Massachusetts’ law prohibiting the possession and sale of some semiautomatic weapons commonly used in mass shootings is acceptable under a recent change to Second Amendment precedent from the US Supreme Court, a federal judge said Thursday.
“The features of modern assault weapons—particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality—along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” the order said.
Accuracy?
edit: I’m not disputing that the fact that an AR-15 is more accurate. I just don’t see how the improvement in accuracy makes the gun fall outside the scope of the second amendment. I mean, if you replace a rifled barrel with a smoothbore barrel on an AR-15, wouldn’t that make it more dangerous because you don’t know where the bullets would go?
Well yeah. My point is the AR-15 isn’t anything special these days. To single it out is irresponsible at best. We need to tackle the general issue of semi-auto rifles with external magazines. Everything else is just performative crap.
Okay but we’ve been here before. They just tried to add more names. To which the gun industry just changed the names. Then they tried to ban certain features. To which the gun industry just built around them.
Until we deal with the heart of the weapon and the reason for it’s combat effectiveness we’ll remain in this cycle.
Accuracy at the level available today is the difference between the Las Vegas shooter’s success and far less damage.
I also find it interesting that “accuracy” became the substance of your criticism rather than the argument as a whole.
E: personally I fully support the idea that that authors of the 2A never, ever thought that guns would have turned out this way. Guns were strictly utilitarian, people had one literally for putting food on the table and an immediate need of defense in an expanding country where there was literally no help for miles if you were lucky in some places. Urban and town life was different. The authors never could have foreseen arsenals in personal possession, never foreseen the ubiquitous use in everything from theft to suicide to school shootings. I’d die on the hill that had they any foresight at all where they thought this were a possibility, they would not have written it the way it stands today. They were shortsighted and myopic in some ways, but they weren’t stupid.
You need to read federalist papers then, if you assume the founders had no idea about technology. Guns of the time were already getting multiple barrels and rounds. You could also own warships privately and people did. That’s the equivalent of owning a nuclear sub these days. To say the 2nd doesn’t apply to modern firearms, means you agree that the 1st doesn’t apply to the Internet.
That’s because there isn’t any. At the constitutional convention they considered a version that included on express personal right to keep guns and it was unanimously rejected.
ROFL no they did not, we had just won a war with privately armed citizens and ownership against a standing army…read the first two paragraphs of paper #28…
Those papers are not saying what you want them to say. Alexander Hamilton is saying Militias are not good enough and if a standing army goes awry then the state’s forces can stand up to them.
He is literally advocating for the police and national guard. Part of his argument is that the modern GOP idea of minutemen was bad and that the Continental Army did the heavy lifting. So we should do what we need until we can raise a standing Army and then use State forces as a check against tyranny at the federal level.
“To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purposes of going through military exercises and evolutions,as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia,would be a real grievance to the people, and serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country… to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise, and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.”
The first two paragraphs of paper number 28…you clearly haven’t read them then.
THAT there may happen cases in which the national government may be necessitated to resort to force, cannot be denied. Our own experience has corroborated the lessons taught by the examples of other nations; that emergencies of this sort will sometimes arise in all societies, however constituted; that seditions and insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body; that the idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government), has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction.
Should such emergencies at any time happen under the national government, there could be no remedy but force. The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief. If it should be a slight commotion in a small part of a State, the militia of the residue would be adequate to its suppression; and the national presumption is that they would be ready to do their duty. An insurrection, whatever may be its immediate cause, eventually endangers all government. Regard to the public peace, if not to the rights of the Union, would engage the citizens to whom the contagion had not communicated itself to oppose the insurgents; and if the general government should be found in practice conducive to the prosperity and felicity of the people, it were irrational to believe that they would be disinclined to its support.
It’s literally saying that we just fought a war with a standing army, and that if we had one and shit went south the people will need to stand up to put it down.
The first largely doesn’t. There’s vanishingly few government owned discussion spaces. And Meta/Reddit/Lemmy are not constrained by the first amendment.
Accuracy means nothing when you’re firing into a crowd. You essentially cannot miss and worse accuracy probably would have meant the Las Vegas shooter would have hit more people.
Really… Ever fired a smooth bore gun? I have. They’re plenty of fun, so long as your protection and ability to eat don’t rely on them. The difference in accuracy at range, plus maintaining velocity, is very different.
I’ll offer you this to read rather than me reinventing the wheel.
