Two experts in Constitutional Law used the power of 21st-century linguistic databases to subject the Second Amendment to semantic analysis, and yet, the meaning of “keep and bear Arms” remains debatable... perhaps, even...
UNXPLAINED
What was in the minds of the Founding Fathers when they settled on the 27 words that comprise the Second Amendment?
Well, that is what James C. Phillips and Josh Blackman tried to find out.
Two experts in Constitutional Law used the power of 21st-century linguistic databases to subject the Second Amendment to semantic analysis, and yet, the meaning of “keep and bear Arms” remains debatable... perhaps, even...
UNXPLAINED
What was in the minds of the Founding Fathers when they settled on the 27 words that comprise the Second Amendment?
Well, that is what James C. Phillips and Josh Blackman tried to find out.
I've watched that Shatner show before, it's pretty good.
But the book you reference is disingenuous. The SCOTUS rulings have clearly identified that the 2A is for the sole purpose of ensuring the Government is in a constant state of feeling threatened and challenged... that the Government understands who the rightful rulers of the country are. This is all documented in the Federalist papers, which they used in their SCOTUS decisions.
It boils down to the last four words, put at the end of the statement concerning the rights of the people and the limitations imposed on the government.
The words were placed at the end of the statement for emphasis.
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED
[This message has been edited by olejoedad (edited 06-12-2022).]
Joe, Some will never agree on the intent of the 2nd Amendment. Some don't deserve the freedoms and guarantees the Constitution provides. Some will cower and hide while others do stand up. Figuring out who, well that's the easy part.
What does the Second Amendment mean? This question is at the center of one of the most divisive debates in modern American constitutional law. The amendment itself contains 27 words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This provision references both the collective right of a militia and an individual right. Does this two-century-old text, then, mean that Americans today have a right to gun ownership and use?
In a landmark 2008 decision on this question, District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court was sharply divided. The majority opinion, by Justice Antonin Scalia, concluded, among other things, that the phrase bear arms against would always refer to service in a militia. But bear arms by itself—the wording used in the Second Amendment—could sometimes refer to an individual right. The dissenting opinion, by Justice John Paul Stevens, intimated that the phrase keep and bear arms was a fixed term of art that always referred to militia service.
In the 12 years since that decision, scholars have gained access to a new research tool that some hope can settle this debate: corpus linguistics. This tool allows researchers to search millions of documents to see how words were used during the founding era, and could help courts determine how the Constitution was understood at that time—what is known as “original public meaning.” Corpus linguistics, like any tool, is more useful in some cases than in others. The Second Amendment in particular poses distinct problems for data searches, because it has multiple clauses layered in a complicated grammatical structure.
With that in mind, in mid-2018 we searched large collections of language from around the time of the founding, and published our tentative findings on the Harvard Law Review’s blog. We used two databases: the Corpus of Founding Era American English (COFEA), which contains about 140 million words of text from various American documents published from 1760 to 1799, and the Corpus of Early Modern English (COEME), which covers British English from 1475 to 1800 and includes more than 1 billion words of text. We have now expanded that initial research to consider how other aspects of the Second Amendment were understood at the time of the framing. Our findings show that both Scalia and Stevens appear to have been wrong with respect to at least one of their linguistic claims in the Heller decision.
In 2008, technology was in a very different place. The iPhone was less than a year old. The format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD drew to a close. And Twitter celebrated its second anniversary. At the time, the justices and their law clerks had fairly rudimentary tools to search how language had been used 200 years earlier. Based on the limited data set Scalia considered, we can’t say his linguistic claim about bear arms against was unsupported then. But this specific conclusion does not stand the test of time.
Scalia concluded that the phrase bear arms “unequivocally” carried a military meaning “only when followed by the preposition ‘against.’” The Second Amendment does not use the word against. Therefore, Scalia reasoned, the phrase bear arms, by itself, referred to an individual right. To test this claim, we combed through COFEA for a specific pattern, locating documents in which bear and arms (and their variants) appear within six words of each other. Doing so, we were able to find documents with grammatical constructions such as the arms were borne. In roughly 90 percent of our data set, the phrase bear arms had a militia-related meaning, which strongly implies that bear arms was generally used to refer to collective military activity, not individual use. (Whether these results show that the Second Amendment language precludes an individual right is a more complicated question.)
