Headline juxtaposition of the day
Really not much to add on this one
This is the cover of today’s Daily Sun from the Sarasota region of Florida. Whether or not it’s a juxtaposition by design (I think it is), I think it captures the current state of firearm regulation within the United States. H/T to James Fallows on Blue Sky for sharing this front page.
Aside: It is worth noting how various political groups and ideologies approach different Constitutional Amendments with varying levels of textualism and originalism. Some, for example, believe the Second Amendment deserves radical textualism and originalism (suggesting that any regulation is in violation of it). Strangely, those same people seem to be convinced that “participating in the insurrection” as outlined in the 14th Amendment requires some form of conviction, though the specific word “conviction” is not found anywhere in the text of that Amendment. Nor was there a discussion of the need for that in any of the contemporary documents nor it’s initial application.
That said, the argument can of course, be reversed too.
I have yet to hear an originalist defend the 2nd Amendment as the right to bear black powder muskets.
@Tony W:
But that’s where textualism comes in. Hence, the argument is that a close read of the 2nd Amendment does not refer to specific types of weapons. Taken to its extreme conclusion, there’s an argument that restricting ownership of fully automatic weapons to those people who have one of a limited(?) number of Federal Licenses is against the 2nd Amendment. And a number of recent Supreme Court 2nd Amendment decisions have followed this thinking.
The flip side of that is, with section 3, the idea of the need for a conviction on a specific crime is in no where specified within a close read of the text.
This brings up the age old question:
What the fuck is wrong with people in this country?
This is also why I don’t know how you message Biden’s successes. It just might not be possible when you have a large portion of the population who will vote for assholes like the ones in the FL legislature. The Republican party has no policies other than get the libs (or any other groups they hate). It is a party entirely built on hatred, and a lot of people in this country are just dying to find someone who hates the people they hate.
@Matt Bernius: We do seem to, mostly, agree that ordinary citizens should not have access to, say, nuclear bombs (although I have heard Libertarian arguments that even those should not be restricted).
This would mean that the boundary is somewhere between rubber-band guns and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles – but most of us agree there should be a boundary. Then the debate is merely where that lies.
The 2nd Amendment is probably the worst-worded Amendment.
Discussion of the Second Amendment … is … exhausting …
I could get a close relative to agree that there is ANY ‘firearm’ that could be banned under the Second Amendment. I suggested, ‘even shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missiles’?
I was joking of course, and he said that was absurd, who would …
@al Ameda:
What? You can’t protect your property from jets that fly over it and disturb the peace?
Joe Biden lied about Cannons being banned.
Before anyone tees off on @Paul L., it’s entirely true that functioning muzzle-loaded canons are not considered firearms and are legal under Federal law (State laws vary around licensing).
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/are-muzzleloading-cannons-considered-destructive-devices
Some breech-loading canons are legal as well, but more heavily regulated.
I want a tank and an A-10! 2nd Amendment says I get to have them. What could go wrong?
Steve
More and more I’ve come to believe that the vast, vast majority of gun owners live in a fantasyland inside their minds. I used to distinguish between many of the gun owners I know and who seem to be rational and sensible about virtually everything else, and the crazy 2nd Amendment solution types. But it has become clearer every year just how unlikely guns are ever to be used for self protection in the ways they imagine (valiant hero defending house and home against invading marauders) and how much more likely they will be used to commit suicide by someone in the house, to murder friends or family in rages (drunken or otherwise), to accidently shoot an innocent thinking they were an invader, or be stolen by a criminal to be used in multiple crimes. But gun owners just can never see it happening to them, to their spouse, to their kids. They all believe so strongly in their vision of themselves as the avenging hero with perfect aim that it clouds all rational thinking.
@MarkedMan:
Yep, that’s exactly it, just toss in the ‘coming race war’ crowd who have wet dreams about shooting liberals, and you have American gun owners.
Still waiting for the “good guys with guns” to show up. For some reason they never do.
The originalist argument should actually pretty much self-repeal the 2nd amendment.
The reason for the amendment in the first place was to insure that the US could defend itself because the Army clause was supposed to keep the military small enough so the government could not use it against the people. Even a cursory audit of the debate surrounding the amendment bears this out. One would think a “constitutional expert” would be familiar with the idea the 2nd was need so we would not need a standing army in peacetime. This idea is all over the historical record like a rash.
