Bob Costas and the 2nd Amendment

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Don’t writhe in pain, amigo. You’re the same guy, who in his own mind does know what constitutional mechanics are, who was just a short time ago telling the online world that natural rights are granted by the government.[/quote]

Nope, I didn’t say natural rights are granted by the government. Constitutional ones are, however. And constitutions do recognize natural rights, and they also grant others - they don’t do one, or the other.

And if you think our Second Amendment - which does allow some restrictions on weapons - violates some natural right to own whatever weapon you want, let me know.

[quote]You may not have an agenda but you have a position you want to defend at any cost. You begin that defense by haughtily carrying on about F-16’s.

[i]“If private fully armed F-16’s can be prohibited than small arms can be.”[/quote]

This is, by definition, a straw man. I never made any such argument. I began with noting how DD and you posited that the Second Amendment lets citizens’ own pretty much whatever they want so “they can shoot back at the federales.” My use of the F-16 was to demonstrate that, no, the Second Amendment does not allow you to own whatever the government owns in terms of arms so that you may be in a state of “rivalry” with the feds. The government has F-16s, citizens do not and cannot, so the “rival” theory is bunk.

I never used the existence of F-16s as a justification to restrict other arms. That’s wishful thinking and bad reading on your part.

"States historically have some regulatory powers when it comes to guns so practically anything a state can conceive of can be limited.

True, and while you were (sadly) surprised to learn of that fact in the last few days, that doesn’t mean it any less true.

“The federal government has taxing authority so ala John Roberts practically anything can be restricted or imposed by merely exercising taxing authority.”[/i]

Well, no, the taxation power isn’t unlimited, but the federal government isn’t restricted from using its taxation power here. If the feds used the taxation power to basically make it impossible to own assault weapons, I’d suspect you could convince a court that there would be an infringement on the basis that the motive was clearly to deny a citizen his right to something (maybe, but courts don’t like to wade into political taxation debates). But ordinary taxation? Yes. And if you don’t like it, the answer is at the ballot box.

Your methodology is fundamentally flawed when it comes to the subject. To a degree.

No, it isn’t - the problem is you just haven’t considered the issue fully, and you don’t know how it works. You just haven’t. There is no one “methodology”, but I have basically jibed with Justice Scalia’s take on the whole issue. Is his take fundamentally flawed, too?

[quote]And by the way, whether or not you personally own guns doesn’t “purify” your argument.
[/quote]

Didn’t say it did, only making the point that I have no personal issue with guns and I am not incorporaring personal issues into the analysis.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]pushharder wrote:

NO, he doesn’t, for cryin’ out loud, or he wouldn’t have had to say, “We’ll see,” when it comes to hand-held rocket launchers.

You are some kinda willfully blind/deaf.[/quote]

Christ Almighty. I said:

Well, sure, he has on [u]non-hand-held weapons.[/u] Do you agree with him?

Scalia said:

[i]I mean, obviously, [u]the (2nd) amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried.[/u] It’s to ‘keep and bear.’ So, it doesn’t apply to cannons. But I suppose there are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to be – it will have to be decided."

http://cnsnews.com/...have-be-decided
[/i]

Scalia said the Second Amendment does not cover non…repeat NON-hand-held arms. Scalia said that for hand-held arms like rocket launchers, “we’ll see”.

Two categories: non-hand-held, and hand-held. Got it? Scalia says non-hand-held = not covered. Scalia says hand-held in the vein of rocket launchers = “we’ll see.”

So, Scalia does not say “we’ll see” as to non-held-hand weapons, he said the Second Amendment does not apply to non-held-hand arms.

On the category of non-held-arms, do you agree with him, or not?

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

Yeah, if you notice they list out things that can qualify and have cruel and unusual separate. They rule it unconstitutional if it is either cruel OR unusual. They have ruled things unconstitutional on the sole reason that they are unusual and the sole reason that they are cruel. They have ruled that it protects us from either.