Further, we found that bear arms often took on a military meaning without being followed by against. Thus, the word against was sufficient, but not necessary, to give the phrase bear arms a militia-related meaning. Scalia was wrong on this particular claim.
Next, we turn to Justice Stevens’s dissent. He wrote that the Second Amendment protected a right to have and use firearms only in the context of serving in a state militia. Stevens appears to have determined—though his exact conclusion is somewhat unclear—that the phrase keep and bear arms was a unitary term of art. Such single linguistic units, called binomials or multinomials, are common in legal writing. Think of cease and desist or lock, stock, and barrel. As a result, Stevens concluded, there was no need to consider whether keep arms had a different meaning from bear arms. Therefore, he had no reason to determine whether keep arms, by itself, could refer to an individual right.
Was Stevens’s linguistic intuition correct? No. The phrase keep and bear arms was a novel term. It does not appear anywhere in COEME—more than 1 billion words of British English stretching across three centuries. And prior to 1789, when the Second Amendment was introduced, the phrase was used only twice in COFEA: First in the 1780 Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and then in a proposal for a constitutional amendment by the Virginia Ratifying Convention. In short, keep and bear arms was not a term of art with a fixed meaning. Indeed, the meaning of this phrase was quite unsettled then, as it had barely been used in other governmental documents. Ultimately, a careful study of the Second Amendment would have to treat keep arms and bear arms as two separate linguistic units, and thus two separate rights.
We performed another search in COFEA, about the meaning of keep arms, looking for documents in which keep and arms (and their variants) appear within six words of each other. The results here were somewhat inconclusive. In about 40 percent of the hits, a person would keep arms for a collective, military purpose; these documents support Justice Stevens’s reading. And roughly 30 percent of the hits reference a person who keeps arms for individual uses; these documents support Justice Scalia’s analysis. The remainder of the hits did not support either reading.
We could not find a dominant usage for what keep arms meant at the founding. Thus, even if Scalia was wrong about the most common meaning of bear arms, he may still have been right about keep arms. Based on our findings, an average citizen of the founding era would likely have understood the phrase keep arms to refer to possessing arms for both military and personal uses.
Finally, it is not enough to consider keep and bear arms in a vacuum. The Second Amendment’s operative clause refers to “the right of the people.” We conducted another search in COFEA for documents that referenced arms in the context of rights. About 40 percent of the results had a militia sense, about 25 percent used an individual sense, and about 30 percent referred to both militia and individual senses. The remainder were ambiguous. With respect to rights, there was not a dominant sense for keeping and bearing arms. Here, too, an “ordinary citizen” at the time of the founding likely would have understood that the phrase arms, in the context of rights, referred to both militia-based and individual rights.
Based on these findings, we are more convinced by Scalia’s majority opinion than Stevens’s dissent, even though they both made errors in their analysis. Furthermore, linguistic analysis formed only a small part of Scalia’s originalist opus. And the bulk of that historical analysis, based on the history of the common-law right to own a firearm, is undisturbed by our new findings. (We hope to publish this research, which also looked at other phrases in the Second Amendment, such as the right of the people, in an academic journal.)
In the next few months, the Supreme Court will decide a Second Amendment case from New York. More likely than not, the justices will dismiss the case as moot, as the local government has already repealed the law at issue. But should the justices want to settle the questions of the Second Amendment more finally, now or in the future, they’ll find that corpus linguistics, by itself, cannot definitively resolve whether Heller was right. Neither Scalia’s nor Stevens’s error provides the gotcha moment that people on both sides of the Second Amendment debate had hoped for.
Yet we remain optimistic about the future of this data tool. For certain originalist cases, corpus linguistics can provide powerful insights into how the founding generation understood a word or phrase in the Constitution. But when corpus linguistics illuminates only part of a text, then originalists should be candid about its limits. And when corpus linguistics provides answers that contradict long-held beliefs, originalists should be willing to reconsider old precedents—yes, even those by Antonin Scalia, originalism’s patron saint
Even with the help of powerful 21st-century linguistic databases, the phrase “keep and bear arms” remains debatable.
