Eight, nine, ten-year-old children trapped in a classroom with a crazed 18-year-old armed with an assault rifle. Children desperately calling 911 asking for them to send the police. Behind the locked door, nineteen armed police officers standing about for 45 minutes. Their commander decides it would be too dangerous to attempt to get into the room and stop the slaughter.
I think if I were the father or grandfather of one of those
murdered children, I would make it my life’s work to kill the 19 police
officers.
80 comments:
Yes, it is incomprehensible and makes one’s blood boil. The police claim that they were unaware that there were still students behind the locked door. There are only two alternatives. Either the gunman had stopped shooting in the classroom, and his victims were already dead, or he continued to shoot while the police were outside waiting. If the latter, how could they not have heard the shots being fired in the classroom. If the former, why did 19 police officers not decide to use a battering ram and assault the gunman, alone in the room, en masse. They should all be fired, and denied their retirement benefits. And the police department should be sued for multiple millions of dollars for the breakdown in communication and leadership. But nothing will bring those dead children back.
Post-script:
I used the word “should” twice in my above comment. “Should” is a normative term. Was I making a moral judgment, or simply expressing my own personal point of view? I submit with regard to the police who were standing outside the door and failed to act, it was a moral judgment. They each took an oath before being sworn in as police officers to serve and protect. Based on what I have rea and seen on television, they knew there was only one gunman. Was their failure to break the door down and swarm the gunman simply a lapse in judgment which cannot be characterized as immoral? Given the oath that they took, and the alternatives they faced, I would maintain that their failure to act, given the possibility that there were still students in the classroom, cannot be justified as a mere lapse in judgment. Their failure to act, when they had the ability to act, where together they clearly were better armed then the lone gunman, was an example of an immoral failure to act.
My wife, Ginger, asked a tantalizing question about the situation outside Robb Elementary school when the parents were urging the reluctant police to enter the building and try to prevent their kids from being slaughtered.
Uvalde being in Texas and Texas being Texas, it is not improbable that some of those parents had guns readily accessible to them at home or otherwise nearby. This raises an intriguing question: Why did none of the parents retrieve those guns and storm the school themselves?
There are lots of possible explanations why such a plan would not have worked, which perhaps explain why no parent even tried. They might have thought that the police would enter the school any minute now. They might have thought that the police would be even more inclined to prevent armed parents from entering, given that they had already prevented unarmed parents from doing so. There may not have been time to go home, get the guns and return. They may simply not have thought of arming themselves to storm the school.
Whatever the explanation for there having been no armed parents at Robb Elementary, the question invokes a tantalizing scenario.
Wrt your question, David, why did none of the parents with guns not retrieve them and storm the building? I hesitate to claim that it's true, since in our day evidence-free reports blossom wildly on the web, but I have seen claims that at least some of the police outside the school were directing their efforts--including handcuffing and pepper spraying--at the distraught parents. One can only imagine what might have resulted if these parents had been armed with guns.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/uvalde-mother-handcuffed-shooting_n_629004cae4b0cda85dbc2842
To Anonymous:
I take your point... the police reacted badly and crazily enough to the unarmed parents who wanted to enter the school that one shudders to think how they would have reacted to armed parents.... probably by shooting them.
Credible report are that one mother did manage to elude the police, enter the school, gather up her child and retreat to safety. Good for her. (Of course, her child was not in the killing classroom.)
The tragic events in Uvalde put a big hole in the NRA’s mantra that the answer to a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun. There were 19 or more supposedly good people with guns, in police uniforms, who failed to confront the bad person with two AR-15’s.
The answer is not arming more people with guns. The answer is doing everything constitutionally permissible to ensure that bad people do not obtains guns, particularly semi-automatic weapons like AR-15s. This means first repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), 15 U.S.C. §§ 7901-7903, which immunizes the manufacturers of AR-15s from being sued in any court in the United States; and then suing the hell out of them. I have already written my two Michigan senators, as well as Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, recommending repeal of the PLCA, and I recommend that you all do the same.
I learned something from watching Chris the Cop videos of him playing the video game SWAT 4. As a police officer (first responder) or Swat, or any police officer for that matter, when you hear gunfire or screaming etc, you're supposed to rush the area with guns at the ready. This became a policy after the Columbine massacre. If true then those police chiefs can be in some big problems legally because of culpability.
I thought I was logged in. This is my post.
I learned something from watching Chris the Cop videos of him playing the video game SWAT 4. As a police officer (first responder) or Swat, or any police officer for that matter, when you hear gunfire or screaming etc, you're supposed to rush the area with guns at the ready. This became a policy after the Columbine massacre. If true then those police chiefs can be in some big problems legally because of culpability.
There has been only ONE mass shooting at a school in Canada where I live: Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal: On Dec. 6, 1989, 25-year-old Marc Lepine shot more than two dozen people, killing 14 women before killing himself with an assault rifle. All other shootings at schools killed 1 or 2 persons, and they are still rare rather than regular, almost monthly news events.
I saw the interview between Texas Senator Ted Cruz and a British Sky News journalist regarding the Uvalde, Texas school shooting that killed more than 20 persons. Here is the link to Cruz and what he said when the journalist asked Why do these frequent school shooting happen only in America, called it American exceptionalism to sting Cruz into overreacting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atrMAK7TjKM&ab_channel=SkyNews
Cruz stormed away: I am sorry that you think that American exceptionalism is so awful...save me the propaganda.
Big money controls the gun politics of America and it isn't going away without a fight. Schools are being attacked in order to kill more, shock the public more and increase the kill count record for mass killings. It is a kind of uniquely American death ritual or human sacrifice practice that has become part of American identity and the political narratives that engage in the gun control security rights versus individual right to bear arms after each mass shooter event travel in a useless loop, compounding civil trauma many times over. You get the "news" and it is already old, you have heard it all before, the value of a human life means nothing in a world determined by money movements.
I think it was reported that the Border Patrol people got the keys to the classroom from the janitor.
"I think it was reported that the Border Patrol people got the keys to the classroom from the janitor."
