Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!
Description
Fury Belle #104 - Texas State Law
(Jul 28th, 2015 Update)
(Jul 28th, 2015 Update)
I still remember the time I was talking with some guys and our conversation topics went; apocalypse plans, zombies, homeless people, hobo spiders, poisonous v venomous, then oddly enough kit kats… In that order. I still find it weird to this day.
Ouch. Your argument about Steven’s dissent was preempted before you even finished your post.
Whether or not a state is “regulating the militia” properly or not has no bearing on the power of the federal government to legislate on the issue. Your argument might be appropriate if we were talking about McDonald v. Chicago and the incorporation of the Second Amendment to protect against state governments… but that’s not the conversation we were having.
We could sit here all night and watch you copy-paste from wikipedia, but that’s incredibly boring. Hopefully it at least entertained whoever was still subscribed to this thread.
Edited
Read the next two paragraphs after your quote. What right is he talking about?
So, you have every (individual) right to form a militia, just so long as your state has regulated them properly, something they don’t seem to be doing these days.
Dear oh dear. Someone doesn’t seem to know that Supreme Court opinions can have multiple dissents. Breyer and Stevens both filed dissents that all four dissenting justices joined. Stevens’ dissent does not begin from an individual right to bear arms for self-defense but indeed questions seriously whether such a right exists in the amendment. Breyer’s argument is intended as a secondary case: giving initial ground and arguing that the decision still should not hold. All four dissenting justices joined both opinions.
With all four dissenters having joined both opinions, one must look to the justices’ other public statements to determine their view on the individual right. And what do these statements say?
Souter: “The Second Amendment does not create any right in U.S. citizens to possess any and all weapons regardless of state regulation, but rather concerns only authority of the states to keep and raise militias”
The Notorious RBG? “It gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only — and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation.”
And how about your man Breyer? Did he ever make any other statements about his view of the Second Amendment? Maybe he wrote an entire chapter on Heller in a book titled Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View, in which he enters upon the smackdown with this:
“This historical examination led the majority to conclude that in the eighteenth century an individual’s right to possess guns was important both for purposes of defending that individual and for purposes of a community’s collective self-defense. It then determined that the framers intended the Second Amendment to protect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms not only to effectuate the more general right to maintain a “well regulated Militia” but also independently as an end…
The dissenters (of which I was one) focused on the words a “well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” In our view, that language identifies the amendment’s major underlying value. Its purpose is to ensure the maintenance of the “well regulated Militia” that it mentions…”
No, it’s pretty clear that the liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are not really enamored of the idea of an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment.
Edited
So yes, the supreme court disagrees with your “collective right” interpretation 9-0. It must have been a shock to the people who made up that argument out of thin air… at least the ones who hadn’t already been fired for falsifying their research.
Edited
Dear oh dear. Try reading Breyer’s dissent a little more carefully. He starts from an individual rights perspective, and justifies the DC handgun ban despite it.
Leave this one to the experts, man. I know you think you’re a polymath, but maybe trust that some things are outside your range of expertise.
I’ve read more of it than you have.
For instance, I know that it was decided five to four, not unanimously.
Go learn something.
So you disagree with all 9 supreme court justices?
Or you didn’t actually read any part of the ruling?
My argument was that guns are dangerous, which had nothing to do with Heller. Heller ruled that an individual right to bear arms exists and that thus gun laws could not impose a blanket ban.
However, it also said, “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of arms.”
Thus, all sorts of other restrictions of the type imposed by California, Connecticut, and other states, such as universal background checks, stripping firearm rights from convicted felons, bans on particular features or large magazines (so long as these are justified by rational public safety concerns and do not vitiate the basic right), or in particular places, or regulating the concealment or other public carrying of firearms, have repeatedly been found since Heller to be constitutional by numerous Supreme Court decisions.
I believe that Heller was wrongly decided on the basis of an individual right to firearm ownership in the first place, but until the Court hands down such a decision it has made quite clear that restrictions short of a complete ban are well within states’ reach.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you. See Heller v. District of Columbia.
>2016
>Citing Hepburn
Nice propaganda bro.
I love my country and my people, but the government is far from trusting.
Since your first statement is irrelevant to the discussion and your second is reiterating a premise already discussed at length, I guess that means the conversation is done. Thank you for your time.
You forget, the US army is in oath to protect their country, their people, and the Constitution. They are never to swore loyalty to the government. And why the hell would I abandon “ guns protects from crimes” Guns don’t cause crimes, the people cause crimes.
Edited because: Mispelling
You lack all historical context for your claims. The Bill of Rights came decades after the Revolution.
The Declaration of Independence did not mention private arms because they were not a significant issue of the Revolution. It mentioned, among other offenses of the King, keeping standing armies, sending foreign mercenaries, and rendering the military “independent of and superior to the civil power.” In other words, it was not guns the colonists wanted to restrain the national military: it was the law.