When this article was published, James C. Phillips was a nonresident fellow with the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford University, and soon to start as an assistant law professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. Josh Blackman was a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.
Look to and reference all the anti-gun folks you want, if you don't understand the 2nd Amendment you be one of those hoping the LEOs get to you in time to save you.
WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators announced on Sunday that they had struck a bipartisan deal on a narrow set of gun safety measures with sufficient support to move through the evenly divided chamber, a significant step toward ending a yearslong congressional impasse on the issue.
The agreement, put forth by 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats and endorsed by President Biden and top Democrats, includes enhanced background checks to give authorities time to check the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21 and a provision that would, for the first time, extend to dating partners a bar on domestic abusers having guns.
It would also provide funding for states to implement so-called red-flag laws that allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed to be dangerous, as well as money for mental health resources and to boost safety and mental health services at schools.
The outline, which has yet to be finalized, falls far short of the sprawling reforms that Mr. Biden, gun control activists and a majority of Democrats have long championed, such as a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks. And it is nowhere near as sweeping as a package of gun measures passed almost along party lines in the House last week, which would bar the sale of semiautomatic weapons to people under the age of 21, ban the sale of large-capacity magazines and implement a federal red-flag law, among other measures.
But it amounts to notable progress, given the deep party divisions over how to address gun violence and repeated failed efforts to approve gun reform on Capitol Hill, where Republicans have thwarted action for years. Democrats hailed the plan, which would also toughen federal laws to stop gun trafficking and ensure that all commercial sellers are doing background checks, as an opportunity to pass the most significant gun safety legislation in decades. . . .
The backing of 10 Republicans suggested that the plan could scale an obstacle that no other proposal currently under discussion has been able to: drawing the 60 votes necessary to break through a G.O.P. filibuster and survive to see an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. . . .
Aides cautioned that until the legislation was finalized, it was not certain that each of the components could draw the 60 votes necessary to move forward. . . .
[President] Biden urged Congress to pass a bill quickly, saying there were “no excuses for delay.” . . .
Excerpts from a newly published report in the New York Times
"Senators Reach Bipartisan Deal on Gun Safety"
quote
The agreement, which falls short of the sprawling changes championed by Democrats, is a significant step toward ending a yearslong impasse over gun reform legislation.
Red flag at night, gun grabber’s delight Red flag at morning, gun owners take warning
"Florida's red flag law, championed by Republicans, is taking guns from thousands of people" Steve Contorno, Leyla Santiago and Denise Royal for CNN; June 1, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06...-flag-law/index.html
"By the Copy and Paste authority lawfully vested in me, I hereby reproduce a few paragraphs from a somewhat 'longish' news report."
Twice a week from her courtroom, Florida 13th Circuit Court Judge Denise Pomponio decides who in Hillsborough County can no longer be trusted with a gun. . . .
This is Florida's "red flag" law in action. Passed in the wake of the horrific 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland high school, the state law provides police a path to ask a judge to temporarily bar dangerous individuals from possessing or purchasing a firearm. Since its creation, Florida judges have acted more than 8,000 times to keep guns out of the hands of people authorities deemed a risk to themselves or others, according to data maintained by the Office of the State Courts Administrator. . . .
In the aftermath of recent massacres in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, those looking to change the country's gun laws see in Florida a blueprint to move forward -- not only because leaders moved to restrict firearms, but because it emerged out of a Republican stronghold unofficially known as the "Gunshine State."
"The Florida law is a good law, and it's a signal of what's possible," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the most vocal advocates in Congress for gun control, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
In Florida, a red flag policy, also known as risk protection orders, was one piece of a sprawling gun reform package that then-Gov. Rick Scott signed into law just three weeks after a teenage gunman killed 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It included $400 million in new spending for priorities like school security and mental health resources, and allowed trained school staff to carry firearms for the first time. Republican lawmakers also agreed to raise the age to own a gun to 21 and implemented a three-day waiting period to purchase most rifles. . . .
