Who sez the GOP doesn't like crazies?

[Burning Petard]

Non-governmental groups cannot own cannons, as coming under the federal restrictions for destructive devices. But in the 19th century at least before the civil war, any one or group with the cash to pay for it could own cannons. The Mormon Church bought a cannon to use in self-defense against local militia groups in Western Missouri but lost it in a swamp while transporting it to the site of the conflict. I think this was about 1840 and was certainly within 1790's technology.

snailgate.

[dales]

Not so fast, snail..........

The cannon conjures images of countless historical battles on sea and land. Interestingly, the lineage of these pieces of artillery can be traced back to Chinese flame-throwing gunpowder weapons called fire lances. Since their first use in conflict – possibly in the 13th century – cannons have played important parts in many battles, but gradually they took on a more indirect role as infantry weapons improved leading up to the 20th century.

Cannon shells are classed as destructive devices in the U.S. under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). They must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and, though legal under federal law, are prohibited from being owned by civilians in certain states. Muzzle-loading cannons themselves, however, are – remarkably – not deemed to be firearms in the U.S. and are therefore not regulated by the NFA.

http://www.online-paralegal-programs.co ... in-the-us/

[Scooter]

You don't need shells when you can buy full sized cannon and balls, and gunpowder. But anyone who would consider shooting a cannon somewhere that it could do damage is not going to go unnoticed, and there aren't many targets that one cannon ball will

My bad, cannon was a poor example, but there was weaponry of the period, so you said, that civilians could not own, so from the onset it is clear that limits were being drawn, and when firearms were limited to one shot before reloading, there is no reason to believe that they would have considered something that spews 10 rounds per second as acceptable for civilian use.

[Burning Petard]

"but there was weaponry of the period, so you said, that civilians could not own, so from the onset it is clear that limits were being drawn, and when firearms were limited to one shot before reloading, there is no reason to believe that they would have considered something that spews 10 rounds per second as acceptable. . . ."

Mr. Scooter, I am not sure who the 'you' above refers to, but if it is me, I specifically did not say that. For a significant period of USofA existence, there was no federal limitation on what armaments a private group, corporation, or individual could own.

There is a fundamental difference in the political philosophy of the USofA and societies more closely related to England, such as Canada and Australia. In the Brit philosophy, sovereignty is found in the Monarch, and people have the rights granted by the monarch. In the USofA, sovereignty resides in the people, and government has only the rights and powers granted by the people. In the USofA, rights of the people are very much not what is spelled out in the constitution.

snailgate.

[Scooter]

My apologies for misrepresenting your statement.

As to the latter, it's not that simple. The British were not shy about deposing or otherwise forcing abdications on monarchs who were seen to be acting contrary to their interests. And long before the Commonwealth realms created constitutions of their own (in Canada it took 115 years), they could look back at a long history of statute and common law that defined the limits of government power. The preamble to Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that Canada was "founded on principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law", which is very close in sentiment to where the American Declaration of Independence speaks of the people being endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights that governments are pledged to protect, using powers derived from the consent of the governed. The Charter also includes its own version of the 9th Amendment, precluding the enumeration of certain rights from being construed as denying the existence of other rights.

One notable difference is that the Charter states explicitly something that in the U.S. has always been understood implicitly - that rights and freedoms are subject to "reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

Or rather, it is understood about most rights - people seem to get that libel is not protected speech, that there can be legitimate reasons to deny bail, that some warrantless searches are justifiable, etc. There only two instances where I see a generalized refusal to accept virtually any limitation on rights. One is eminent domain, where even though the 5th Amendment explicitly authorizes governments to expropriate private property, there are huge swaths of people who refuse to accept its legitimacy.

The other is guns. It is impossible to have a reasoned discussion about the role of guns in public safety (positive and negative), because whatever is proposed will be seen as an attempt to restrict or ban gun ownership. Can't share information that would be relevant to a background check, because to consider all relevant information would be a denial of due process to anyone wishing to buy a gun. Can't have the CDC commission research on injuries and deaths involving firearms, because that implies that gun ownership is a "sickness", and DHS will confine all gun owners in FEMA camps so they can be "cured". Can't have a gun registry, because it will be used by the government to break into our homes in the dead of night and seize our guns. Can't require secure storage when not in the care and control of a responsible adult, because unsupervised toddlers should not be denied to opportunity to discover what happens when you pull on that little lever under the barrel.

And so on.

Whatever differences do exist between our countries, our two systems of government have come by and large to a similar place in defining most individual rights and reasonable limitations on them. The only glaring difference is on gun ownership, and it isn't about being pro- or anti-gun when Canadians own slightly more guns per capita than Americans; it's about why Americans view handguns specifically as the last line of defence of their freedoms. And spare me the "it provides a check on the power of a tyrannical government" schtick. In the 150 years before the Constitution, there had been not one, but two, successful revolutions that deposed monarchs and forced their successors to accept heretofor unheard of limitations and direction in exercising the Royal Prerogative. All without any constitutionally protected right to own a gun.