We have somehow routed around the army clause (as the founders envisioned it), which was to keep the peacetime army small so the need for the 2nd it all but moot. To state it plainly, the 2nd amendment is no longer relevant. We have a giant standing army, and the militia as a defensive force hasn’t been relevant since the Napoleonic wars. Here is the clause from the Virginia Declaration of rights at the time of the Declaration of Independence (on which the 2nd was modeled after).
The emphasis was on the idea that the very presence of a standing army was dangerous to liberty. When the bill of rights was being debated there were two whole essays in the Anti-Federalist papers named Standing Armies are Dangerous to Liberty.
Here are a few drafts of the amendment …
June 1789
July 1789
The point is that the 2nd was only about checking the power of the federal government in the context of not letting them establish a standing army that could defeat the militias of the several states. This was before they had the chance to screen “Red Dawn” and realize that a plucky group of high school students could easily bring down a modern army.
This idea comes up over and over again. Thomas Jefferson himself proposed a law that would ban fire arms on the campus of the University of Virginia so the idea that the amendment was absolute would have been a surprise to the people who actually composed it.
Also, I think you can ban nuclear arms and private Aircraft carries under the clause that reservice foreign policy to the federal government (I’m sure Greg Abbott would weigh in on that one however).
So I was recently in a … we’ll call it a discussion, where the fear was protecting us against our own military, so the solution was that any yahoo should be allowed to have anything the military had (“the Nazis disarmed the Jews, after all!” – a half truth but I wasnt prepared to argue that point). So I replied, “nukes?” And the reply was, “well no, but the military shouldn’t have nukes, either.” Good luck with that.
Maybe we should strengthen Posse Comitatis, if that’s the fear. I understand it has way too many exceptions.
@Matt Bernius:
I have a friend who honestly, fervently, believes that the 14th amendment only applies to Black men. My retort was that if that’s the case, then cars, air travel, hell the entire contemporary world, was not only illegal, but entirely unconstitutional. He sputtered some nonsense about the right to interstate travel (I haven’t looked, but I think the Constitution is silent about intrastate travel) and something something Jefferson wanting the Constitution replaced every 20 years.
@Tony W:
I lost a friend over an argument about the 2nd amendment. It’s my belief that it’s a giant run on sentence. Their response was an absurd rationalization that was intensely complicated.
@Rick DeMent: The Founders definitely meant for people to have weapons of war for their militias. There were privately owned and maintained artillery pieces.
Were there larger weapons of war in the Revolutionary period that people weren’t allowed to have? I’m not aware of any, and I think the Founding Fathers just didn’t think to put an upper limit on that.
But, just because the government has its own standing army now doesn’t mean that the people have lost their rights to own guns, artillery pieces and weapons of war. You would need some kind of amendment clearly limiting those rights.
And the Founders, in their wisdom, gave us an Amendment process. But it hasn’t been used for that.
We just have a lawless Supreme Court that has decided to invent restrictions out of thin air, presumably under the belief that the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have wanted your neighbor building nuclear weapons, or owning a machine gun. I’m glad we have a lawless Supreme Court in this instance, but we shouldn’t pretend that it’s anything else.
The Founders, in their infinite wisdom, created an Amendment process that is overly hard, and so the Supreme Court has filled the gap by just making shit up. I think this would mostly be the Originalist interpretation, and that it would conclude the Court is in the wrong.
Alternately, we can phrase that differently, and say that the Founder, in their infinite wisdom, knew that the Supreme Court would sometimes be making shit up, and added the Amendment process as a balance to that, but that the shit being made up has been mostly fine so the people of the various states seldom need to resort to Amendments. This would come close to “the Constitution is a living document.”
But ultimately the constitution, including that pesky 2nd Amendment, means what 5 of 9 sitting justices says it means. (Not “believes it means” as who knows what lies in the hearts of the justices)
I always like to point out that the people who believe an armed society is a polite society never apply the same logic to Iran getting nuclear weapons.
They should be pro-nuclear-proliferation.
@Beth:..I think the Constitution is silent about intrastate travel
Does this count?
