Vegas shooting thead

• fish82

  

  The #isaderp is strong this week.
• isadore

  HitsRus;1876412 wrote:I suspect a good deal of disingenuousness here... you posted only part of the quote, leaving out, "However, weapons arrest rates per 100,000 are highest for teens and blacks." Moreover the statistics are 22 years old. 2 Pinocchio's bud. Half truths at best...just like all the other stuff you've posted on this thread.

  Gosh a ruddies , the statements I made are true and supported Department of justice statistics. From 1990-2010 60% of arrests for weapons law violations were white. I know that does not fit your obvious views of black teens as the greatest crime threat and your reason for supporting unrestricted gun ownership but it is true.
  https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/aus9010.pdf
  As I consistently show, your claims are false and your arguments specious.
  
• isadore

  O-Trap;1876362 wrote:Stating how easy it is does absolutely zero to demonstrate that it's a matter of pride. As such, no. You have no grounds for calling it bragging. I stated a fact. A fact that exists independently of me. Inasmuch as this is true, it is necessarily not bragging.
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  
  You dismissed anyone who might sell guns as a lowlife, which dismisses why they might be doing so out-of-hand, and since systemic racism does put POC at a disadvantage in this regard at a disproportionate level, it doesn't matter that you didn't assume they were black. Your dismissal of anyone who finds themselves in circumstances that make them think they have to do it dismisses the disadvantages that go along with that systemic racism AND ignore the resulting choice.
  
  Once again, I've never, ever bought from people selling illicit products. Also, I never said I associate with them (but you needed some conclusion to jump to). I merely said I knew who they were. That is true. I do know who they are.
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  
  The Colonists had their own army in 1775. As in, not the English army. So, they formed an army prior to viewing themselves as distinct from the English, and then they kept it after that change. They used it to fight the English, even.
  
  But you're suggesting that AFTER creating an army that was distinct from the English and using it to fight against the English, their intention was to disband the army in favor of militia ... something they never actually tried to do?
  
  Surely you jest.
  
  The army was indeed small, because they didn't extort the general public to pay for it with a variety of taxes, opting instead to fund government with tariffs. Even still, the army led the militia in all major conflicts. To try to make that out to be the result of some fear of an "occupying" military is ridiculous. Moreover, it would make the Constitution redundant, as it already addresses military access to private property in the VERY NEXT AMENDMENT.
  
  If the point was to avoid an official army, then they did a whole bunch of other stuff that makes no sense whatsoever. If, however, the point was to allow private citizens to be armed, then the rest of it makes sense.
  
  Square peg. Round hole.
  
  
  
  I've never purchased a firearm of any sort.
  
  If the words are demeaning ... and they were ... then it was an insult. Digging in your heals on your silly non sequitur is only going to hurt your case.

  You are partially true in your claim of not being a braggart. You are much more a fraud than a braggart. All these claims you make on how easy it would be for you to obtain an automatic weapon with absolutely no foundation in fact. Your expertise is even more brought into doubt by your admission you have never bought a firearm of any sort. Mass murders, motivated by a wish for a high body count, often with intellect and resources, have been unable to obtain these weapons.
  I stated that I believed people who sell illegal weapons are scum, they cause deaths. I did not tie my opinion to any ethnic group, but you did. You claimed young African Americans were most involved with illegal weapons. The charge reflected your prejudices, not my statement or the fact
  At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the large majority of the colonists viewed themselves as English. The army they raised was not to fight England, but to resist a tyrannical king. They were following a many century English tradition going back to 1215 and Runnymede. Even the body of the Declaration was not a list of complaints about England but against George III.
  From the late colonial army occupation and the war the colonists came away with a hatred of monarchy and standing armies. The early republic kept it army miniscule and on the frontier. In this period the militia was to be relied on to suppress Shay’s and the Whiskey Rebellions. Even in the War of 1812 the vast majority of the troops and the leading Generals Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison were militia.
  The Founders feared a standing army. And they wrote their alternative into the Constitution. In Article I, II, IV, 5[SUP]th[/SUP] Amendment. And in the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] the Founders spelled out its importance, why people would be given the right to bear arms. “A well regulated (government controlled) Militia, being necessary for the security of a free state (something they did not say about an army) we will let you have guns.
  I was being descriptive and I never dig in my “heals”.
  
