On 12/19/2014 9:09 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 10:34 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/19/2014 5:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 4:18 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[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]
<mailto:[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.
It's not a question of access, it's a question of portability and
concealment.
My point here is only that making an item illegal can't stop people from getting
something they really want (and 3d printers make any attempts to ban things that much
harder).
Of course part of the reason people "really want" guns is that other people have them.
Every time there's a notorious shooting, there's a spike in gun sales.
And no matter how severe the laws against handguns are made, you can only imprison
someone for life once (so if their plan is to kill someone an additional law won't stop
them).
Cops could much more easily see who was carrying an M16 rather than a
Glock, and
even rifles could be banned in certain areas. So while everyone would have
the
right to own an M16 they could be arrested for carrying it around town and
down to
liquor store.
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.
No, because there would be a definition of "rifle" that would make sawing
it off
illegal, as there is for shotguns for that very reason.
I'm not saying laws against concealing them can't be written, only that it's unrealistic
in my mind that a "long-gun only" policy could keep concealable weapons out of the hands
of criminals.
But it seems that in your mind all laws are futile.
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).
Sounds like another statistic dreamed up by the NRA.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/nyregion/28homicide.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0
"More than 90 percent of the killers had criminal records; and of those who wound up
killed, more than half had them."
You've slipped from "felony conviction" to "criminal record", which is a very different
thing.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/blnoguns.htm
Among those prohibited include: "Persons under indictment for, or convicted of, any
crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding on year;"
Those are persons to whom you cannot sell or give a gun to - unless their rights are
restored by the state after serving their sentence (which is automatic in many states).
It doesn't say such a person can't possess a gun.
But you're right that simply outlawing possession of handguns wouldn't have
much
effect because they are easily concealed. There would have to be a drive to
confiscate all of them and forbid their importation and sale and sale of
ammunition
- which is why it won't be done.
And even if we succeedein eliminating all guns, we'd get in its place an epidemic of
knifings.
Hard to have a drive-by knifing.
Brent
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