Maybe it doesn’t. When I mail my water bill to the water office not one mile from my house and both within the boundaries of the Prairie State it travels from my local Post Office across the Mississippi River to Saint Louis MO and back to my local post office (200 mile round trip) before it is delivered to the addressee.
All for 66¢! What a deal!
@Mister Bluster:
That just says the post office gets to use those roads. It says nothing about anyone else using them or intra-state travel.
Just to be clear, I fully realize I’m being an ass saying that. But that’s all originalism & textualism.
One, The Sun is my local paper. I’ve occasionally referred to it in these threads as my semi-pro local paper. I’m embarrassed I missed that juxtaposition this morning. My excuse id their national and state news is usually day old, so I skim those stories. I have a letter to them pending. They did a story yesterday about our FL Surgeon General Ladapo telling doctors not to recommend bivalent COVID boosters. They reprinted a Miami Herald story that barely mentioned expert rebuke of Ladapo. I contrasted their conservative friendly version of that story with a letter in the same issue accusing them of liberal bias. I think the gun story juxtaposition was an accident. Working on a shoestring. Got a local story to fill the front page? No. Grab a state story off the wire. More room? Grab a national story. They can’t afford to piss off their MAGA readership with any but accidental irony.
Two, the Onion’s classic “Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be”. Seems to me there used to be a widely accepted but unwritten rule of interpretation something like – Follow the Constitution, but don’t do anything stupid.
@Beth:
14th Amendment only applies to minorities.
dicta from Justices Soyomayor and RBG in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.
Being a gun owner I guess I should weigh in.
To start with, most gun owners are idiots of limited reading cognition. The only part they know or care about is the last half, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” while the first part the “well regulated militia” is in their heads written out of the constitution.
2ndly many of them are fragile little snowflakes who feel the need to burnish their manliness credentials by carrying a firearm.
Lastly, nobody needs an AR-15 or AK-47 or one of the many knockoffs. They don’t need 30 round magazines (what they need is more time on the firing range). They don’t need silencers. They don’t need ghost guns. etc.
Myself, the only semi auto I own is my squirrel gun (.22 Long Rifle). My deer gun is a bolt action, and I own 2 pump action shotguns. Oh yeah, I have a revolver too.
I don’t carry a gun. The one time I did my ex’s husband was “gunning” for me (nothing more than anonymous and not so anonymous death threats and a few run ins with him where he was… not right, as in mentally off). Even then, I only carried when I went to pick up my son and the chances of him losing it were elevated even more than normal.
All that being said I do use my guns from time to time. A couple weeks ago I needed to eliminate an armadillo that had taken up residence here. They can tear up a garden in no time flat. I’ve tried to live trap them but it is not possible with the traps I have. Same goes for woodchucks, their butts are too big.
@Mister Bluster: US Route 1 was, and still is in some places, called Post Road exactly for these reasons. In Madison, CT it is called Boston Post Road, although in Boston I doubt it is called Madison Post road.
@OzarkHillbilly: I know a fair number of hunters who have long guns for that purpose. I should have made it clear that I consider that a wholly separate category. It’s still dangerous to own a gun (as I am sure you are aware) but it doesn’t mean that you live in fantasyland.
@Paul L.:
You should include a quote from the court case followed by analysis if you expect anyone to take your post seriously.
And if you don’t expect anyone to take your posts seriously, why even bother posting? If your answer is anything more substantive than masturbation, go back to the first paragraph and follow the advice.
The belief that the either text or original intent Second Amendment greenlights 17 year olds unregulated access to firearms is not radical textualism and originalism.
It’s an obvious lie, perpetrated by stupid and/or psychotic people who are easily manipulated sheep for the corporate gun lobby and weapons manufacturers.
Follow the money is a cliche, but it applies here. America’s child-killing rightwing ammosexuals want us to think they’re textualists and originalists, so we won’t notice they’re actually just liars, lunatics, and idiots. The Republican Party cares more about gun sales than kids’ lives. It’s amoral and evil.
What other nation has allowed gun violence to become the #1 killer of its youngest? Hell, even most creatures protect their young.
It’s shocking how Boomers sold their children’s lives out to Reaganism and its lying Federalist Society hacks. I can’t wait for Xers, millennials and Zoomers to put the breaks on this descent into conservative gun nut Wild West madness.