• HitsRus

  

  isadore;1876452 wrote:Gosh a ruddies , the statements I made are true and supported Department of justice statistics. From 1990-2010 60% of arrests for weapons law violations were white. I know that does not fit your obvious views of black teens as the greatest crime threat and your reason for supporting unrestricted gun ownership but it is true.
  https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/aus9010.pdf
  As I consistently show, your claims are false and your arguments specious.

  Thanks for providing the more recent statistics. Unfortunately, they don't show anything different than the half truths you posted earlier. I was making no claims other than what you posted was half truth at best....and I'm right.
• superman

  HitsRus;1876484 wrote:Thanks for providing the more recent statistics. Unfortunately, they don't show anything different than the half truths you posted earlier. I was making no claims other than what you posted was half truth at best....and I'm right.

  Four levels of lies.
  1. Lies
  2. Damn Lies
  3. Statistics
  4. Statistics that Isadore uses.
• isadore

  HitsRus;1876484 wrote:Thanks for providing the more recent statistics. Unfortunately, they don't show anything different than the half truths you posted earlier. I was making no claims other than what you posted was half truth at best....and I'm right.

  No I am right, the majority arrested for weapons charges are by a large amount white
  Total weapons arrests 159,020 whites 92,630 blacks 63,710
• OSH

  

  justincredible;1876255 wrote:If you stop responding to him maybe he'll go away.

  I don't know what is worse: the numerous pages people want to "chat" with isadore about the subject OR the fact that I've read everything.
  
  Trainwreck.
• QuakerOats

  isadore;1876508 wrote:No I am right, the majority arrested for weapons charges are by a large amount white
  Total weapons arrests 159,020 whites 92,630 blacks 63,710

  
  So blacks are 40% of the arrests, but just 10% of the population. Who da thunk.
• isadore

  OSH;1876524 wrote:I don't know what is worse: the numerous pages people want to "chat" with isadore about the subject OR the fact that I've read everything.
  
  Trainwreck.

  
• isadore

  QuakerOats;1876528 wrote:So blacks are 40% of the arrests, but just 10% of the population. Who da thunk.

  gosh they are a large % of population, despite your efforts.
• O-Trap

  

  isadore;1876461 wrote:You are partially true in your claim of not being a braggart. You are much more a fraud than a braggart. All these claims you make on how easy it would be for you to obtain an automatic weapon with absolutely no foundation in fact. Your expertise is even more brought into doubt by your admission you have never bought a firearm of any sort. Mass murders, motivated by a wish for a high body count, often with intellect and resources, have been unable to obtain these weapons.
  I stated that I believed people who sell illegal weapons are scum, they cause deaths. I did not tie my opinion to any ethnic group, but you did. You claimed young African Americans were most involved with illegal weapons. The charge reflected your prejudices, not my statement or the fact

  
  
  Once again, you're showing your ignorance if you think one is required to have purchased something in order to know where to find it.
  
  Do you think a person who has never bought weed would find it particularly difficult? Meth? Opioids? If not, why do you think firearms are so different? Because you think the laws on the books currently are particularly effective? Hilarious.
  
  Are they harder to acquire than legal ones? Sure. So, if a legal one will do the trick, does it make sense to opt for a legal one? Of course.
  
  But only a fool continues to conflate being able to do something and actually doing it.
  
  I could tell you where to buy weed, as well. Not because I'm special, but because everyone knows how to get it.
  

  isadore;1876461 wrote:At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the large majority of the colonists viewed themselves as English. The army they raised was not to fight England, but to resist a tyrannical king. They were following a many century English tradition going back to 1215 and Runnymede. Even the body of the Declaration was not a list of complaints about England but against George III.
  From the late colonial army occupation and the war the colonists came away with a hatred of monarchy and standing armies. The early republic kept it army miniscule and on the frontier. In this period the militia was to be relied on to suppress Shay’s and the Whiskey Rebellions. Even in the War of 1812 the vast majority of the troops and the leading Generals Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison were militia.
  The Founders feared a standing army. And they wrote their alternative into the Constitution. In Article I, II, IV, 5[SUP]th[/SUP] Amendment. And in the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] the Founders spelled out its importance, why people would be given the right to bear arms. “A well regulated (government controlled) Militia, being necessary for the security of a free state (something they did not say about an army) we will let you have guns.
  I was being descriptive and I never dig in my “heals”.