The Articles of Confederation, our first constitution after the Revolution, did not guarantee an individual right to arms. It did, however, require states to “keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered.”
In the Federalist papers, arms were only briefly mentioned, and again in the context of the organized militia, under the command of the state governments: “To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.”
Years after the Constitution was passed (during which, at the Constitutional Convention, argument over weaponry was strictly in the context of the militia and standing armies), this was the context in which the Bill of Rights was understood at the time of its passage: it even quoted the Articles of Confederation in its wording. The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee the states the right to keep a well-regulated militia, as the states were accustomed to being permitted under the Articles.
An individual right to bear arms was not a significant part of American law until first recognized in the mid-1800s, in a decision claiming this as an individual right in the process of denying that right to Negroes. You won’t hear the precedent itself quoted much, though: it was Dred Scott.
I see that you have fully abandoned the premise that guns protect from crime; this is good, as the claim is completely false. Now have turned to guns as a bulwark against tyranny. However, if you think any number of guns gives you and your buddies the ability to stand up to the U.S. Army, I’d like to introduce you to the U.S. Army.
The same goes for the NYPD, the IRS, or the Bureau of Land Management. The First Amendment is a much better protection against tyranny than the Second: the threat of violence is not the legitimizing principle of a developed society, and bands of armed men roving the streets loudly declaring their rights are far more responsible for dragging us toward the state in which it is the legitimizing principle than for preventing such an occurrence.
You ignore the fact that the British had tried to force civilians to give up arms. It has more relevance than you think they do.
1st Amendment - Freedom of Speech, Religion, Media
Reason: The british have brought upon unfair trials and prosecute people for speaking out against the king and hang them for treason.
2nd Amendment - Freedom to bear arms
Reason: The british have forced upon disarmament, mainly because it gives the people equal grounds to fight against corrupt government powerheads, should the need arise. Disarming citizens allows unequal and unopposed, absolute control over the populace, whether they liked it or not.
3rd Amendment - The right to deny housing to soldiers, in time of war or peace.
Reason: British soldiers kept forcing homeowners to give them food and housing whenever they damn pleased. And no one could say anything about it because, oh that’s right, they would be hanged for denying them, which they believe is treason, and the british soldiers were armed!
Want me to go on? There’s more reasoning behind these amendments than you think there are. These Socialist ideals are the offspring of communism. These ideals NEVER worked. History has proven, time and time again, that it never has, and it never will.
You just dismissed an entire field of academia instead of reading studies in well-respected medical journals. …anyway.
So. Abandoning your claim that guns make people safer, you have now moved to the argument that (regardless of whether they do) the government has no right to regulate things, only people, decorated with a reference to the Revolution. Therefore I take it that you have assented by default to my prior claim, that guns increase crime.
As for the claim regarding regulation, governments (in particular state governments, which are the usual forum) can regulate people in ways such as saying, “you have to pass a background check to own a gun,” “you can’t carry guns in a day care,” et cetera. They can do this because in addition to rights, we have responsibilities to the safety of our communities. This is not generally a controversial statement, except when someone is claiming that their Second Amendment right is more important than any other societal consideration. It isn’t. We get to balance it against other considerations. Regulations do that.
Finally, since you brought up the Revolution, it had nothing to do with guns. You don’t have to take my word for it: read the Declaration of Independence, which lists the causes of the conflict. It’s about taxation without representation; laws and Crown actions regarding the columnists’ arms are not even mentioned. “They took our guns” is not and never was a cause of the American Revolution, despite what many people would like to claim.
Social Scientists are probably the least reliable for statistics.
The government does not dictate the lives of people. Why do you think George Washington and the Colonists fought in the revolution against the king in the first place? The people are responsible for their own safety. The only time the government should ever step in is when they are endangering the lives of other people. It has to be a clear and direct threat. Guns do not cause crimes, people cause crimes. Does that mean we have to ban people too?
Okay, I watched the video. I see where you got your interest in Plano for this argument.
Let’s see… he points out that America is not among the top 100 countries in per capita murder rate. Why gosh, that’s true. We are, indeed, better off than, say, Togo and Ethiopia, among other countries. This is perhaps not surprising when you notice that we are a first world country and should maybe expect to be ranked better than they are on most measures of human health. Perhaps our goal should not be “let’s be a safer country than Ethiopia!” Perhaps our goal should be “let’s be as safe as just about every other developed nation on Earth.” Whereupon our goal is suddenly much further away, because all those European countries? Yeah, they’re up there in the safest top few dozen, with murder rates around 1 per 100k people/year, while we’re sitting at 3.8.
This seems to be the general quality of his argument. He literally pulls screenshots from Wikipedia and makes bad statistical connections.
…
You know, TheWhatNow, this guy is a political commentator. He has no actual expertise in the subject. The articles I cited are written by actual statisticians and social scientists and other health professionals who study this sort of thing. They don’t poke around Wikipedia until they find something and base their argument on it.
