[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Fissile material is not inherently evil, either. Should someone with the financial means to procure and process it be allowed to do so?
[/quote]
Here we go again with the tired and weak debate strategy that says, “Shucks, if we can’t ban AR-15’s we wouldn’t be able to ban ICBM’s. Now all we ‘reasonable’ people admit that ICBM’s are out of bounds so let’s just continue to be ‘reasonable’ by conceding the government can ban “military-looking” weapons as well.”
[/quote]
No, it is the natural argument that arises in response to that particular line of thought. It is the reductio ad absurdum of the proposition in question.[/quote]
I would hope that it would not be natural for any person to make this absurd argument.
There is here neglect that what was written is “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” and not different things that the founding fathers didn’t write, such as “the right to keep arms and ordnance shall not be infringed” or “the right to keep and deploy (or other word) arms and ordnance shall not be infringed.”
If they had chosen to write something of those sorts, then perhaps - perhaps - the above extension to absurdity could at least begin to have some aspect of some sort to it. But, they didn’t.
There’s also rarely, if ever, any use to a reductio ad absurdum that is in fact not parallel. To be valid, each detail has to hold up. Otherwise it is nothing but absurd.
From Miller, “ordinarily when called for service [militiamen during the late eighteenth century] were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.”
So, today, do our servicemen show up with their own weapons-grade uranium or plutonium? Obviously not, and since they don’t, smh’s attempt to make fissile material part of the same category as hand-carryable arms is absurd and shows nothing other than the lengths he will go to.
As reported in https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:_UGl0su-vK8J:www.law.ku.edu/sites/law.drupal.ku.edu/files/docs/law_review/v60/05_Obermeier_Final.pdf+ordnance+arms+“second+amendment”+-ordinance&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESi6lsd5XZvP4QmTg_xo_vM22b1AGNBibn63BBp225H_4uHUqUjQFpZIdIWfZ8wZiB5W6J3vz70KhGl9iDN1ggVMbR0Ga8l1ntp0fBZtz2gBYDYttRwwJGHm3C81NeAdfgffzinO&sig=AHIEtbRjjFupKztBL3gwFPh5Z5bUk9wCuA, regarding Scalia’s writing for the majority decision, "Specifically, the Court considered what “arms” were protected under the Second Amendment, giving rise to a number of important and, at times, seemingly contradictory points. For one, it noted that “arms” did not only refer to weapons useful in a military setting, as had frequently been claimed. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, the Court held that, much like the First and Fourth Amendments, the Second Amendment was not a static creature, constrained to protect only the types of arms that existed during the time of the Framers: “[T]he Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
From Webster’s dictionary of 1828, which is about as authoritative as one can get with regard to American word meaning in that day, while there appears not to be an absolute distinction between “arms” and “ordnance,” the definition of “arms” with regard to law is:
In law, arms are any thing which a man takes in his hand in anger, to strike or assault another.
while the definition for “ordnance” is:
ORD’NANCE, n. [from ordinance.] Cannon or great guns, mortars and howitzers; artillery.
So if there was an understood distinction where arms - let alone arms that one can “bear” - usually did not mean heavy weapons and ordnance most often meant heavy weapons, and clearly they did not choose the word ordnance, it may be that the Second Amendment, as in Supreme Court decisions, refers to arms that can be carried. And not to ordnance that cannot be carried let alone the absurd such as nuclear weapons, stocks of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, tanks, bomb-loaded F-16’s, etc.
It might even be that when arguments descent to such absurdity, it is because those making them have nothing, thus bringing them to such an empty resort.