RKBA and self defense

[srothstein]

Frankie,

The two flaws I see with your position are that you think the nuclear weapons are currently controlled, and that you are willing to consider definitions a minor quibble to work out later.

It is a real fact that nukes are available on the international black market already. Russia cannot account for all of the nukes that were in the USSR arsenal and many were reported sold by officers who did not receive paychecks for some period of time after the breakdown. The reason the jihadists are not using them against us is that the cost is so high that they cannot afford them. There is also a technological level to be maintained and a support team that is usually required.

This is why the argument over whether or not the Second applies to nukes is a ridiculous argument. The price is what really regulates any market. You can never beat the laws of supply and demand. Nukes are rare and expensive.

So, if you ask me if the Second allows for reasonable restrictions by asking about nukes, I will take a real world answer of no, there can be no restrictions.

The second problem I have is the definition of WMD. I have always hated that term since it is a made up term from the media to make things sound bad, like assault rifle. So, I take a physics type definition and the only way to destroy mass is by converting it to energy, thus a nuke. Any other definition allows people to play games and come at us in detail. Is a cannon a WMD? How about a .50 cal machine gun? How about a 7.62 machine gun? I have even heard some very anti-gun people claim semi-auto AK and AR clones are WMD since they were first designed for war.

You cannot let definitions be quibbles to decide later. If we are going to discuss gun control, we must start by taking the lead in framing the debate. We have allowed the anti's to frame the debate and define terms for too long now and it only hurts us.

So, can we regulate bombs? How about biological or chemical weapons? Those are what we really are talking about when someone says WMDs. And the proof that they cannot be controlled is in everyone's kitchen. Anyone can make a bomb out of kitchen materials with a little knowledge. The Anarchist's Cookbook proved this by teaching everyone who could read exactly how to do this. The recent incident in Las Vegas proves that some people do know this and read it. I learned some of it in my high school physics and chemistry classes. And I have to assume the terrorist are not truly stupid and know this also.

But I also do really hold to the logic that I can own anything I want and it is no danger to anyone. It is how I use it that may become a danger, and we do allow the use to be regulated. If I kill or injure someone without proper cause, I can always be criminally charged and civilly sued. Yes, freedom is dangerous because it means a lot of people might die by something I do. But I do support freedom.

[bdickens]

The Second Amendment only applies to small arms and I don't think you are going to find a Constitutional scholar in the worls who says different.

[frankie_the_yankee]

1) One of the things that make WMD's expensive is the "smuggler's tax". If they were legal they would be cheaper. I have a pharmacist friend from college who used to pay $1 per gram for 100% pure pharmaceutical grade cocaine back in the late 70's. At the time, the street price was around 100 times higher.

2) With oil revenues in the mix, some jihadists do not lack for money. So no matter how expensive a nuke might be, I'm sure there are people and groups with the money to buy one if they could.

3) The price of all manufactured goods goes down over time as methods and machines improve. So someday nukes will be a lot cheaper than they are today.

4) Assume they were legal and you could buy them at Wal-Mart. How long do you think it would be before some jihadists bought some and blew us all up?

5) I agree that people misuse and twist the term "WMD" to include semi-auto rifles, etc. All I was saying was that I didn't want to get bogged down quibbling over some definition that I might have quickly dreamed up at 11PM at night, when it's the basic principle that was what I was discussing.

[boomerang]

The US constitution affects the US. It has no force in Jihadistan.

[KBCraig]

1) One of the things that make WMD's expensive is the "smuggler's tax". If they were legal they would be cheaper. I have a pharmacist friend from college who used to pay $1 per gram for 100% pure pharmaceutical grade cocaine back in the late 70's. At the time, the street price was around 100 times higher.

2) With oil revenues in the mix, some jihadists do not lack for money. So no matter how expensive a nuke might be, I'm sure there are people and groups with the money to buy one if they could.

3) The price of all manufactured goods goes down over time as methods and machines improve. So someday nukes will be a lot cheaper than they are today.

I believe eleven of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as is bin Laden. There are hundreds of billions (possibly trillions) of dollars in oil profits floating around Saudi Arabia in the hands of those sympathetic to the 9/11 attackers.

They have more than enough money. Nukes are available on the black market. Why haven't they used them, Frankie?

Easy: even suicidal jihadists understand deterrence, and they understand the price their holy land would pay if they set off a nuke in the U.S.

