Mass Shooting At Denver Batman Movie Premiere

"Fearful" is a mild exaggeration of the actual situation.
I was a little ill-at-ease, as to home defense.




NOT including the unarmed kids who
were murdered in the theater because thay lost
the dominance of power. Thay were HELPLESS, in compliance with your wishes
and with the wishes of the murderer.

The predator had a monopoly of power,
with lethal results for some of his victims.

Thay needed the crutch that u scorn.
Thay PERISHED for being helpless,
without sufficient defensive firepower, as u prefer.

The killer woud hug u and kiss u for making it so easy.





David

That is how I've always interpreted the second amendment.
By what has actually been written in your constitution.
But then, I am not a citizen of the US, so I'd be interested to hear the current working interpretations of the second amendment ... & not just from the gun lobby here, please.


Second Amendment/Rational Wiki:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment

It seems to me that "citizens' militias" are rather an out-of-date concept, certainly not a necessity, or a serious consideration, in the 21st century.
(when was the last episode of a "citizens' militia" taking up arms against the state?)

But how can the second amendment be interpreted as the "right" of any individual to buy whatever arms they choose, for whatever purpose?
James Holmes bought these weapons legally, apparently, & used them to wipe out the lives of 12 innocent people, say nothing of the others who were wounded or traumatized by this event.


The making of a sick Joker:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/the-making-of-a-sick-joker-20120722-22hr8.html

How can that possibly be justified, or allowed, even?

.

Of course...but you'll never convince the gun nuts. Also the NRA appears a classic example of a relatively small lobby group who use what are basically terror tactics to exert influence well beyond their numbers....we have such groups here, but not the gun lobby so much.

I can't think of any group here (in Oz) which argues for unlimited gun ownership for individuals.

But I would still be very interested in US A2Kers', responses to my questions about the second amendment.

Well, they exist and parrot the US stuff like little robots.

But I was saying they DON'T have such power...yet.

I was thinking of groups like the religious right, who have huge impact on such things as euthanasia and gay marriage because they terrify politicians. This while the majority DO support both those things. Of course, the Roman Catholic influence on the Labor Party is also important in this.

I know that they exist, Deb.

But they have bugger-all "power" because most people don't identify with them, at all.

So what is your point, Deb?
I was trying to encourage some discussion here about the second amendment & what it actually means to US posters. Because I would actually be interested in their responses.
Do you have some problem with that?

No. I have no idea how you would get that from what I said.

Read your posts.
You are saying discussion is not possible with the "gun nuts"
I am saying I'd like to hear from more than the "gun nuts" on interpretations of the second amendment.

I'm a US citizen and not a gun nut and I think the second ammendment is outdated, unnecessary and causes much more harm than good.

I never owned a gun or felt that I needed a gun for defense when I was living in the US. I grew up in a house in which there were no guns and I always felt absolutely safe, as I did in all the houses in which I lived in the US as an adult.

Thank you for your response, aidan.

The religious right is opposed to sex before marriage, perversion, homosexuality, divorce and abortion. What is this "huge influence"? It looks to me that the religious right have hardly any influence at all.

There are arguments against euthanasia and marriage being anything other than between one man and one woman which have nothing to do with religion.

Most serious scholars, who are not polemically invested in the gun culture, see the second amendment as a guarantee of participation in the militia. In his commentaries on the common law, Blackstone refers to people keeping and bearing arms according to their degree. He goes on to say that the game laws effectively disarm a large portion of the population. St. George Tucker, an American legal scholar, wrote his own commentaries on the constitution, published in 1803, in which he specifically points out Blackstone's comment on the right to bear arms. Most scholars see Tucker's comments as construing the second amendment to refer to a collective, civic right, and not an individual right. It ought to be needless to say that the gun lobby fulminates against that view, and either claim that Tucker has misconstrued the meaning of the amendment, or that scholars have misconstrued Tucker.

Historically, and even before the First Congress sent its proposed amendments to the states, the militia has shown itself not to be an effective agent of military security. There are almost no examples of the militia performing well away from the immediately vicinity of their homes. The only example of which i can think is the final battle of the Saratoga campaign, when New England militia came in large numbers because of their respect for Benedict Arnold (now cast as the arch-villian of our revolution). In effect, they were fighting for their homes, because after Washington drove the English from Boston, the New Englanders were rarely threatened other than by troops landed briefly from ships--with the exception of troops sent out by the English to raid what is now Vermont as a part of the Saratoga campaign. Thereafter, the New Englanders showed up to fight, and they particularly showed up to fight for Arnold.

Otherwise, the one thing one could count on was the militia running away, or refusing to fight. Washington was contemptuous of them, and over the decades, other military commanders learned not to rely on them. They even proved unreliable when fighting for their homes, as was the case at Bladensburg in Maryland, in 1814, where six or seven thousand militia ran away from fewer than 2000 redcoats, setting the stage for the burning of the city of Washington.

So, no matter what sort of fairy tales the gun nuts tell, the second amendment has never functioned to provide the United States with military security. It is completely accurate that many gun nuts think it allows them to keep and bear any goddamned gun i can afford. There is a culture, too, of guns being sold illegally at gun shows, or cassually and illegally out the back of somebody's truck in a parking lot (i've personally seen this on more than one occasion).

In two Supreme Court decisions in the latter part of the 19th century, the Court stated that the second amendment binds the Federal government, but not the states. That would seem to authorize gun control measures by the states. In 1939, in The United States versus Miller the Court observed that they had no reason to believe that a shotgun having a barrel of less than 18" length was a weapon useful for the militia. That decision referred to the National Firearms Act, which the Court upheld. So, as of 1939, the Court also recognized a right of the Federal goverment to control what types of weapons one might keep and bear. Inferentially, at least, the Court's decision in Miller refers to the constitutional authority of Congress to provide for arming the militia (Article One, Section Eight).