Tangential to this discussion, Wayne LaPierre has resigned as NRA head/primary gold digger.
@Jen:
Womp womp.
@Gustopher: Yes, but in absence of a large standing army. We have one now and I would argue in defiance of the constitution as written.
The militia hasn’t figured into any conflict since, well really since the revolution. The militia was useful for putting down local rebellions in the early days but it has never payed a decisive role against another power. there were militia units in the Spanish American war but to say they were key to victory would be arguable.
Never in the 20th century. Militias are no longer necessary to the security of our free state unless they arrest and jail Trump.
@Tony W: Well the argument could be made that at the time civilians had access to the most advanced military hardware. Which at the time included cartridges, machine guns, cannons etc. FOID cards and all those other gun related regulations didn’t exist but were added on later as laws. Seriously though the argument you made in relation to black powder rifles shows a great deal of intentional ignorance in relation to how the constitution has been interpreted in relation to other technological advances. You have much better standing to harp on the “well regulated Militia” part of the law.
@Scott:..Still waiting for the “good guys with guns” to show up. For some reason they never do.
Nearly 400 “good guys with guns” were at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The result was 21 innocent corpses.
NPR
Thank you “good guys”.
@Matt Bernius: Yeah there’s a few examples of specific weapons being covered in a different way than is mainstream for modern versions. Another example would be black powder revolvers. Most states have far fewer laws in relation to carrying one around vs a modern pistol. Despite a fully loaded black powder revolver being just as dangerous (arguable more dangerous due to higher caliber).
Hell if you really want your mind blown look at what qualifies as Curio and Relic according to the ATF. Full on legit machine guns including the early M16s qualify.
@DK: You know what’s funny? Reagan was responsible for California’s current state of gun control laws. Hell as President Reagan passed the biggest gun bans in the history of this country. I find endless amusement in the fact that the GOP is singularly responsible for banning/confiscating the most amount of guns. Because the average gun owning moron is like “DA DEMONRATS GONNA TAKE MUH GUNSZAS!!!” while voting for the party that has actually taken guns out the hands of owners multiple times in the past.
@Kurtz:
@Kurtz:
One of the undying questions of the internet (that applied not only to Paul L., but a legion of others).
@Paul L.: You left out “followed by analysis.”
@Rick DeMent has it exactly right. The way we worship the Founders in this country instead of understanding how downright *practical* they were is depressing (besides the 2nd Amendment, see the Great Compromise for a morally indefensible example of such practicality). If you don’t have a standing army, and the very idea of a police force didn’t even exist yet (the Bow Street Runners, generally considered the forerunner of modern police forces, came into existence in London around 1800) then what do you need against foreign invasion, Indian attacks, or a criminal? Militias and posses! Duh. There are so many examples of the Founders being perfectly fine with restrictive gun laws (fun fact-in Revolutionary Boston it was illegal-by patriot orders not British-to carry a gun and and they were absolutely in favor of gun registration laws because if you didn’t know who had a working gun and was trained on it you wouldn’t know who to call on when you needed a militia or posse for crying out loud!!); all the way through the shootout at Tombstone which was ostensibly though not really about some of the Cowboys gang not turning in their guns when they came into town which they were legally required to do because 150 years ago this country was smart enough to understand that leaving guns in the hands of drunk, horny, gambling cowboys blowing off steam in town was a stupid idea. Damn Clarence Thomas as he bloviates about how gun laws today are only valid if they have a deep history in the country while he simultaneously has pretty much no knowledge of the actual history at all. And damn my run-on sentences too-I get REALLY worked up about this (sorry not sorry).
Time to take my blood pressure meds.
If y’all want to see the future then I suggest you look up FGC-9. It’s a fully 3d printed semiautomatic “carbine” which even has instructions for rifling the barrel. Legit with just a 3d printer and a hardware store nearby you can crank one of these out. We’ve reached the point where even an outright gun ban won’t stop individuals from having access.
Yes FGC-9 stands for Fuck Gun Control 9mm…
In case you’re wondering the bullet side of things isn’t going to matter either as plastic casing is already a thing. Caseless is also a thing.
@OzarkHillbilly: .