If you read my edit, it’s already in there. Just like the judge said, modern firearms fall well outside the scope of weapons available to, and used by, the public at large. Yea, there’s ridiculous arguments of private citizens owning what constituted literally military weapons in the early days of the country, but those argument are devoid of framing.
So, in case you didn’t read the article:
“The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons—specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense,” the order said, and the current restrictions “pose a minimal burden on the right to self-defense and are comparably justified to historical regulation.”
…
“The features of modern assault weapons—particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality—along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” the order said.
Hence my argument in agreement with the assessment.
If you read my edit, it’s already in there. Just like the judge said, modern firearms fall well outside the scope of weapons available to, and used by, the public at large.
Nowhere in the article does the judge use the phrases or words “modern firearms” “public” “scope” “available.” That is your interpretation of what the judge said. I asked for you to elaborate so I would be on the same page as you. I think I have a different viewpoint than you. I don’t expect that my interpretation of what the article says will align 100% with how you interpret it.
The only purpose for the BULLETHOSE BABYKILLER 2000 is mass murder, and is an extreme threat to public safety, and please ignore the contract to put one in every police car in the country
Guns were strictly utilitarian, people had one literally for putting food on the table and an immediate need of defense in an expanding country where there was literally no help for miles if you were lucky in some places.
Okay? But the AR-10’s increased accuracy, muzzle velocity, range, and functionality are fine?
If you have a problem with AR, then replace that with “any modern semi-auto hunting rifle”. Because there is no functional difference.
Just for a minute I wish the gun control lobby would actually learn about guns. They’d be far more effective. And the for the record, I want them to be more effective.
They used to line up both armies in a field and all fire at each other at the same time with the hope of some musket balls hitting the other side. The invention of rifling increased accuracy greatly but was very difficult to do at the time. The muskets they used during the American revolution were very in-accurate, soldiers loaded inconsistent amounts of powder, the bullets were inconsistent sizes and density, and the barrels were limited by manufacturing methods.
It’s weird that high rate of fire and large magazine capacities aren’t mentioned because that is by far the deadliest aspect of modern firearms. Hand guns have both of those and are responsible for much more violent crime. Muzzle velocity, range, and accuracy describe most hunting rifles. I’d rather someone shoot 1 round of 50 cal per second from a 5 round magazine than 10 rounds of 9mm per second from a 30 round magazine.
Accuracy?
edit: I’m not disputing that the fact that an AR-15 is more accurate. I just don’t see how the improvement in accuracy makes the gun fall outside the scope of the second amendment. I mean, if you replace a rifled barrel with a smoothbore barrel on an AR-15, wouldn’t that make it more dangerous because you don’t know where the bullets would go?
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That’s great. But they had rifling and accuracy at 300 meters. They had breech loading, and cartridges too. The Army just didn’t want to adopt them.
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Not really. Hold on lemme go get you some examples.
https://www.browning.com/products/firearms/rifles/bar/bar-mk-3-dbm-wood.html
https://www.springfield-armory.com/m1a-series-rifles/
https://hk-usa.com/hk-models/sl8/
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Well yeah. My point is the AR-15 isn’t anything special these days. To single it out is irresponsible at best. We need to tackle the general issue of semi-auto rifles with external magazines. Everything else is just performative crap.
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Okay but we’ve been here before. They just tried to add more names. To which the gun industry just changed the names. Then they tried to ban certain features. To which the gun industry just built around them.
Until we deal with the heart of the weapon and the reason for it’s combat effectiveness we’ll remain in this cycle.
Accuracy at the level available today is the difference between the Las Vegas shooter’s success and far less damage.
I also find it interesting that “accuracy” became the substance of your criticism rather than the argument as a whole.
E: personally I fully support the idea that that authors of the 2A never, ever thought that guns would have turned out this way. Guns were strictly utilitarian, people had one literally for putting food on the table and an immediate need of defense in an expanding country where there was literally no help for miles if you were lucky in some places. Urban and town life was different. The authors never could have foreseen arsenals in personal possession, never foreseen the ubiquitous use in everything from theft to suicide to school shootings. I’d die on the hill that had they any foresight at all where they thought this were a possibility, they would not have written it the way it stands today. They were shortsighted and myopic in some ways, but they weren’t stupid.