  Just ... stop.
  
  I have never seen someone fight so hard to try to make someone else agree with them.
  
  I never never contended that the militia was smaller. The army was necessarily smaller, because it wasn't funded like a large army. But the militia WAS subordinate to the army in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812.
  
  Show me where they stipulated that "well-regulated" means government-controlled. I'll wait.
  
  And yes. At that time, the militia were absolutely necessary for the security of a free state. The army was, what, 50K large? The militia had to be five to ten times that size. However, as I just stated (and as can be abundantly found), the militia took orders from the army.
  
  Moreover, you're conflating something else, as well. You're conflating what the founders explicitly refer to as a "right" and what you're viewing as permission.
  
  Taking away the justification clause, the Second Amendment says, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall no be infringed." They did not say, "Permission will be granted for people to keep and bear arms."
  
  They refer to the keeping and bearing of arms as a "right," and they gave the contemporary need for a militia as sufficient grounds for nobody to try to infringe on that right.
  
  However, REGARDLESS of how you wish to interpret the militia clause (and you're doing that wrong already, but I digress, as it's mostly irrelevant), the fact that they use the term "right" to refer to the act of keeping and bearing arms, as well as the word "infringe" as the term used to describe the absence of that right, means an understanding of basic English, even at a level that shrugs off time-based contextual nuance, is sufficient to note that they deemed the ability to keep and bear arms as the default right of human beings, with an attempt to restrict that right being an infringement, and not merely a withholding of permission.
  
  If something requires permission, it is not a right. It is a privilege. Like you being able to live in blissful ignorance of where to find illegal contraband for sale.
  
  If you need a reference point for what the word "right" means when it is used in the Bill of Rights, see every other right listed in the document and let the drafters' own words interpret themselves. A "right" is a freedom that someone has simply for being a person.
  
  And frankly, the right to self-ownership ... that is, the right to possess my own body and make decisions about it ... is meaningless without the right for me, the owner of that body, to protect it with whatever force is necessary to do so against agents trying to infringe on it.
  
  Now, the beauty of this is that rights are neither permissions nor obligations. Your right to adequately defend yourself is not a permission, but neither is it a mandate. You don't have to own a gun. You are free to tell people it's a bad idea to own a gun.
  
  But it is a "right," and not an allowance, to keep and bear arms. If you think they got that wrong, you're free to make your case. The case you're trying to make right now, however, is nonsense, and it isn't worthy of further recognition. Come up with better support ... hell, ANY sound support ... or your position is worthy of little more than being ignored.
• CenterBHSFan

  

  O-Trap;1876551 wrote:However, REGARDLESS of how you wish to interpret the militia clause (and you're doing that wrong already, but I digress, as it's mostly irrelevant), the fact that they use the term "right" to refer to the act of keeping and bearing arms, as well as the word "infringe" as the term used to describe the absence of that right, means an understanding of basic English, even at a level that shrugs off time-based contextual nuance, is sufficient to note that they deemed the ability to keep and bear arms as the default right of human beings, with an attempt to restrict that right being an infringement, and not merely a withholding of permission.

  I think this is the longest sentence that I've ever read on this sight.
  
  A+
• O-Trap

  

  CenterBHSFan;1876592 wrote:I think this is the longest sentence that I've ever read on this sight.
  
  A+

  Perhaps a misguided attempt to be so explicit and thorough that it cannot possibly be misconstrued.
  
  In hindsight, probably an exercise in futility, as I'm sure "someone" will find a way to try to misconstrue it.
• Heretic

  

  O-Trap;1876597 wrote:Perhaps a misguided attempt to be so explicit and thorough that it cannot possibly be misconstrued.
  
  In hindsight, probably an exercise in futility, as I'm sure "someone" will find a way to try to misconstrue it.

  Oh yeah, we all know that. And it will be amusing, I'm sure!
• O-Trap

  

  Heretic;1876600 wrote:Oh yeah, we all know that. And it will be amusing, I'm sure!

  What he lacks in reasoning he makes up for in endurance.
• fish82

  

  O-Trap;1876601 wrote:What he lacks in reasoning he makes up for in endurance.

