So throughout the Obama years in particular, gun control proponents (primarily the political Left but some on the establishment political Right) have mocked the idea that a tyranny could ever form in this country (in reference to when gun rights people talk about right to resist tyranny via arms). Yet then Donald Trump gets elected and one would think Adolf Hitler himself was now in the White House. If anything, for those on the Left who really do truly see Trump as a potential tyrant, it would be an example of why the right to arms is so important, because we know from history that seriously big things and extreme events can happen in relatively short periods of time. There is a joke that goes that in the late 19th century, Germany began the process of modernizing and within only sixty years was a modern country.
While I do not see Trump as any tyrant, real tyrants very much could be elected into power by the people in the same way. That is how Hitler got into power. He was elected into office, then the German people voted and approved to give him dictatorial powers. Such history is a prime example of why the right to arms is so important to protect, as we never know if a true tyrant could somehow come to power in the future.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Possibilities for a More Conservative Court
Hopefully, President-elect Trump will be able to further change the balance of the Supreme Court to being more conservative. This will ensure the protection of political speech against so-called "campaign finance reform" and thus prevent the Left from hamstringing groups like the NRA speech-wise, but also, will thus allow the Court to hopefully be able to strike down gun control legislation such as assault weapons bans and high-capacity magazine bans. Wouldn't it be awesome if the Supreme Court was to strike down all state-level and local assault weapons bans and "high-capacity" magazine bans throughout the country in one swoop? The Left would hem and holler and scream and rage, but the Court would be on extremely firm ground to do so, both from a historical standpoint and from a logical standpoint.
Gun Control Myth #6: "We don't allow people to cry fire in a crowded theater."
Yes, but we also do not muzzle their mouth when they go into a theater on the off-chance that they might do so either. Similarly, people should not be disarmed just because of the off-chance that someone might be a killer. As such, the above quote in the title is not a legitimate basis for much of the so-called "reasonable gun control" that the gun control proponents demand.
Gun Control Myth #5: "Fondling of Guns"
One of the ways that gun controllers love to mock gun rights proponents is to make out as if the only reason people (usually though of as men, and by that they mean white men) own guns is as penis extensions. Basically, such men are never viewed as adults, but rather as scared little boys who are afraid of the world and who need to compensate for something as well. This is of course an ironic view as more often it is the gun controllers who seem to be fearful of their fellow humans, hence why they want to ban guns. Gun rights proponents, by contrast, do not have any such fear of their fellow humans, which is why they want all of them to be armed. If you are known as the local gun guy in your neighborhood, and the neighbors then come inquiring about buying a gun, said gun guy will have the whole neighborhood armed by the end of the day if he can.
All of that said though, one of the oft-used sayings with regards to gun people is that they "fondle" guns. Basically, this is a very snide, condescending view taken towards gun people, that they are intellectually and emotionally immature, having such admiration for something like a gun. While it is true that many people will admiring hold, or even fondle, a firearm, it has nothing to do with it being a penis extension or lack of emotional maturity. Rather, it just has to do with an admiration for the craftsmanship and manufacturing quality of the weapon.
One will find people, both men and women, who will fondle all sorts of things that are examples of fine workmanship. For example, women who fondle high-quality shoes and handbags, men who fondle good tools and machines (and guns are a form of tool).
All of that said though, one of the oft-used sayings with regards to gun people is that they "fondle" guns. Basically, this is a very snide, condescending view taken towards gun people, that they are intellectually and emotionally immature, having such admiration for something like a gun. While it is true that many people will admiring hold, or even fondle, a firearm, it has nothing to do with it being a penis extension or lack of emotional maturity. Rather, it just has to do with an admiration for the craftsmanship and manufacturing quality of the weapon.
One will find people, both men and women, who will fondle all sorts of things that are examples of fine workmanship. For example, women who fondle high-quality shoes and handbags, men who fondle good tools and machines (and guns are a form of tool).
