Firearms Refresher course

[hawker238]

Why aren't sub-machines guns available to the public?

[Nilsen]

lazs2...

Must be different in the US than here then, its the other way around here.

[Widewing]

Originally posted by hawker238
Why aren't sub-machines guns available to the public?

Oh, but they are if you want to pay the tax and get the proper license.....

My regards,

Widewing

[lazs2]

yep... you can own full auto guns here but it is "regulated" by the feds... In affect it is so restrictive as to remove the right to won them...  this is the problem with allowing the feds to "regulate"   I don't want firearms ownership to be for the priviliged few under heavy restriction.

neilsn... I bet if you dug a lillte deeper than some catch phrase by your antgunners... you would find that things are indeed the same in your country.   I doubt that your sociopaths are any more polite than ours.  no doubt you have fewer tho.

lazs

[lazs2]

beetle... you are correct in your "gin and tonic is one drink not two" analodgy but......

what you asked in your gun thread/poll was 4 questions.... It was the exact same thing as you asking if people liked gin and tonic and then when you got 30 people to say no.... you then added things up to mean that 30 people did not like gin  or... 30 people did not like tonic.

mine of course simply asked if you thought your countries laws were too strict or not strict enough.  

lazs

[beet1e]

If I asked someone if they liked walks along the beach on summer evenings, most people would answer YES, some might answer NO. You're saying that those are invalid responses to those FOUR questions - ie. do they like walks, do they like beaches, do they like summertime, and do they like evenings.

Give it up, Lazs. You're way out of your depth in the semantics hot-tub.

[miko2d]

lazs2: do you have any idea of what the U.S. looks like?   In a popular revolt there would be no way that an army could be in all the hot spots at once.

 Right.
 US army is small, most of it is ouitside US and the actual combat troops are the small fraction of the total number. In case of a civil war in US, considerable part of those would not defend the government against a widespread revolt.

 There is no need to start with Garand or end with anything better. The scoped deer rifles are extremely effective weapons - against people, vehicles, helicopters, etc. Americans also have plenty of shotguns, sidearms and milirary-type semi-auto rifles available.
 Many people have .316, .416 and even .50 cal and know how to use them.

 A really popular uprising - involving most of the population supporting or indifferent to the rebels - would succeed without any need for the heavy arms.


midnight Target: I think that if you all really need the constitution to protect your gun rights.

 The Constitution is a piece of paper. It does not protect rights, it just lists them. People protect or violate rights if they have power and inclination to do so. They mostly don't so they have no rights.


-dead-: Is the Chinese Communist government not repressive? Does it have a popular mandate? Maybe, maybe not. Yet, if it is unpopular and represssive, why no news on the armed rebellion to overthrow the government?

How about Iraq and that nasty Mr Hussein - popular uprising? Yes. Large quantities of civilians armed with rifles etc.? Yes. Open country? Yes. Regime change? Nope. Rebels crushed by helicopters and tanks.

 Dread, you use circular arguments. You presume that Chinese and Iraqi regimes were not overthrown because the population did not posess heavy weapons and then proceed to prove they were not overthrown because the population did not posess heavy weapons.
 More likely explanation is that they could overthow those regimes but did not intend to. At least the majority of the population.
 I know for sure that if every russian in 1980 was issued any weapons he/she wanted, there would not have been a rebellion. The police is russia went around unarmed and millions of people drafted into soviet army every year did not dream of turning powerfull weapons at their disposal against the government.

 If people at Waco had any kind of weapons including a nuke, it would not have helped them to defeat the government. The bunch of militant shia fundamantalists that set out to rebel against Hussein in 1991 did not enjoy popular support even among mostly-shia army.
 Most russians and chinese and iraqis did not care to overthrow the government - just like US Democrats do not care to overthrow a government or secceed when a republican president, Congress and Senate are elected.

 miko

[Dune]

I've stayed out of this becuase most of it is the same old arguements by the same people, but this is for MT:

A 2001 5th Circuit Appellate decision did come down saying that the 2nd Amendment was an individual right.  It was United States v. Emerson

A good article on the issue from the National Review

A Right of the People
The meaning of the Emerson decision.