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-12-2022).]
The weird thing is that damn near every single mass shooter has posted his lunatic ramblings online and nobody stopped them. Many were investigated by law enforcement and nobody stopped them. It seems the purpose of law enforcement is actually to photograph the crime scene.
Why is it that some folks think criminals are buying and registering their weapons?
It takes a special kind of stupid to believe the police can protect you when you are facing a criminal intent to take your money, possessions or your life. Although, generally the police will call an ambulance for you once they arrive.
Originally posted by Hudini: The weird thing is that damn near every single mass shooter has posted his lunatic ramblings online and nobody stopped them. Many were investigated by law enforcement and nobody stopped them. It seems the purpose of law enforcement is actually to photograph the crime scene.
The Buffalo perpetrator posted his online manifesto about 40 hours before he perpetrated. He posted it using a screen name or online identity, so not a lot of time for anyone to try to figure out his real identity and how to stop him. Had there been any such effort from the time that the manifesto became visible online. (I don't know whether there was any such effort.)
He did have a history of talking about suicide (according to some reports), so perhaps he could have been "red flagged" and thereby prevented from purchasing the weapon(s) and ammo (and body armor) that he used. Or at least prevented from purchasing what he purchased in the straightforward, legally permissible, "over the gun dealer's counter" kinds of transactions that he was able to engage in and did engage in in order to equip himself to perpetrate.
Although a resident of New York State, he bought some of his perpetrator's gear in nearby Pennsylvania. I think he bought the gun that he used in New York State and then went to Pennsylvania to fit it with a larger magazine or modify it in some other way that went outside of what was legally permissible in New York.
Maybe what should have happened in his case will become more feasible now, given what the New York State legislature and governor enacted in the wake of Uvalde. And maybe if the "bi-partisan" gun safety legislation that is currently being drafted in the U.S. Senate is finalized and passed, and then passed by the House and signed into law at the national level by the President.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-14-2022).]
Originally posted by Hudini: The weird thing is that damn near every single mass shooter has posted his lunatic ramblings online and nobody stopped them. Many were investigated by law enforcement and nobody stopped them. It seems the purpose of law enforcement is actually to photograph the crime scene.
I think that assessment is way off target. I haven't seen that the Uvalde perpetrator (for example) ever posted any kind of manifesto online. The age 64 perpetrator who killed 58 people in Las Vegas in 2017 created no manifesto and did not even indulge in a suicide note.
Here's something I just came across as I thought about how to complete this "manifesto" of my own, about the Sandy Hook perp; to wit:
Though originally Lanza was said to have left no Internet footprint, this has turned out to be incorrect.
But nothing so clear or as obvious as a "manifesto."
When there is a manifesto, that tends to raise the national news profile of the shooting, but I assert that there have been many manifesto-less mass shootings over the years, where the number of gunshot victims is just the minimum of 4 (not counting the perp) or not greatly above the minimum of 4 that's needed to qualify as an Official mass shooting. The sort of generic, "flies under the national news radar" kind of shooting at some out of the way industrial or office complex (etc.) perpetrated by a disgruntled employee or ex-employee. That kind of thing. The more mundane kinds of mass shootings.
I assert that when there is a manifesto, that raises the news profile, and so that creates a misleading impression about how many times there is a manifesto; i.e., a kind of Confirmation Bias. I think this is why there is a tendency for people to think that manifestos are more common than the records actually confirm.
QED.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-14-2022).]
Why is it that some folks think criminals are buying and registering their weapons?
It takes a special kind of stupid to believe the police can protect you when you are facing a criminal intent to take your money, possessions or your life. Although, generally the police will call an ambulance for you once they arrive.
Rams
Baffling isnt it. People who don't think things through for themselves.
Why is it that some folks think criminals are buying and registering their weapons?
It takes a special kind of stupid to believe the police can protect you when you are facing a criminal intent to take your money, possessions or your life. Although, generally the police will call an ambulance for you once they arrive.
Rams
No **** man.....