You need to read federalist papers then, if you assume the founders had no idea about technology. Guns of the time were already getting multiple barrels and rounds. You could also own warships privately and people did. That’s the equivalent of owning a nuclear sub these days. To say the 2nd doesn’t apply to modern firearms, means you agree that the 1st doesn’t apply to the Internet.
I’ve read the Federalist Papers in their entirety and I see 0 defense for the modern interpretation of the second amendment among them
That’s because there isn’t any. At the constitutional convention they considered a version that included on express personal right to keep guns and it was unanimously rejected.
ROFL no they did not, we had just won a war with privately armed citizens and ownership against a standing army…read the first two paragraphs of paper #28…
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-21-30#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493341
Those papers are not saying what you want them to say. Alexander Hamilton is saying Militias are not good enough and if a standing army goes awry then the state’s forces can stand up to them.
He is literally advocating for the police and national guard. Part of his argument is that the modern GOP idea of minutemen was bad and that the Continental Army did the heavy lifting. So we should do what we need until we can raise a standing Army and then use State forces as a check against tyranny at the federal level.
“To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purposes of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country… to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise, and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._29
The first two paragraphs of paper number 28…you clearly haven’t read them then.
It’s literally saying that we just fought a war with a standing army, and that if we had one and shit went south the people will need to stand up to put it down.
This is arguing in favor of the national government having the ability to mobilize forces. At the time, there was no standing army
Again, I mentioned it being relevant today. The US government neither wants nor needs your help
Great so the police and national guard fulfill that function. We can safely ban private ownership now since the need they expressed is fulfilled.
The first largely doesn’t. There’s vanishingly few government owned discussion spaces. And Meta/Reddit/Lemmy are not constrained by the first amendment.
Accuracy means nothing when you’re firing into a crowd. You essentially cannot miss and worse accuracy probably would have meant the Las Vegas shooter would have hit more people.
Really… Ever fired a smooth bore gun? I have. They’re plenty of fun, so long as your protection and ability to eat don’t rely on them. The difference in accuracy at range, plus maintaining velocity, is very different.
I’ll offer you this to read rather than me reinventing the wheel.
https://gizmodo.com/the-physics-of-bullets-why-a-modern-gun-shoots-10-time-5944455
Would you care to elaborate on this?
If you read my edit, it’s already in there. Just like the judge said, modern firearms fall well outside the scope of weapons available to, and used by, the public at large. Yea, there’s ridiculous arguments of private citizens owning what constituted literally military weapons in the early days of the country, but those argument are devoid of framing.
So, in case you didn’t read the article:
…
Hence my argument in agreement with the assessment.
Nowhere in the article does the judge use the phrases or words “modern firearms” “public” “scope” “available.” That is your interpretation of what the judge said. I asked for you to elaborate so I would be on the same page as you. I think I have a different viewpoint than you. I don’t expect that my interpretation of what the article says will align 100% with how you interpret it.
Ah yes, ignore the argument again and quibble over grammar and vocabulary.
Whatever man.
The only purpose for the BULLETHOSE BABYKILLER 2000 is mass murder, and is an extreme threat to public safety, and please ignore the contract to put one in every police car in the country
Guns were not strictly utilitarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duelling_pistol
Framing mean anything to you? Just because you don’t find it utilitarian for mean that wasn’t a job they did then.
Dueling pistols were known for being ornate.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dueling_pistols.JPG
Look up the invention of rifling, amongst numerous other things.
Okay? But the AR-10’s increased accuracy, muzzle velocity, range, and functionality are fine?
If you have a problem with AR, then replace that with “any modern semi-auto hunting rifle”. Because there is no functional difference.
Just for a minute I wish the gun control lobby would actually learn about guns. They’d be far more effective. And the for the record, I want them to be more effective.
Yes
They used to line up both armies in a field and all fire at each other at the same time with the hope of some musket balls hitting the other side. The invention of rifling increased accuracy greatly but was very difficult to do at the time. The muskets they used during the American revolution were very in-accurate, soldiers loaded inconsistent amounts of powder, the bullets were inconsistent sizes and density, and the barrels were limited by manufacturing methods.
It’s weird that high rate of fire and large magazine capacities aren’t mentioned because that is by far the deadliest aspect of modern firearms. Hand guns have both of those and are responsible for much more violent crime. Muzzle velocity, range, and accuracy describe most hunting rifles. I’d rather someone shoot 1 round of 50 cal per second from a 5 round magazine than 10 rounds of 9mm per second from a 30 round magazine.