I assume the incident commander, who was the head of the school PD, had a set of master keys with him and he refused access. If he didn't have a master set that is yet another strike. The problem with blaming all nineteen officers is that the only way to override a stubborn commander would be to organize a mutiny. The BP was a separate, cohesive unit under their own commander who was able to say BS, override the locals, get a master, and make it stick.
Every school I can recall had out-swinging doors and a battering ram isn't going to be effective against hardened out-swinging doors. Swat units and FDs have the right tools. Having easy access to masters is a part of good policy.
Where was the resource officer?
How was it OK for a teacher to prop open an outside door and leave it unattended? Was this a regular practice? Lots of questions.
"Big money controls the gun politics of America..."
The money is the carrot. The Republican primary voter is the stick - they really believe the kayfabe. All this is enabled by our failing constitution and corrupt Supreme Court.
I don't know what standard police procedures in this type of situation are in the U.S. and if they violated them, the cops involved should be sanctioned, although not assassinated as the originial post suggests, rhetorically I understand. Still violent rhetoric is violent.
I've observed that cops in Chile tend to not put their own lives in risk when they act in groups, although individual cops can be heroic at times.
Having never been in that kind of situation, I don't feel that I have the right to condemn the cops involved for not being heroes. The one time in my life that I had the opportunity to risk my life as a hero, I didn't.
Most of us are human, all too human and the desire to preserve one's own life runs very deep as an instinct.
As Marc comments above, the U.S. needs much stricter gun control laws, that is clear.
"Having never been in that kind of situation, I don't feel that I have the right to condemn the cops involved for not being heroes."
I respect & greatly admire the police. No one should be over critical when it comes to the police. But everyone knows that heads are going to roll for this horrible shooting.
A categorical imperative in favor of those police officers may go something like this:
'If anyone justifies that the cops didn't have to intervene in contradiction to their orders, then everytime a police officer knows the right thing to do but doesn't do it (because of a higher ranked order) then they shouldn't be held negligible in all like cases.'
Of course, this rule sounds completely unrealistic and in no way pragmatic.
I should have written instead:
'If anyone holds justifiable that the cops didn't have to intervene in contradiction to their orders, then everytime a police officer knows the right thing to do but doesn't do it (because of a higher ranked order) then they shouldn't be held negligible in all like cases.'
If justifiable, then hello Big Brother.
It seems murky to me, given that sure, I've seen stuff about how frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the school. Taking this for a bungled shooting response, also that this is a horrific shooting, being called the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade, I still am not quite so exited about this particular incident -- it is, after all, at least the 30th school shooting at a K-12 school in 2022. And it seems to me like the info is murky, and the decisions that were made, maybe sometimes it comes to entering "negotiations" with the suspect. I don't know -- making big decisions also means that you lose options that you previously had. I gather the impression that aactical team came to the classroom and forced entry after about an hour. The issue is 'waiting'? It seems murky to me.
Marc Susselman:
'I used the word “should” twice in my above comment. “Should” is a normative term. Was I making a moral judgment, or simply expressing my own personal point of view?'
Probably the definition of 'normative' here turns out to be circular, and also, I'm not seeing a distinction between 'making a moral judgment' and 'simply expressing my own personal point of view'. If there is a distinction, then I fear to try to guess how exactly, it is drawn.
" I don't feel that I have the right to condemn the cops involved for not being heroes."
It's not being a hero, it's doing your job. That means the guys at the top see that training is done and the proper equipment procured. A ballistic shield fits in a car trunk. There wasn't one between the school district and the town? How does that happen? It also means leaders who can operate under pressure. The Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941 identified strengths and weaknesses. These departments need better leadership and training. They also need to reevaluate their members.
Nothing murky D, this was a massive fail on so many levels.
s.w., interesting:
https://www.labornotes.org/2022/05/you-have-be-very-persistent-lessons-starbucks-union-chile
To Danny:
You say: "I'm not seeing a distinction between 'making a moral judgment' and 'simply expressing my own personal point of view'. If there is a distinction, then I fear to try to guess how exactly, it is drawn."
I appreciate your puzzlement. However, it must be said that there is substantial philosophical literature on precisely the question you raise. The field is called "meta-ethics," a clumsy label, I agree.
With some fear of appearing to be unbearably self-serving, may I suggest that you take a look at some of my replies to Marc's posts, in which he insists that we are either strong objectivists [i.e. moral realists] about goodness and rightness] or simply admit that moral judgments are just expressions of taste.
There are other options. Well, that is a long story.
If you really want an answer to your very apt question, then I recommend getting ahold of a good introductory book on ethics... and going to the chapters on meta-ethics... i.e. the meaning and rational basis of moral judgments.
There are lots of them.
Forgive my pedantry. I am just trying to be helpful...I guess I speak as somebody who has been teaching moral philosophy for about 50 years.
@ Danny
You said: "The issue is 'waiting'? It seems murky to me."
On the facts that have come out so far -- more will prob come out later -- there's nothing "murky" about the basic situation.
Nineteen or so policemen stood outside a locked classroom for a significant period while there was a gunman inside killing people (children, mostly), a couple of whom were desperately calling 911 and begging police to enter the classroom.
Those facts themselves indicate that something (as aaall says in more detail above) went very wrong here. Wrong assessment of the situation, wrong training, probably both...
The only thing "murky" is your comment, which seems almost willfully obtuse.
By the way, why have you have put the word "waiting" in quotation marks? Are you unaware of the standard definition of the word? What would you prefer to call it, if not waiting?
I'm not participating in this thread any further, am behind on some things I need to do.
aaall,
Thanks for the link...
Danny,
The comments David Zimmerman refers to are in the previous thread and are very helpful.
The singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn wrote a song that captures the visceral reaction of one man to mass violence in Guatemala 50 or so years ago. The singer/narrator describes the horror of helicopters coming to strafe villages, and refugee camps, and "how many kids they've murdered, only god can say." The first verse concludes with: "If I had a rocket launcher, i'd make somebody pay.
In the subsequent verses the tag line "If I had..." gets increasingly freighted with more anger. The second verse calls out 'generals and their stinking torture states ends with "I would retaliate," Verse 3 references 100,000 refugees awaiting starvation "or lss humane fates." It ends with: "cry for Guatemala, with a corpse in every gate. If I had a rocket launcher, I would not hesitate. The last verse calls for listeners to act to end the slaughter. The concluding lines are as follows: "situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry. If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die."