If I wanted, I could have an entire arsenal here (courtesy of Detroit )...What are ya's libs, new at this ??? HOW long do you think it takes to paddle across the St. Clair river on a dark night ???
I simply dont want. I am too old, too out-of-shape-and too broken to make proper use of sporting or hunting rifles anymore. Home-defence ?....I can kill ya dead with an unregulated weapon, and without a firearms-permit
Younger days, I swum that.
Government controls 2 things, and 2 things only. Elvis and **** ........
And Elvis has left the building.
Ya REALLY think just because you make some "rule" and call it "law" that says "you cant do that" you will be obeyed ?????
With jackboot thugs to enforce them ?????
JUST like those woke censorship "you cant say that" and "you cant think that" ..."Laws"
Yeh.....how's that working out for ya'all ?????
Gaawwddd-damn right I broke your speech and thought "laws"....now WTF are ya going to do about it ????? Go **** yourself if ya dont like it. This is not the complaints department.
<edit>
Freedom is not obedience....and obedience is not freedom. George Orwell doesnt live here.
And then ya get SOOOOOOOOOOO ****ing surprised when somebody finally got pushed to far and did something about it. Took down the tormentors.....guess what. We as a species have been doing that since Neanderthal ooga used a mastodon bone to smash booga's skull for stealing fire...
We are a violent species that doesnt tolerate **** at an individual level....get used to it, we have been that way for a few million years.
<edit-edit>
Signed a proud non-law-abiding criminal. Like prohabition, when "law" says I cant drink a beer....yeh, about that. **** off.
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-17-2022).]
Originally posted by MidEngineManiac: [Scroll back one message to see what was said.]
If I say that I think it would be better to have a new law—let's designate it for the sake of this discussion as "A4.37-c"—that restricts or regulates the sale or transfer of firearms in some way that goes beyond whatever laws are already on the books, I am not saying it because I expect that everyone is going to willingly comply with A4.37-c.
After contemplating the preceding message, it seems like a call to anarchy... a mindset that wants to argue for the abandonment of any and all laws and law enforcement, "period."
If I say that I think it would be better to have a new law—let's designate it for the sake of this discussion as "A4.37-c"—that restricts or regulates the sale or transfer of firearms in some way that goes beyond whatever laws are already on the books, I am not saying it because I expect that everyone is going to willingly comply with A4.37-c.
After contemplating the preceding message, it seems like a call to anarchy... a mindset that wants to argue for the abandonment of any and all laws and law enforcement, "period."
I'm shocked Rinsey....
Shocked out of my boots...well...running shoes. And cane I can shake at you !!!
Gotta-dimmit man, my walker triped over the sidewalk...
BTW, Rinse.....I dont have the slightest fear of you being armed.....Why do you fear me doing the same ?
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-17-2022).]
If I say that I think it would be better to have a new law—let's designate it for the sake of this discussion as "A4.37-c"—that restricts or regulates the sale or transfer of firearms in some way that goes beyond whatever laws are already on the books, I am not saying it because I expect that everyone is going to willingly comply with A4.37-c.
After contemplating the preceding message, it seems like a call to anarchy... a mindset that wants to argue for the abandonment of any and all laws and law enforcement, "period."
Rinsey...
It's reality mister.............you are in CA straddling the Mexican border, and in the middle of it...
Are you so stupid to believe you cant gat any gun you want ???? with rounds and mags... ?????
Yeh, right......
And what exactly is "law" and "government" going to do about it ????
Yeh......Get one yourself, man, because when you need help, cops and ambulance are only 20 minutes.....Unless you are islamic, then ya can damn well call your own ambulance.....
After contemplating the preceding message, it seems like a call to anarchy... a mindset that wants to argue for the abandonment of any and all laws and law enforcement, "period."
ANNDDDD......
This exactly why we have a Ukraine-Russia war....shooting at each other and killing.....
Those who think they are comfortable and a revolution will never happen...
guillotines and swords and beheadings...bullet to the head, dump the nazi garbage and keep on, Allah is hunting you. More muslims.
Anarchy ????.....no Rinse, its a war for freedom, same as when the Americans in 1776 told the brits to **** off...
I'm getting tired of European and arab and politics man....