That’s just a dumb statement. How dumb? In most of Europe suppressors are not only legal but in a lot of the countries they are mandatory(with included fines for firing a gun without a suppressor). Suppressors VASTLY decreases the risk of hearing damage and makes life nicer for those living near ranges or hunting areas among a list of other benefits. Suppressors don’t make guns magical murder machines or silent. Even with subsonic ammo a well suppressed gun is still very noticeable. I know this from first hand experience because it’s not terrible difficult to legally own suppressors in most states.
I’ve never understood why people flip out about suppressors like you did. Then again I don’t understand your irrational hatred of a weapons platform based purely on how it looks. Despite using the same ammo or even ammo that is less effective at killing than what you have defined as proper rifles…
@Kurtz & @Steven L. Taylor:
I think this is a good time to remind everyone of Paul L.’s recent practical demonstration of his ability to read and understand Supreme Court decisions.
To quote a verified lawyer from later in the thread:
Then later James also joined in to explain how Paul L, was misreading Brandenburg’s holdings with regard the Schenk:
So perhaps, just perhaps Paul L has a motivated reading that leads him to conclusions that no one who has studied case law (even somewhat briefly) would support. Also, let’s remember that asking him to explain his twisted logic never goes well and usually leads us to a Gish Gallop.
@Matt:
The state of the art weapons of the 18th century were ships of the line, the rough equivalent of an aircraft carrier, today. On land it was muzzle-loaded cannon, the modern comp being HIMARS or similar. There were of course no 18th century comps for aircraft, drones, tanks, electronic warfare, and, just as importantly, there were no militia equivalents to the level of training professional soldiers have today, nor for the strategies of combined arms warfare, etc… Even in the 18th century militias were largely useless when they weren’t actual impediments. Professionals always beat amateurs. IOW there just isn’t much real equivalence between then and now.
Especially given that the true purpose of militias was putting down slave rebellions and hunting down runaways.
@OzarkHillbilly: @MarkedMan:
I join MM in exempting actual hunters from criticism. A real hunter who needs an extended mag is obviously not much of a hunter. And very few deer wear body armor, so not a lot of need for armor-piercing rounds. As for handguns, well, you can shoot snakes, but if you’re going out after elk with a Glock, good luck, and if it’s bear you’re after make sure your will is up to date. OTOH, if you can hit a flying duck with a handgun you may be Annie Oakley.
@Matt:
Yeah, the entire 3D gun printing stuff is really scary–especially as fabrication materials get better/more resilient.
I’m not sure anything will be done with this until a printed gun is used in an attempted mass shooting (which I’m prepared to bet will probably happen within the next 5 years*). Further, I’m not sure there is anything that can be done easily around it.
* – Aside: I also suspect a printed gun will be on a shooter, not necessarily used as the primary tool for the shooting.
@Paul L.:
Funny that your quote can’t be found anywhere in Sotomayor’s decision.
Let me guess, you haven’t read a single word of the dissenting opinion, so you just play in the hay to find whatever you can build that looks right to you.
Your reasoning (loose definition) seems to indicate that you think applying an equality standard (plain reading of the 14A) inherently means something is taken away from the majority like it’s a zero sum situation.
First, this implicitly concedes that the majority has an historical and continuing habit of taking away rights from minorities.
Secondly, you can’t even choose that hill to die on, because you got lost on the way to the hill.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Lucky. Indiana only legalized rifle hunting a couple of years ago, and I haven’t gotten around to shopping for a deer rifle, still using deer slugs. Which is good for the deer–turns out when my ammo doesn’t have a spread, I’m a bit of a lousy shot.
@Matt Bernius:
Can we bet on the outcome of gish gallops? Because if so maybe we should encourage them.
@Matt Bernius:
Whataboutism: Jack Smith in this indictment quoted a single judge in Trump v. Wisconsin. But I am not allowed to quote the plaintiffs, Soyomayor or RBG in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action because true lawyers who studied the case law would not do that.
Note the case was dismissed because “Trump’s legal challenge to change Wisconsin’s certified election results “unreasonable in the extreme” and was filed too late.”
But great prosecutor Jack Smith can quote this one judge!!1!!!1
@Neil Hudelson: Ditto for Illinois. I was beginning to believe that Illinois and Indiana would never change that.