4) Assume they were legal and you could buy them at Wal-Mart. How long do you think it would be before some jihadists bought some and blew us all up?

There is no logical difference between your argument and Sarah Brady's. If anyone could buy a gun at the local store and carry it in public without harsh restrictions, why, there would be blood in the streets! OK Corral all over again! Wild West brought to life!

Argumentum ad baculum has been the technique used to justify almost every denial of rights, and it's beneath someone of your intelligence.

[srothstein]

The Second Amendment only applies to small arms and I don't think you are going to find a Constitutional scholar in the worls who says different.

Interesting theory. Care to show anything that backs it up? I don't know about the Constitutional scholars and what they say since they generally avoid discussions that go off the wall into nuke-land.

But how about machine guns, cannon or light artillery, or tanks? Are they protected? Clearly, if I am going to be a militia member and defend my country, I need the capability to defend it from an invading army, which means I should be able to get these weapons, along with such things as stinger missiles (available black market but expensive) and similar weapons.

[pt145ss]

One of the complaints the authors of the Declaration of Independence wrote about was that the crown forced their British brethren to “Bear Arms� against them. The British were not just armed with muskets, they were armed with top of line (for the era) military arms…canons and etc. So when they use the term Bear Arms in the declaration of independence and in the constitution, how can you be sure they are only referring to light arms?

As for machine guns…they are not totally banned…just taxed.

Then there is the SCOTUS case (can’t remember the name right now…it’s too late for me to think straight) about the guy carrying a sawed off shotgun across state lines. IIRC…the ruling boiled down to the fact that a “sawed off� shotgun was not something in regular use by the military and therefore it was not protected. That, to me anyway, means that arms that are in regular use by the military would be protected. So, that being said, if I had the money, why would I not be allowed to go out and purchase a patriot missile system for home defense?

[boomerang]

As for machine guns…they are not totally banned…just taxed.

Not banned you say? How much tax would I have to pay to "make" a machine gun on a Form 1 this year?

[frankie_the_yankee]

I believe eleven of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as is bin Laden. There are hundreds of billions (possibly trillions) of dollars in oil profits floating around Saudi Arabia in the hands of those sympathetic to the 9/11 attackers.

They have more than enough money. Nukes are available on the black market. Why haven't they used them, Frankie?

Easy: even suicidal jihadists understand deterrence, and they understand the price their holy land would pay if they set off a nuke in the U.S.

Deterrence is certainly a factor. But you can't rely on it to work with some lone nut who may not give a fig if the holy land goes up in a blaze of glory. That's where intelligence and interdiction comes in. All of the various restrictions make it tougher, at the margin, to do.

You might not believe this, but I happen to believe that one reason why we haven't yet been nuked is because the BG's haven't been able to actually get their hands on one and smuggle it in here. I know our interdiction efforts are far, far from being perfect, but they are better than nothing and I give them at least partial credit for warding off attacks to this point.

And if bin Laden has all this money and former Soviet nukes are so easy to get on the black market, why didn't he just buy a few and flatten NYC and DC on 9-11 instead of spending years putting together this elaborate "fly the planes into the buildings" deal?

Besides, if nukes were fully legal to buy and possess, it would be easier for the BG's or just an isolated lunatic to light one off, BECAUSE THERE WOULD BE NO ONE TRYING TO STOP THEM.

Does any LE organization in the USA expend resources chasing down people who buy milk shakes? No. Why? Because IT'S NOT AGAINST THE LAW AND ANYBODY CAN DO IT.

Now if you want to put nukes in the same catagory as milk shakes that's fine and dandy but I think you will be awful lonely out there.

Frankie wrote: 4) Assume they were legal and you could buy them at Wal-Mart. How long do you think it would be before some jihadists bought some and blew us all up?

There is no logical difference between your argument and Sarah Brady's. If anyone could buy a gun at the local store and carry it in public without harsh restrictions, why, there would be blood in the streets! OK Corral all over again! Wild West brought to life!

Argumentum ad baculum has been the technique used to justify almost every denial of rights, and it's beneath someone of your intelligence.

My argument is far from Sarah Brady's. The way you are framing it, I could just as well pose the question that, since criminals by definition violate the law, why do we bother to have laws in the first place?

My argument is closer to that of Einstein. Newton's laws of motion gave us an excellent, relatively simple, way to calculate how mass, gravity, inertia, etc. work out in practice. His equations yielded solutions that were as accurate as any measurements possible in his time.

