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.
No, the 2nd means you have the right to defend the rest of your freedoms to life, liberty, or property -- without prohibitions/infringements that violate due process.
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.
There you go. Bold 'authoritative' words from a majority rules position.
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.
Dream on 'count'. -- We the people decided over 220 years ago that our right to arms shall not be infringed. -- The right cannot be 'defined' away by authorities.
In fact, they all make an oath to 'support & defend' that amendment. -- As an Annapolis man, you did too; correct?
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.
Yep, and the trend toward 'rational' infringements is being argued well by your sort of rhetoric. Fancy that.
You could defend gun rights pretty effectively with the assistance of friends like me.
Your sort have never been 'friends' of rights. Your own 'bold authoritarian words' just above tell the real tale.
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.
You irrationally believe that I support "WMD", -- apparently passionately.
I cannot support that. You've lost an ally.
Allies like you we don't need.
You wrote: "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."
They have the materials, for a specific use, and the materials are controlled and regulated.
What I am asking is whether or not they have the right, the constitutional right, to assemble them into a dirty bomb because they want one. Nuclear material in x-ray machines, et al, has a purpose. It's not weaponized. If the hospital crew takes apart the machines and starts assembling nuclear material for the purpose of weaponizing it into a bomb, they have committed a slew of serious crimes and, if detected, will be arrested for it.
What you are saying is that the 2nd Amendment means that people don't just have the right to have nuclear material in hospitals, fertilizer in their fields, and gasoline in their tanks (nobody disputes that they can, subject to regulation). You're saying that they have the right to take these materials which they have and assemble them into weapons of mass destruction, which they can keep if they want to, so long as they don't bother anybody.
That is not in fact the way that the 2nd Amendment is interpreted by the courts or Congress, but you and your ilk here are asserting that courts and Congress are breaking the Constitution, and people actually already HAVE the right, under the Constitution, to take the nuclear materials out of the x-ray machine and make a dirty bomb.
You will not back away from your purism on the 2nd Amendment issue. And others have chimed in in support of your position. Conversely, not one single defender of gun rights has stood up alongside of me and said "You're right, these guys are over the top". My impression, therefore, is that folks who support 2nd Amendment rights on the conservative right think like you do, and really think they have some sort of God-given right to nuclear weapons.
That is absolutely insane.
Now, as to this: "Damn near anything can can be made into a weapon. That's rational; - prohibitions on damn near anything are not rational."
You are eliding two things: materials which CAN be made into a weapon, and actually MAKING and HAVING a weapon. If you own a chunk of land in the Rocky Mountains, you've got plenty of Uranium right there, in the soil. If you're a radiology clinic, you've got plenty of radioactive material. If you have decorative castor bean plants in your garden, you have vegetable ricin, probably the deadliest natural poison around, in your backyard. It is you, not me, who is suggesting that I am saying all of these things have to be banned. That's ridiculous.
It is a very different thing to have castor beans and to cut the beans, slice them, squeeze out the juice, and repeatedly distill the sap to get ricin. The former, the bean, has the potential to be a weapon, but it's a plant. If you take the time, effort and methods to make it into a weapon, then it's a weapon, and it's purpose is to be a weapon. I say that there's no reason to even think about castor beans, but there is every reason to criminalize somebody actually making and possessing ricin from castor beans. What is the purpose of making and having ricin? To have a nasty poison, the discreet drop of which on a doorknob or in a coffee cup can kill somebody. Why does ANYBODY have the need to poison his neighbors? That's not self-defense. Just the fact of making and possessing ricin demonstrates a diseased mind and an unstable intent.
Same thing for the radiology lab. Having radioactive material IN THE MACHINES in order to take x-rays is a perfectly normal use. That's why it's there, for x-rays. For safety reasons, it's subject to the NRC, but we need x-ray machines, so of course that stuff is out there. Why shouldn't it be? It's a very different thing, though, if the doctor goes in at night, opens up the machine, pulls out the radioactive materials and starts assembling them with explosives into a dirty bomb. What's the purpose of THAT? To kill people. Lots and lots of people. To shut down a whole are of the city. Unlike a gun, which is a tool to use against an immediate violent threat, to repel a killer, to protect a family, what is the use of a nuclear bomb? Not to protect anything. It's to blow the hell out of city blocks and kill a lot of people. You cannot seem to distinguish between radioactive material sitting INSIDE OF an x-ray machine to take x-rays, and the very different purpose, and mentality, of pulling it out of the machine and assembling it into a bomb. It's not threatening in the machine, but it IS threatening when weaponized, and anybody who would weaponize it and keep it under his control is obviously no good. A nuclear bomb isn't something you can use for self-defense. It's a vehicle to take out the neighborhood.