Gun Control Myth #4: "High-Capacity" Magazines
Just like the term "assault weapon," yet another major myth here is on the so-called "high-capacity magazine." This again, however, is a term that was made up by the gun control proponents. Generally, it is defined as any magazine that is over ten rounds. The problem however is that no where in the world of firearms was it ever considered that a gun of over ten rounds was high-capacity. For many hand guns, and rifles like AR-15s and AK-47s, 17-30 rounds is the standard-capacity magazine ("standard capacity" being the actual term for these magazines). A ten round magazine is a reduced-capacity magazine generally-speaking.
One of the common refrains heard is that, "If you can't hit the target with ten rounds or less, you shouldn't have a gun." But this ignores a few things that can happen in self-defense scenarios:
1) How you shoot when in a self-defense situation can be very different than how you shoot when relaxed and shooting at a range. At a range, the target is fixed and is not moving towards you with the intent of doing severe physical harm. Different people can react in different ways to such situations, but oftentimes, in any such situation where one's life is at stake, the brain reverts to a more primitive state. Fine motor skills literally break down. This is why if for example a person who is panicking might try ramming down a door instead of taking the time to just pull it open and then go through it. The same thing can happen in terms of shooting.
Some examples could be if you are out hunting and see a deer and shoot at it multiple times and miss. Well then you might come to the conclusion that your shooting skills need some work. On the other hand, let's say you're out hunting and suddenly, a grizzly bear comes charging at you from the bushes. You open fire and miss a few times, but then manage to take out the bear before it gets you (this has happened). Well the fact that you missed multiple times before hitting it no one would attribute to your being a bad shot, it is that your shooting skills can to a good degree go out the window when you have a bear charging you and you are trying to focus to take it out before it takes you out.
Another example could be if you place a foot wide plank of wood that is ten feet long on the ground and tell the average person to walk across it. Most people could probably do so. Now place that same plank one-hundred feet up in the air and tell the same people to walk across it, where if they fall off, they fall to their death. A lot of people either wouldn't be able to cross it or would end up falling off. Why? Because in such a life-or-death situation, the fine motor control that they need to maintain balance, which is fully intact while on the ground, goes out the window while they are up in the air.
The same problems can happen with regards to self-defense. How you shoot when relaxed at a range can be totally different than how you shoot when in a combat situation. So the idea that one should be limited to only ten rounds because some gun control proponents arbitrarily declare that that is all you "need" has no basis.
2) You might be dealing with a drugged-up opponent. Sometimes what makes people break into people's homes is that they get high on drugs. Being high on drugs can inhibit a person's reasoning, to the point where the sight of a gun being pointed at them in a sober state would make them stop coming and run away even, whereas in their drugged up state, they continue to try and attack. Drugs also can reduce any sense of pain and thus if you shoot the attacker, they can still keep coming.
This also leads to another misconception, which is that a person just drops with one shot. That is not the case, especially with handguns. Whether a person will drop or not can depend on a multitude of factors ranging from their level of adrenaline to where they have been shot (adrenaline can keep them coming). Being drugged-up can also increase things like anger and rage which can keep the attacker coming. Technically, the only things that will stop a person from coming when shot is that too much oxygen (i.e. blood) stops flowing to the brain and thus the person goes unconscious, or a direct severing of the nervous system from the brain (via taking out the spinal cord right at the neck). How fast the shooting of a person will cause the blood flow to their brain to stop depends on the gun, the ammunition, the distance, where the person is shot, and so forth.
There was for example the woman who was defending her children with a 6-shot revolver from a man who had broken into her home. She fired all six shots, missed once, and hit him five times. He did not drop, but instead decided he had had enough and ran out of the house. But what if he had decided to keep coming, say due to being high? She would have been defenseless at that point. What if he had a partner who broke in via a side window who came in? What if the partner was armed?
