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Rucker61 said:
Only when the militia is mustered - not 24/7. Congress can tell you what you must, can or cannot possess while the militia is mustered, but not what you can keep at home or use in your off time. A militia member under active muster could also lose the right of free speech, free association and freedom from unreasonable search - that right would still exist for that citizen elsewhen and elsewhere.
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Congress is not the only one authorized to form militias. States have that right.
 
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Rucker61 said:
No, you asked how many sentences there are in the Second Amendment. Everything before the comma reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". That's not a sentence, it's a sentence fragment. The Second Amendment is but a single sentence.

You read Heller, right?

"(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved. Pp. 22–28.
(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment."
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No court has the authority to change the Constitution of the United States nor of any State.
 
Cordelier said:
I don't have a problem with people being armed... what I do have a problem with is people being armed with semi-auto rifles. There are plenty of superior bolt-action and lever action rifles for hunting, and unless your house is being attacked by a squad of North Korean sappers, using a semi-auto rifle for self-defense is ridiculous.
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Who are you to declare what a weapon is used for?

Weapons are about the right to self defense, not hunting. That self defense INCLUDES self defense against a rogue government or government agent.

BTW, did you know that a semi-automatic rifle, when used in a mass shooting, is firing at a rate typical of a Civil War era rifle or less? That's right! The 'rate of fire' argument doesn't hold water. Neither does the 'magazine capacity' argument.

The semi-automatic action has been around for a VERY long time. Why do you suddenly dislike it now?? Remember, Congress has no authority to ban by type of gun (including its type of action).
 
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Cordelier said:
And if there were no semi-auto rifles, 4 out of those 10 would have probably been killed in the incidents anyway.

So you tell me... how many blasted up tin cans and shot-up paper targets are those 6 lives worth?
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False equivalence. Blasting tin(?) cans and paper targets is not murder.
 
Cordelier said:
My solution would be to make semi-auto rifles with a muzzle energy greater than a .22 Hornet Title II weapons. Restrict them in the same way we restrict machine-guns and sawed-off shotguns. We can grandfather them in for people who already possess them. I don't think that's draconian.
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Congress has no authority to restrict machine guns or sawed off shotguns.

You aren't dictator of the United States. You don't get to choose what weapons people may use as their personal arm.
 
Cordelier said:
I've told you where I get my numbers - from the FBI Active Shooter Study... I've already posted some of the numbers I've obtained from parsing this study earlier in this thread.
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Irrelevant. Numbers do not give Congress the authority to overrule the 2nd amendment.
 
Rucker61 said:
Given the power of Congress enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, how does Congress not have the authority to limit who is in the militia?
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Not the question you brought up. They do have the authority to declare the size of the militia and who will serve in it, but ONLY for the federal militia. They do not have any rights of State militias.
 
Into the Night said:
Congress has no authority to restrict machine guns or sawed off shotguns.

You aren't dictator of the United States. You don't get to choose what weapons people may use as their personal arm.
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Of course they do. Commerce clause. Are those weapons SOLD?
 
Rucker61 said:
I've seen that study. I still don't see where "4 of 10" comes from - that's pure conjecture on your part.

I would consider the Mother Jones Mass Shooting database to be more complete. Handguns are used more often than rifles; shotguns aren't that far behind rifles.
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Not really... the Mother Jones database only outlines 105 cases between 1982 and 2018. The FBI Study outlines 160 cases between 2000 and 2013.
 
Cordelier said:
Not really... the Mother Jones database only outlines 105 cases between 1982 and 2018. The FBI Study outlines 160 cases between 2000 and 2013.
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The Mother Jones database is for mass shootings - the FBI active shooter database includes shootings with no deaths. Only 40% of active shootings had three or more deaths (mass shootings).
 
Rucker61 said:
I've seen that study. I still don't see where "4 of 10" comes from - that's pure conjecture on your part.
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The 4 of 10 statement comes from the figures I cited earlier... in the 25 cases where a semi-auto was used in the hands of a "hardened killer", average fatality levels were 58% higher than in the control group of 128 cases where no semi-auto rifle was used. Come to think of it, I must have been tired last night - my "on-the-fly" math was wrong... 6 (not 4) would have been killed if the shooter was forced to use an alternative type of firearms if a semi-auto rifle wasn't available (6 * 1.58 = 9.48 or 10 for argument's sake).
 