A couple of centuries later, scientists started to notice that Newton's solutions were off a little bit when applied to objects moving at very high speeds. In particular, the planet Mercury (whose orbital velocity is the fastest of all of the planets) always exhibited a measureable deviation from what Newton's laws predicted.

Enter Einstein and the theory of Relativity. This theory incorporated most of Newton's equations, but added a few "refinements". These refinements were insignificant at "normal" (i.e. low) velocities, but gave increasingly different solutions as velocities approached the speed of light. To this day, Relativity yields solutions that are as accurate as our ability to measure.

It's not that Newton's theories were "wrong". Indeed, they are used to this day in the (low velocity) situations to which they apply. There's no point in working through Einstein's much more complex math only to arrive at the same answer provided by Newton's much simpler methods.

Likewise, the concepts underlying the 2A are great, and are rightly applied to a very large set of scenarios in our common experience. But I am saying that the destructive power of nukes puts them in an entirely different "universe" than the one that an AK47 "lives in". So the basic 2A principles should not, cannot, and do not apply.

It's like I have said in the past. If nukes are unrestricted, you could buy them in vending machines. So what happens if someone named "McNoonan", for instance, buys one and keeps it in his spare room. One day he isn't feeling so hot and he decides to light it off. Does this mean deterrence has failed? And how do we respond? Do we destroy Ireland, or Scotland?

Given that the consequences of such an event would amount to millions of casualties, I think the scenario deserves a more serious response than simply saying, "Oh, that's Sarah Brady's argument."

Still another problem with unrestricted nukes is that people from other countries could come here, buy them, and take them home. (Don't say they couldn't afford them. North Korea can't afford FOOD and yet it has supported a nuclear weapon development program for many years. Buying an off the shelf item would be much, much cheaper. Especially where no smuggler's tax is involved.) Soon, every country on Earth would have them, including countries ruled by Stone Age dictators and other murderous individuals. It's not hard to visualize that these characters would sometimes use them on each other.

Millions more casualties.

Who's argument it is, or might be, or might resemble, is irrelevant. I really don't care if it is Beazelbub's argument, or Pee Wee Herman's. Since we are talking about nukes and millions of casualties, give me some solid arguments in return that will convince me that my concerns are unwarranted.

[frankie_the_yankee]

The Second Amendment only applies to small arms and I don't think you are going to find a Constitutional scholar in the worls who says different.

Interesting theory. Care to show anything that backs it up? I don't know about the Constitutional scholars and what they say since they generally avoid discussions that go off the wall into nuke-land.

None of the Heller briefs on the pro-2A side address nukes per se, but I think some of them touch on the aspects of constitutional law that allow for them and other WMD's to be restricted. So I would suggest those briefs as a good resource.

But how about machine guns, cannon or light artillery, or tanks? Are they protected? Clearly, if I am going to be a militia member and defend my country, I need the capability to defend it from an invading army, which means I should be able to get these weapons, along with such things as stinger missiles (available black market but expensive) and similar weapons.

The arguments in favor of various light weapons are much better than any "pro nuke" arguments, IMO.

[pt145ss]

I believe eleven of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as is bin Laden. There are hundreds of billions (possibly trillions) of dollars in oil profits floating around Saudi Arabia in the hands of those sympathetic to the 9/11 attackers.

They have more than enough money. Nukes are available on the black market. Why haven't they used them, Frankie?

Easy: even suicidal jihadists understand deterrence, and they understand the price their holy land would pay if they set off a nuke in the U.S.

Deterrence is certainly a factor. But you can't rely on it to work with some lone nut who may not give a fig if the holy land goes up in a blaze of glory. That's where intelligence and interdiction comes in. All of the various restrictions make it tougher, at the margin, to do.

You might not believe this, but I happen to believe that one reason why we haven't yet been nuked is because the BG's haven't been able to actually get their hands on one and smuggle it in here. I know our interdiction efforts are far, far from being perfect, but they are better than nothing and I give them at least partial credit for warding off attacks to this point.

And if bin Laden has all this money and former Soviet nukes are so easy to get on the black market, why didn't he just buy a few and flatten NYC and DC on 9-11 instead of spending years putting together this elaborate "fly the planes into the buildings" deal?

Besides, if nukes were fully legal to buy and possess, it would be easier for the BG's or just an isolated lunatic to light one off, BECAUSE THERE WOULD BE NO ONE TRYING TO STOP THEM.