By David Kopel, research director, Independence Institute & Glenn Reynolds, law professor, University of Tennessee & writer for InstaPundit.Com.
October 25, 2001 2:10 p.m.
 
Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit released a decision that, in ordinary times, would have gotten a lot of attention. The decision, United States v. Emerson, recognized that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees individual citizens a right to own guns...

The Fifth Circuit concluded:

We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment. We hold, consistent with Miller, that it protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms, such as the pistol involved here, that are suitable as personal, individual weapons and are not of the general kind or type excluded by Miller.

[lazs2]

beetle said... "If I asked someone if they liked walks along the beach on summer evenings, most people would answer YES, some might answer NO. You're saying that those are invalid responses to those FOUR questions - ie. do they like walks, do they like beaches, do they like summertime, and do they like evenings. "

no beetle... again... if you had a poll and asked if people like walks along the beach on summer evenings and you got 30 no answers it would be inappropriate to conclude that people didn't like beaches or... that they didn't like summer or even that they didn't like to walk.   You would use it as proof that those people didn't like the evening.

or... if you had added "in a storm" to the end of your question and got 30 no answers you would conclude that people didn't like walking on the beach.

Ask your poll questions one at a time and you will get 4 answers.

in your gun poll you are asking very different things... some are mild and some are relatively radical... A yes answer would mean that you agreed with all the radical questions as well as the mild ones.

just as perhaps we all like beaches and we all like summer we may not all like to walk or walk on the beach during a storm.

lazs

[Wlfgng]

the whole thing in a nutshell:   we in America have the RIGHT to bear arms.. no one says you HAVE to..
or that you HAVE to use it..


that's where education comes in.
I'd rather live with armed/informed/educated citizens nearby than with un-armed ones.   (in fact I do)

armed-uneducated (with regards to the weapon) is pretty scarey too.

[beet1e]

Lazs.

It really doesn't matter. I asked the question I wanted to ask in my poll, and got lucid answers from people in 16 different countries. And there was nothing you could do to stop it.

And Lazs, more than 40 people responded to that thread. None of the others had difficulty understanding the question (note the singular). None of the others felt the need to enter into a debate about semantics.

[midnight Target]

Hickman v. Block, 81 F.3d 98, 99 (9th Cir. 1996), involved another § 1983 suit by a citizen against state officials who denied his application for a concealed weapons permit. The Ninth Circuit decided to "follow our sister circuits in holding that the Second Amendment is a right held by the states, and does not protect the possession of a weapon by a private citizen." Id. at 101. Thus, the plaintiff's lack of standing was dispositive, though the court did note that the Second Amendment "is not incorporated against the states." Id. at 103 n.10.

Cases v. United States, 131 F.2d 916, 923 (1st Cir. 1942), also discussed in note 19, infra, the First Circuit concluded that the Second Amendment was not infringed because there was no evidence that the defendant "was or ever had been a member of any military organization or that his use of the weapon . . . was in preparation for a military career" and the evidence showed he was "on a frolic of his own and without any thought or intention of contributing to the efficiency of the well regulated militia." Id. While the First Circuit did not explicitly adopt the sophisticated collective rights model, its analysis is in many respects consonant with it.

United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016 (8th Cir. 1992), the Eighth Circuit found it unnecessary to commit to either the states' rights or the sophisticated collective rights model of the Second Amendment. The court proclaimed that "[c]onsidering this history, we cannot conclude that the Second Amendment protects the individual possession of military weapons." Id. at 1019. Yet, the court went on to consider whether the defendant's actual possession of machine guns was "reasonably related to the preservation of a well regulated militia." Id. at 1020. Like the Third Circuit in Rybar, the Eighth Circuit held that membership in an unorganized militia did not satisfy the reasonable relationship test. The court felt that unless the reasonable relationship test was satisfied, it was "irrelevant" whether the Second Amendment was collective or individual in nature. Id. However, the court's inquiry into the nature of the defendant's possession of the machine guns is more compatible with the sophisticated collective rights model.

