Obama to Seek New Assault Weapons Ban (PPR Version)

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But isn't that the Aspies' favorite past-time?

Pretty much.

sorry, haven't actually sold guns since '82 or so...

I seem to remember it was the Germans who came up with the assault rifle (MP-44), because they realized that in urban warefare, there wasn't much need to shoot farther than 400 yards or so. They used a smaller caliber, etc.

I remember the ATF rules they had posted where I worked (Roses, many moons ago), that regulated all sorts of weapons (did you know there was a regulation that included spaceships? I didn't), which surprises me that there wasn't an actual definition.

Shows what ya know...

The ATF missuses the word "machinegun" to define weapons that do not fit the criteria of a machinegun. I wouldn't put much stock in them coming up with a technically accurate definition for "assault weapon".

Unfortuntely, (or maybe by dint of the fact that our Urban/Euro Anti Gun types don't actually have a logical Philosophical argument), this thread doesn'y seem to be doing as well as the other one...

No Matter. I'll cross-post to add to the discussion here.

From the other thread:

No sir. In fact FALSE. If one is NOT enslaved (an entirely different subject) or NOT incarcerated (i.e. not free to leave the place of incaceration/enslavement), one is, or at least was considered to be a Free Person, capable of and under Natural Right to own, possess and carry weapons.

This INCLUDED brigands, for one does not become a brigand until the act. Once one is a Brigand, even then as long as one is FREE one has the right to defend ones self, property and nation with arms. That the brigand may ans should be killed in the commission of his aggerssive act of violence against another is, again, a different matter.

Who is to judge "a man is wandering lose, regardless of his mental faculties"? If he is loose, then he has not been "adjudicated" - which, when the laws were written, meant "subsequently incarcerated".

Do you wish to set some arbitrary standard by which some "authority" dictates that Colored Person A may not own a firearm but White Person B may? (or Jewish/Christian, or Hutu/Tutsi, or whatever)? That's been tried and has shown only to lead to genocide.

Maybe next week all AS persons shall be barred, regardless of proficiency/competency, because some "authority" dicates that AS now equals a "mental defective" (lovely term that... see what the Nazi's did with that term...)

Let me put this simply:

Every (Free, as in un-incarcerated) man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

This Right is derived from the fundamental Right to Exist.

If any being has a Right to Exist, it has the Right to individually defenend its individual existence.

To defend one's existence one must have both the will and the means.

To have the Means one must have both the training and the tools.

Animals are born with ot the training and tools... Instinct, Tooth and Claw.

Humans are born with neither, and must LEARN and MANUFACTURE the means of self defense.

The most effective tool of Self Defense - the defene of simpe existence - currently developed is the Firearm.

To reject, ban or otherwise disuade by authority the use of the most effective tools for self defense by the general population is to suggest that the lives of The People are not worth preserving... that the lives of The People, as individuals, are Worth Less than the lives of the Government Officials who would remove their means of self preservation.

Any Person or Government that suggests that the life of ANY Free Person is WOrth Less than the life of any other Free Person is suggesting that the Government has the authority to take that life at will.

I don't know about yours, but, my life is not WorthLess than the life of some Authoritarian Thug sent to oppress/kill me.
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I know, I know... preaching to the choir....

Very well said MrMisanthrope!

However, I don't think there's any getting through to some people.
Sheep will be sheep.

It's the difference between a Citizen and a Subject.

The Stockholm Syndrome is strong and pervasive amongst Subjects...

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let people have guns...
why should we let them have ideas?"
--Joseph Stalin

Basically, I own firearms because I like going into the hills and blowing crap apart with bullets. There's something very soothing to me about calming down, controlling my body's movements, clearing my mind, calculating wind and range, then pulling the trigger. It's like that zen Buddhist archery thing, but with bullets.

On the other hand, I fully realize that one day I may need to defend myself. I have a loaded firearm in a locked safe that is one number away from being unlocked. And yes, I'll put rounds into anyone threatening myself or my roommates. I also consider the possibility that one day the gov't may get a little too oppressive and the common man may have to rise up.

Do I want that? Hell no!! If a second American Civil War starts, it won't be any more glorious that the first one was. Remember how that started? Spectators at the battles, people waving at the soldiers, all that crap. If a new one starts, it'll be long, brutal, and most everyone I fight alongside will die. Not my idea of fun. But aren't some things worth fighting for?

BTW, since we're pretty much all AS here, we'd be near the front of the line to have ours taken away "for the good of the public". Especially those of us who also have some other malady like BP or ADHD, etc.

No, I must correct you: A citizen of democracy is also a subject of his sovereign. The "only" difference to a subject in a monarchy is that he is also part of the sovereign, but the sovereign in a democracy is not the single citizen, but a constructed legal person: "The People". In practical terms it does not make a lot of difference: E.g. the Netherlands, regardless the fact that the formal sovereign is Queen Beatrix, is not less democratic than e.g. the USA.

It sounds like a Hobbesian day dream.

ruveyn

Not really, more current constitutional law. You should not forget that our modern constitutional law is a child of the Absolutism. The modern idea what state constitutes and his function were coined in 16th and 17th century. With the American and French Revolution only two concepts were added: The idea of a constitution and a theory regarding the legal consequences of a revolution.

Dox.
If it is not gun control that is keeping the likes of Australia, New Zealand, UK, off that list what is. Conversely I notice that Canada, Sweden and Finland are not on the list either and yet all have very high levels of gun ownership.

So what is going on. A cusroy glance suggests the countries on that list have very unstable societies, is this the problem in the US? Do you have the information on socio economic relationships to gun ownership vs homicidal gun use.

I'll have to double check this, but after gun control was passed in Australia, I think assaults and property crimes went up.

In the North East of the country, the rural areas tend to have higher gun ownership, while crime is largely restricted to the poor urban areas where the gun ownership is much lower, IIRC. There is something of a misperception about crime in the You-Knighted Stayts; it's not like the whole country is a rampant hell hole (well, except the South of course); crime is restricted to a substantial degree to the dregs of society, whose ranks swell under our unusually high income inequality.

40 states have generous concealed weapons permit laws, and they keep those laws because they work.

I'm not quite sure what you are asking here, Dent, since you somewhat answer your first question in your second sentence. I think the major point there is that violent crime and gun ownership don't correlate in a meaningful way at the national level, since as you pointed out countries with strict controls can have high rates of violent crime, as do countries with lax controls, and countries that are awash in guns can go either way as well. My own personal theory about violent crime in the US is that it is mostly a result of our melting pot social system that brings so many peoples of so many different socio-economic backgrounds into close contact with one another. Our massive boondoggle drug war doesn't help either, most of those inner city gun murders are gang related, which means drug related, which to me means completely unnecessary.

Regardless of all that however, messing with the guns isn't the way lower crime, I've yet to see a credible story of a crime ridden area being redeemed through gun control. I do, however, know of many a dictator who started a reign of terror by seizing all of the civilian held firearms first, so the idea can't be said to have a particularly good track record.