  Dude can take a punch like nobody’s business.
• isadore

  O-Trap;1876551 wrote:
  
  Once again, you're showing your ignorance if you think one is required to have purchased something in order to know where to find it.
  
  Do you think a person who has never bought weed would find it particularly difficult? Meth? Opioids? If not, why do you think firearms are so different? Because you think the laws on the books currently are particularly effective? Hilarious.
  
  Are they harder to acquire than legal ones? Sure. So, if a legal one will do the trick, does it make sense to opt for a legal one? Of course.
  
  But only a fool continues to conflate being able to do something and actually doing it.
  
  I could tell you where to buy weed, as well. Not because I'm special, but because everyone knows how to get it.
  
  
  
  Just ... stop.
  
  I have never seen someone fight so hard to try to make someone else agree with them.
  
  I never never contended that the militia was smaller. The army was necessarily smaller, because it wasn't funded like a large army. But the militia WAS subordinate to the army in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812.
  
  Show me where they stipulated that "well-regulated" means government-controlled. I'll wait.
  
  And yes. At that time, the militia were absolutely necessary for the security of a free state. The army was, what, 50K large? The militia had to be five to ten times that size. However, as I just stated (and as can be abundantly found), the militia took orders from the army.
  
  Moreover, you're conflating something else, as well. You're conflating what the founders explicitly refer to as a "right" and what you're viewing as permission.
  
  Taking away the justification clause, the Second Amendment says, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall no be infringed." They did not say, "Permission will be granted for people to keep and bear arms."
  
  They refer to the keeping and bearing of arms as a "right," and they gave the contemporary need for a militia as sufficient grounds for nobody to try to infringe on that right.
  
  However, REGARDLESS of how you wish to interpret the militia clause (and you're doing that wrong already, but I digress, as it's mostly irrelevant), the fact that they use the term "right" to refer to the act of keeping and bearing arms, as well as the word "infringe" as the term used to describe the absence of that right, means an understanding of basic English, even at a level that shrugs off time-based contextual nuance, is sufficient to note that they deemed the ability to keep and bear arms as the default right of human beings, with an attempt to restrict that right being an infringement, and not merely a withholding of permission.
  
  If something requires permission, it is not a right. It is a privilege. Like you being able to live in blissful ignorance of where to find illegal contraband for sale.
  
  If you need a reference point for what the word "right" means when it is used in the Bill of Rights, see every other right listed in the document and let the drafters' own words interpret themselves. A "right" is a freedom that someone has simply for being a person.
  
  And frankly, the right to self-ownership ... that is, the right to possess my own body and make decisions about it ... is meaningless without the right for me, the owner of that body, to protect it with whatever force is necessary to do so against agents trying to infringe on it.
  
  Now, the beauty of this is that rights are neither permissions nor obligations. Your right to adequately defend yourself is not a permission, but neither is it a mandate. You don't have to own a gun. You are free to tell people it's a bad idea to own a gun.
  
  But it is a "right," and not an allowance, to keep and bear arms. If you think they got that wrong, you're free to make your case. The case you're trying to make right now, however, is nonsense, and it isn't worthy of further recognition. Come up with better support ... hell, ANY sound support ... or your position is worthy of little more than being ignored.

  You make a claim about purchasing an automatic weapon. God how pompous and with so little foundation. You claim this knowledge with no proof to back it up. Yes drugs flood our culture. I am sure many people are able to obtain the more common illegal drugs. Automatic weapons are quite different. Read or have someone read your local newspaper to you. Read the crime stories, read the court news. Story after story of drug arrests, case after case of people convicted for possession and sale of drugs. How many for robberies, assaults, murders committed with automatic weapons. Many gun related crimes, but with handguns, shotguns, occasionally rifles, automatics. How many people in the court news for possession of automatic weapons. Isolated or none. But you believe it is so doable. Even motivated mass murders cannot do it. BUT YOU CAN.
  After the writing of the Constitution the miniscule army and the militia was under direct CIVILIAN Control, the President and the Secretary of War. They appointed the generals. The two leading successful commanders, appointed by Civilian leadership were Militia generals, Jackson and Harrison who had independent commands.
  The Constitution that preceded the Bill of Rights and the 1792 Militia Acts spelled out what was meant by well regulated. Read Article I, II, the Fifth Amendment and the contemporary legislation, the Founders spelled out well regulated.
  While the army during the War of 1812 may have reached 50 thousand. During most of the early Republic. “After the war, the Continental Army was quickly disbanded because of the American distrust of standing armies, and irregular state militias became the new nation's sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point's arsenal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Army It was once expanded to 5000 for a couple of years then shrunk again till the War of 1812.”
  Right after the grant the right to bear arms, they regulated the weapons. In the 1792 Militia Act the government spelled out specifically what gun the militia would and how many cartridges they would have.
  The right is defined by the first clause, the need for a militia was the reason to allow gun possession. That is why the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment is structured differently than any other amendment in the Bill of Rights. All the others just list rights.
  “If something requires permission, it is not a right. It is a privilege.” Gosh there are infringements. For example you must have a special license to own automatic weapons. And that infringement was accepted even after the Heller. Obviously infringement is allowed. Regulation of guns is constitutional.
  Obviously you cannot accept the truth about the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP].
  