Cordelier said:
The 4 of 10 statement comes from the figures I cited earlier... in the 25 cases where a semi-auto was used in the hands of a "hardened killer", average fatality levels were 58% higher than in the control group of 128 cases where no semi-auto rifle was used. Come to think of it, I must have been tired last night - my "on-the-fly" math was wrong... 6 (not 4) would have been killed if the shooter was forced to use an alternative type of firearms if a semi-auto rifle wasn't available (6 * 1.58 = 9.48 or 10 for argument's sake).
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You can't extrapolate the numbers that way. You have to look at the details of each incident.
 
Into the Night said:
Congress is not the only one authorized to form militias. States have that right.
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There's only one Militia. That's why Article I, Section 8 refers to "the Militia". States have the power to appoint officers and the authority for training the Militia... according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
 
Rucker61 said:
You can't extrapolate the numbers that way. You have to look at the details of each incident.
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You did the same extrapolation when you put forward the claim that semi-auto rifles killed an average of 10 people a year... My response is that they are on average 58% more deadly than all other firearms. We're both talking averages, are we not?
 
Cordelier said:
You did the same extrapolation when you put forward the claim that semi-auto rifles killed an average of 10 people a year... My response is that they are on average 58% more deadly than all other firearms. We're both talking averages, are we not?
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My numbers are based on actual numbers; yours depend on conflating inherent "deadliness" with the numbers killed in unique circumstances by different firearms. I would presume that the number of available victims is as big a factor as any. We just can't assume that if a handgun or shotgun had been used in any shooting where a semiauto rifle had been used that there would be fewer deaths, especially a 40% reduction.

If the shooter at Sandy Hook had used the handguns that he had rather than the rifle, it's pure conjecture that there would have been 40% fewer deaths, given that in similar circumstances with tougher targets a shooter armed with weaker handguns killed 30.
 
Rucker61 said:
My numbers are based on actual numbers; yours depend on conflating inherent "deadliness" with the numbers killed in unique circumstances by different firearms. I would presume that the number of available victims is as big a factor as any. We just can't assume that if a handgun or shotgun had been used in any shooting where a semiauto rifle had been used that there would be fewer deaths, especially a 40% reduction.

If the shooter at Sandy Hook had used the handguns that he had rather than the rifle, it's pure conjecture that there would have been 40% fewer deaths, given that in similar circumstances with tougher targets a shooter armed with weaker handguns killed 30.
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Given the combination of higher magazine capacity, higher rate of fire, and higher muzzle velocity and accuracy of semi-auto rifles, I think a 58% increase in fatalities would be roughly consistent with what one would expect to see in such instances, don't you? If not, well, that'll be great news... just imagine how much the Pentagon will be able to save by doing away with M-16's and M-4's and just issuing M9 handguns instead.
 
Cordelier said:
Given the combination of higher magazine capacity, higher rate of fire, and higher muzzle velocity and accuracy of semi-auto rifles, I think a 58% increase in fatalities would be roughly consistent with what one would expect to see in such instances, don't you? If not, well, that'll be great news... just imagine how much the Pentagon will be able to save by doing away with M-16's and M-4's and just issuing M9 handguns instead.
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The military generally doesn't shoot unarmed people trapped in a gun free zone. They also tend to engage large numbers of armed people as far out as they can.

Comparisons between military use and mass shootings is flawed from step one.
 
Rucker61 said:
The military generally doesn't shoot unarmed people trapped in a gun free zone. They also tend to engage large numbers of armed people as far out as they can.

Comparisons between military use and mass shootings is flawed from step one.
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It's not when you're trying to gauge the casualty-inflicting capabilities of various weapons.
 
Cordelier said:
It's not when you're trying to gauge the casualty-inflicting capabilities of various weapons.
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so your argument is the second amendment ceases to operate at a certain level of "lethality" of small arms? or are you just another liberal who wants to ban the firearms he thinks he can muster enough emotion against-facts be damned.
 
Rucker61 said:
You have to consider the circumstances.
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The way I figure it, every incident has circumstances. Taken in isolation, those circumstances matter a great deal. But if you look at a large number of incidents, then the differing circumstances start cancelling each other out and trends start appearing. Like the fact that semi-auto rifles are inherently more dangerous than handguns. That seems self-evident to me. I didn't know what the numbers were going to be... that's why I analyzed the FBI Study - to get a grasp of how much semi-auto rifles affected these incidents. In all honesty, I was expecting the disparity to be even larger... probably 100-200% higher. That it only came out to 58% was a bit of a shocker to me.
 
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