[HN Gopher] Ban on guns with serial numbers removed is unconstit...
___________________________________________________________________
Ban on guns with serial numbers removed is unconstitutional -U.S.
judge
Author : quantified
Score : 20 points
Date : 2022-10-13 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Why does the US treat 1st Amendment freedom of speech differently
| than 2nd Amendment keeping and bearing arms?
| klyrs wrote:
| The first amendment says nothing about a well regulated press.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I was afraid to mention that phrasing.
| klyrs wrote:
| It sounds like you're fishing for an explanation of
| something but afraid to spell it out. All you can lose is
| up to 5 karma per comment
| sweetbitter wrote:
| "Well regulated" in this context means well-equipped, does it
| not?
| quantified wrote:
| It's really unclear, isn't it?
| digdugdirk wrote:
| "U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin in Charleston found Wednesday
| that the law was not consistent with the United States'
| "historical tradition of firearm regulation," the new standard
| laid out by the Supreme Court in its landmark ruling."
|
| I was waiting to see the exciting places this precedent would
| take us. Though I have to admit, I was expecting the "AR-15's
| aren't muskets" argument to get out there first.
| quantified wrote:
| Interestingly, the boundary between "recent" and "tradition" is
| not at all clear. If a 1968 law is not old enough to be
| traditional, what law is? It's certainly not "ancient
| tradition". Is there a fixed year that demarcates "traditional"
| from "recent", or is it a distance back from the present?
|
| Apply the same logic to all the clauses of the constitution,
| and we're going to get super weird pretty quickly.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Is the US in any way special that makes this process of
| regulating weapons so difficult? Do other countries not have
| 2A-like legislation?
| powerslacker wrote:
| The Federal government in the US is (on paper) extremely
| limited in comparison to other countries. The US constitution
| was written specifically to limit the potential for
| tyrannical or mob rule. To regulate or disarm the citizenry
| of the United States is a particularly arduous task because
| the US Federal government does not have that kind of
| sovereignty.
| daveslash wrote:
| Gun ownership is baked into our founding documentation (The
| Constitution); as such, it's part of the very premise of our
| governmental foundation. All other laws, regulations, and
| everything else about our government is built from and
| traceable to The Constitution. As far as I know, only 2 other
| countries in the world have something similar in their
| Constitution: Mexico and Guatemala.
|
| Countries that _don 't_ have that baked into their
| foundational documentation have an easier time actually
| putting regulations into place and enforcing them. Because
| the right to guns is in our charter, it makes regulation much
| more difficult to implement and enforce (not to mention, much
| more unpopular because to many folks it feels like a betrayal
| of the charter).
|
| That's what makes the US different than most other countries
| in that regard.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Because the right to guns is in our charter, it makes
| regulation much more difficult to implement and enforce
| (not to mention, much more unpopular because to many folks
| it feels like a betrayal of the charter).
|
| There are some debates, however, that the first clause of
| the second amendment actually is meaningful and not just
| meaningless flavor text. The interpretation of the second
| amendment therefore has undergone a lot of change over
| time, and is now interpreted way more broadly than it was
| in the early years of the country (i.e. when many of the
| founding fathers were still alive). An interpretation where
| the militia clause was largely meaningless didn't really
| come into vogue until the 1970s, and the NRA has a version
| of the 2nd amendment on its headquarters that edits it out.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _There are some debates, however, that the first clause
| of the second amendment actually is meaningful and not
| just meaningless flavor text._
|
| Nobody says it's meaningless, it just doesn't mean what
| gun control proponents want it to mean, due to (a) a
| purpose, even a stated one, not being a limit on
| Constitutional rights; and (b) what the word "militia"
| means in the text.
|
| (a) "The prefatory clause does not suggest that
| preserving the militia was the only reason Americans
| valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it
| even more important for self-defense and hunting."
| District of Columbia v. Heller. There are numerous rights
| in the Constitution that are not limited solely to their
| original or documented purpose. The equal protection
| clause protects against gender, sex, and sexuality
| discrimination just as much as it protects against
| discrimination based on race or condition of former
| servitude. The First Amendment protects artistic
| expression and personal speech just as much as it
| protects political speech. A documented purpose does not
| limit the applicability of a Constitutional right.
|
| (b) It is nearly a century-old precedent that the militia
| refers to every able-bodied man, not just those in, e.g.,
| the National Guard. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S.