If a state kills its own citizens, including children for nothing other than to stay in power, then those fighting against the "stinking torture state" would be engaged in a just war. I am hard pressed to see any difference in the moral calculus behind resorting to violence to rectify the injustice of dictatorships slaughtering the innocent or of children dying at the altar of the inviolate sanctity of Second Amendment guarantee that everybody can own weapons of war.
It just seems to me that arguing about the really poor police response is just what gun manufacturers and 2nd Amendment nutters would like us to do. Instead of being outraged that some 18 year old is able to get assault weapons in the first place, we get to argue about how the police should have acted more heroically or whatever. This is just what these idiots want to argue and you're going to here how if the 'good guys' just had the proper leadership, or better training, or better body armor, or better weapons, well, that is the main problem. Not that some idiot is easily able to get these weapons in the first place and drive around with them and use them whenever he has some kind of mental breakdown.
Jerry, the performance of the local cops pretty much puts paid to "good guy with a gun" meme so beloved of conservatives. In order for that to work everything has to work right. That is not the world in which we live.
In a world of Paul Blarts and with crazy folks everywhere but where semi-automatic centerfire firearms are not available these massacres couldn't happen but do you really want to just blow off this level of incompetence?
Policing is serious business. The state of American policing is a serious problem. When the Border Patrol are the good guys, we know there's a problem. This is sort of walking and chewing gum... we can handle it.
We also need better mental health services, free and available to all without any stigma or disqualifications. Free medication too because there have been incredible advances in medication for mental disorders.
A woman friend has a 20 year old son who had been diagnosed as bipolar and was taking medication, but not the right one, freaked out one night and attacked her. She screamed and a neighboring apartment called the cops. When the cops arrived, he attacked them with a sharp instrument, was wrestled to the ground and arrested.
She wanted him out of her life even if that meant leaving him on the streets, but an online group of parents of children with bipolar disorders got in touch with her and convinced her that it's a question of finding the right cocktail of medications and the right psychiatrist.
Not cheap, but a group of friends and family supported her, helping her pay for a top psychiatrist and the right new medication. The kid is peaceful and studying now.
The whole above process should be free and provided by an decent state.
I got the impression the situation was temporally stable, there was no current shooting, and the police had paused before storming the classroom to gather facts, to regroup, to plan, and perhaps for some of them to face the prospect of meeting their maker. If so, this was absolutely the right thing to do. We know from Kahneman that fast thinking in crises of this type is sometimes necessary, and when it is, well, we all have to do what we have to do; but where it isn’t, you plan, plan, plan - then strike instantly and ruthlessly when the enemy has relaxed a little. In this kind of situation you want cool, logical, thinkers - I’m afraid if my child had been in there I wouldn’t have wanted any of you within a mile of the situation, especially the poster that suggested that the parents with their own guns could have stormed the room. Only in America would anyone think that’s a sane solution, let alone an effective one. (Of course, if the situation wasn’t stable, then police should have stormed immediately. As far I know, the facts aren’t yet known).
Lord knows I’m no fan of the police. In my 60 years and many encounters with them, they have never helped any situation I’ve been in and often made it worse. Mostly, the police are arseholes. But the NRA are bigger arseholes, and they’re the ones you should be blaming. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this entire “the police did nothing for 45 minutes” story comes out of the NRA’s disinformation team: it smacks of a diversion.
Robert Loughrey,
I agree that we should not rush to judgment.
These are the possible scenarios:
a. There were no children in the room in which the shooter had barricaded himself. If this was the case, then, yes, there was no need to storm the room and risk police officers being killed (putting aside the question whether why the phone calls being made by children in the room to 911 was not being conveyed to the command officer, and from him to the 19 officers waiting outside the door).
b. But the police did not know if (a) was the case. There may have been children, alive, in the room. In that case, either the gunman had finished his shooting and all of his victims were already dead.
c. If (b) was not the case, then he had not finished shooting, and he continued to shoot, then the police should have heard the shots and stormed the room. The shooter would not likely be wasting his ammunition just shooting into thin air. He was probably shooting at live children, and continuing to kill them.
d. Since the police did not know if (a) was the case, then regardless whether (b) or (c) was the case – either the shooter had stopped shooting, but there were still children in the room, alive. Or he had finished shooting, and all the children were already dead. There were 19 police offices outside the door. They were all supposed to have been trained in how to deal with a live shooter situation. Since they did not know if (a), (b) or (c) was the case, they had an obligation, as sworn police officers, to assume the worst and storm the room, yes, risking their lives, just in case (c) was the case.
The above calculus is not that complicated. A trained, experienced police officer – out of 19 police officers, at least one or more would have been so qualified – should be able to have made this calculation in less than 15 minutes. They are supposed to be trained in the kind of fast thinking that Prof. Kahneman wrote about. But they waited outside the door for 45 minutes. There was no valid excuse for them to wait that long.
LFC,
Although you have indicated that you are done commenting on this thread, I do have a question for you:
Why do you think it is “wrong” for a gunman to shoot and kill young children?
If this is a moral judgment on your part, on what it is based? Personal preference, or intuition, or something else? If something else, can you explain what that something else is? Is it a "considered moral judgment"? If so, what is the moral judgment that is being considered?
Just wondering.
Wow, that's intense, but I'm glad to hear you say it. Hopefully, there will be some justice in this regard.
Marc
In the previous thread I wrote a comment in which I said that it is possible that there are objective moral principles (but that they don't exhaust the moral realm, so to speak). It seems to me that the judgment that murder is wrong could stem from either:
1) an objective moral principle or
2) to paraphrase/quote D. Zimmerman in the previous thread, an attitude (or conviction or belief) purified by confrontation w relevant facts and subject to the requirements of consistency and impartiality.
In this case, since everyone agrees that the actions of the gunman were profoundly wrong and heinous, I don't really care whether the judgment is based on (1) or (2).