Shoot them all, then we can have some peace.
Kill them all...let thier god sort out the good ones.
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-17-2022).]
Peter Bergen is a CNN National Security Analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice (practice of what?) at Arizona State University.
Here he interviews Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, about so-called "mass shootings."
"Opinion: Forensic psychologist largely dismisses common talking point that mass shootings are caused by individuals with mental disorders" Peter Bergen for CNN; June 19, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06...gen-meloy/index.html
another Mainstream Media Activity Alert from "rinse-bot"
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-20-2022).]
The title is intentionally misleading. The entire article is propaganda.
You cannot tell me about a mass murder that was committed by a sane person. I can tell you about mass murders that were committed without a gun. Where should the focus be?
The title is intentionally misleading. The entire article is propaganda. You cannot tell me about a mass murder that was committed by a sane person.
I can tell you about mass murders that were committed without a gun.
Where should the focus be?
"Where should the focus be?" I don't know. There needs to be a sharpening of the focus about where the focus should be. Here's some of what Professor Meloy had to say:
"LEAKAGE"
quote
The movement along the pathway to violence with its different stages is typically the same, whether it's a terrorist or a school shooter, and along the way, one of the most fascinating things is these individuals will engage in "leakage," which is communication to a third party of the intent to attack. And in one study, we saw that more than half of the time, the individual told a third party what they were planning to do.
What frustrates me is that there is a continuous failure of many individuals to take "leakage" seriously and report it to some authority. They often hear a person articulating their violent intent, and they minimize it or deny that they actually heard what they heard, and then they don't report it. And then a horrible event unfolds. That for me is always very difficult to see repeated again and again as these attacks unfold and to see events such as those in Buffalo and Uvalde, where these killers were troubled and made a number of warning behaviors prior to their attacks, and there was little or nothing done to try to stop them from doing what they were about to do.
However, there are also people who engage in "leakage" who don't carry out an attack. So you've got this paradox that is sometimes very difficult for the public to understand. I worry about complacency, and that even affects people like me who are looking at these cases all the time. You might think: "Well, here's another case of leakage where there was actually no intent to carry out the attack." But you just don't know that. What that means operationally is you have to investigate every case of leakage.
THE "PUBLIC HEALTH" APPROACH
quote
I think the approach we have to take is the public health approach. There are two main levels to this: There's primary prevention like we saw with Covid-19 vaccines. You don't know who's going to get Covid-19, but what you do is you try to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
Now, the translation of that into the threat management of potential mass shooters is the better regulation of firearms in the United States, and that is the primary prevention approach that you see being carried out at the federal level in a very weak form.
What we need is universal registration of firearms and much closer regulation of individuals purchasing firearms. And that's primary prevention, because you don't know which one of those individuals is going to want to carry out an attack and try to access a firearm amid the millions of very responsible gun owners all over the country. So you protect the Second Amendment, but none of our freedoms are absolute: You typically have certain conditions and measures of responsibility for exercising your rights.
A secondary prevention is the identification of symptomatic individuals. So in a medical scenario, if an individual started to experience symptoms, you would intervene medically. So secondary prevention in the case of those who might be on the pathway to violence is to identify symptomatic individuals and then intervene to try to divert them from that pathway.
Some states now mandate threat assessment management teams in their secondary school systems. Way upstream on the pathway to violence, that may mean more publicly available mental health care. Way downstream close to an attack, it becomes oftentimes law enforcement intervention. So you tailor the intervention to where you see this individual, where they are on the pathway to violence, how fast are they moving, and what kind of intervention can be done to try to mitigate the risk.
"Universal Registration of Firearms"... somehow, I"m not "seeing it." But other than those four words, I don't see that there's anything in the professor's commentary that should be discarded without some further consideration.
?
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 06-20-2022).]
Although a resident of New York State, he bought some of his perpetrator's gear in nearby Pennsylvania. I think he bought the gun that he used in New York State and then went to Pennsylvania to fit it with a larger magazine or modify it in some other way that went outside of what was legally permissible in New York.