3) You might be dealing with multiple opponents, or even multiple drugged-up opponents
The above reasons are all examples of why police officers carry standard-capacity magazines. There is also the arbitrariness of the term, just like with the "assault weapon" term. After the Newtown slaughter, for example, some politicians in New York state (where I live), wanted to make it where a person could only possess two five round magazines (they were probably seeing it that that would not infringe on a person's ability to hunt, thinking the right is only about hunting). Instead, the law was made where now anything over seven rounds would be considered "high-capacity." It then quickly was made apparent to the state government that very few companies actually make seven round magazines, and so the law was changed to saying that you could continue to have ten round magazines, but could only load the full ten rounds while at a range shooting. While at home, you could only load the magazine with seven rounds.
Yes, apparently telling law-abiding citizens that they could only load a ten round magazine with seven rounds was somehow supposed to have an effect on criminals. Obviously, a criminal who is about the break the law by breaking into your home and then further break the law by stealing something and/or maiming or killing you and your family, is not going to dutifully abide by the law and only load a ten round magazine with seven rounds, and that is assuming that said criminal is even using a ten round magazine in the first place.
Luckily, at least this part of the law was struck down eventually by a court, as the judge found it "arbitrary and capricious."
One of the common refrains heard is that, "If you can't hit the target with ten rounds or less, you shouldn't have a gun." But this ignores a few things that can happen in self-defense scenarios:
1) How you shoot when in a self-defense situation can be very different than how you shoot when relaxed and shooting at a range. At a range, the target is fixed and is not moving towards you with the intent of doing severe physical harm. Different people can react in different ways to such situations, but oftentimes, in any such situation where one's life is at stake, the brain reverts to a more primitive state. Fine motor skills literally break down. This is why if for example a person who is panicking might try ramming down a door instead of taking the time to just pull it open and then go through it. The same thing can happen in terms of shooting.
Some examples could be if you are out hunting and see a deer and shoot at it multiple times and miss. Well then you might come to the conclusion that your shooting skills need some work. On the other hand, let's say you're out hunting and suddenly, a grizzly bear comes charging at you from the bushes. You open fire and miss a few times, but then manage to take out the bear before it gets you (this has happened). Well the fact that you missed multiple times before hitting it no one would attribute to your being a bad shot, it is that your shooting skills can to a good degree go out the window when you have a bear charging you and you are trying to focus to take it out before it takes you out.
Another example could be if you place a foot wide plank of wood that is ten feet long on the ground and tell the average person to walk across it. Most people could probably do so. Now place that same plank one-hundred feet up in the air and tell the same people to walk across it, where if they fall off, they fall to their death. A lot of people either wouldn't be able to cross it or would end up falling off. Why? Because in such a life-or-death situation, the fine motor control that they need to maintain balance, which is fully intact while on the ground, goes out the window while they are up in the air.
The same problems can happen with regards to self-defense. How you shoot when relaxed at a range can be totally different than how you shoot when in a combat situation. So the idea that one should be limited to only ten rounds because some gun control proponents arbitrarily declare that that is all you "need" has no basis.
2) You might be dealing with a drugged-up opponent. Sometimes what makes people break into people's homes is that they get high on drugs. Being high on drugs can inhibit a person's reasoning, to the point where the sight of a gun being pointed at them in a sober state would make them stop coming and run away even, whereas in their drugged up state, they continue to try and attack. Drugs also can reduce any sense of pain and thus if you shoot the attacker, they can still keep coming.
This also leads to another misconception, which is that a person just drops with one shot. That is not the case, especially with handguns. Whether a person will drop or not can depend on a multitude of factors ranging from their level of adrenaline to where they have been shot (adrenaline can keep them coming). Being drugged-up can also increase things like anger and rage which can keep the attacker coming. Technically, the only things that will stop a person from coming when shot is that too much oxygen (i.e. blood) stops flowing to the brain and thus the person goes unconscious, or a direct severing of the nervous system from the brain (via taking out the spinal cord right at the neck). How fast the shooting of a person will cause the blood flow to their brain to stop depends on the gun, the ammunition, the distance, where the person is shot, and so forth.