But since I've never claimed any particular expertise in philosophy and since in four years of college I took only one course that was officially labeled a philosophy course (a course I disliked and that persuaded me that I shouldn't be a philosophy major), there's no particular reason you shd care what I think.
On the other hand, since DZ has taught moral philosophy for more than 50 years, there's some reason to pay attention to what he's saying.
I continue to believe, for what it's worth, that your view of meta-ethics, as D Zimmerman wrote in the previous thread, is wrong. You, of course, think your view of meta-ethics is correct. So we'll agree to disagree.
P.s. "meta-ethical position" is a better way of putting it than "view of meta-ethics"
P.p.s. In the previous thread you said, in effect, that I was not qualified to express an opinion on these matters, so again, I don't know why you care what I think about meta-ethics.
At the risk of being considered tedious, an annoying bore, and perhaps an authoritarian fascist by some, I want to make a point, because I think it is an extremely important point to be made on a blog whose general orientation is the discussion of philosophical issues, and of philosophical issues relating in particular to the area of ethics, Prof. Wolff’s area of expertise (and of David Zimmerman as well).
Virtually everybody whose has commented on Prof. Wolff’s post have expressed a point of view decrying the death of 19 innocent children at the hands of a crazed gunman, who, it seems apparent, suffered from some serious form of psychological infirmity. From this I can only infer that the commenters believe that was in some sense “wrong” for the gunman to kill these 19 children. From this I can infer that the commenters believe killing 19 innocent children is in some sense “immoral.” Why? Can any of you prove that it is immoral? Why do you believe it?
In a series of comments in a previous post, I argued that bashing in the skull of a newborn healthy human being is objectively immoral. I was met with a chorus of dissents – all I was expressing was my personal belief; in other cultures, and at other times in history, infanticide was fairly commonly practiced, and therefore I have no right to say that such a practice is immoral.; can I prove that it is immoral; there are no morally objective principles, there are only personal preferences, which vary from culture to culture and over time.
Well, the murder of those 19 children by a crazed gunman is just an extension of bashing in the skull of a newborn, healthy human being. Yet all of the commenters commenting on this post are expressing the view that what the gunman did (as well as the failure of the police to respond adequately and the laws of our country which allowed an 18 year-old to get his hands on the two AR-15’s which he used to commit his carnage) is somehow “wrong,” intolerable, barbaric, …. i.e., it was immoral. Prof. Wolff went so far as to state that it justified the parents and grandparents of the victims to make it their life’s work to hunt down and kill each of the 19 policemen who did nothing to save the victims. From this I infer that Prof. Wolff believes it was wrong for the gunman to have killed the 19 children. Why? What is worng, or immoral about killing 19 children, and why do you believe it, and can you prove that your belief is valid?
(Continued)
Again, I raise this tedious question because it lies at the root of something that is important for society, and important for the philosophy of ethics, and therefore, I submit, a legitimate and important topic of discussion on this blog. Are there, or are there not, objective moral precepts that are true and valid, regardless whether we can prove them? And if there aren’t, why do we keep acting and communicating as if there are? I may be accused of beating a dead horse, but no pain is inflicted on the dead horses.
In the previous thread, s. wallerstein raised the question about the young Frenchman, who, during WWII, is faced with the decision whether to join the French Resistance. Whichever decision he makes has pros and cons, benefits and deficits, such that there is no objective moral answer as to what he must do, suggesting, therefore, that there are no objectively moral principles whatsoever. But this is a logical fallacy derived from the false premise that if there are objectively moral precepts, there must be an objectively moral precept that answers every ethical dilemma. There is no objectively moral precept which can answer the Frenchman’s dilemma, therefore there are no objectively moral precepts. The highest prime number is (2 raised to the power of 82,589,933) – 1. Mathematicians do not know if that is the last highest prime number, of if there are any more. From this uncertainty should we conclude that there are no prime numbers? Of course not. The same applies to whether there exist any objective moral precepts, just because we do not have an answer for the young Frenchman during WWII.
According to LFC, whether his belief that killing the young children was objectively immoral, or “an attitude (or conviction or belief) purified by confrontation w relevant facts and subject to the requirements of consistency and impartiality” does not matter, for whichever is valid, you wind up at the same place. But how you get tot that place, particularly in philosophy, is in fact quite important. There is a vast difference between “an attitude, conviction or belief which is purified by confrontation with relevant facts etc. … , and an objectively moral precept, because an ”attitude,” however it is arrived at, and whatever fancy language you ensconce it in, is just that – an attitude, a personal preference that you share with many others for which you offer an explanation. But attitudes are not objectively valid, they are personal preferences. A personal preference, however consistent with the facts and impartial, that it is wrong to kill 19 children is far different than stating, directly and unequivocally, that killing 19 children is objectively immoral, because attitudes can change, and objective truths do not.
On CBS Sunday morning, they had a segment about gun control laws in Australis, which were enacted after a mass shooting in Port Arhtus, Australia, in 1996. It is worth watching:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/checking-gun-violence-in-australia/
"There was no valid excuse for them to wait that long."
Certainly but at this point we still don't have a clear timeline. The district chief who was in charge isn't giving interviews. It doesn't matter how many cops were in the hallway, they needed a key and it isn't clear if the IC had one and if so how he managed it. That the BP guy needed to run down a janitor (how long did that take?) is just weird. We are long past mere "storming." Doesn't matter how many folks are in the hallway, you aren't going through a locked out-swinging commercial grade door from the outside without a key or specialized breaching tools.
Still too many questions.
The LFC/DZ two step seems more than sufficient for a good society.
The video below is disturbing but informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeGEHEpUzIY
Sort of makes it clear that this has nothing to do with shooting sports.
Wow, how cool - and sick.
Earlier this month, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a panel composed of two Trump appointees and a Clinton appointee (who dissented), in effect struck down a Calif. law that prohibited people under age 21 from buying semiautomatic weapons. (Technically, the panel reversed a district ct's refusal to enjoin the law.)
Link to follow later.
The case LFC is referring to is Jones v. Bonta (9th Cir., May 11, 2022), and you can find it at the link below.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2022/05/11/20-56174.pdf
Because a 16 yo in the 18th century could sometimes carry a flintlock musket, an 18 yo can buy a semi-automatic rifle in the 21st. Makes sense! Biden has appointed a number of judges to the Ninth recently so Bonta should do an en banc appeal.