@Matt Bernius: Businesses have been building gun parts via 3d printers for many years now. Those machines are coming down in prices a good amount every year. Technological advances are allowing for consumers to have more access to that level of 3d production. I really don’t know how this is going to go down as 3d printing is incredibly useful in general.
@Michael Reynolds:
True but hogs and other animals come in packs and those tusks can fck you up (their charge is HARD and fast). Hogs have built in armor to defend against the tusks of other hogs which makes penetration more difficult. Legit one of the few times some people will use FMJ for hunting to ensure penetration. My 7.63×39 (ak47 pattern which shoots like a weakened 30-30) 123 grain soft point rounds didn’t have issues penetrating the hogs we hunted. Granted those hogs weren’t big tough bastards. In Texas and some other areas people will outright rent a helicopter just for pest control aka hog killing. So you end up shooting dozens of them at a time if you have the magazine capacity.
So be careful when you make such broad generalizations because it just shows your ignorance. Not trying to insult you because I’m quite ignorant on the hows of hunting a wide range of animals myself.
The “extended mag” thing is starting to became kind of a hobby horse for me lately. Your SUV doesn’t have an “extended gas tank” because my Honda has a smaller gas tank. It has what it was designed to have from the start. A 30 rnd mag is not an extended magazine for an ak pattern but a 45+ rd mag is..
My take on firearms history, is that a lot of time, effort, ingenuity, and money were expended in making a gun that could fire more than one shot without the need to reload. You got oddities like the duck foot gun, volley guns, etc. Typically these fired several shots at once.
I think the first guns to fire sequentially without the need to reload were revolvers. These could be pre-loaded with several shots. But, as I recall, often the shot going off would light some or all the ones waiting their turn in the revolving chamber.
The breakthrough finally came with the use of metal cartridges. These were safer in existing designs, like revolvers, and allowed for internal or external magazines in other guns. An early example is the Henry rifle, designed in 1860. And these were rare even by the time of the US Civil War, where single shot, muzzle-loading rifles with percussion caps were used. The big innovation widely available at the time was the Minié ball ammunition.
So the arms the founders had in mind were single shot, muzzle loading, flintlock muskets and pistols. Not AR-15 semiautomatic with a high velocity round and a 30-shot magazine. That’s one of those things originalists overlook.
@Rick DeMent:
And not much use then. I’ve seen numerous statements, some IIRC from George Washington, that the militia weren’t much use. I confess I haven’t watched the movie closely, but in The Patriotisn’t the big trick the militia luring the Redcoats into a trap by running away when the British expected them to run away?
@Gustopher: I suspect that the Founders were imagining a world in which really heavy armaments would have their ownership constrained by the immense cost. Situations like being able to build and arm, for example, a frigate (or a fleet thereof) would be limited to people whose wealth was of legendary size. The people who grow up to be Bruce Wayne, maybe. The founders had no idea at all that capitalism was going to be so wealth producing (and wealth concentrating) that there would be multiple people (in a single nation, no less) who would be able to afford to build rocket ships, for instance, so such projects would remain in the purview of governments exclusively.
@Gustopher:
Interesting point. If Luddite’s interests had gravitated more toward the liberal arts rather than hard sciences, he might have had yet another topic for which the university he attended would not have given an ok to write.
@Kurtz: Your comment seems to parallel the discussion we were having yesterday about plagiarism and why a person can’t simply stack a bunch of citations from sources (documented or otherwise, I would add) and call it an essay/thesis/dissertation.
@Paul L.:
You didn’t merely quote something. You paraphrased something, attributing it to two justices. When pressed for a quote and analysis, you provided a quote from a filing in the case, not the dissenting opinion. (You have any thoughts on Claudine Gay or Bill Ackman’s wife?)
You are demonstrating your inability to interpret what you read and make arguments based on that text.
Given that your quote was just the top of a longer document, you appear lazy.
Or you’re a liar.
Or you’re a raving lunatic who makes a street corner preacher seem cogent.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Haha. I just finished a post and yours appeared upon refresh.
I missed that discussion yesterday. Maybe I should take a look.
@Matt: I’ll simply note that most of those owners whose guns were taken away were more than likely black and/or Hispanic and quietly slink away.