I’ve watched your source. Will you now do yourself the favor of actually reading one or two of mine?
Edited
You still don’t understand, do you? Here’s a link to Bill Whittle’s video on Murder rates. His data is detailed enough for you to understand that the gun control belief is not what they think it is.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Bill+Whittle+Gun+Control&view=detail&mid=6E00CCF80026F138FB106E00CCF80026F138FB10&FORM=VRRTAP
They’re… made to be threatening? They’re weapons. A gun that isn’t the present promise of instant, easy death is a gun that isn’t doing its job.
Perhaps your belief might be reconsidered if you did as I suggested and read any of the several papers I cited previously, which found exactly the opposite. Guns increase homicides. As for nonhomicide crimes, you’re also wrong there. Cars and homes with guns (announced by, say, one of those posters saying “Protected by Smith & Wesson”) are preferred targets, because a gun is a valuable and useful item for a crook to steal. http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Cops-fear-they-re-targets-of-gun-thieves-4356659.php . You’re simply wrong all around. Take a look at some of the sources cited.
Listen. Truth to tell, it’s not the guns I care about, it’s the people. If guns saved lives I would donate to gun-distribution charities. But from everything I can gather, they kill, so I don’t like them. It’s that simple.
But there is something we can do: make guns rarer. If someone doesn’t like that answer, it must be because they’re willing to accept the cost in lives.
I still fail to see how guns makes it more dangerous. They are probably the least threatening objects in the country. The real threat are people, not weapons. In the right hands(Not just cops and soldiers), it will be used to protect themselves from foreign and domestic threats. In hindsight, it becomes a tool for self defense and hunting food. In the wrong hands… well, you know the answer.
I fully believe that allowing people to arm themselves helps discourage crime attempts. Because who wants to rob a household from an armed family? Criminals are cowards, and like you said, they are lazy. They love easy pickings. Disarming citizens is the first step for crime to start.
The old saying goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” What happens when you disarm civilians? As for suiciders? That’s something they need to straighten out. We can’t control what they do with them. Whatever they do with a firearm, it’s on them. I know it sounds selfish… but there’s little we can do about it other than keep trying to dissuade them from suicide.
Did you read the papers cited? I think you might find them interesting.
Anyway, the short answer is in two parts. One, every gun is Chekhov’s gun. Having one nearby makes it more likely that situations will arise in which its use is desired, because people tend to discard options for which the tools aren’t readily available. He who would have peace should prepare for war, but unless he prepares much more diligently for peace he will have war only.
Two, and much more importantly, even if aggression remained at the same level around guns, guns make a given level of aggression much more lethal. There have in recent years been a mass sword attack in Sweden, mass knife attacks in China, and other similar attempts in places where it’s much harder to get guns. (It’s never impossible, but contrary to the usual argument that “criminals will always get guns,” criminals in fact tend to be a lazy lot. That’s why they’re criminals: if something’s hard, they stop trying….) These attacks resulted in almost no fatalities, especially compared to mass shootings. Why? Because it is much harder to kill someone with anything else. That’s why we send people to war with guns, not swords. Gun to a knife fight, remember? Making guns harder to get doesn’t make murders impossible, it makes them harder. Constitutional rights may never be removed, but they may be reasonably burdened in the interest of the general welfare.
(The sad corollary to this ease of killing isn’t even reflected in the homicide statistics above: although depression is chronic, most suicide attempts are passing intense compulsions which die down by the time someone has collected fifty pills or tied a noose. All a gun takes is one trigger pull – which means suicide attempts are roughly equivalent in households with guns, but successful suicides in households with guns are much more frequent.)
How does firearms cause an increase in aggression? You make it sound like the firearms are cursed or have devil-like powers.
Whoa, holy cow man. Calm down. There are answers to your questions.
1.) Small towns and rural areas have lower homicide rates than cities. This includes per capita, and is in part simply because people are further away from each other in less-dense areas. If 1 in 10,000 people gets killed in a given year, a city with 5million people will have 500 homicides across a few square miles while a town of 10,000 will have 1, and the 1 is likely to be anywhere in a hundred square miles. You see less crime because you are around fewer people.
2.) Households with guns are at higher risk of homicide, especially firearm homicide. Citation: Firearm availability and homicide: A review of the literature. Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 2004; 9:417-40.
3.) States with higher levels of household gun ownership have higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. However, there is no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide. Hence, it is the gun prevalence that drives the additional homicides. Citation: State-level homicide victimization rates in the U.S. in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003. Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.
4.) Stronger gun laws reduce gun deaths. For instance, states that require background checks for all handgun sales have lower levels of gun violence compared with states that do not require background checks. Citation: http://ampr.gs/1E4XmfI . In the reverse direction, repeal of Missouri’s background check law was statistically responsible for an additional 60 or so murders per year in that state. Citation: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-014-9865-8 .
I’m sure the continuation of this conversation will be calm, rational and respectful.