There are more, but that is a start.

[lazs2]

MT... not one decision that says that the second is not an idividual right... some decisions seem to point to the fact that it is up to the state...  The supreme court has never implicitly tied the owning of firearms to militia or military service only.

What has happened consitently is the courts unwillingness to decide on individual rights..   They have upheld bans on certain types of weapons on states rights grounds.   They have also said that the individuals rights do not extend to some military weapons in a few cases.

The supreme court has never said that being part of a militia was necessary in order for an individual to own firearms.   Quite the oppossite... militia groups have found no protection from the courts when they petition to own banned weapons.  

lazs

[lazs2]

beetle said... "And Lazs, more than 40 people responded to that thread. None of the others had difficulty understanding the question (note the singular). None of the others felt the need to enter into a debate about semantics"

no... but you haven't really asked people what they thought of your conclussion.   That was not up for debate.   You took what you wanted from your 4 part poll question and used that to prove a preconcieved question.

My poll cancels out your poll as I got the oppossite results.  That would make it seem that one of the polls was flawed.

my question was simply "do you think the firearms laws in your country are to strict or not strict enough."   basicly, a two part question with 2 possible answers.   too strict or not strict enough.

sooooo.... I got my results honestly.   you did not.   I also know that you will bring out your flawed poll from time to time in the future to prove some point or another... That is fine but you won't be being honest... I simply wanted to have an honest poll to refer to so I made mine.

lazs

[Dune]

MT, and as I posted on AGW, you said you wanted a Federal case that said the 2nd Amnd was an individual right and I gave you U.S. v. Emerson.  So there is one.

And now you and I could post any number of cases and law reviews that hold one side or the other.  But it wouldn't mean anything.  That is becuase we have different Federal Circuits saying different things.  This is not supposed to happen.  And if it does, the Supreme Court is supposed to issue a ruling to decide the issue.  I'll grant you that the 3 SC cases hint (none really come out and say it) that it's a collective right.  But, in legal terms, the issue has never been settled by them.  And the general belief on this issue has been changing.  I beleive that if you checked, you'd find that the majority of scholars dealing with this issue would say that they believe it's an individual right, just like the others discussed. (1st, 4th, 5th etc.)  So you can't rest your case on ones decided 50 or 100 years ago by the SC.  The school of thought has swung.

There have been 2 cases dealing with this issue in the last 4 years, Emerson and one in the 9th Circuit.  Emerson's court said it was an idividual right and the 9th said it wasn't.  (Now two things to conisder, one the 9th is liberal and quoting a 9th decision is a great way to prove the opposite amongst lawyers, and even the NRA requested that the appelants in that case not take it up because it was a crappy case)  Once again, we now find ourselves with different interpretations of the law in different parts of the country.  An issue the SC is supposed to settle.

And something else to consider.  If you look at the cases the SC decided and the ones you've quoted, they have all been matters of someone comitting a crime with a gun.  There hasn't been a case of a regular citizen challenging a law.  I believe that this would also make a difference.

Which brings us to where we are today.  The Roe v. Wade decision has really brought one thing home to everyone.  Once the SC decides an issue, it may be 50 years or more before you get them to decide it another way.  So, if you're going to take a case up, it had best be a damn good one, because if you don't get the ruling you want, the law will be agianst you for a long time.

This issue is undecided in legal terms.  And eventually either Handgun Control Inc. or the NRA is going to believe they have a case that will settle the issue in their favor and take it up.  The SC passed on its last opportunity to do this (the 9th Circuit case, even they didn't want to be involved in something the 9th did).  Then we will have our answer and any debate will be academic.  Until then, you and I can argue, but it's thoeretical at best.  You have your beliefs and older cases.  I have mine and a very new case.  And neither one of us could be assured of what the SC would say the law is.