Your own country has experienced several episodes when smaller or larger segments of the populace took up the arms they owned by constitutional right, against a government they judged to be tyrannical. They all failed. Someone should rethink that whole protection from tyranny rationale.

[rubato]

Very well said. An excellent overview.


yrs,
rubato

[Burning Petard]

Mr. Scooter, I second rubato's applause. I can only nit-pick some details in your remark above so I won't. The USofA, like Canada, the U.K. Australia, each has some things that are distinctive in its national character, and all share some things based a mutual shared history. The place of firearms in USofA does indeed seem weird to many outsiders and even many of its own citizens. It did not start with the NRA. I recently skimmed a book about dueling in America. It noted that Alexander Hamilton, that big money machine now on Broadway, was killed in a duel with that bad man Aaron Burr, but Mr. Hamilton was free in his challenges to duels for any who offended him. During one political contest in New York city, Hamilton issued four challenges to duels to four different people in one day.

snailgate

[dales]

During one political contest in New York city, Hamilton issued four challenges to duels to four different people in one day.

Same thing goes on today, if one is "dissed".

[BoSoxGal]

Take that, NRA! A little 2nd amendment sanity from our federal courts!

Appeals Court Rules that Second Amendment Doesn’t Protect Right to Assault Weapons

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect assault weapons—an extraordinary decision keenly attuned to the brutal havoc these firearms can wreak. Issued by the court sitting en banc, Tuesday’s decision reversed a previous ruling in which a panel of judges had struck down Maryland’s ban on assault weapons and detachable large capacity magazines. Today’s ruling is a remarkable victory for gun safety advocates and a serious setback for gun proponents who believe the Second Amendment exempts weapons of war from regulation.

In 2013, Maryland passed a law barring the sale, possession, transfer, or purchase of what it dubbed “assault weapons,” including AR-15s, AK-47s, and semiautomatic rifles. It also banned copies of these firearms and large capacity magazines. Gun advocates sued, alleging that the law violated their right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. A district court rejected their claims, but a panel of judges from the 4th Circuit reversed that rejection, holding that the Maryland law infringed on gun owners’ Second Amendment rights—and that gun regulations must be subject to the extremely demanding “strict scrutiny” standard. The full court voted to vacate that decision and rehear the case, and Tuesday’s decision marks a vigorous rejection of that extreme stance.

The majority opinion opens with a disturbing account of several recent mass shootings enabled by the kind of assault weapons that Maryland seeks to ban. In Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, Orlando, Binghamton, Tucson, Virginia Tech, and Fort Hood, mass shooters used either military-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, significantly increasing the ultimate death tolls. Newtown, in particular, compelled Maryland to ban these weapons. The state recognized that the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller protects citizens’ right to keep handguns in the home. But it argued that the firearms it had proscribed constituted “dangerous and unusual weapons,” which the Heller court said could be outlawed. Indeed, Maryland pointed out, the Heller court explicitly declares that especially dangerous weapons “that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned.”

A majority of the 4th Circuit agreed with Maryland, holding that the weapons it forbade were sufficiently similar to M-16 rifles to fall outside the ambit of the Second Amendment.

“Whatever their other potential,” the court wrote, these weapons “are unquestionably most useful in military service. That is, the banned assault weapons are designed to kill or disable the enemy on the battlefield.”

“The next effect of these military combat features,” the majority concluded, “is a capability for lethality—more wounds, more serious, in more victims—far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns.” Likewise, the banned large-capacity magazines “are particularly designed and most suitable for military and law enforcement applications”—specifically, to “enable a shooter to hit multiple human targets very rapidly.” It is a weapon of war, not the tool of self-defense envisioned by the Heller court.

Although the majority held that these weapons fell outside the scope of the Second Amendment altogether, it also noted, as an “alternative basis,” that even if the amendment applied, the Maryland law would still be constitutional. Since the law does not “effectively disarm individuals or substantially affect their ability to defend themselves,” it would only be subject to intermediate scrutiny if the Second Amendment applied. And the law meets that level of scrutiny because it is “reasonably adapted to a substantial governmental interest.” Maryland, the majority explained, has a more than substantial interest in preventing its residents from being slaughtered by assault weapons. And the law reasonably targets those weapons that inflict the most violence in the shortest period of time.

The most striking part of Tuesday’s decision is a concurrence written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee. Wilkinson joined the majority opinion, but he wrote separately to express his discomfort with the gun lobby’s strategy of using the courts to increase access to dangerous firearms:

As Heller recognized, there is a balance to be struck here. While courts exist to protect individual rights, we are not the instruments of anyone’s political agenda, we are not empowered to court mass consequences we cannot predict, and we are not impaneled to add indefinitely to the growing list of subjects on which the states of our Union and the citizens of our country no longer have any meaningful say.