Of course we don't prohibit x-ray machines.
Of course we make illegal any steps to take that radioactive material and do something else with it, something unauthorized, ESPECIALLY trying to assemble it into a WEAPON for Christ's sake! This should be obvious.
Eliding possession of things that could be weaponized into actually weaponizing them is not a legitimate step. It's the fact that it's a weapon that makes ricin dangerous, and the fact that it's NOT a weapon, and can't be used as a weapon without specific, intentional, methodical steps, that makes castor beans plants not dangerous. The mindset that WANTS ricin, which only has one use, and to keep that possession a secret from everybody else, is the mindset of a criminal. Nobody with good intent wants secret quantities of weaponized deadly toxins or nuclear weapons. It's obvious. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and we do not have to pretend that there exist people who might just want to assemble a radioactive dirty bomb out of radioactive materials for some legitimate purpose. There IS NO legitimate purpose in private possession of a nuclear weapon. Whoever wants one, wants it precisely to be able to hold a whole community hostage and threaten the lives and property of a vast number of people. That's not true with guns. People can want guns to defend themselves against marauders, and most people who have guns DO want them for self-defense. It's a weapon, that's its purpose, the threat of crime is real, and the possession to deter that threat is legitimate. But a private nuclear weapon or a private cache of deadly neurotoxins? What is the legitimate purpose of THAT? What sort of self-defense does THAT provide? None. The former provides the ability to be a terrorist or a mass-murder suicide at one's own unfettered discretion. The 2nd Amendment doesn't empower people with the God-given right to be able to threaten the whole damned neighborhood. And ricin? Hidden, unregistered? What's that for? Not to keep the criminals out. No. It's only purpose is to be able to untraceably murder people. The Second Amendment does not give any right to do that either.
I am sorry. If you've really got to take the position, which you have, that the Second Amendment confers the right to possess ricin and nukes, then you are out of your gourd. More importantly, by publicly insisting on it (and by the silence of defenders of gun rights on the topic), you're damaging the cause of the LEGITIMATE 2nd Amendment reading, which is to allow individuals to defend themselves with GUNS. You don't have the right to defend yourself with ricin or a nuclear weapon. The 2nd Amendment doesn't say you do. The Courts don't. The Congress don't. The majority of the people don't. I don't. It's not a rational position. All rights are limited. Weapons rights are not the only exception. Come on, be reasonable here.
This whole nuclear weapons issue would go away if you'd just flatly say: "You're right, the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right to private nuclear weapons, or ricin, or weaponized anthrax." That you WON'T SAY THAT tells me you think it DOES. That not one other gun rights person will stand up and say "Come off it, that's nuts" alarms me.
Do you have the right to have a nuke in your basement?
Yes or no?
It is a simple question.
Then you wrote: "Dream on 'count'. -- We the people decided over 220 years ago that our right to arms shall not be infringed. -- The right cannot be 'defined' away by authorities.
In fact, they all make an oath to 'support & defend' that amendment. -- As an Annapolis man, you did too; correct?"
