The fact is that under our Constitutional form of gov't your neighbor can indeed have a lab in his basement ~capable~ of working with anthrax; --- just as he can own the materials to make a fertilizer bomb in his U-Haul. He has that freedom to posses dangerous materials; -- "so long as he doesn't bother anybody".
The 2nd Amendment has to mean GUNS, not mass casualty weapons.
The 2nd means we all have the freedom to own property that can be used for armaments. -- Fertilizer, fuel, dead/diseased animals, -- even nuclear materials, -- can & are owned by free men. Unable to refute the above reasoning, you've ignored it.
And then the question is merely one of how much safety regulation or registration one is going to require - or not require - concerning personal ownership of guns.
The real question has always been one of how much safety regulation or registration one is going to require - or not require - concerning personal ownership of 'dangerous' property. -- And history shows us that prohibitions do not work.
My opinion is that gun possession is clearly a federal right, spelled out in the Second Amendment.
It's clearly a individual, inalienable constitutional right, - like our rights to life, liberty, or property, -- and can only limited by due process of law [no prohibitive infringements].
Like any other right, it is broad, but naturally limited. An unlimited right would mean that convicted felons could have guns.
Non-violent ex-felons should have such rights restored.
It would mean that the Secret Service couldn't infringe people's gun rights when the President was around.
They can't now, constitutionally speaking.
And it would mean that people could individually possess WMD. That's all nutty.
It's 'nutty' to claim that we can have a free republic that can prohibit any type of property dangerous enough to be made into a 'mass casualty weapon'. -- 9/11 taught us that lesson.
--- tell me that the 2nd Amendment DOES NOT mean that there is any personal right to have either nuclear weapons or fully-automatic weapons, mass-casualty weapons, and we can proceed. That's the FIRST test, the litmus test of sanity.
Comparing nuclear materials with machine guns is hardly a test of sanity. Its nutty.
Personal nukes? Yes or no. (NO is the right answer.)
Many 'persons' in our country possess nuclear materials, and the ability to make it into weapons. No one [to date] has been insane enough to do so.
Machine guns? Yes or no. (NO is the right answer.)
Millions of 'persons' in our country possess the materials, and the ability, to make machine guns. Not many [to date] have been insane enough to do so, and use them as "mass-casualty weapons". -- And it's 'nutty' to prohibit them.
Once we get past those two "No's", we've admitted that the 2nd Amendment IS a limited right.
No one here is arguing for an unlimited 'anarchy of arms'. We argue for a right to own and carry arms, -- without infringements.
"Arms" does not mean ALL arms. Some arms can be infringed, are infringed, have to be infringed, and it's perfectly constitutional to infringe them.
Prohibitions on arms are infringements. Constitutional due process must be used in the writing & enforcing of restraints on that liberty.
Justice Harlan recognized:
"--- The full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause `cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution.
This `liberty´ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on.
It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints ---"
I agree, it [the 2nd] protects a pre-existing right, just like the first Amendments "freedom of speech" protection protects a pre-existing right to free speech. The problem, though, it what the parameters of that right are. I bring up WMD because it is topical. DO the Michigan Militia, or the Dearborn Mosques, have the right to build huge fertilizer bombs just so long as they don't use them?
Answered above.. Millions of 'persons' in our country possess the materials, and the ability, to make bombs. Not many [to date] have been insane enough to do so, and use them as "mass-casualty weapons". --- Due process can be used make & enforce laws to reasonably regulate bomb-making without prohibiting our freedom with "-- substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints --".
That there is a right to keep and bear arms or to free speech is an abstraction.
Weird concept. They are a very real part of our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. -- Care to explain your reasoning?
When we try to apply that concretely, to people with evil intent building mass-casualty weapons (which are arms) or selling child pornography (which is material produced by a branch of "the press"), does it mean that people cannot be STOPPED from building such weapons or selling such pornography?
Sure, weapons of 'mass-casualty' are arms, capable of being 'built'; -- how do you stop people with 'evil intent' from driving a moving van full of gasoline into a schoolyard and setting it afire? Should we be 'licensed' to buy gas?
There is no unlimited right, but the guff I am getting here with my WMD question sure makes it look like you think there is an absolutely unlimited right to have ANY sort of weapon.
If that's what you think, then say so.
Already said it, -- 'no comment' from you; -- No one here is arguing for an unlimited 'anarchy of arms'. We argue for a right to own and carry arms, -- without infringements.
Say: there is a personal right to possess nuclear weapons, because they are arms, and the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
You're 'stuck on nukes'. -- Your local hospital probably has enough nuclear material to make a fairly nasty 'dirty bomb'. -- I say: -- there is a personal right to possess such nuclear materials.
Or say the opposite, which is the rational position: there is a right to keep and bear arms, which can't be infringed, but that right doesn't mean nuclear weapons.
Damn near anything can can be made into a weapon. That's rational; - prohibitions on damn near anything are not rational.
It means personal sidearms, which is to say guns. Reasonably limit the idea of arms to GUN RIGHTS, and we can quickly get on the same page,
You advocate prohibitions on machine guns. That takes you off the 'reasonable limits' page.
but it doesn't work to "hedge" on WMD. It's not infringing the right to keep and bear arms to prohibit people from having WMD; the right doesn't extend that far.
Machine guns are not "WMD". It's infringing the right to keep and bear arms to prohibit people from having 'automatic' weapons; the right extends that far.
So, the 2nd Amendment means that you can have nukes in your basement, it's your inalienable right.
There is not much more to say, really.
It doesn't say that.
It doesn't mean that.
And it isn't going to be allowed to mean that.
The latter is the most important point, because neither you nor I gets to define what the Constitution means. The authorities do that, the courts. The trend for years has been away from gun rights, not toward them, and the trend will continue too, if this is the sort of defense that defenders of the 2nd Amendment offer. You could defend gun rights pretty effectively with the assistance of friends like me.
But you won't back away from the insanity that the 2nd Amendment is not limited to guns, and insist that it means any sort of armaments at all, right up to WMD. You believe that, apparently passionately.
I cannot support that.
You've lost an ally.