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 Alex C wrote:
2nd Amendment.

It restricts the government from infringing in our right to bear arms. If you ban certain types of arms, you're infringing on our right to bear them.

Current laws banning certain types of arms are unconstitutional.

It doesn't say "right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, except certain types that the government thinks we shouldn't own".

This is just plain nonsense. NOBODY, outside of maybe a tiny and irrelevant lunatic fringe of militia zealots, thinks that the right to bear arms is an unlimited right. Nobody thinks that private citizens should be allowed to own nuclear weapons, artillery, etc. So at this point we've already accepted the general principle that the government can ban certain classes of weapons and we're just arguing the fine points of which particular weapons should be banned.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:
Those of us who want to, should have the right to be armed so as to be able to challenge our own military.

And this is wishful thinking that has nothing to do with reality. Individuals with AR15s have no realistic hope of challenging the military, and arming individuals with the ability to challenge the military would result in a horrifying cost in deaths from accidents. The average person simply does not have the ability to safely use a fighter jet or tank or whatever, and allowing them to do so almost inevitably means that people will die from their incompetence. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I'd rather not have to worry about having a plane crash into my house because someone confused the ability to buy a MiG-21 with the ability to fly it safely, or because someone didn't buy enough land to safely contain their artillery range and let a few shells hit the adjacent neighborhood.

I always find the idea of the 2nd amendment helping against the government to be ridiculous. Dictatorships don't just pop out of the ground. You will have lost your 2nd amendment rights long before it turns into something you could get a popular uprising forming against.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I always find the idea of the 2nd amendment helping against the government to be ridiculous. Dictatorships don't just pop out of the ground. You will have lost your 2nd amendment rights long before it turns into something you could get a popular uprising forming against.

That's true.

Hence, the 2nd is here to stay.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
2nd Amendment.

It restricts the government from infringing in our right to bear arms. If you ban certain types of arms, you're infringing on our right to bear them.

Current laws banning certain types of arms are unconstitutional.

It doesn't say "right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, except certain types that the government thinks we shouldn't own".

This is just plain nonsense. NOBODY, outside of maybe a tiny and irrelevant lunatic fringe of militia zealots, thinks that the right to bear arms is an unlimited right. Nobody thinks that private citizens should be allowed to own nuclear weapons, artillery, etc. So at this point we've already accepted the general principle that the government can ban certain classes of weapons and we're just arguing the fine points of which particular weapons should be banned.

There is no need to make owning any weaponry illegal. The expense of owning some of those weapons would be astronomical and keep the numbers in circulation down to a minimum, almost certainly zero for nuclear weaponry.

Artillery and such I think should be allowed. I think you should also be allowed to own operational tanks with functioning main weapons. Anyone who goes to the bother of maintaining a working tank with some ammo isn't going to use it to murder someone, or shoot up a school, or hold up a liquor store. Same reason automatic weaponry shouldn't require a license, crime with said weapons is all-but-nonexistent because they are big flashy and expensive. So really only law abiding citizens wishing to exercise their 2nd amendment rights would own them.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
2nd Amendment.

It restricts the government from infringing in our right to bear arms. If you ban certain types of arms, you're infringing on our right to bear them.

Current laws banning certain types of arms are unconstitutional.

It doesn't say "right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, except certain types that the government thinks we shouldn't own".

This is just plain nonsense. NOBODY, outside of maybe a tiny and irrelevant lunatic fringe of militia zealots, thinks that the right to bear arms is an unlimited right. Nobody thinks that private citizens should be allowed to own nuclear weapons, artillery, etc. So at this point we've already accepted the general principle that the government can ban certain classes of weapons and we're just arguing the fine points of which particular weapons should be banned.

There is no need to make owning any weaponry illegal. The expense of owning some of those weapons would be astronomical and keep the numbers in circulation down to a minimum, almost certainly zero for nuclear weaponry.