There was for example the woman who was defending her children with a 6-shot revolver from a man who had broken into her home. She fired all six shots, missed once, and hit him five times. He did not drop, but instead decided he had had enough and ran out of the house. But what if he had decided to keep coming, say due to being high? She would have been defenseless at that point. What if he had a partner who broke in via a side window who came in? What if the partner was armed?
3) You might be dealing with multiple opponents, or even multiple drugged-up opponents
The above reasons are all examples of why police officers carry standard-capacity magazines. There is also the arbitrariness of the term, just like with the "assault weapon" term. After the Newtown slaughter, for example, some politicians in New York state (where I live), wanted to make it where a person could only possess two five round magazines (they were probably seeing it that that would not infringe on a person's ability to hunt, thinking the right is only about hunting). Instead, the law was made where now anything over seven rounds would be considered "high-capacity." It then quickly was made apparent to the state government that very few companies actually make seven round magazines, and so the law was changed to saying that you could continue to have ten round magazines, but could only load the full ten rounds while at a range shooting. While at home, you could only load the magazine with seven rounds.
Yes, apparently telling law-abiding citizens that they could only load a ten round magazine with seven rounds was somehow supposed to have an effect on criminals. Obviously, a criminal who is about the break the law by breaking into your home and then further break the law by stealing something and/or maiming or killing you and your family, is not going to dutifully abide by the law and only load a ten round magazine with seven rounds, and that is assuming that said criminal is even using a ten round magazine in the first place.
Luckily, at least this part of the law was struck down eventually by a court, as the judge found it "arbitrary and capricious."
Gun Control Myth #3: "Assault Weapons"
One of the most common lies told by the Gun Control Complex is the myth about so-called "assault weapons" and "high-capacity magazines." President Obama makes speeches saying, "Weapons of war have no place on our streets," Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York State says, "No one hunts with an assault weapon, no one needs ten bullets to kill a deer, stop the madness..." and similar refrains such as these can be heard and read from all manner of media, pundits, and politicians. Another common one is, "No one 'needs' an assault weapon!"
What such people are unaware of is the nonsense of the term assault weapon, the fact that the Second Amendment is not about hunting (hunting is most certainly included, but included in the way that writing romance or science-fiction novels is included in the First Amendment, i.e. it's not the main reason for writing an explicit protection of the right), or that fact that it is one's right and not one's "need."
So what are the problems with the term "assault weapon?" Well, "assault weapon," as a legal-term, is something that was made up by politicians and gun control proponents. It has no actual technical meaning, and its meaning can be constantly changed by said gun controllers depending on if they want to expand its scope so as to ban more guns by labeling them as assault weapons (usually the refrain here is referred to as "closing loopholes"). In the late 1980s, the gun control community saw an ample opportunity to ban whole groups of guns simply by labeling them as "assault weapons" and taking advantage of the ignorance of much of the public about the subject, who would think that they are machine guns that are being banned.
California pioneered the first assault weapons ban, then a federal level one was passed in 1994, which is widely-believed (including by Bill Clinton himself) to have played a major role in why the Democrats lost control of the Congress for the first time in forty years in the 1994 elections. The federal assault weapons ban defined an assault weapon as a "semiautomatic weapon containing at least two Evil Features" (yes they really called them that---later state-level bans got rid of the term due to how ridiculous it sounded; saying one wants to ban guns with evil features won't win the public the way saying one wants to ban guns with special military features that increase their deadliness can win people). The "Evil Features" consisted of a bayonet lug, flash suppressor, grenade launcher (a specific type of grenade launcher), pistol grip, folding or retractable stock, and may have included another feature I am not thinking of, but that was the basic gist of it.
Now, the logic here was flawed for multiple reasons:
1) The right to keep and bear arms is about the right of the people to possess, at the very least, the same basic types of weapons utilized by soldiers. It is not about a right to possess weapons that the government "approves of," no more than the right to free speech or a free press is about speech or media coverage that the government approves of. The debate on this goes all the way back to ancient times, when Aristotle wrote in his work "Politics" about the importance, as he saw it, of the people possessing arms so as to prevent tyranny from forming, and also for protecting against criminals.