• OSH

  

  Copy and paste is strong with this one...
• O-Trap

  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:You make a claim about purchasing an automatic weapon.

  
  
  I made a claim about knowing where to find one. If, as you say, I made a claim about purchasing one, please feel free to quote me.
  
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:God how pompous and with so little foundation. You claim this knowledge with no proof to back it up. Yes drugs flood our culture. I am sure many people are able to obtain the more common illegal drugs.

  
  
  The "more common" drugs are "more common" because people want to buy them. It's not because they're somehow magically easier to produce, transport, or sell.
  
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:Automatic weapons are quite different.

  
  
  Do you think transporting or selling them takes some magic fairy dust? They're not quite different other than the fact that they're particularly expensive.
  
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:Read or have someone read your local newspaper to you. Read the crime stories, read the court news. Story after story of drug arrests, case after case of people convicted for possession and sale of drugs. How many for robberies, assaults, murders committed with automatic weapons.

  
  
  Very few. It would be awfully hard to justify spending the money on automatic weapons to engage in a robbery that may or may not end up bringing in as much as you spent? Especially when a more affordable handgun will do the job.
  
  You're suggesting that if automatic weapons were easy to access, they would be prevalent in the commission of everyday crimes, but you're ignoring the fact that they're particularly expensive (well out of the price range of many everyday criminals, either because the criminal himself cannot afford the firearm or because the criminal cannot justify the expense for the crime he's committing) AND that they're more difficult to conceal than handguns.
  
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:Many gun related crimes, but with handguns, shotguns, occasionally rifles, automatics.

  
  
  You pretty much could have stopped with "handguns." VERY few crimes are committed with shotguns and rifles (both semi-auto and full auto).
  
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:How many people in the court news for possession of automatic weapons. Isolated or none.

  
  
  How many people go to court for crimes committed with shotguns and (legal) rifles? VERY few to none. Your attempt to use correlation as evidence of causation here (yet another textbook fallacy) would make one believe that shotguns and long rifles must be either illegal or at least regulated as strictly as full-auto rifles, since so few crimes are committed with them.
  
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:But you believe it is so doable. Even motivated mass murders cannot do it. BUT YOU CAN.

  
  
  And, despite the fact that I've pointed it out multiple times, you continue to conflate "cannot" with "do not." Motivated mass murderers choosing the most viable path of least resistance to commit mass murder. At present, the route the Vegas shooter chose was one of less resistance than getting full-auto weapons. You're treating a spectrum of difficulty in acquisition as a dichotomy, which is sophomoric.
  

  isadore;1876640 wrote:After the writing of the Constitution the miniscule army and the militia was under direct CIVILIAN Control, the President and the Secretary of War. They appointed the generals. The two leading successful commanders, appointed by Civilian leadership were Militia generals, Jackson and Harrison who had independent commands.
  The Constitution that preceded the Bill of Rights and the 1792 Militia Acts spelled out what was meant by well regulated. Read Article I, II, the Fifth Amendment and the contemporary legislation, the Founders spelled out well regulated.
  While the army during the War of 1812 may have reached 50 thousand. During most of the early Republic. “After the war, the Continental Army was quickly disbanded because of the American distrust of standing armies, and irregular state militias became the new nation's sole ground army, with the exception of a regiment to guard the Western Frontier and one battery of artillery guarding West Point's arsenal.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Army It was once expanded to 5000 for a couple of years then shrunk again till the War of 1812.”
  Right after the grant the right to bear arms, they regulated the weapons. In the 1792 Militia Act the government spelled out specifically what gun the militia would and how many cartridges they would have.
  The right is defined by the first clause, the need for a militia was the reason to allow gun possession. That is why the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment is structured differently than any other amendment in the Bill of Rights. All the others just list rights.
  “If something requires permission, it is not a right. It is a privilege.” Gosh there are infringements. For example you must have a special license to own automatic weapons. And that infringement was accepted even after the Heller. Obviously infringement is allowed. Regulation of guns is constitutional.
  Obviously you cannot accept the truth about the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP].