Does any LE organization in the USA expend resources chasing down people who buy milk shakes? No. Why? Because IT'S NOT AGAINST THE LAW AND ANYBODY CAN DO IT.

Now if you want to put nukes in the same catagory as milk shakes that's fine and dandy but I think you will be awful lonely out there.

Frankie wrote: 4) Assume they were legal and you could buy them at Wal-Mart. How long do you think it would be before some jihadists bought some and blew us all up?

There is no logical difference between your argument and Sarah Brady's. If anyone could buy a gun at the local store and carry it in public without harsh restrictions, why, there would be blood in the streets! OK Corral all over again! Wild West brought to life!

Argumentum ad baculum has been the technique used to justify almost every denial of rights, and it's beneath someone of your intelligence.

My argument is far from Sarah Brady's. The way you are framing it, I could just as well pose the question that, since criminals by definition violate the law, why do we bother to have laws in the first place?

My argument is closer to that of Einstein. Newton's laws of motion gave us an excellent, relatively simple, way to calculate how mass, gravity, inertia, etc. work out in practice. His equations yielded solutions that were as accurate as any measurements possible in his time.

A couple of centuries later, scientists started to notice that Newton's solutions were off a little bit when applied to objects moving at very high speeds. In particular, the planet Mercury (whose orbital velocity is the fastest of all of the planets) always exhibited a measureable deviation from what Newton's laws predicted.

Enter Einstein and the theory of Relativity. This theory incorporated most of Newton's equations, but added a few "refinements". These refinements were insignificant at "normal" (i.e. low) velocities, but gave increasingly different solutions as velocities approached the speed of light. To this day, Relativity yields solutions that are as accurate as our ability to measure.

It's not that Newton's theories were "wrong". Indeed, they are used to this day in the (low velocity) situations to which they apply. There's no point in working through Einstein's much more complex math only to arrive at the same answer provided by Newton's much simpler methods.

Likewise, the concepts underlying the 2A are great, and are rightly applied to a very large set of scenarios in our common experience. But I am saying that the destructive power of nukes puts them in an entirely different "universe" than the one that an AK47 "lives in". So the basic 2A principles should not, cannot, and do not apply.

It's like I have said in the past. If nukes are unrestricted, you could buy them in vending machines. So what happens if someone named "McNoonan", for instance, buys one and keeps it in his spare room. One day he isn't feeling so hot and he decides to light it off. Does this mean deterrence has failed? And how do we respond? Do we destroy Ireland, or Scotland?

Given that the consequences of such an event would amount to millions of casualties, I think the scenario deserves a more serious response than simply saying, "Oh, that's Sarah Brady's argument."

Still another problem with unrestricted nukes is that people from other countries could come here, buy them, and take them home. (Don't say they couldn't afford them. North Korea can't afford FOOD and yet it has supported a nuclear weapon development program for many years. Buying an off the shelf item would be much, much cheaper. Especially where no smuggler's tax is involved.) Soon, every country on Earth would have them, including countries ruled by Stone Age dictators and other murderous individuals. It's not hard to visualize that these characters would sometimes use them on each other.

Millions more casualties.

Who's argument it is, or might be, or might resemble, is irrelevant. I really don't care if it is Beazelbub's argument, or Pee Wee Herman's. Since we are talking about nukes and millions of casualties, give me some solid arguments in return that will convince me that my concerns are unwarranted.

This was the whole point of taking the scenario to the extreme. I think most of us believe 2a should not be infringed, but as seen in this thread, even the strongest of supporters draw the line somewhere, where as only a limited few are willing to go to the extreme. So 2a for most of us hinge on reasonableness. This is DC biggest argument…they say that they are not violating the 2a, rather they are reasonably restricting. I personally do not think DC laws are reasonable, but I do think banning felons and metal defects from owning and possessing is reasonable. I do not think owning nukes is reasonable, but certainly owning full auto firearms is reasonable.

However, it is this reasonableness theory that is going to get us. We really need to watch out for this because if we don’t, at some point our rights will get whittled away into something completely unrecognizable.

[bdickens]

Interesting theory. Care to show anything that backs it up? I don't know about the Constitutional scholars and what they say since they generally avoid discussions that go off the wall into nuke-land.

But how about machine guns, cannon or light artillery, or tanks? Are they protected? Clearly, if I am going to be a militia member and defend my country, I need the capability to defend it from an invading army, which means I should be able to get these weapons, along with such things as stinger missiles (available black market but expensive) and similar weapons.