"
The “essential predicate” is “that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity,” especially torture.
“A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.”
“A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
“A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”
"

The very fact that they have used the 8th to overturn COMMON practices proves my point explicitly.[/quote]

Ok, so you are saying the Supreme Court has always gotten the 8th Amendment right when striking these common practices down?

[DoubleDuce]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

Yeah, if you notice they list out things that can qualify and have cruel and unusual separate. They rule it unconstitutional if it is either cruel OR unusual. They have ruled things unconstitutional on the sole reason that they are unusual and the sole reason that they are cruel. They have ruled that it protects us from either.

"
The “essential predicate” is “that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity,” especially torture.
“A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.”
“A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
“A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”
"

The very fact that they have used the 8th to overturn COMMON practices proves my point explicitly.[/quote]

Ok, so you are saying the Supreme Court has always gotten the 8th Amendment right when striking these common practices down?[/quote]

That question was posed to you first.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

No sir. That is NOT what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting the 2nd amendment may have originally allowed for the private ownership and use of weapons whose modern equivalents could not possibly have been foreseen and subsumed under that original intent. It’s weaponry that has evolved. Not the constitution. [/quote]

I don’t have a problem with this, this is absolutely true. The Framers didn’t envision modern global industrial warfare. And that is why this is a thorny issue from a public policy perspective. The US had to “keep up” in the arms race since WWI, which meant the US had to invest in tanks, planes, missiles, all that stuff. The needs of national security quite obviously drove weaponry in this direction (on a massive scale) and the US government had no choice but to arm itself in this way.

So, as a function of national security, to protect itself from the world, the US government is the proud owner of all these weapons the Founders never envisioned. Well, has the need of the US government to own all of these weapons to defend itself created an entitlement to US citizens to own all of them as well out of some constitutional requirement that the private populace always be in a position to win a war against the federal government?

That’d be an odd result - geopolitical/national security concerns now “define” what kinds of weapons an American private citizen is entitled to own in civil society. During the Cold War, the US was forced to get an arsenal of nuclear missiles - well, does that reflexively mean that if Apple, Inc. wanted to buy a nuke, they could? National security needs dictate what weapons we can privately own?

That’s where the “rival” theory ends up, which I think is a preposterous result. And I don’t think the Founders intended for such an odd result.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]pushharder wrote:

He’s going to do what he already has done - harp on the tradition that allows states to regulate arms to a certain degree. Problem is, technological advancement was NEVER the basis to the best of my knowledge for those particular regulations, at least in the early days, the early days where original intent was contemporary.[/quote]

You don’t have any knowledge of these “particular state regulations,” so how in the world can you possiblu know that technological advancement was never the basis for them?

Even by the mid 1800’s when the full fledged Gatling gun and repeating rifles and revolvers were in use I’m betting one can’t find many if any state laws that restrict their possession in the interest of public safety as compared to less advanced weapons. Yes, you CAN find state or local laws where all guns had some limitations but not specific ones based on a sliding scale of their “ease of large scale death infliction potential.”

The issue isn’t if they [b]did[/i], the operative issue is whether the could have. Even if you’re right, just because they didn’t did not mean they couldn’t.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

That question was posed to you first.[/quote]

Nope, the court has gotten it wrong.

[thunderbolt23]

Also, guys, this has been tremendous fun - it really has - but I just can’t keep up with the depth of the conversation in light of how busy I am at work. As such, I have to bow out (this time, for real).

But it really has been fun, and no hard feelings. I respect all of your opinions on the matter, and they force me to think hard about my own. Always a good experience. And we’ve got more common ground than different, and there’s nothing a few round of sporting clays couldn’t solve between us.

(Although I’d protest Push and DD’s attempt to use gatling guns to shoot the clays.)

[kamui]

the militia is supposed to be “well regulated”.
What does that mean ?
What does this regulation involve and entail ?
How is it enforced ?
By whom ?