  Once again, you use the word "allow."
  
  Rights aren't "allowances." The rest of the Bill of Rights makes it overwhelmingly evident that the drafters of the Constitution used the word "right" to mean something specific. You seem to want to help yourself to that definition with every other amendment, but you want to try to deny its meaning for one of them. The cognitive dissonance it takes to think that a "right" means something different for one amendment, but not the rest, is staggering.
• isadore

  O-Trap;1876753 wrote:I made a claim about knowing where to find one. If, as you say, I made a claim about purchasing one, please feel free to quote me.
  
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  The "more common" drugs are "more common" because people want to buy them. It's not because they're somehow magically easier to produce, transport, or sell.
  
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  Do you think transporting or selling them takes some magic fairy dust? They're not quite different other than the fact that they're particularly expensive.
  
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  Very few. It would be awfully hard to justify spending the money on automatic weapons to engage in a robbery that may or may not end up bringing in as much as you spent? Especially when a more affordable handgun will do the job.
  
  You're suggesting that if automatic weapons were easy to access, they would be prevalent in the commission of everyday crimes, but you're ignoring the fact that they're particularly expensive (well out of the price range of many everyday criminals, either because the criminal himself cannot afford the firearm or because the criminal cannot justify the expense for the crime he's committing) AND that they're more difficult to conceal than handguns.
  
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  You pretty much could have stopped with "handguns." VERY few crimes are committed with shotguns and rifles (both semi-auto and full auto).
  
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]
  
  How many people go to court for crimes committed with shotguns and (legal) rifles? VERY few to none. Your attempt to use correlation as evidence of causation here (yet another textbook fallacy) would make one believe that shotguns and long rifles must be either illegal or at least regulated as strictly as full-auto rifles, since so few crimes are committed with them.
  
  [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT][/FONT]
  
  And, despite the fact that I've pointed it out multiple times, you continue to conflate "cannot" with "do not." Motivated mass murderers choosing the most viable path of least resistance to commit mass murder. At present, the route the Vegas shooter chose was one of less resistance than getting full-auto weapons. You're treating a spectrum of difficulty in acquisition as a dichotomy, which is sophomoric.
  [/SIZE][/COLOR]
  
  
  Once again, you use the word "allow."
  
  Rights aren't "allowances." The rest of the Bill of Rights makes it overwhelmingly evident that the drafters of the Constitution used the word "right" to mean something specific. You seem to want to help yourself to that definition with every other amendment, but you want to try to deny its meaning for one of them. The cognitive dissonance it takes to think that a "right" means something different for one amendment, but not the rest, is staggering.

  Without the slightest foundation of support, you claim you could with little difficulty obtain automatic weapons. You provide no evidence to support your claim. There is evidence to the contrary. Even highly motivated mass murderers cannot purchase automatic weapon. Many had resources. Paddock was a mult-millionaire. Newspapers and local tv stations have frequent drug range. Tens of thousands of dollar, gun seizures are common of handguns, shotguns, many illegally sawed off, rifles, assault weapons but not automatics. The dealers often with extensive criminal contacts and financial resources still do not have automatic weapons.
  .And there is no reason to believe a weenie like you could get a machine gun.
  I see you have abandoned attacks on the significance of “the well regulated militia” to the Founders.
  The 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment was written differently than any other amendment in the Bill of Rights.
  The Second Amendment reads: “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 adheres to the rhetorical form of a periodic sentence, which typically presents a string of modifying elements introductory to the main clause. Here, the modifying element is the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” which is what grammarians call a nominative absolute. The function of the absolute is unique in that it does not modify any word or phrase in the main clause directly; its function is to establish the context, situation or cause for the action of the main clause, in this case, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
  Clearly, according to the language of the Second Amendment, the reason for keeping and bearing arms was so that a “well-regulated militia,” drawn from the ranks of male citizens.
  As is spelled out in Article I and II of the Constitution and the 1792 Militia Acts that Militia and its weaponry was to be regulated by the Federal Government.
  