| 174, 179 (1939). That is why "the militia is assumed by
| Article I already to be in existence," District of
| Columbia v. Heller, rather than being created by Congress
| or a state.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| "District of Columbia v. Heller" was in 2008, and was the
| first time the Supreme court ruled that the 2nd amendment
| allowed the right to bear arms outside of a well
| organized militia. In fact, they had 4 chances to to do
| that in the early 20th century alone, passing on it. It
| was only with a more conservative court that existed
| recently that the interpretation that the militia clause
| of the 2nd amendment was just flavor case became law of
| the land.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| my understanding is the exact opposite. how odd.
|
| >A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
| security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
| and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
|
| Well regulated means well armed. Militia means citizen
| army, and the people means the people.
|
| It is hard to come to a different understanding of the
| amendment without redefining these terms.
|
| My understanding is that those favoring a living
| constitution focus on the purpose or why of the amendment
| was there, and and that a citizen militia is not longer
| necessary.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It definitely means a well organized militia, like the
| ones they use to defend Switzerland, which every male
| belongs to and has to go through a year or two of
| conscription before they take a gun home.
| glial wrote:
| > Well regulated means well armed
|
| How do you figure this? Is there judicial precedent for
| this particular interpretation?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> As far as I know, only 2 other countries in the world
| have something similar in their Constitution: Mexico and
| Guatemala
|
| That's what it says at
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/05/how-many-countries-
| have..., along with the note that the US "is the only one
| that does not explicitly include a restrictive condition".
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I wonder if any regulation of fully automatic weapons is
| constitutional now.
| spoonjim wrote:
| If you take the Second Amendment literally as written, even
| regulation of personal nuclear weapons is unconstitutional.
| barbazoo wrote:
| We all know, the only way to stop a bad guy with a nuclear
| weapon is with a good guy with a nuclear weapon.
| kbelder wrote:
| That does seem to be the case.
| otikik wrote:
| He said "a good guy".
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I suppose the real question is how far the current supreme
| court is willing to go then?
| filoleg wrote:
| Sure, but posessing some of the materials needed for
| producing such a weapon is indeed illegal due to the Atomic
| Energy Act of 1954. Here is an article about some
| tangentially related recent events that mentions it (and
| explains as well)[0].
|
| Owning a personal nuclear weapon might not be technically
| illegal. However, producing it and transferring it is
| illegal. Which, seems to be almost functionally equivalent
| to being illegal to possess.
|
| This is just purely my thoughts on how that hypothetical
| could play out, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't
| stupid curious about it myself.
|
| 0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/
| 19/w...
| shantbefringed wrote:
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| When have nuclear weapons ever been considered "arms"?
| Infantry don't carry nuclear weapons.
| nautilius wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_de
| vic...
| glial wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer, but development of nuclear weapons _is_
| called an "arms race".
| dublin wrote:
| Read the Bruen opinion - it's well-written and actually
| pretty clear that recent (really, meaning the last two
| centuries) gun restrictions are unconstitutional. Any
| restrictions have to be ones that would have been commonly in
| place when the Constitution originated, so generally, no
| later than 1791.
|
| It's likely (and a really good thing for liberty and
| Constitutional rights in general) that Bruen will invalidate
| both the heinously unconstitutional 1934 National Firearms
| Act (which was never allowed to face a court challenge), and
| also the 1968 Gun Control Act, so yeah, full auto will likely
| be confirmed to have always been protected by the
| Constitution once the current slug of cases challenging these
| laws makes it through the courts.
|
| Once the NFA falls, firearms manufacturing of all kinds will
| be opened up to every citizen. This is already starting a
| renaissance in the 3D printed guns community. (Current 3D
| printed guns are still a very poor substitute for their
| machined counterparts, but they now work well enough now to
| be the equivalent of really cheap, bad guns, and have the
| advantage that they do not require registration, which is
| really just a database for confiscation or harassment.)
| glial wrote:
| I can accept that Bruen's arguments have a certain internal
| logic. What I don't understand is how we have decided weigh
| the "right" of having guns vs the "right" to life, liberty,
| and the pursuit of happiness. According to the Declaration
| of Independence, the latter is what the government is _for_
| , and everything else -- even and especially the bill of
| rights -- is an implementation decision designed too
| further those aims.
|
| Given that the US 22x more per capita gun deaths than the
| EU, perhaps we missed the mark. Maybe it's just me, but it
| seems like gun proliferation is in practice harmful to
| life.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-13 23:01 UTC)