Landmark Supreme Court Decision on 2A

[Elessar]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/washi ... uscnd.html

I don't really want to start a debate on this issue because it's quite incendiary. Suffice it to say this is a significant development in the pantheon of gun legislation, regardless of one's position.

However, it doesn't really have an immediate effect on anybody unless you live in D.C.

[Asso]

I'm aware of this ruling.

[Distracted]

Interesting. If I lived in DC I'm not sure if I'd be relieved or frightened. Probably relieved, since I'd keep my guns locked up anyway but now burglars in DC need to think twice.

[Elessar]

Interesting. If I lived in DC I'm not sure if I'd be relieved or frightened. Probably relieved, since I'd keep my guns locked up anyway but now burglars in DC need to think twice.

Thing is, D.C. is in the upper NE where liberalism is common and gun ownership is low anyway. I'd never find any, but I'd be interested in seeing some projections for gun ownership after this.

[blacknblue]

Interesting. If I lived in DC I'm not sure if I'd be relieved or frightened. Probably relieved, since I'd keep my guns locked up anyway but now burglars in DC need to think twice.

Thing is, D.C. is in the upper NE where liberalism is common and gun ownership is low anyway. I'd never find any, but I'd be interested in seeing some projections for gun ownership after this.

That statement is not necessarily supported by the evidence. Perhaps you should have said that *legal* gun ownership is relatively low. According to one story I read today, there were 135 gun related homicides in D.C. in 1976, the year the gun law got started. There were 143 of them last year.

What struck me is that, the way Scalia phrased his opinion implied something else. By stating that D.C. had no right to interfere with a citizen's right to keep a handgun in their home for self-defense, he effectively implied a constitutional right to self-defense, at least inside one's own home.

[justTripn]

I'll tell you the truth: I don't like the Second Amendment for the modern day. I understand there was a good reason for it at the time. And I'll bet an individual right to bear arms IS the original meaning of the Amendment. To say otherwise, brings to mind some people I know arguing that the Apostle Paul didn't REALLY mean that women must keep silent in the church. So if you want to attack the Second Amendment, just attack it head on. But of course nothing will be accomplished that way because Americans LIKE THEIR GUNS. That's why the protection is there in the Constitution. I accept that.

There is still lots of room for maneuvre by the gun control advocates since guns are so much more powerful and sophisticated than when the Second Amendment was written. So many guns that exist today would not necessarily fall under Second Amendment protection.

[Asso]

What you say is clarificant for me JT!

[Alelou]

Yeah, I was going to say I wouldn't count it as the liberal northeast in terms of gun ownership when you're talking the urban wilds of D.C.

We lost a little girl here in Albany just recently with a gun a bunch of teenagers were 'sharing' by stowing it in a communal area. One of them -- a fifteen-year-old -- decided to shoot at some other teenagers and hit her instead.

[Asso]

But...why? WHY?
And don't believe we - the world - are immune!

[CX]

Do I really need to go on about how I grew up in a house with loaded guns and never managed to blow my head off or anyone else's again? Firearms are completely harmless until someone picks them up, and when it gets right down to it, bare hands can be deadly weapons too - what do you think kung fu is all about? So to borrow a quote, "from my cold dead hands." I'm certainly glad that someone in Washington has some sense.

[Asso]

Eh, CX.
You're too sure, in my opinion.
I don't want to, neither I like to have guns.
Evidently that's something which belongs to you and to your culture.
And I don't want to argue about that.

[CX]

You know, it's fine if some people don't like guns. I might think it's kind of silly, because putting any kind of blame on an inanimate piece of metal is wasting thought and energy, but if you honestly don't like guns for whatever reason, that's cool. The problem comes when someone who doesn't like guns gets self-righteous and wants to take everyone else's guns away from them, because in their minds it's for my own good. These are the people who piss me off. I also really have to roll my eyes when someone hauls out the standard "kid blows own/someone else's brains out" story, because I honestly think back to my childhood and how not only did I know there were loaded guns in the house, but right where they were, and how we still have loaded guns in the house, and we've never had even any kind of accidents, let alone myself or one of my siblings playing with a gun like it's a toy. And I even had toy guns, I could just tell the difference between a toy and the real thing, and even with the toy I would catch holy hell if I ever pointed it at a person or even the family dog.

[Alelou]

CX, just because YOU, one kid, DIDN'T blow his head off does not mean that all other kids in that situation will fail to blow their heads off. You just can't extrapolate from one case to the rest of the world. To put it plainly, you are not a statistically valid sample.

I'm not personally anti-gun control at this point in my life, but I do think that more guns in more houses with more kids equals more preventable fatalities.

But there's a limit to how much you should try to save people from their own irresponsibility by putting another law on the books.

[CX]

How am I and every other kid I knew in a similar situation not a valid statistic? After all, we're supposed to give credence to these stories about kids that blow their heads off, so how about the stories about the kids who didn't? It's not rocket science to prevent some kid from winning the Darwin Award when it comes to firearms, knives, or any other dangerous object.

[blacknblue]

My father kept a loaded shotgun propped up in a corner of his bedroom all my life. When I cut one of my front adult incisor teeth, he humorously had me come over and bite down on the stock of the shotgun, so that I could honestly boast someday that I had cut my teeth(tooth) on the stock of my father's gun.

I hurt myself many times. I cut my finger badly oen time on a power saw. I smashed my fingers several times using hammers. I cut myself with axes and hatchets. I jabbed myself with screwdrivers. I got into fights wherin ai got kicked in the nuts, punched in the face and belly, knocked to the ground and jumped on, and then had my head hammered into concrete. I have been stabbed by knives, electroshocked, burned, knocked off bluffs, dragged over gravel, had trees trunks that I was cutting split on me and the butt swing up and knock me ass over teakettle. I have been knocked out by heat exhaustion, i have come within a cat whisker of drowning. I have been hit by cars and sent flying. I have gotten my hand caught in the door of a grader and got dragged down the highway, with my full body weight hanging by nothing but my wedding ring. I have been hurt many time.

But in 46 years, 9 months, and 14 days of intimate proximity to guns of every description, I have never been shot.