ETA: And yes, just for today, I’m going to refrain from adding Kurtz’s requested analysis. Follow wherever your muse will lead, folks.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: @Matt Bernius:
This is OT to the OP, but. . .
I went back and looked through some of that discussion. I got to a Bernius post that I found interesting.
Maybe my entire process was different from most. Unless the prompt was a straight knowledge check, my papers usually centered on ideas informed by the course material, but somewhat separate from it. Because I used sources as tools and material for a different structure, attribution was pretty easy.
When I would see accusations of plagiarism, I would wonder how the hell that ever happens to a person with intellectual integrity.*
I think that’s why I was somewhat insulated from the dangers of plagiarism. Of course, it could be equally half-assed. And it could put me in other iffy situations. Sometimes the constraints of the rubric didn’t allow the idea enough space. Or it didn’t exactly answer the original question. Or it just turned out poorly like a meal with poor flavor combinations. But I would have to try to plagiarize in order to commit it.
*On the other hand, the larger a work or more complicated a subject, it seems likely mistakes are going to happen. Same with people who speak extemporaneously daily. Write or talk long enough, you’re going to write or say some stupid shit.
But I also have a long-held sneaking suspicion that few people actually read the assignments they are supposed to, much less the additional research they do for longform assignments.
@Matt: “So be careful when you make such broad generalizations because it just shows your ignorance”
Remember, kids, to the Matts of the world, unless you can reel off sentences like “My 7.63×39 (ak47 pattern which shoots like a weakened 30-30) 123 grain soft point rounds didn’t have issues penetrating the hogs we hunted” you are simply not allowed to have an opinion about gun control because you are ignorant and thus not one of the elect.
Remember, only people who love guns are qualified to talk about guns. The rest of you, just shut up and wait for the bullet.
@wr:
On the other hand, we could use Matt’s posts to sharpen our own arguments.
After all, that same argument you’re making can, has been, and is used against the technocratic necessities of the administrative state. But expertise should inform every branch of government.
In these same comment sections, I have made the same argument that Matt makes about 3D printing and firearms.
Am I saying give up on gun control? No. But it can’t be the only approach to dealing with gun violence.
Are women allowed to have guns? At the time the second amendment was written, women didn’t have the right to own property. If they couldn’t own property, then clearly they couldn’t own weapons. Originalism definitely forbids women from owning weapons. Alternatively, originalism is a preposterous doctrine.
@Kurtz:
Sadly no, because it’s predetermined and we all lose.
@Kurtz:
FWIW, that is something (the other) Matt has definitely helped me to do. We have had lots of exchanges on this topic and I have always learned from them and it’s helped me to rethink my own priors on certain gun control related topics.
@MarkedMan: I keep mine in a gun safe.
No it’s a fact, sorry if that is inconvenient for you.
So does ear protection. You should try it some time. As for living near a gun range, I do. I like knowing what kind of whack jobs are down there w/o going to see. YMMV.
No shit Sherlock. I also know that a silencer does make it harder to locate a shooter, a real problem during a mass shooting.
So do me a favor and get the fvck off your high horse.
eta: and I really don’t care what they do in Europe or any place else that doesn’t have a mass shooting every goddamn day.
@gVOR10: I confess I haven’t watched the movie closely, but in The Patriotisn’t the big trick the militia luring the Redcoats into a trap by running away when the British expected them to run away?
At the Battle of Cowpens, under Daniel Morgan, irregular militia were ordered to fire a single volley, then retreat as would be expected of undisciplined troops. The British, under Banastre Tarleton, attacked with dragoons. The irregular militia turned and fired a second volley, then fled again. This caused the British commander to order an advance against the “defeated” Americans. At that point, the British encountered American regulars. The maneuver was repeated at Guilford Courthouse.
@Zachriel: I did a battlefield tour about 15 years ago. The park ranger mentioned that perhaps half of the militiamen present at Cowpens were armed with long rifles, whereas the British used smoothbore muskets; one of the few times a militia was better armed than regular troops.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Oh yeah saint Reagan and the GOP only cared about gun control once said guns were in the hands of non whites.
