Oh. That was the law until the 30s, and it wasn't much changed until May 19, 1986, when Reagan signed the bill into law that limited machine guns to only those manufactured before that date, and nothing's changed since then.
lain:
The Second Amendment, according to the SCOTUS, disagrees with you.
Oh are we just discussing the law? I thought we were talking about what could or should be and why. If we're talking law we can just print code sections.
lain:
If everyone had cancer would you want it?
You are an attorney unless I've missed my guess, and this is what you trot out to defend your position?
Well, at least up until that point if I trotted out any reasoning at all I'd have lapped you and the profundity of your "Disagree" so we can probably keep those to ourselves.
Rather, it was one sentence in what I thought might be an evolving conversation. Anticipating at some point you'd graduate beyond the one word response for the most part. The founders had reasons for the right. Many people ate the food their guns were instrumental in providing. We didn't have a permanent standing army. And I noted the relative problems that largely didn't allow for the sort of thing we saw in Vegas to be in their minds. I suspect they'd have had a different position today. In any event, we can still have it.
As a sum it would be, as an illustration it isn't.
It is very difficult to obtain a machine gun right now, true.
Within the law, absolutely. Unless you buy one of those legal means to make and then possess one illegally. But you appear to think that's fine. God alone knows why.
The problem is the threat of leftists getting into power and using registration to stage a campaign of confiscation, so I know you've heard at least one reason against.
If a government and the people ever reach a point where guns are to be banned registration or its absence won't be a difference maker. Ammunition will be. And to go against a real good by means of a paranoid potential that really won't matter seems capricious as reasoning goes.
In fact I insist upon good safety practice for everybody who touches a gun, but it shouldn't be a law.
As a safety issue why not? Do you know how many accidental shootings occur every year?
I do however support the idea---that right now I don't know of anybody championing---to include mandatory firearms safety classes in all public school curriculum.
It might be the next best thing, but unless a student had to pass it to possess a firearm it would still lack teeth.
In the case where we must use our weapons to defend our lives, this is a nonstarter. It is absolutely true that larger magazines enable more rounds fired per unit time, all other things being equal, and that's exactly what you need in a situation where you're fighting for your life and limb.
Well, no. Name the last time anyone in a position to defend their life from some attacker needed a thirty round clip to do it. That's just not how most shootings, especially robbery related shootings happen. A person trained in the use of a weapon can manage it with fewer rounds than you'd find in a six shooter. In most cases the brandishing of a weapon will be the difference maker.
The Second Amendment recognizes the right to keep and bear one-person machine guns; their effective ban right now is against the law.
I treat the right as a right, and as the SCOTUS has defined that right. It stems from the right to life.
No right is without abridgement or balance among others. Especially where a compelling societal interest may overwhelm the unrestricted right.
What will change things, is if carrying rifles becomes common.
We have more guns than any other country. How safe are we comparably to countries with strict controls? Not very.
Which is the point, your silly introduction of nuclear weapons notwithstanding.
If you're going to talk about mouseguns you're legless in complaint.
Carry rifles. Nobody with a handgun could have stopped the guy from down on the ground, but the toll would have been 10x smaller if someone with a rifle hit him between the eyes, which would have been easy with a rifle.
Yeah, that's the better alternative, a bunch of people who haven't been checked out on safety, or a rifle range, firing up at a hotel presumably filled with other people than the shooter.
lain:
If you really want to lessen the chances, while recognizing and protecting the RKBA, ban tall structures.
Can't be done and shouldn't for any number of reasons, while making ourselves appreciably safer from this sort of incident can be done without destroying cities or the right to bear arms.
Congress is who they are because 60% of Americans believe in the RKBA.
No, Congress is bought and paid for by the gun lobby. When most Americans favored limiting clips after a spate of school shootings Congress followed their masters on the point.
Your continued accusation that it's about money is simply false.
Rather, your willful naivety in the service of an unreasonable position plays the false note.
Here's a
link to a recent LA Times article containing a summation of the influence and links to support the contention.
From the article about the powers in Congress presently:
The gun rights organization spent a stupendous $54.4 million in the 2016 election cycle, almost all of it in “independent expenditures,” meaning spending for or against a candidate but not a direct contribution to a campaign. The money went almost entirely to Republicans to a degree that almost looks like a misprint (but isn’t): Of independent expenditures totaling $52.6 million, Democrats received $265.
The NRA endowed the 54 senators who voted in 2015 against a measure prohibiting people on the government’s terrorist watch list from buying guns...
And the madness continues.