The gun nut lobby often dismiss the first clause of the second amendment ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state") because they wish to dismiss any notion that firearms can be regulated. I've had more tha one person tell me explicitly that that clause is meaningless. No direct tests of the right of the states to regulate firearms has reached the Supremes since Miller in 1939. In 2008, in the case of The District of Columbia versus Heller, the Court held that the second amendment protects the right of individuals to keep firearms for traditional purposes (such as self-defense in the home) in Federal enclaves. The gun nuts have been hysterically ecstatic, alleging that Heller strikes down all gun control legislation in a single broad stroke. This is by no means certain. Just as they ignore the first clause of the second amendment, they ignore the qualifier of "in a Federal enclave" in Heller. The District of Columbia is just such a special Federal enclave, and its government by the Congress is provided for in the Constitution. Whether or not this will lead to gun control laws being struck down remains to be seen, as it has not be used as a precedent in any cases in the Federal system since it was decided.

Almost none of that applies to the Colorado situation, though. As i've already mentioned, in Cruikshank and Presser in the 19th century, the Court held that the second amendment binds the Federal government but not the states. No decision since then has contradicted those decisions. The gun nuts are crowing that Heller "incorporates" the second amendment, meaning that it now applies to all the states as well as the Federal government. There is a problem with that interpretation, though, because the first clause of the amendment speaks of a well-regulated miliita, and the language about a Federal enclave in Heller make the proposition dubious.

But even under previous precedent, Colorado would still have the right to authorize their firearms legislation. While it is certainly true that nationally, the NRA is a lobbying body weilding far more power than its numbers would suggest, that is not the case in a state such as Colorado, where the power of the NRA is very real. If as is explicitly stated in Cruikshank and Presser, the states are not bound by the second amendment, then that power of the NRA in Colorado is above challenge. The claim of incorporation in Heller ought to be beneath the notice of any intelligent scholar. However, how the Court rules in any case in which a defendant cites Heller will ultimately determine wherher or not that case incorporates the second amendment (i.e., binds the states). It still does not address the issue of "well-regulated." The Court as currently composed is often seen as friendly to the pro-gun lobby.

Thank you for that considered response, Sentata.

You betcha--i suspect that if any of our American members bother to read it, there will be some to a great deal of dissent.

Well we shall see!

That's a tasty way to start a post. It sets one's stall out efficiently. So efficiently in fact that it almost renders proceeding further superfluous.

I would advise avoiding "most" because it implies that there are other serious scholars, possibly 49.99% of the species, who take a different view as a result of having a wider scope to their scholarship than the majority. Or a narrower one.

Jack's assertion is FALSE.
That was NOT the original interpretation; in his imagination ONLY.

OK, Olga,
here is the interpretation of the US Supreme Court in 1990:
( I posted this before )
in the case of US v. VERDUGO 11O S.Ct. 1O56 (at P. 1O61)
the United States Supreme Court declares that:

"The Second Amendment protects
'the right of the people to keep
and bear arms'".

THE SUPREME COURT THEN PROCEEDS TO DEFINE "THE PEOPLE" AS BEING THE
SAME PEOPLE WHO CAN VOTE TO ELECT THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
EVERY SECOND YEAR. (Notably, one need not join the National Guard
in order to vote for his congressman.) The Court further defined "the people"
to mean those people who have a right peaceably to assemble [1st Amendment]
and those who have the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures [4th Amendment]
in their persons houses, papers and effects (personal rights, not rights of states,
as the authoritarian-collectivists allege of the 2nd Amendment).

THE COURT HELD THAT THE TERM "THE PEOPLE" MEANS THE SAME THING
EVERYWHERE THAT IT IS FOUND IN THE CONSTITUTION OF 1787, AND
EVERYWHERE THAT IT IS FOUND IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

In VERDUGO (supra), the Court indicated that the same people are protected
by the First, SECOND, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments;
i.e. THE PEOPLE who can speak & worship freely can keep and bear arms.

The US Supreme Court re-affirmed this case in the HELLER case in 2008.

In the HELLER case,
the US Supreme Court approvingly says the following:

In Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846),
the Georgia Supreme Court
construed the Second Amendment as
protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore
struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly.
Its opinion perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause
[i.e.: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"]
of the Second Amendment furthers the purpose announced in
the prefatory clause, [i.e., the militia clause]
in continuity with the English right:

"The right of the whole people,
old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only,
to keep and bear arms of every description,
and not such merely as are used by the militia,
shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon,
in the smallest degree;
and all this for the important end to be attained:
the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia,
so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.
Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant
to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right,
originally belonging to our forefathers,
trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked
sons and successors, re-established by the revolution
of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists,
and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta!”

[All emphasis has been lovingly added by David.]








It IS a necessity to obay the Supreme Law of the Land, Olga. The Constitution is the ultimate authority.




U may disapprove, Olga,
but the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land
and it remains intact as the political contract
and as the legitimacy of government.
Government is constituted of the Constitution,
as ice is constituted of water.




That is so by denying government any JURISDICTION of civilian gun possession.
It also respects the Constitutional requirement of: "equal protection of the laws." That means no discrimination.
THAT 's how.





David

If I remember my WW2 history correctly the British design a simple to produce sub-machine gun and send it plans to the people living under the Nazis and thousands was manufacture under the nose of the SS.

Those plans I am sure still exist and what can be done in France under the nose of the SS in the 1940s surely can be done with modern machine shop tools by any amount needed under the nose of the ATF in the 2010s.

Footnote breaking news that fearsome 100 rounds magazine on that assault rifle jam forcing him to fall back on secondary weapons.

Not a big surprise given how large magazines are far more likely to jam then smaller magazines.