I only had to briefly scan the100-page decision in Jones v. Bonta to conclude that the majority decision is an exercise in right-wing legalistic b.s. sophistry. The issue in question was the constitutionality of a California statute which placed a a minimum age of 21 to purchase either a long gun (rifle) or a semiautomatic centerfire rifle (like an AR-15 or an M-16). The 2-judge majority opinion overturned the lower court’s denial of a request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the statute from going into effect. The opening sentences of the majority opinion states: “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army. Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.” As the phrase which was popular during the 1980s goes, “Gag me with a spoon.”
The majority’s ruling is in fact contrary to the holding of the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, the controlling authority on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, written by J. Scalia, in which he stated:
“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [a prior S. Ct. decision] said ... that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U.S. at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.” ...
“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service – M-16 rifles and the like – may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.” (Emphasis added; citations omitted.)
At the time of the revolutionary war, no soldiers, whether 18 years old or 70 years old, possessed an semi-automatic weapon which the California statute imposed a minimum age of 21 in order to purchase or own. Under the majority opinion in Heller, NO AMERICAN CITIZEN, REGARDLESS OF HIS/HER AGE HAS A RIGHT UNDER THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO BUY OR OWN A SEMI-AUTOMATIC WEAPON. PERIOD. Therefore, the California stattue imposing a 21 year -old minimum age on the right to purchase or own semi-automatic weapons is not, contrary to the majority ruling in Jones, prohibited by the 2nd Amendment. Their decision to the contrary is based on their ignorance and disingenuousness.
@ Marc,
as you know I am not a US citizen and I may not fully grasp the situation. To make a long story short, I read the Second Amendment as a law in a very specific historical situation that should dissolve once all institutions are established that regulate and control the state's monopoly on the use of force. The wording could be applied to Ukraine today, where an external enemy threatens the security of the state and a "well-regulated militia" may be unavoidable. To derive from this a natural right to bear arms for one's own individual security is ridiculous.
One, perhaps naive, question I must ask, however: Are all gun owners in the USA actually members of a "well-regulated militia"?
Adam,
Thank you for your question.
The only state militias which exist today are the National Guard units in each of the 50 states. And not every citizen of the state belongs to the National Guard. In order to become a member of a stat’s National Guard, an individual has to go through military training – boot camp, etc.
So, given the wording of the 2nd Amendment, a natural reading would be that only members of a state’s National Guard has the right to bear arms. But the problem is the end clause of the Amendment: “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Who are “the people” referred to? I read it, and the dissent in the case I referred to, D.C. v. Heller, as referring to the people in the militia, i.e., each state’s National Guard. That is not how the majority read it. The confusion is partially caused by the presence of the comma between the word “Arms” and the word “shall,” which makes it read as if “the people” being referred are the people of the United States generally, not just the people who belong to the state militias. This demonstrates how important proper punctuation is – because of the presence of a comma, the people of the United States have to experience these periodic blood-baths.
It demonstrates how bonkers having a 200-year old constitution is.
I'd be terrified to have a constitutional convention to bring it up to date.
On the importance of grammar and punctuation (o tempora, o mores):
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0013838X.2018.1436285
“Being-clauses in Historical Corpora and the US Second Amendment
Abstract
“The gun control debate in the US revolves around the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Due to over two hundred years of language change, this Amendment is confusing and ungrammatical for modern readers. Analysts of the Amendment have taken into account the etymology of many of its words, but the present study is the first to examine the syntactic changes that have caused the Amendment’s current ungrammaticality, and to assess the syntactic interpretations of the Amendment that were available at the time of its writing. The present study rejects most of the readings of the Amendment previously suggested by legal scholars and journalists, and assesses the remaining interpretations according to their probability.”
Also:
http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/debaron/essays/guns.pdf
http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/debaron/essays/guns.pdf
https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3744&context=hastings_law_journal
[the grammatical discussion proper begins at p. 1215]
There are no doubt many others.
Anonymous,
Interesting idea, an examination of the 2nd Amendment based on changes in English syntax over the intervening 240 years. I will have to take a look at the articles.
Killer rabbits?
You know how sportswriters sometimes conjure up what players the best baseball team, football team, or basketball team would consist of, I was thinking about what would be the make-up of the ideal progressive Supreme Court. I would want the following Justices: Brandeis, Cardozo, Douglas, Warren (Earl), Marshall, Brennan, Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter. Of course, the conservatives would propose a different make-up – but they already have it.
I guess I should have written, "they pretty much have it," given the 3 dissent,ers. That is why so much depends on the next election. J. Sotomayor has some health issues which could force her retirement.
I think you’re all crazy, and Lord (or prof W, whichever happens first) strike me down. You’re debating the grammar of a document written before your great-great grandparents were born, and using it as a basis as to whether it’s ok to kill your own children. Get a grip. America should get rid of that monstrous comfort blanket and move into the twentieth century, if not yet the twenty-first.
“Oh, but it says so in these tablets which were revealed to my great grandparent’s cousin’s dog’s namesake”. You’re all crazy. What’s the great thing science has taught us, perhaps the only really useful truth the human race has discovered? Old is not necessarily true. It applies to our parents, the bible, the Koran, the constitution, the supreme court, Marx, even the esteemed host of this blog.
America, get over yourself. The planet cannot afford your infantile tantrums.
Here's a slightly different ideal progressive Sup Ct:
- (the first) John Marshall Harlan (who dissented in Plessy v. Ferguson)
- Warren
- Brennan
- Marshall
- Brandeis
- Ginsburg
- Sotomayor
- Douglas
- Black (maybe)
Though yr list is also good.
LFC,
I thought about including J. Black. He was a strong 1st Amendment advocate, but he could be pretty ornery. Most people do not know that before he became a S. Ct. Justice, he had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan, since, as a Alabama politician, he could not get elected w/o belonging to the Klan.
The First J. Harlan was also a very good choice. In addition to his dissent in Plessy, he wrote a dissent maintaining that the federal civil right laws which were enacted after passage of teh 13th Amendment could be applied to individuals without any state action.