Artillery and such I think should be allowed. I think you should also be allowed to own operational tanks with functioning main weapons. Anyone who goes to the bother of maintaining a working tank with some ammo isn't going to use it to murder someone, or shoot up a school, or hold up a liquor store. Same reason automatic weaponry shouldn't require a license, crime with said weapons is all-but-nonexistent because they are big flashy and expensive. So really only law abiding citizens wishing to exercise their 2nd amendment rights would own them.

Exactly.

But people will still write it all off as "nonsense", being quite happy to let governmental agencies gak all over the 2nd amendment in the name of "safety" and "common sense" while simultaneously condemning Donald Trump for seeking to infringe on people's 1st and 4th amendment rights (as we all should, his proposals are terrible). Y'know how he sounds like an absolute fething moron? That's what "common sense gun reform" proponents sound like to me whenever they're spouting their ignorant bs.

 Grey Templar wrote:
There is no need to make owning any weaponry illegal. The expense of owning some of those weapons would be astronomical and keep the numbers in circulation down to a minimum, almost certainly zero for nuclear weaponry.

Even a minimum is way too much, if that minimum is defined only by cost. Rich people aren't immune to being stupid with incredibly dangerous weapons just because they have lots of money. And you're clearly in the minority on this point. There's pretty indisputable precedent that, regardless of your opinion on whether or not the government should ban those weapons, they clearly have the power to do so.

Artillery and such I think should be allowed. I think you should also be allowed to own operational tanks with functioning main weapons. Anyone who goes to the bother of maintaining a working tank with some ammo isn't going to use it to murder someone, or shoot up a school, or hold up a liquor store. Same reason automatic weaponry shouldn't require a license, crime with said weapons is all-but-nonexistent because they are big flashy and expensive. So really only law abiding citizens wishing to exercise their 2nd amendment rights would own them.

I'm not worried about someone robbing a liquor store with a tank that costs more than the value of anything in the store, I'm worried about idiots who don't know how to use a tank safely. I've given this example before, but consider the FAA's regulation of ex-military aircraft. There are extremely strict rules on where you can fly a fighter jet, what qualifications you have to have, etc. And it's because there was an ugly history of people with more money than sense buying ex-military aircraft and crashing them because they didn't have the ability to fly them safely. So the end result is that you can buy a MiG-21 for surprisingly cheap, but there's a long list of limits on what you can do with it and very few civilians are legally allowed to fly one.

The same situation exists with tanks and artillery and stuff like that. With a "normal" gun the average person is certainly capable of using it safely. You'll always have accidents because people are people, but the safety requirements for, say, an AR-15 are fairly basic. If you can follow the safety rules for a single-shot .22 rifle you can safely use an AR-15. But with a tank or artillery piece suddenly things change. Instead of an average back yard and a decent backstop you need miles of land for a firing range and it's very easy to misjudge the arc of a shot and hit the wrong target. And those stray shots suddenly have a lot more potential to kill people. A miss with an AR-15 won't kill someone unless it's a direct hit, which is incredibly unlikely. A stray artillery shell can kill a whole family if it lands in their house.

So, at absolute minimum, we need strict laws about owning and operating those big guns. Licenses, mandatory proof that you own a few hundred square miles of land to build an artillery range, etc. It is not acceptable to kill a whole house full of people just because you decided to buy a tank instead of an expensive car.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
There is no need to make owning any weaponry illegal. The expense of owning some of those weapons would be astronomical and keep the numbers in circulation down to a minimum, almost certainly zero for nuclear weaponry.

Even a minimum is way too much, if that minimum is defined only by cost. Rich people aren't immune to being stupid with incredibly dangerous weapons just because they have lots of money. And you're clearly in the minority on this point. There's pretty indisputable precedent that, regardless of your opinion on whether or not the government should ban those weapons, they clearly have the power to do so.

The government has the power to infringe on all our rights. They however do not have any right to do so.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The government has the power to infringe on all our rights. They however do not have any right to do so.

Clearly-established precedent disagrees with you.

Thats an issue I have with Judicial activism.

I think all the valuable discussion this thread could have generated has come and gone before it was made.