06-17-2016, 01:12 PM
[Bob]To many, the notion that rights are not absolute seems to imply that rights should have no legal power.
[Mike]Then those many are wrong (see ** below)
[Bob]There are well known principles that specify when rights can be and must be curtailed. The primary example came from Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. No right allows one to harm others. Your example of libel laws is classic. If one uses speech to harm another, or uses a gun to harm another, the Bill of Rights provides no legal protection.
{Mike]Is that the only one in your opinion?
[Bob]You seem also ignorant of US v. Miller. Existing Supreme Court precedent states the weapons most explicitly protected by the 2nd Amendment are modern military weapons... which would be assault rifles in modern times.
I was ignorant of this case. I looked into it found this from the wiki article on it:
The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.
And
Gun rights advocates…interpret it to state that ownership of weapons for efficiency or preservation of a well-regulated militia unit of the present day is specifically protected.
This supports your contention. I would add that not only are semi-auto firearms included, but so are machine guns, rpgs, shoulder-mounted SAMs (e.g. Stingers), flamethrowers, armored vehicles, tanks, chemical munitions and tactical nuclear weapons. Does the 2nd Amendment allow any individual or private group (e.g. Aryan Nations or an American-based radical Islamist group) the right to acquire a tactical nuke?
I then looked up Heller on wiki and found this:
**Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.
THIS is the limitation to which I referred, and which you have yet to address. It was what I meant by scale. There is a difference in terms of scale between a sawed-off shotgun (the weapon with which Miller was concerned) or a handgun (the weapon to which Heller refers) and ALL of the weapons I listed.
It seems to me that the Supreme Court made abundantly clear that they have NOT yet ruled on whether a ban on more powerful weapons is a violation of the Second Amendment.
[Mike]Then those many are wrong (see ** below)
[Bob]There are well known principles that specify when rights can be and must be curtailed. The primary example came from Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. No right allows one to harm others. Your example of libel laws is classic. If one uses speech to harm another, or uses a gun to harm another, the Bill of Rights provides no legal protection.
{Mike]Is that the only one in your opinion?
[Bob]You seem also ignorant of US v. Miller. Existing Supreme Court precedent states the weapons most explicitly protected by the 2nd Amendment are modern military weapons... which would be assault rifles in modern times.
I was ignorant of this case. I looked into it found this from the wiki article on it:
The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.
And
Gun rights advocates…interpret it to state that ownership of weapons for efficiency or preservation of a well-regulated militia unit of the present day is specifically protected.
This supports your contention. I would add that not only are semi-auto firearms included, but so are machine guns, rpgs, shoulder-mounted SAMs (e.g. Stingers), flamethrowers, armored vehicles, tanks, chemical munitions and tactical nuclear weapons. Does the 2nd Amendment allow any individual or private group (e.g. Aryan Nations or an American-based radical Islamist group) the right to acquire a tactical nuke?
I then looked up Heller on wiki and found this:
**Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.
THIS is the limitation to which I referred, and which you have yet to address. It was what I meant by scale. There is a difference in terms of scale between a sawed-off shotgun (the weapon with which Miller was concerned) or a handgun (the weapon to which Heller refers) and ALL of the weapons I listed.
It seems to me that the Supreme Court made abundantly clear that they have NOT yet ruled on whether a ban on more powerful weapons is a violation of the Second Amendment.