I think you misunderstand the situation a wee bit, Robert Loughrey. As I see it, anyway, pointing to the grammar of the constitution and its amendments is part of an ongoing effort to break the grip of the past upon the present. It is one way—but only one way—of pursuing what you advocate, namely, getting rid of that monstrous comfort blanket.
As to how the world will rid itself of the US’s overweening presence and no longer be subject to its infantile tantrums, something I too wish, but that’s a different problem. And I'm not sure resolving the first--interior, domestic--problem will help resolve the second one.
aaall said...
'Nothing murky D, this was a massive fail on so many levels.'
This is addressed to me. I might more easily agree that the U.S. is uniquely terrible at protecting children from gun violence, if you like. I have read that firearms are the No. 1 cause of death in kids in the U.S.
This week's massacre in Uvalde, Texas, I think it is hard enough to grasp, but it’s only a small fraction of the children who are killed by guns in the U.S. each year. Mass shootings tend to get the most attention. They are not the cause of most firearm deaths in the U.S.
Anyways, I picture that preparing for mass shootings is a small part of what school police officers do. And it's not so very absurd to me that the district's police chief her, decided officers should wait to confront the gunman. This could, for example, be on the belief he was barricaded inside adjoining classrooms and children were no longer at risk. I'm intrigued by the point that it is not uncommon especially in some Southern states and large cities for school districts to have their own police forces, like Uvalde. I haven't done much of any research on school policing, it's more a case of my thought being that "Critical Thinking" may sound like an obnoxious buzzword from liberal arts schools, but it's actually a useful skill. Here, I am not even sure that the situation warrants an opinion.
But I'll give you an opinion that this thread sure has gone off world! ;)
David Zimmerman said...
'If you really want an answer to your very apt question, then I recommend getting ahold of a good introductory book on ethics... and going to the chapters on meta-ethics... i.e. the meaning and rational basis of moral judgments.
There are lots of them.'
Ah, but I don't really want an answer. Actually, I didn't really have a question. It maybe could be construed as a question, though a rhetorical one, when I offered this:
'I'm not seeing a distinction between 'making a moral judgment' and 'simply expressing my own personal point of view'. If there is a distinction, then I fear to try to guess how exactly, it is drawn.'
I'll rejoin you for this:
'Forgive my pedantry. I am just trying to be helpful...I guess I speak as somebody who has been teaching moral philosophy for about 50 years.'
But that, I guessed.
The only problem with detailed surveys of 18th century grammar is that it won't matter if the Trumpy fix is in.. Pages 39 - 41 of Jones v. Bonta read like they were written by an arms industry rep. and copied by a clerk too clueless to know he was being conned. I can't imagine the whole Ninth going along with this given the new Biden appointees..
D, many large districts (not just Southern) as well as colleges/universities have their own PDs. Somewhat unusual for a small district to have one.
`
May be of interest:
https://twitter.com/Johnson__joey/status/1530499958490660865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1531084139646144512%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es4_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fballoon-juice.com%2F
Almost everyone is at least five figures, most are six, one seems to be pushing seven.
Liberals and progressives are in for some very hard times. Not only is the reversal or serious modification of Roe v. Wade imminent, but the Supreme Court is likely to expand gun rights under the 2nd Amendment, in a case challenging a N.Y. law which requires a special license for carrying a concealed gun. If that requirement is ruled unconstitutional, then all of the regulations which are being proposed after the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde are likely to go nowhere. In addition, the separation between church and state, and the limits on school prayer, are also at risk, in a case involving the termination of a high school football coach who insisted on his right to conduct a silent prayer on the 50-yard line of the high school football field after every game. The advances which were made by the Warren Court during the 1960’s are all in jeopardy, including the ruling in Miranda v. Arizona. This Court is going to take us backwards and it will be the beginning of the unraveling of our democracy as we know it. All due to the election of a maniacal President who has never even read the Constitution and knows nothing about its evolution.
"All due to the election of a maniacal President..."
We might recall that condo that recently collapsed in Florida (of course, Florida!). It was doomed years ago but looks can be deceiving until a key member goes. That, and we never found all the Americans.
aaall,
The collapse of that structural member was not written in the stars. Had the building been properly inspected and that weakened structural joist been attended to, the building would not have collapsed. All it took was for a few building inspectors to have gotten off their asses and done their job.
The same is true of the election of that maniacal President. Had enough registered voters have done their homework and done a rational examination of the vices and virtues of him and his nominated opponent, made a rational decision about the comparison, and, regardless their preference for another candidate who did not get the nomination, gotten off their asses and voted intelligently, the maniac would not have been elected, and Roe v. Wade would have been saved, along with the N.Y. law placing restrictions on the right to carry a concealed weapon, as well as sustaining the termination of the high-school football coach who insists on using a forum affiliated with a public high-school to espouse his support of Christianity. And the list of the outrageous decision to come goes on and on.
Right and if Hillary Clinton had won, being 10 times more hawkish than Trump and at least twice as hawkish as Biden, she might have pushed Putin even harder, thus setting off a war in Ukraine 4 years earlier and given how hawkish she is, she might have provoked China into invading Taiwan and one of those conflicts might have resulted in nuclear war and none of us would be sitting here enjoying ourselves feeling morally self-righteous complaining about how horrible Trump is.
It's getting a little boring listening to people blame all the ills of humanity on people who didn't vote for Hillary. No one can predict the future: it could even be that Trump saved us from nuclear war.
s. wallerstein,
How are things in Chile? Did you vote in the 2016 U.S. election?
s. wallerstein
Hillary might have done what you suggest, and she might not have. We can speculate but we'll never know. What she would not have done, what is beyond speculation, is put the likes of Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Barratt on the Supreme Court. Trump did appoint them and the country already is suffering as a result, and will continue to do so for years to come.
I followed the condo story and my spidy sense tells me that the building was irreparable at any reasonable cost. I'd be interested in seeing the core tests from the original pours, the actual concrete composition and the actual slump of the loads. According to reports the steel was shorted, at least in some places. I'm sure corruption in the building trades never happens in south Florida. My point is that, as with our Constitution, the condo was an accident waiting to happen.