So you are saying that despite there being laws that prohibited buying such things, (he was after all a resident of New York, and buying the stuff to commit murder) that he still went out and got them?!?
I mean, who could have guessed that someone planning on killing people would be willing to break the law to get the equipment to do such a thing.
Originally posted by rinselberg: What frustrates me is that there is a continuous failure of many individuals to take "leakage" seriously and report it to some authority. They often hear a person articulating their violent intent, and they minimize it or deny that they actually heard what they heard, and then they don't report it. And then a horrible event unfolds. That for me is always very difficult to see repeated again and again as these attacks unfold and to see events such as those in Buffalo and Uvalde, where these killers were troubled and made a number of warning behaviors prior to their attacks, and there was little or nothing done to try to stop them from doing what they were about to do. ?
quote
Gendron received a psychiatric evaluation last year, after making threats at his high school. For reasons that are still unclear, the state’s red-flag laws were not invoked. “This could have been a hundred-and-ten-per-cent preventable,” Deninis said. “New York State, they dropped the ball.”
So you are saying that despite there being laws that prohibited buying such things, (he was after all a resident of New York, and buying the stuff to commit murder) that he still went out and got them?!?
I mean, who could have guessed that someone planning on killing people would be willing to break the law to get the equipment to do such a thing.
For the sake of discussion, I put aside whatever it was (specifically) that was legal for him to purchase from a firearms retailer in Pennsylvania, but not legal for him to purchase from a firearms retailer in his own state of New York. I'll just call that "X".
If there were a national law against X, he wouldn't have been able to travel to the adjacent state (Pennsylvania) or any other of the other 49 states and bring his newly and legally purchased X back with him to New York. (I think he violated New York state law when he returned to New York with X in his possession.)
He didn't get his X by pursuing it in some clandestine way in New York. He took advantage of the circumstance that he could go to Pennsylvania and buy it legally, in a straightforward, "over the counter" firearms or firearms accessory kind of transaction.
So I don't know about X. I don't even know exactly what X was. Maybe it was a larger-sized clip or magazine that New York state has put a law against. Maybe it was something else.
I wonder if any new legislation will come out of this "bi-partisan" effort among certain Democratic and Republican U.S. Senators.
No matter how hard we try, we just cant get through can we Rinsey ???
Guns and swords and crossbows and bombs and airplanes and mixing bleach with ammonia to make gas are TOOLS......TOOLS. Nothing more. So are chainsaws, wood-chippers and big tanks of electric eels (as amusing as those are )...
They do nothing on their own. Not one damn thing. I have a hatchet and drywall hammer that have never in their existence gotten off the tools shelf and gone and attacked somebody....Neither have my projectile weapons.....
Tools.....I can read a magazine, or I can roll it tight and use it as a kaboton. THAT is a person's choice, not the magazines (BAN PLAYBOY !!!!!!)
Until you lefties get the idea through your head that tools are not the problem, entitled people with no self-control are.....the problem the left created...then the problem wont be fixed...
You folks are just like neandethals sacrificing sheep to a rain god, and when rain doesnt happen more sheep are needed....
Ya just cant handle thinking things through to cause and effect....Critical thinking. But yeah, thats offends them and hoooiiiissssttttsssss da feeeewwwwiiinnngggssss.
<sigh>
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Keep poking at a hibernating bear to take selfies, then get SOOOOOO scared, offended and angry when the bear wakes up mad and goes after ya. Call for banning and controlling bears. Not very bright are ya'as. Ya'all CA lefties probably shouldn't come to northern Ontario. Bears dont give a **** how scared, offended or shittin your pants you are, they only care that you bothered them when you shouldnt have. And ya went into his home to do it. That was the 1st bad idea. The stick isnt the problem. The ******* holding it is.
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-20-2022).]
If you go with the idea that "When X (whatever that is) is criminalized, only criminals will have (or do) X," and take that to an extreme... what argument could be made for having any kind of law or government?
That's about all I can say about the previous message. The message that comes right before this one. It's extreme.
For the sake of discussion, I put aside whatever it was (specifically) that was legal for him to purchase from a firearms retailer in Pennsylvania, but not legal for him to purchase from a firearms retailer in his own state of New York. I'll just call that "X".