By claiming that "military-style" guns can be banned, one might as well do away with the concept of the right to keep and bears arms altogether. This is an ancient concept and has been a fundamental debate throughout history, in that do the people have the right to be armed, or should only the State have the ultimate authority and power over weapons.
2) How exactly these features listed as military-style features (or "evil features" as the federal ban referred to them) is never explained by said bans. How said features make the weapon supposedly more dangerous or deadly is never explained, although pretty much any ergonomic feature that makes a weapon easier for a person to utilize can be claimed as some kind of feature that increases the weapon's deadliness.
3) What can be labeled as a military-style or evil feature can be anything the gun control proponents want it to be.
So even if one wanted to claim that people did not have a right to guns with military features on them, a lot of these features are not actual military features. In reality, almost all are just ergonomic features which make the weapon easier, (and thus SAFER for people to handle. It is not a good idea for someone to have to use awkward and difficult-to-handle weapons for self-defense).
Another common refrain heard is that these are weapons that are "designed to kill people." A common claim is that "assault weapons" are weapons "explicitly designed" to "kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible." How this definition ever came about I have no idea, but it is total nonsense. A semiautomatic rifle does not suddenly become a weapon designed to let you kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible because you attach a bayonet lug to it or a retractable stock for example. As for being designed to kill people, well the problem with this claim is that it gives the impression that guns not labeled as "assault weapons" are not designed to kill people. This is flawed for two reasons:
1) Since the difference between an assault weapon and a non-assault weapon can be a simple ergonomic feature, it's a pretty baseless claim to make that by somehow adding said feature, that the gun now becomes explicitly designed to kill people
2) People are animals, namely the great ape known as Homo Sapien Sapien. If the gun can be used to kill a multitude of other non-human animals, so long as they are within the same size and weight range of humans or moreso, the gun can be used to kill a human.
In addition to the above, technically, almost all guns that are commonly owned by American civilians are military, or functionally identical to military guns or grounded in military designs:
AR-15: Semiautomatic version of the M-16 (actual assault rifle, capable of automatic fire); as such is not technically a "military-grade" weapon.
12 Gauge Pump-Action Shotgun: Extremely common gun among civilians, law enforcement, and the military. Has been used in every military conflict since World War I, where the Germans nicknamed it the "Trench Broom" and wanted its use banned, and wanted to try American soldiers captured using it for war crimes. Design dates to 1885.
Remington 700: Bolt-action hunting rifle. Design grounded in original military bolt-action rifles, which consequently also themselves make excellent hunting rifles. Used by the military and law enforcement in the form of the M24 and M40 sniper rifles. Bolt-actions date back to the 19th century.
9mm handgun: Very popular among civilians, also carried by law enforcement and standard sidearm of the military for many years
.45 caliber handgun: Design dates to 1911 (Colt 1911, hence the name). Very powerful handgun and standard military sidearm for many decades.
Lever-action rifles: Straight-up military firearm, design dates back to mid-19th century. First used by the North in the Civil War. Still extremely popular for self-defense, law enforcement use, and hunting.
And then of course, going back to the Revolution, muskets were military arms, built to be rugged. Many civilians at the time had hunting long guns that were rifled, and thus significantly more accurate than muskets, which were used for volley fire. Muskets tended to be more rugged and were cheaper and simpler to produce.
Yet another baseless claim often made is that so-called "assault weapons" are weapons that one can "fire from the hip." This claim in particular is made by Senator Barbara Boxer. Now for one thing, nobody who is skilled with a long gun (rifle or shotgun) is going to fire it from the hip. Firing from the hip is a Hollywood type of thing. Two, the pistol grip, one of the features to makes such a gun be labeled as an assault weapon, actually makes it more difficult to fire from the hip, and thus makes a person less able to fire it from the hip, not more. So if you want to stop people from having guns that they can fire form the hip, so-called assault weapons would be made the only guns available, not banned!