Presidential system? Check! Undemocratic legislative body vulnerable to wide demographic distortions? Check! Electoral College instead of a popular vote? Check! Wishing parties away as a strategy? Check! (We might add a corrupt and failed impeachment and a failure to hang Jeff Davis and Alexander Stevens).
Had Hillary won we would have avoided the corruption but there would have been gridlock and whatever extra devilment the Republicans could come up with. As of the 2020 election the Supremes would number seven unless the Dems flipped the Senate in 2018. We have no idea who would have won in 2020 or who would have controlled the Senate. The can may be kicked only so many times.
If this isn't a death spiral, it will do...
s.w. I was involved in politics well before Vietnam and was quite cynical by the time it came along. One can take stupidity and tragedy in stride without terminal disillusionment.
Back in the late 1990s I pulled up behind a pick up in Santa Monica. Across the back of the cab and tailgate was the following in 4" high letters:
F--k Boxer, F--k Feinstein, F--k Clinton and his lying B---h
There was a twenty five year very well funded right wing campaign demonizing the Clintons assisted by the main stream media (remember the NYT and White Water in the early 1990s through "Clinton Cash" in 2015?).
I'm sure Ukraine would have been better armed and there would have been no extortion but "Hillary the Hawk" was propaganda. Greenwald was in the tank for Trump (and likely a pay grade or so higher as well).
aaall,
I think that you can understand where I'm coming from, unlike some others here.
You can blame Trump's 2016 victory on Jill Stein, on Bernie fans who didn't bother to vote, on the fact that the Democrats nominated Hillary (not the most charismatic candidate around), on the fact that Bill married Hillary instead of someone more charismatic, on whoever wrote the part of the U.S. Constitution which puts the electoral college in effect instead of the popular vote (as in most democracies), on King George (because if he hadn't been an asshole, the U.S. might have remained a British colony longer and followed a path like Canada), on the big bang.
If you're looking for someone to blame, you'll always find one. It's the blaming that gets on my nerves, it's the constant self-righteousness, the constant search for someone or some group to feel morally superior to, the sermonizing from certain people, the priggishness, the pharisaism.
Now you can say that I feel morally superior to those who constantly proclaim their moral superiority, but it's really not a moral thing. It's a gut feeling. You've been around enough to understand where I'm coming from.
aaall
Your post brings to mind Newt Gingrich and the "politics of personal destruction." That's been the Republican game for some time.
"That's been the Republican game for some time."
The disastrous 1946 election gave us Nixon (and Murray Chotiner) as well as Joe McCarthy and resulted in Taft-Hartley. The rot runs deep.
Let's remember that back in the day, both parties used to exhibit a certain internal diversity.
In addition to the Nixons and the Joe McCarthys, there were Jacob Javits, Edward Brooke, and some other Republican Senators in that mold. Hatfield (of Oregon) was a co-sponsor of the McGovern-Hatfield amendment on Vietnam, for example.
Then, of course, there were the Southern pro-segregationist Democrats going way back at least to Theodore Bilbo (who I think was a Democrat, though wd have to double check). Anyway, Eastland, Stennis, etc. And the Republican Everett Dirksen voted, I believe, for the '64 Civil Rights Act.
As has been widely noted, the parties have become progressively more homogeneous in the late 20th and the early 21st century.
The Repubs in the modern era were always more aligned w business and against labor, for sure, but there were all kinds of internal divisions on social policy. And foreign policy, for that matter. The change in the Repub Party was gradual, but the key moment was the nomination and election of Reagan, the closest thing to a fully ideological President that the U.S. had in the second half of the 20th cent.
But the longer history has a certain importance because it suggests that political parties can change over time. That much of the Repub Party today has been taken over by authoritarians or proto-authoritarians is true, but it's not something written in stone like a law of physics.
The implication that all Republicans have been rotten and wicked since 1946 and all Dems have been virtuous and pure as the driven snow since 1946 is inaccurate. Both parties used to operate in a shared space of support for capitalism (something that is still largely true) and support for a certain amount of govt intervention in the local and natl economies. Even Reagan, ideologically committed to a view of government as "the problem," couldn't consistently govern that way.
For years many Dems were as devoted to pork-barrel projects in their districts and states as Repubs. A classic, though by no means isolated, example is Robert Byrd, Dem of West Virginia, who over his many years in the Senate funneled untold millions in federal spending into West Virginia. Not that it always or esp. benefited the poorest people in the state, but that's another story.
I remember how the Democrats in 1976 declined to nominate either Fred Harris or Morris Udall, nominating Jimmy Carter instead. Carter was certainly not as bad a President as some thought at the time, but he wasn't all that great in many respects either.
The contemporary Republican Party is a horror show, but it's important to remember that the sources of decay in the U.S. polity are deeper and more varied than the evils of one political party. There's an entire right-wing noise machine that has engulfed whole swaths of the electorate.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I find the all-rot-on-one-side, all-virtue-on-the-other-side picture of American politics to be a tad too simplistic.
The shift in our politics that began, probably, at the time of the civil cights protests of the 60's with Richard Nixon Southern strategy and grew rapidly with the Viet Nam war protests, has been amazingly thorough. E.J. Dionne, in a column in the Washington Post a few days ago, noted that every state that voted for Lincoln in 1860 voted for Obama in 2008.
Politics has been an important part of the switch, but culture has been the underlying factor in most if not all of them: civil rights, climate change, guns, God and the flag, immigration, abortion.
1)The NRA holds guns sacred.
2)Ancient peoples such as the people of Carthage and the Aztecs and maybe the Romans practiced human sacrifice and/or held violence sacred
3) Though you cannot defend our values of valuing life as objective, to me, they are reasonable
4) To defend the making of guns and violence sacred, I'd have to defend the Romans "conquer or die' or the human sacrifice of the Aztecs and of Carthage
5) The morality of the sanctity of life is not objective like math or physics or biology, but it's hard to defend or empathize with the shooter in Texas and the law enforcement
6) This is my view right now. It is only my view and I am open to be persuaded otherwise
"The implication that all Republicans have been rotten and wicked since 1946 and all Dems have been virtuous and pure as the driven snow since 1946 is inaccurate."