If there were a national law against X, he wouldn't have been able to travel to the adjacent state (Pennsylvania) or any other of the other 49 states and bring his newly and legally purchased X back with him to New York. (I think he violated New York state law when he returned to New York with X in his possession.)
He didn't get his X by pursuing it in some clandestine way in New York. He took advantage of the circumstance that he could go to Pennsylvania and buy it legally, in a straightforward, "over the counter" firearms or firearms accessory kind of transaction.
So I don't know about X. I don't even know exactly what X was. Maybe it was a larger-sized clip or magazine that New York state has put a law against. Maybe it was something else.
I wonder if any new legislation will come out of this "bi-partisan" effort among certain Democratic and Republican U.S. Senators.
You know you can buy whatever you want in New York, right? It just takes more money and isn't as easy, or legal.
Your theory is that someone willing to drive wouldn't be willing to pay more if driving doesn't work.
Let's compare this to other prohibitions. Estimates were that when the US banned alcohol sales, people started drinking more. But it was illegal everywhere... How is that possible?
If you go with the idea that "When X (whatever that is) is criminalized, only criminals will have (or do) X," and take that to an extreme... what argument could be made for having any kind of law or government?
That's about all I can say about the previous message. The message that comes right before this one. It's extreme.
It's not an extreme. People that are "law-abiding" by definition follow the law. People who break the law don't follow the law. Slippery slopes are real. I could go off on a rant about pedos and the warnings the Right gave years ago when probably you defended gay marriage and we said it would lead to diddling little kids... And here we are.
Disarming the US is just a way of getting us to a Communist "utopia".
It's not an extreme. People that are "law-abiding" by definition follow the law. People who break the law don't follow the law. Slippery slopes are real. I could go off on a rant about pedos and the warnings the Right gave years ago when probably you defended gay marriage and we said it would lead to diddling little kids... And here we are.
Disarming the US is just a way of getting us to a Communist "utopia".
"Law abiding" are the the controlled ones....licking the masters hand like a dog for permission to live....OH, look at me, I licked your ass and gave you 900 dollua....do I have a licence for a dog now....????
Free men dont ask, and dont need permission,
If you pay tax on a roll of toilet paper, and ask permission to take a **** .......
then on the most basic level, you are not free.....
A bear can **** in the woods and wipe his ass with a rabbit without problems....the bear is free. Can you do the same, without cops shooting at you ????
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-21-2022).]
Joe, Some will never agree on the intent of the 2nd Amendment. Some don't deserve the freedoms and guarantees the Constitution provides.
Rams
Excuse me ??? RON, the entire idea was it apples to everbody equally....
Not just those the government decides who can be armed....like when the government can use lawyers and "laws" to shoot at those who throw 20=puond bags f tea into a party ??
5 pounds of tea costs 6 bucks...wanna play those games again.... Some will cower and hide while others do stand up. Figuring out who, well that's the easy part.
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-21-2022).]
If you go with the idea that "When X (whatever that is) is criminalized, only criminals will have (or do) X," and take that to an extreme... what argument could be made for having any kind of law or government?
.
You are conflating things. The 2nd amendment shall not be infringed.
You are conflating things. The 2nd amendment shall not be infringed.
Agreed whole-heartedly.
The only reason people dont want you(us) armed, is because they are planning on doing things they know damn well would get them shot.
Attention libs.....
Nope, you aint "safe" here in my home, this isnt a safe-space. It's a redneck free-speech and free thought zone. You will encounter words, beer, black coffee, rebel flags, country music, weapons, and a whole lot of other things you dont like. It's my home, not yours. Your consent or approval is neither sought, nor required. The door works 2 ways, and if you dont like free speech then you can apply your own standard to yourself, shut your mouth, and get the **** out. Or be removed. Your choice.
Oh, your offended...good, find a complaints department somewhere. I don't work in one.
[This message has been edited by MidEngineManiac (edited 06-22-2022).]
)...What are ya's libs, new at this ??? HOW long do you think it takes to paddle across the St. Clair river on a dark night ???
