On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 4:18 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12/19/2014 2:02 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 9:24 AM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> They also failed to foresee that hand-held weapons would become so >> powerful. >> > > Are you sure that more powerful hand-held weapons would change their > minds about the need to keep a balance of power between the government and > the citizens? I suspect it would just reinforce the idea. > > > They foresaw a country without a standing army with an armed citizenry > that could be called upon to defend their states. So I think the straight > forward interpretation of the 2nd amendment is that citizens have the right > to the same arms that are commonly issued to individual soldiers - which > would be assault rifles. >
The government argued as much in this Supreme Court case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller > I think the U.S. government could ban handguns - but not assault rifles. > And this might go a long way toward reducing gun homicides because as it is > now almost all homicides are with handguns. > But if people are willing to commit the most severe crimes (murder), would a law against handguns serve any additional deterrent? The access to such devices will have less and less correlation to the legality of such devices as 3d printing technology takes off. We've already seen plastic printed magazines and even plastic guns being made from 3d printers. And of course if rifles are legal, then sawing the barrel and stock off to make it concealable will always be an option. For the overwhelming majority of people people who commit murders with guns, ownership of the gun is already forbidden for them (as they likely have existing felony convictions). Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