As to this, correct. And having taken the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the USA against all enemies, foreign and domestic, several times, I will say unequivocally that any person who breaks the laws against possession of nuclear, biological or chemical materials, or sensibly prohibited mass-casualty weapons like machine guns, is doing so because he's a domestic enemy of the Constitution, hellbent on maintaining in secret the power to kill his neighbors or tear down the constitutional order with weapons of great power which are not legitimate to self-defense. There is a residual right of rebellion against tyranny, and it is contained and protected by the Second Amendment. If the people, as a mass, like in the Revolution, feel tyrannized, they can rise up and their weapons, as a mass, as a militia, can drive out the oppressive authorities. But there is absolutely no INDIVIDUAL right of rebellion. No INDIVIDUAL has the right to decide, all on his own, that the government is oppressive and that HE is the guardian of the Constitution, that the authorities are tyrants and that everybody else, who won't rebel or band together, is a "sheeple", and that HE has the right, all on his lonesome, to start blowing away cops and taking out whole city blocks. That is called mass murder, insanity and terrorism. To try to possess a personal WMD, unregistered, unbeknownst to anybody, is to be a domestic enemy of the Constitution of the United States by law and by logic. It is precisely because I took that oath and have thought about this so much that I see, very, very clearly, that the Second Amendment is about COLLECTIVE capacity to recreate the revolution, and about individual self-defense using guns. Nobody has the right to, all by himself, decide to destroy the neighborhood. And nobody has the right to possess the weapons that gives him the capacity to do it. There is no such right in the Constitution, and attempting to possess such things is, in fact, attempting to SUBVERT the Constitution by possessing an individual override to the due process of law and legitimate powers of the authorities. There is no such right either in the Constitution or given by God. My oath requires me to oppose the nonsense that you are spouting about individual WMD rights.
And finally, as to this: "Allies like you we don't need."
Yes, you do. This is a democracy. Numbers tell the tale here. If you want to lose the gun rights you have, then go ahead and be a nut and assert that you don't JUST have the right to guns to defend yourself (and, collectively, as a militia, to defend the neighborhood), but that you have the right to hold, in secret, weapons that would let you destroy the neighborhood all on your lonesome if you went nuts and felt like it.
The 2nd Amendment means guns. That's what it MEANT in 1787. It's what it still means, even though now there are a whole lot more sophisticated "arms" out there. If we can keep it focused on THAT, on the good things that private possession of firearms does like suppressing crime, and even argue passionately that for women to defend themselves, they should think about getting a gun - that's all sane, and it's all what the Constitution means.
But you just won't stay on the reservation of sanity. You, and others, just have to keep coming back here and asserting over and over that the Second Amendment MEANS that government can't restrict ANY weapons, at all, ever, no matter how deadly. Private nukes, hidden? Constitutional. Not only that, but anybody who says otherwise, like ME, is some sort of authoritarian. Is that REALLY what the staunch 2nd Amendment defenders mean? Of course I cannot stand by you in that case. Because if you don't see the necessary limits in law, for the safety of the Republic itself from lunatics, then you're not really on the side of the country, but on the side of some strange obsession with weapons. And that sort of thing is dangerous to the Constitutional order.
I believe that my oath requires me to protect the gun rights of individuals. I don't believe that there is any "right to bear mass casualty weapons" in the Constitution or intended by the Founders. Nor do I think that the "right to bear arms" ever meant that known dangers to the Republic were in possession of that right, just as "freedom of speech" never meant the freedom to slander, and "freedom of the press" never meant the freedom to publish child pornography. The freedoms and rights are themselves naturally and rationally limited, by custom, by law, by due process and by common sense. If you've got a private nuclear weapon in your basement, or a private stash of ricin, you have evil intent and you're an enemy of the Constitution, not exercising a right at all.
Machine guns are a separate case, because they could be a weapon of self-defense...if you're being assaulted by a regiment of criminals or something like that. It's not a REASONABLE assertion of the right. In our history, private machine guns were used extensively by organized crime to attack the constitutional order, not by individuals to defend themselves. We outlawed them and restricted them, and their lack of availability has been real and effective: when nutjobs go into Luby's and shoot up the place, they do so with semi-automatic weapons because they can't GET the machine guns that would render such incidents far, far bloodier than they already are.
I think we could have a rational argument about machine guns, and whether or not the ban on them infringes the rights under the Second Amendment. I am somewhat persuadable. I am persuadable that non-violent ex-felons perhaps should be permitted to regain their gun rights. Reasonable time, place and manner restrictions for the protection of the Republic by protecting the person of the President mean that guns can be, and must be, excluded from the place where the President is. This is common sense and does not violate the Constitution, in my opinion (and since it's my opinion that governs how I fulfill my Oath, it matters here).
But "the right to keep and bear arms" is not "infringed" by criminalizing WMD, because there is no right to keep or to bear WMD at all. Never was. And the 2nd Amendment shouldn't be stretched and deformed to say there is, because it damages the credibility of the arguments for gun rights. Talk about a slippery slope! Good God! If we accept that you have the right to carry a hidden pistol, we also have to accept that you have the right to keep a nuke in your basement? In for a penny, in for a pound? That's nuts.