–Children who get a hold of daddy’s gun (about 20 kids/day are shot in this country)
–Gun suicides by household members other than the designated owner
–Shootings (either intentional or not) by household members other than the designated owner
–People killed by stolen guns
–People killed with their own gun
No he didn’t, at least not the way I read him. Nor did I for that matter, although I said I would be open to a conversation (and still am).
Will hopefully reply to the rest of your post to me later
Seatbelts certainly can (or at least I have never heard of a failure analogous to the ones we are speaking of for smart tech). They don’t fail to do their job if they are buckled–they may be put to breaking strain by the force of impact, or they may not be buckled fully, but their job is to impede (among other things) the human body’s propensity to catapult through the windshield at crash impact, they don’t randomly fail to do their job. Seatbelt failure is failure of the material to hold up to the sum of the physical forces it encounters, not a failure to do it’s job from the start.
Edited to add: A seatbelt is also very simple mechanically speaking, and if so inclined a car owner could easily check functionality and maintenance it. A smart chip/electronic locks/biometrics are in no way simple enough to be fully maintenanced, repaired, or fixed by the majority of the owners they would end up being with in this hypothetical policy. That is a HUGE difference.
I would say the ‘job’ of seatbelts is to reduce the risk of serious injury and/or death in the event of an MVA–a job they can fail to do under certain circumstances. In fact, they can be contributory to injury/death in some cases. Thus, if the standard for mandating seatbelts had been ‘They can never contribute to an increased risk of death in an MVA,’ they would not now be mandated.
Setting aside the fact that you seem to be grossly underestimating the complexity of modern auto restraint systems: A gun owner, if so inclined, could be just as vigilant in assessing and maintaining the functionality of his smart-gun technology as he could his seatbelts.
You gave me a lot to chew on. ![]()
I think it’s squared by the fact that the FFs trusted the states to make sure that sentiment occurred. Look at the intent and language of the Constitution and the BOR - there isn’t much to protect citizens from their states’ infringing on their rights (and not just keep and bear rights, individual rights generally). Even though individual states could conceivably impair a citizen’s rights as much as the federal government could, the FFs didn’t use the Constitution to protect citizens from those abuses because they had great confidence that the states - closer and more accountable to the people, jealously protective of their turf against a new federal government - simply wouldn’t infringe on them. There was no need to recognize an individual right to guns because a state, which was in charge of providing for ready militia to serve against enemies (outside and inside), would surely do that (and already did in some cases, since they had state constitutions that predated the US Constitution).
You’d only erect a universal individual right in the Constitution if you thought there was a serious need to protect citizens from state infringement of rights. There was no serious concern about that at the time - states were trusted, the new federal government was not as much.
So there is no inconsistency - Madison wanted (politically) a well-armed populace and he had every reason to believe that states would properly handle making that a reality.
I think that makes sense, and I don’t think those are mutually exclusive, for the reasons stated above. States could and would handle taking care of the desire to see an armed populace. The FFs simple weren’t worried that states would infringe on those rights, however defined.
Ok, and an important checkpoint here - what you wrote is true, from an originalist point of view, meaning the intent of the law is fixed at the point of creation and doesn’t change as the times change. Maybe, though, based on how things have changed, we should incorporate rights, because we’ve learned that states are much more likely to infringe on rights than the FFs thought they would, and so the assumptions have changed.
But my point is this - the originalism doctrine that conservatives and libertarians tell us must be followed says we can’t do that.
And I think you’ve highlighted a point I was trying to make earlier - I think you can get to an individual right on gun ownership of you want to say, hey, the times have changed and so have the assumptions, so the state of our rights must be adjusted accordingly. True originalism, however, forbids such an approach.
So, the 2A crowd is going to have to make peace with the fact that they are Living Constitutionalists as much as dreaded liberals to get to the right they want to be constitutionally recognized.
Mmmm, nah.
I’m a gear and tools type guy, as you may be able to relate to.
Would you want to do an eye surgery with a tool you don’t trust?
Mandating smart gun tech. would most likely just increase the demand and value of arms made pre-mandate.
Like the pre-ban stuff when there was a capacity limit.
Of course not. But neither do I set the bar for ‘trustworthy’ at ‘the tool must be guaranteed to never, ever fail.’ If that were the standard, no eye surgery would occur. (I assume the same is true for the tools you use as well.)
There are ways of dealing with that–buybacks; insurance requirements, etc.
Hahahaha!!!
That sums up the level of media discussion on firearms rather succinctly
I have to jump in and say that you’re wrong about the “job” of a seat belt. Sure you can define it’s job to fit your argument, but that’s pure sophistry.
What seatbelts are designed to do Is keep passengers from being partially or fully ejected from the vehicle, becoming missiles that could injure other passengers, and position them so that the airbags can be deployed effectively. Passengers are sometimes injured by rapid deceleration, which causes trama to soft tissues and internal organs, but that’s physics, and blaming the seatbelt is like blaming the patch of ground that the airplane crashed into.
This has the effect of “keeping the passenger” safe far more often than not. When it does not is when the physics involved are far beyond what can be designed for in a cost effective manner. or that a passenger would be willing to wear. There is simply too much force involved in a high speed head on collision or side impact.
The only way a seatbelt could be said to fail is if it actually broke. It’s 2 inch webbing which has working load of like 5,000 or 6,000 pounds (off the top of my head). Your body will turn to jello before it fails. I’ve never heard of one breaking.
In summary, whoever stated that you might be able to mandate electronic gun locks once they have a failure rate similar to a seatbelts had a good point. Your counter point about how seatbelts “fail” according to your own broad and impossibly vague definition is based on ignorance at best.
Furthermore, as someone who owns firearms for hunting, self-defense, and the pure joy of shooting, I would like to hear specifically which technology you are endorsing.