@wr: God forbid you should know what you’re talking about. You’ve ranted and raved about Trump getting basic facts wrong. Yet it’s perfectly fine for people to get basic facts wildly wrong as long as they are supporting your hobby horse? This kind of stuff scares me because every time we talk about guns the left wingers quickly start acting like right wingers in that facts and reality no longer matter. All that matters is what you want to believe. Every time it’s like talking to right wingers about abortion or LGQBT+ stuff. The information I shared was an attempt to educate readers on the guns that are used for hunting and why. Instead of absorbing that information and maybe adjusting your view slighting you went full right winger. Maybe next time actually talk about what I said and not what you want to believe I said?
@OzarkHillbilly:
I provided a list of reasons why suppressors are a good thing for hunters and shooters to use. Your response? The left wing version of “I”M NOT LISTENING”. It’s like trying to explain to a right winger that a zygote is not a baby. You don’t care about facts or reality only your beliefs.
Which makes it harder for you to know what is going on around you while you’re busy hunting or poking holes in targets. So you could have someone screaming to look behind you or to not fire and you wouldn’t hear it until it’s too late. Regardless hearing protection is not all the same. It’s quite possible to still suffer hearing damage while wearing protection. Come on man you’re talking about something that is REQUIRED to use a gun in Europe. That alone should give you pause and maybe reconsider your opinion.
Holy crap tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling me. Okay time to get some education going on that will be promptly ignored. The absolute peak frequency for small arms is generally 900-1500HZ. That’s on the lower end of the 20-20,000 range that most humans can hear. The lower you go the harder it is to locate the source of a sound. Now add in trees, geographical features like hills, ground vegetation, etc and you end up with sound waves bouncing all over. If you can locate a shooter in the forest from non visual distance then you’re god damned superman. Inside a building or dense urban environment means a LOT more reflections. In that situation a suppressed weapon is arguably easier to locate as you can hear the sound profile better (including the rounds themselves). A suppressor isn’t going to make a mass shooter magically impossible to find.
Says the guy who has insulted me in every manner possible including denying that I even exist. All I have to do is type “gun” and you go off on your rude and unnecessary tangents. Most places would of banned you already for your abuse or at least warned you.
It’s already obvious you don’t care about facts or reality but I appreciate you outright admitting it. Personally I prefer to look at the nitty gritty of the European laws to see what they do differently. So we can do better.
What I find really funny though is that you’ve personally held Europe up as an example of why we should ban/highly restrict guns yet here you’re so quick to dump them once you find out they do things you don’t like. How very right winger of you…
@SC_Birdflyte: It really depends as the colonists were using basically any gun they could get. There was an eclectic mix of rifles and smooth bores. The Brown Bess AKA the Land Pattern Musket was used by the British which means there were lots of them laying around in storage or on the battlefield after the fight. So if I were to travel back in time to see first hand I would expect to see quite a few on the colonists side.
Using your enemy’s weaponry is a tradition going back to the genesis of humanity.
Just a FYI when a gun is fired in an enclosed space the report is so loud it utterly overpowers your ability to hear it. It just straight up becomes noise and pain destroying any ability to acoustically locate the source. If the shooter is outside in an urban environment things change as the sound waves aren’t as captive but there is still plenty of flat surfaces to bounce off. All that bouncing makes it hard to know where the original noise was made.
In comparison if they were using a suppressor that ear overload doesn’t happen and you can hear the high pitched noises of the gun very well. Unlike the low pitched boom that overpowers all other frequencies from the gun the higher pitched sounds of the gun and the crack of the bullet exceeding the speed of sound are very directional.
@OzarkHillbilly: Have you ever heard of airsoft? Paintballing? BB gun fights? There’s an airsoft place nearby that has a mix of fields. There’s the standard forested field. The field featuring a mix of forest and buildings. There’s also the urban environment field complete with cinder block and wooden buildings. I’m not sure on actual sizes but they are several acres in size allowing for +90 yard shots (even in the urban field). According to you no one should be able to find snipers ever because the loudest airsoft gun is nearly silent compared to a suppressed firearm. The pellets an airsoft gun fires are subsonic so you don’t even get the crack of the rounds going by to give you direction. Yet somehow even the most casual of kids can figure out where a sniper is shooting from based on the sounds.
All of these responses would of been much sooner but I got destroyed by that storm system. Power and recovery before the next system hits was far higher priority than responding to what is essentially a troll.