective.
I did comment. My sarcasm is an indictment of people’s online discussion conduct. They name call for starters.
Someone says they or their rights are more important than someone elses
I mean… this is a simple truth. I have the right to free speech, but I can still be held legally accountable if my words cause actual harm. In such instances, other people’s rights to various things override my right to free speech. (Yes, I’m simplifying. Free speech is just a quick example.)
I agree. I find it difficult for people to acknowledge that all parties of a topic that brings strong opinions have rights.
There’s a balance or compromise needed, but it’s easy to believe one person’s right trumps another’s, but how to determine who’s is more important is a difficult. We usually go with greater good, or personal life experiences.
I think it’s easy to side against firearms for the sake of safety and a greater good. I can’t imagine Americans allowing laws that restrict being allowed to have children though. I imagine most people would say that having children falls into an inalienable right category, but are there instances where people wouldn’t have been allowed to have kids if you had to apply for some kind of license?
Both examples affect safety and human lives.
Merry Christmas
People say other people are wrong instead of having differing views (yep)
Unfortunately the uneducated masses in this country literally cannot recognize statements of fact from statements of opinion, literally cannot recognize evidence when you put it right in front of them.