Can you afford a nuke? Or a tank? Or an artillery piece? No you can't and neither can I. The price each runs into the millions of dollars. It is entirely spurious to argue that you have any right to posess such things because you simply don't have the means to. That makes me think of the scene in Life of Brian where the PFJ is working out their manifesto:

JUDITH:
I do feel, Reg, that any Anti-Imperialist group like ours must reflect such a divergence of interests within its power-base.
REG:
Agreed. Francis?
FRANCIS:
Yeah. I think Judith's point of view is very valid, Reg, provided the Movement never forgets that it is the inalienable right of every man--
STAN:
Or woman.
FRANCIS:
Or woman... to rid himself--
STAN:
Or herself.
FRANCIS:
Or herself.
REG:
Agreed.
FRANCIS:
Thank you, brother.
STAN:
Or sister.
FRANCIS:
Or sister. Where was I?
REG:
I think you'd finished.
FRANCIS:
Oh. Right.
REG:
Furthermore, it is the birthright of every man--
STAN:
Or woman.
REG:
Why don't you shut up about women, Stan. You're putting us off.
STAN:
Women have a perfect right to play a part in our movement, Reg.
FRANCIS:
Why are you always on about women, Stan?
STAN:
I want to be one.

REG:
What?
STAN:
I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
REG:
What?!
LORETTA:
It's my right as a man.

JUDITH:
Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
LORETTA:
I want to have babies.
REG:
You want to have babies?!
LORETTA:
It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG:
But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA:
Don't you oppress me.
REG:
I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA:
[crying]
JUDITH:
Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS:
Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG:
What's the point?
FRANCIS:
What?
REG:
What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS:
It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG:
Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-07.htm

Militias do not commonly employ tanks, artillery, or nukes; they are the province of standing armies.

[anygunanywhere]

Militias do not commonly employ tanks, artillery, or nukes; they are the province of standing armies.

Militias would indeed employ such weapons if the militia concept today was exactly the same as it was during the revolution.

It seems as if the pervasive "living document" concept of the Constitution and BOR has pretty much erased much of the idea of absolute freedom and absolute rights from the grasp of most.

I myself am tired of hearing "The framers did not envision nuclear weapons....." from those who whine about those who would use them against others. The framers did not envision cloning either, but that does not mean we can not apply the concept of personal freedom and personal responsibility to pretty much anything we do or anything that is developed.

I myself consider nukes a stretch, but If I could afford one I would most certainly think about it. Having accepted the fact that at one point in my life I would have assisted in lobbing 160 nuclear weapons at enemies of freedom in defense of my country I think I could do so to turn my enemies into a vapor cloud mushrooming towards the stratosphere. Yes, I believe I could go there.

Call it deterrence. Mutual assured destruction works. We talk about it all the time when we tell the antis that the world around us is safer because we carry. Criminals state emphati8cally that potentially armed victioms is their biggest fear.

Mutual assured destruction.

Absolute rights.

Freedom.

Can it get any simpler?

Anygunanywhere

[bdickens]

Militias would indeed employ such weapons if the militia concept today was exactly the same as it was during the revolution. Anygunanywhere

Wrong. Militias during the time of the revolution did not have artillery. Standing armies did. The revolutionaries who first faced off against the British Army did not have artillery. Only later, when a regular army was formed and funded did they have it.

[pt145ss]

The original post had little to do with the constitution or the second amendment. The original post has to do with the theory/doctrine that self-defense is God given and because it is God given one has the right to the best tools available. I took that theory and applied it today’s technology… mostly to point out that when you take this theory to the extreme, it becomes a little unreasonable. The question then becomes…what is reasonable vs. not reasonable. This is relevant to the second amendment because some arms rights are reasonable and some are not. Some places it is reasonable to allow carry and some places it is not reasonable to allow carry.

If 2a is absolute as you guys suggest, then no legislature can infringe on that right. Let’s apply that to felons…if absolute, then felons should be allowed to own, possess, and even carry if they wish. Is that reasonable? (on a side note…I actually think this is reasonable if the felon has paid his debt to society) At what age do you suggest a person be legally allowed to own, possess, and carry a firearm? 5, 10, 18, 21? Would you want your typical 5 year old carrying his pistol he got from grandpa to school? Is a 5 or 10 year old mature enough to handle the responsibility of carrying a loaded pistol on their person?

If the second is absolute, then these (and many more) are the type of issues we will be facing.