What such people are unaware of is the nonsense of the term assault weapon, the fact that the Second Amendment is not about hunting (hunting is most certainly included, but included in the way that writing romance or science-fiction novels is included in the First Amendment, i.e. it's not the main reason for writing an explicit protection of the right), or that fact that it is one's right and not one's "need."
So what are the problems with the term "assault weapon?" Well, "assault weapon," as a legal-term, is something that was made up by politicians and gun control proponents. It has no actual technical meaning, and its meaning can be constantly changed by said gun controllers depending on if they want to expand its scope so as to ban more guns by labeling them as assault weapons (usually the refrain here is referred to as "closing loopholes"). In the late 1980s, the gun control community saw an ample opportunity to ban whole groups of guns simply by labeling them as "assault weapons" and taking advantage of the ignorance of much of the public about the subject, who would think that they are machine guns that are being banned.
California pioneered the first assault weapons ban, then a federal level one was passed in 1994, which is widely-believed (including by Bill Clinton himself) to have played a major role in why the Democrats lost control of the Congress for the first time in forty years in the 1994 elections. The federal assault weapons ban defined an assault weapon as a "semiautomatic weapon containing at least two Evil Features" (yes they really called them that---later state-level bans got rid of the term due to how ridiculous it sounded; saying one wants to ban guns with evil features won't win the public the way saying one wants to ban guns with special military features that increase their deadliness can win people). The "Evil Features" consisted of a bayonet lug, flash suppressor, grenade launcher (a specific type of grenade launcher), pistol grip, folding or retractable stock, and may have included another feature I am not thinking of, but that was the basic gist of it.
Now, the logic here was flawed for multiple reasons:
1) The right to keep and bear arms is about the right of the people to possess, at the very least, the same basic types of weapons utilized by soldiers. It is not about a right to possess weapons that the government "approves of," no more than the right to free speech or a free press is about speech or media coverage that the government approves of. The debate on this goes all the way back to ancient times, when Aristotle wrote in his work "Politics" about the importance, as he saw it, of the people possessing arms so as to prevent tyranny from forming, and also for protecting against criminals.
By claiming that "military-style" guns can be banned, one might as well do away with the concept of the right to keep and bears arms altogether. This is an ancient concept and has been a fundamental debate throughout history, in that do the people have the right to be armed, or should only the State have the ultimate authority and power over weapons.
2) How exactly these features listed as military-style features (or "evil features" as the federal ban referred to them) is never explained by said bans. How said features make the weapon supposedly more dangerous or deadly is never explained, although pretty much any ergonomic feature that makes a weapon easier for a person to utilize can be claimed as some kind of feature that increases the weapon's deadliness.
3) What can be labeled as a military-style or evil feature can be anything the gun control proponents want it to be.
So even if one wanted to claim that people did not have a right to guns with military features on them, a lot of these features are not actual military features. In reality, almost all are just ergonomic features which make the weapon easier, (and thus SAFER for people to handle. It is not a good idea for someone to have to use awkward and difficult-to-handle weapons for self-defense).
Another common refrain heard is that these are weapons that are "designed to kill people." A common claim is that "assault weapons" are weapons "explicitly designed" to "kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible." How this definition ever came about I have no idea, but it is total nonsense. A semiautomatic rifle does not suddenly become a weapon designed to let you kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible because you attach a bayonet lug to it or a retractable stock for example. As for being designed to kill people, well the problem with this claim is that it gives the impression that guns not labeled as "assault weapons" are not designed to kill people. This is flawed for two reasons:
1) Since the difference between an assault weapon and a non-assault weapon can be a simple ergonomic feature, it's a pretty baseless claim to make that by somehow adding said feature, that the gun now becomes explicitly designed to kill people
2) People are animals, namely the great ape known as Homo Sapien Sapien. If the gun can be used to kill a multitude of other non-human animals, so long as they are within the same size and weight range of humans or moreso, the gun can be used to kill a human.
In addition to the above, technically, almost all guns that are commonly owned by American civilians are military, or functionally identical to military guns or grounded in military designs:
AR-15: Semiautomatic version of the M-16 (actual assault rifle, capable of automatic fire); as such is not technically a "military-grade" weapon.