Wilkinson also criticized the dissenting judges, as well as the plaintiffs in this case, for attempting to take gun regulation out of democratic sphere almost entirely. His panegyric to judicial restraint with regard to Second Amendment interpretation is quite moving:

Disenfranchising the American people on this life and death subject would be the gravest and most serious of steps. It is their community, not ours. It is their safety, not ours. It is their lives, not ours. To say in the wake of so many mass shootings in so many localities across this country that the people themselves are now to be rendered newly powerless, that all they can do is stand by and watch as federal courts design their destiny—this would deliver a body blow to democracy as we have known it since the very founding of this nation.

In urging us to strike this legislation, appellants would impair the ability of government to act prophylactically. More and more under appellants’ view, preventive statutory action is to be judicially forbidden and we must bide our time until another tragedy is inflicted or irretrievable human damage has once more been done. Leaving the question of assault weapons bans to legislative competence preserves the latitude that representative governments enjoy in responding to changes in facts on the ground. Constitutionalizing this critical issue will place it in a freeze frame which only the Supreme Court itself could alter. The choice is ultimately one of flexibility versus rigidity, and beyond that, of whether conduct that has visited such communal bereavement across America will be left to the communal processes of democracy for resolution.

Both Wilkinson’s concurrence and the majority decision are refreshing in their fact-based analysis and grounding in real-world experience. Pro-gun judges often discuss the Second Amendment as an abstract, intellectual font of liberty. But after the Newtown shooting, Maryland legislators did not see liberty in assault weapons, they saw carnage. In response, the legislature strived to keep those weapons out of the state for fear of further bloodshed. The 4th Circuit was correct to let Maryland’s law stand and resist attempts to remove gun control from the democratic process altogether.

[Burning Petard]

Yes, the law is a wonderful thing. M-16's may be banned because they are military weapons. Sawed -off shotguns may be banned because they are not military weapons.

snailgate.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Yeah, ban those "scary looking" guns.
Please define "assault weapon" before banning all "assault weapons".

these weapons “are unquestionably most useful in military service.

Doubtful since they lack a fully automatic (or even a limited automatic) mode.

[Burning Petard]

Assault weapon--I like my plain English definition: An implement, not a normal part of the human body, used to commit an assault.

'Course when I was young and impressionable I was heavily brain-washed by a team of military instructors that the ultimate weapon was a man with boots on the ground and a rifle in his hands.

snailgate.

[dales]

Please define "assault weapon" before banning all "assault weapons".

Functionally, there is NO difference between civilian "assault" weapons and a semi-automatic hunting rifle.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Functionally, there is NO difference between civilian "assault" weapons and a semi-automatic hunting rifle.

That's my point
Other than "scary looking".

[Burning Petard]

The typical exception: If all the m16 and AK47 look alikes are not counted, most semi-automatic hunting rifles fire a projectile with much less energy (.22 rimfire) or much greater energy at impact. One of the main reasons hunters do not choose to use these military lookalikes is that they are not powerful enough. I dread to see the time when this information trickles out to the street and 'bad-guys' begin using 12 gauge shotguns and rifles with a bore greater than .303

Why does this kind of discussion nearly always use the term 'assault-weapon' rather than the term 'assault rifle'?

In some localities 'scary looking' is enough. In Newark DE you can be arrested and fined for disturbing the peace if an individual complains that your open carry of an AR16, or a pistol, or a sling shot frightens them. The local law specifically says 'any-projectile emiting device' and cases have involved all three of these. Super soaker or lesser water guns have been dismissed.

snailgate

[rubato]

The M16 was developed with a goal of wounding soldiers more often and killing less often. Not the goal of the typical hunter. While it is true that you can also shoot small game against which it is more lethal in nearly all cases you can shoot the same small game with a .22 which is far cheaper and less likely to accidentally kill someone a mile away.

No hunter with any self-respect needs a 30 or even 15-round magazine.


yrs,
rubato

[Burning Petard]

Agreed, rubato. Every argument I have seen in support of larger magazines, has always involved their use in shooting people. That includes the Thompson with the 50-round drum mag that dates to the 1920's when there was no federal restriction on civilian possession of full-auto firearms. The Browning HP35 pistol was designed for a 13 round load--for shooting at humans. The argument about separate magazines is about speed of reloads, not total capacity. Many a .22 rimfire semi-auto rifle or lever/pump action centerfire rifles have magazines under the barrel, or feeding through the butt-stock. that hold more than 15 rounds and I have not heard any program to eliminate them.

snailgate

[RayThom]

POLITICS

[dales]

POLITICS

Oh, ray said a bad word!

[dales]

Many a .22 rimfire semi-auto rifle or lever/pump action centerfire rifles have magazines under the barrel, or feeding through the butt-stock. that hold more than 15 rounds and I have not heard any program to eliminate them.

snailgate

That's b/c they are not those ugly black guns!