  
• like_that

  

  Remember that time Apple took away the gun emoji and solved all gun crime?
• HitsRus

  

  ^^^^ yeah, green water pistol now! I wonder how many shootings it prevented!
• justincredible

  

  Joke all you want, but I definitely FEEL safer. And that means something.
• FatHobbit

  

  Had to do SOMETHING, right?
• O-Trap

  

  isadore;1876775 wrote:Without the slightest foundation of support, you claim you could with little difficulty obtain automatic weapons. You provide no evidence to support your claim. There is evidence to the contrary. Even highly motivated mass murderers cannot purchase automatic weapon. Many had resources. Paddock was a mult-millionaire. Newspapers and local tv stations have frequent drug range. Tens of thousands of dollar, gun seizures are common of handguns, shotguns, many illegally sawed off, rifles, assault weapons but not automatics. The dealers often with extensive criminal contacts and financial resources still do not have automatic weapons.
  .And there is no reason to believe a weenie like you could get a machine gun.

  
  
  Well I'm hardly going to go get one just to prove my point. Moreover, I didn't say completely without difficulty, as though I'd trip over one walking down the sidewalk.
  
  However, there is not evidence to the contrary, despite what you claim. I'm not going to go over your continued conflation of "cannot" and "did not" again. Nor am I going to over-explain your misappropriation of correlations as evidence for causation. I've done that enough for anyone, even you, to see. Whether you cannot or merely will not is not able to be known (see how that works?) by anyone but you.
  

  isadore;1876775 wrote:I see you have abandoned attacks on the significance of “the well regulated militia” to the Founders.
  The 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Amendment was written differently than any other amendment in the Bill of Rights.
  The Second Amendment reads: “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 adheres to the rhetorical form of a periodic sentence, which typically presents a string of modifying elements introductory to the main clause. Here, the modifying element is the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,” which is what grammarians call a nominative absolute. The function of the absolute is unique in that it does not modify any word or phrase in the main clause directly; its function is to establish the context, situation or cause for the action of the main clause, in this case, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
  Clearly, according to the language of the Second Amendment, the reason for keeping and bearing arms was so that a “well-regulated militia,” drawn from the ranks of male citizens.
  As is spelled out in Article I and II of the Constitution and the 1792 Militia Acts that Militia and its weaponry was to be regulated by the Federal Government.

  I've not abandoned attacks on it, because I was never attacking it in the first place. Thank you for demonstrating a straw man, however. Your efforts in this thread would be an excellent example of quite a few of the logical fallacies that even a college freshman learns to avoid.
  
  The Second Amendment was written with a defense for its own declaration of a right. In that sense, yes. It is "different."
  
  However, a defense doesn't have to be the only defense. It was a sufficient defense for the justification of declaring the bearing of arms as a right.
  
  As for your effort to suggest that the first portion of the statement is necessarily a modifying element, you're treating it as though it was an if/then statement, and on top of that, you're affirming the consequent.
  
  Ex: "The weather having been rainy, the sidewalk is wet."
  
  The latter is not logically contingent on the former. The sidewalk might have been wet because your neighbor Chuck's sprinkler system made it wet.
  
  As long as it's rainy, the rain is sufficient for explaining why the sidewalk is wet, and so no additional explanation is necessary for the wet sidewalk, but the sidewalk being wet is not contingent on whether or not it rained.
  
  What do the drafters of the Bill of Rights mean by "rights?"
  
  You're suggesting that they mean the same thing ... except one place, where you don't like what that would mean. For that one place, they just must have meant something different. Even though they were drafting the "Bill of Rights," and the function for doing so was to outline the "rights" that were not to be infringed, they were probably not serious about that one, right?
  
  But by all means, keep trying to push that square peg through. You've shown an exceptional amount of persistence, continuing steadfastly in your intellectual retardation.