Indeed, however I never claimed that. In fact, if one is familiar with the actual history, there's no way to read what I wrote in that way.
The 1938 elections followed by WWII, stopped the New Deal (as legislation not as a dispensation, of course). 1946 is important because it was the beginning of the claw-back by Capital. The Wagner Act was passed in 1935. Putting the Congress in Republican hands meant the odious Taft-Hartley Act could be passed in 1947. It was a combination of conservative Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans that passed it but had the Congress remained Democratic there probably wouldn't have been enough votes to pass it and there certainly wouldn't have been the votes to override Truman's veto.
We also got the Red-baiting template as well as the deplorables. Another point to ponder is given the Republican record in the '20s and '30s how could so many folks vote for any Republican (Mencken maybe?)? Anyway 1946 was an inflection point.
"The contemporary Republican Party is a horror show, but it's important to remember that the sources of decay in the U.S. polity are deeper and more varied than the evils of one political party. "
Actually the Republican Party morphing into the ideologically coherent political organ of a revolutionary movement (so-called Movement Conservatism) is the story of that decay. The "right-wing noise machine" along with a slew of think tanks and foundations constitute the propaganda organs. (See the "Powell Memo" and "What is to be Done.")
Democrats, for good or ill, are politicians, Republicans are cadres. The apparatchiks in that noise machine see themselves as a vanguard.
In 1948 Truman desegregated the military and the Humphrey wing put a Civil Rights plank in the Dem platform. Some southern Dems bolted and created the States Rights ticket which carried four states. The fairly liberal Republican, Dewey, defeated arch conservative Robert Taft on the Republican side. (Wisdom of the Founders - Thurmond and Wallace got about the same number of votes but Thurmond got 39 electoral votes and Wallace got none.)
1948 showed a path forward. In 1964 the Republicans had a choice between Civil Rights and all those white conservative votes in Dixie and here we are.
I take one or two of the points, but I'm not able right now to continue the discussion.
M.S
Following this blog for the past couple months has made me realize how little I know about the constitution. Is there a book or reasonable resource to learn from that you would recommend?
Anonymous,
For a thorough analysis of each of the provisions in the Constitution, I would recommend the casebook that I used when I was in Law School some 40 years ago, but there are updated editions of the volume available on Amazon. The text is “Constitutional Law,” by Gerald Gunther (prof. of law at Stanford), with a new co-author, Kathleen Sullivan. There is a used version of the 17th edition available on Amazon for $44.03. There is also an newer edition available for $250.00. I do not know when the `17th edition was printed, and what the last S. Ct. term was when it was published. It may therefore not be totally up to date on recent decisions. However, it would give you a strong foundation of the basic constitutional law principles. Note, it will require some work getting through it. The way a casebook works, the author will provide some commentary regarding a particular Article of the Constitution, followed by an excerpt from an actual S. Ct. decision addressing that particular Constitutional Article. There will probably be some legal terms that you do not know, so you may want to also purchase a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary.
In addition to, or instead of, the Gunther casebook, I can also recommend “The Constitution: That Delicate Balance” by Fred W. Friendly and Martha Elliot. It contains a review of certain landmark decisions which have become constitutional precedents. It is not as thorough as the Gunther text, but is more accessible and provides a basic understanding of some of the constitutional provisions. It is currently available on Amazon in hardcover for $5.80, and for $29.99 in softcover.
Good luck!
Anonymous
An additional book that may be worth a look: Mark Tushnet, The Constitution of the USA: A Contextual Analysis. (I've read one of his other books but this one seems as if it might be a worthwhile overview.)
Over the week-end, there were numerous gun violence incidents, in Philadelphia, Chattanooga, South Carolina, all involving handguns, not AR-15s. The United States is in deep trouble due to the 2nd Amendment and Scalia’s interpretation of it, and his inconsistency in the Heller decision. He wrote that the 2nd Amendment protects individual ownership of guns, but he qualified the Amendment as applying only to the types of weapons which existed at the time of the Constitution’s ratification. But the D.C. ordinance which was at issue in Heller involved restrictions on the use of handguns. The majority held that the ordinance was unconstitutional, yet handguns did not exist at the time that the Constitution was ratified.
These shootings, which erupt during group gatherings, are going to continue, and I don’t see any of the proposed gun regulations which Sen. Murphy and some Republicans are discussing as significantly curtailing the gun violence. We are haunted by the Heller decision, and its sanctioning the ownership of handguns. This is being promoted by fringe elements in the gun culture, the NRA and the Republican Party, and they were behind the Jan. 6th insurrection.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/06/05/ryan-busse-former-firearms-executive-gun-industry-creates-fear-nr-vpx-sot.cnn
"...yet handguns did not exist at the time that the Constitution was ratified."
Actually they did:
https://muzzle-loaders.com/collections/flintlock-pistols
This may be of interest:
https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/subjects/carrying-weapons/
Handgun proliferation has been a recurring problem since the last half of the nineteenth century. I don't believe Heller would prevent banning semi-automatic firearms which would solve a lot of problems. Revolvers are just fine for protection.
One thing to keep in mind is that the NRA and the Republican Party are organs of the same insurrectionist movement. Most of "gun culture" are now cadres.
aaall,
You are correct, and I should have known better. Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton with a muzzle-loaded handgun.
I was thinking more of revolvers and Saturday-night specials. Shouldn't Scalia's majority opinion exclude such weapons and limit the use of handguns to the muzzle-loaded weapons of the 18th century? The kind of weapon Aaron Burr used could not fire successive rounds of bullets.
I guess you would have to craft an argument that limited the term "arms" to those types of firearms in common use in the late 18th century. I doubt it can be done. Federal (and state) laws do exempt "antique" firearms or their replicas (defined as in manufacture prior to 1899). If automatic firearms can be banned as a class and semi-autos have already been temporarily banned, a semi-auto ban would work. If a combination of strict background checks, age limits, waiting periods, quantity limits, and permits were enacted the market would solve the quantity problem.
BTW and apropos of the "home protection" argument, an mid-19th century cap and ball revolver would work just fine.
Post a Comment