The effectiveness of safety technology is measured in…How effective it is at producing safety. So there’s no sophistry involved in talking about seatbelts failing if they produce a bad outcome. No one cares about the tensile strength of their seatbelts; all they care about is whether they are, on balance, better off wearing them. This is a straightforward issue of risk/reward–nothing “broad and impossibly vague” about it.
If anything, sophistry lies in defining seatbelt failure solely in terms of breakage. Doing so reminds me of the old medical wisecrack: ‘The operation was a success, but the patient died.’
And 99.9% of the time they produce a vastly better outcome. You stated that they are “contributory to death or injury in some cases”. This is nonsense.
What do you think would have happened if the patient injured by their seatbelt hadn’t been wearing it? Instead of their chest rapidly decelerating against a seatbelt, their chest would have hit the steering wheel, which has a smaller surface area and would create greater trauma by applying the same force to a smaller area. Or their head would have gone through the windshield. Or their head and chest would have been partially ejected from the passenger compartment and crushed when the vehicle rolled over on them. Or any other number of horrible things would have happened to them.
In short, whatever direct harm a seatbelt caused, without a seatbelt those same patients would have been, with absolute certainty, worse off. There are literally millions of motor vehicle crashes a year in this country, every now and then you can find a freak crash where a patient survived because he was thrown clear of the impact, but those are one in a thousand, or one in several thousand. On the other hand, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people killed in crashes every year who would have survived, probably with minor scrapes and bruises if they had just worn their damned seatbelt.
You’re talking out of your ass with this seatbelt nonsense. If you can’t admit you’re wrong, just move on to something else.
Did states provide munitions and arms to militiamen during this time period?
I understand your argument and perhaps this is semantics, but here is my perspective. The Constitution as written in 1787 provided a means to change/add amendments and the 14th was added, at least in part, to clarify what constitutionally granted rights apply equally. From there the 2A has been incorporated (McDonald). Is that not the original intent of the founders for the Constitution as a whole?
I get that you believe the original intent of the 2A was not an individual right (I disagree), but you keep saying originalists need to accept they believe in a “living” document like liberals. I don’t see it that way. Originalists aren’t interpreting the document from today’s viewpoint/perspective/culture, which is my understanding of what Marshall was arguing. Rather, the proper procedure was followed as laid out in the Constitution and, regardless of the dispute over what the 2A’s original intent was, at this point, it has been incorporated by the 14th and McDonald.
I donno, maybe I don’t understand what it means to be an originalist, but I don’t think most people that believe they are or claim to be originalist don’t accept that the Constitution can change.
Yes, basically - original intent doesn’t mean looking to 1787 automatically, it means looking at the original intent of the particular law you’re looking at when that law passed. So, if you’re an originalist, for the 14A, you’d look to the original intent of why it was passed in the era it was passed/ratified (1789).
Ok, but that was my point above. Focus an originality lens in the 14A - was the intent in 1789 to protect citizens from state infringements on their rights to firearms? Was the 14A (or part of it) driven by a worry that “we didn’t think these individual states would start enacting gun rights restrictions, but they are, and now we need to pass something that makes these states subject to the 2A…”? Is there any support for the idea this was a/the reason?
If the answer is no, isn’t the conservative approach to engage in judicial restraint, not invent a new right unsupported by original intent, and defer to the democratic process?
Really? How about cases in which a person in a car on fire after an MVA cannot get out because of their seatbelt, and burns to death? How about someone in a submerged car post-MVA who cannot exit the vehicle and drowns?
I agree that the risk/benefit ratio definitely favors wearing seatbelts. That’s why I wear mine all the time. But the ratio is not zero; ie, they can contribute to death.
Still “nonsense”?
As my comment above makes clear, this shoe is now on the other foot. (To be clear: You’re the other foot.)
I think I’m missing something…the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868…
The cases where a person is trapped in a burning car or drowns are the 0.1% that I referred to, and I’m being very generous when I give it 0.1%.
On the rare occasions when people are trapped in burning or submerged vehicles it was far more likely that they couldn’t get out or be gotten out because their legs were pinned under the dash board, or the driver’s side door was too deformed to open and the lay person just doesn’t know how to breach auto glass. These are relatively common occurrences in general (entrapments, not fire or drownings), and require an extended extrication. Not because their seatbelt held them in. Any witnesses to an actual case of someone dying in a car fire who blamed the seatbelt didn’t know what they were talking about. That is more urban myth than anything.
Auto safety has evolved by leaps and bounds just from the mid-00’s to now, never mind since the 70’s when the notorious Pinto would burst into flames.
Back to the discussion about guns, the vast majority of gun owners would probably voluntarily adopt an electronic safety measure that had a success rate of over 99.9%, that had been proven over decades of use the way seatbelts have. Your counter point about seatbelts contributing to injury or death is nonsense and you should move on. From what I have read on these boards, I doubt you will.
After my third post I’m starting to get the feeling of the scientist arguing with the flat-earther. I’m sure you’ll persist, and I have better things to do, and there are already more intelligent posters in this thread. But I hope no one reading this actually buys into your stupidity about seatbelts.
Sorry, typo. 1868.
I’m not very far in NV, but NCR just gave me a walkie talkie, and Boone is a bomb companion.
Don’t think I could ever side with a slaver, not even on an “evil” play through. Just not my thing.
Sure, but speculation based on solid footing. Private citizens owned warships that could devastate half a city block in seconds when the 2nd was ratified.
Let’s not pretend they were also unaware that technology advances
I’d bet a mortgage payment it has more to do with $ than “smashing the patriarchy”.
We don’t, lol.
Who the hell cares? If someone isn’t being an asshole, let them love what they love, like what they like, and do what they do.