12 Gauge Pump-Action Shotgun: Extremely common gun among civilians, law enforcement, and the military. Has been used in every military conflict since World War I, where the Germans nicknamed it the "Trench Broom" and wanted its use banned, and wanted to try American soldiers captured using it for war crimes. Design dates to 1885.
Remington 700: Bolt-action hunting rifle. Design grounded in original military bolt-action rifles, which consequently also themselves make excellent hunting rifles. Used by the military and law enforcement in the form of the M24 and M40 sniper rifles. Bolt-actions date back to the 19th century.
9mm handgun: Very popular among civilians, also carried by law enforcement and standard sidearm of the military for many years
.45 caliber handgun: Design dates to 1911 (Colt 1911, hence the name). Very powerful handgun and standard military sidearm for many decades.
Lever-action rifles: Straight-up military firearm, design dates back to mid-19th century. First used by the North in the Civil War. Still extremely popular for self-defense, law enforcement use, and hunting.
And then of course, going back to the Revolution, muskets were military arms, built to be rugged. Many civilians at the time had hunting long guns that were rifled, and thus significantly more accurate than muskets, which were used for volley fire. Muskets tended to be more rugged and were cheaper and simpler to produce.
Yet another baseless claim often made is that so-called "assault weapons" are weapons that one can "fire from the hip." This claim in particular is made by Senator Barbara Boxer. Now for one thing, nobody who is skilled with a long gun (rifle or shotgun) is going to fire it from the hip. Firing from the hip is a Hollywood type of thing. Two, the pistol grip, one of the features to makes such a gun be labeled as an assault weapon, actually makes it more difficult to fire from the hip, and thus makes a person less able to fire it from the hip, not more. So if you want to stop people from having guns that they can fire form the hip, so-called assault weapons would be made the only guns available, not banned!
Gun Control Argument #2: The Heller Decision allows for "reasonable regulation"
One of the primary gun control arguments made is that the 2008 Supreme Court decision of D.C. vs Heller allows for "reasonable regulation" and that "dangerous and unusual weapons" can be outlawed. Justice Scalia does say this in the ruling, but it was not written with the meaning that the gun control proponents seem to think it means. The problem with the Gun Control Complex is that they themselves like to be the arbiters of what constitutes "reasonable" gun control and what constitute "dangerous and unusual" weapons. Generally, this means any and all gun control that they wish for, and so long as they leave you with one gun that you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to obtain, with one round, then they are protecting your right to keep and bear arms. Of course, this mindset applied to any of the other rights protected in the Bill of Rights would never hold up in a court. No one would claim with a straight face that the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, for example, means that the government can conduct any and all search and seizure that it pleases, and so long as it doesn't completely search and seize every single thing that you own, that this thus fits the definition of reasonable search and seizure.
No, to infringe on any of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights, the government has to have a really severe reason to do so, and then can only do so within a very narrow scope. The same should apply with regards to the Second Amendment. So what constitutes reasonable regulation under the Second? Well the Second Amendment I do not believe prohibits the government from implementing restrictions on for example violent criminals and the mentally ill from legally possessing arms (rapists, murderers, actual terrorists, mentally ill (as in found mentally ill in a court of law), etc...). But it does not at all mean that the government has the authority to engage in things like magazine capacity restrictions, so-called "assault weapons" bans, and so forth.
No, to infringe on any of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights, the government has to have a really severe reason to do so, and then can only do so within a very narrow scope. The same should apply with regards to the Second Amendment. So what constitutes reasonable regulation under the Second? Well the Second Amendment I do not believe prohibits the government from implementing restrictions on for example violent criminals and the mentally ill from legally possessing arms (rapists, murderers, actual terrorists, mentally ill (as in found mentally ill in a court of law), etc...). But it does not at all mean that the government has the authority to engage in things like magazine capacity restrictions, so-called "assault weapons" bans, and so forth.
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