How can we regulate guns ... ?

Laws have to be based on definitions, or else the result is like TSA security, where they confiscate nail scissors from pilots even though there's an axe in the cockpit. In other words, arbitrary and pointless. Getting your definitions right so they actually interdict the activity you wish to interdict and don't impose useless inconveniences and deadweight loss isn't a "sideline", it is the material debate. And it's not something you can just sidestep out of a misguided urge not to just stand there, but do something, won't somebody think of the children, and so forth.

Not if you propose to enact a ban on assault rifles. Then why do you keep getting it wrong?

Yes, but that's what you're wrong about - the idea that you can regulate something you can't define.I mean if we can just handwave and leave stuff to the "experts" who will, by definition, get it right, why even bother talking about policy? Why don't we just say "well, let's have whatever policy to reduce murders the experts know is best" and boom, done? No murders at all?

The Second Amendment does, however, specify the purpose of the individual right to bear arms - the necessity of being able to call the general citizenry up into an ordered and self-provisioned militia in a time of national defense.To that end, the Second Amendment preserves an individual right to own weapons that are appropriate for light infantry soldiers; that's why the Second Amendment preserves semi-auto battle rifles but not squad-grade weapons like RPG's. A tank is not arms, because it can't be carried and operated by a single soldier. No, it wouldn't be, and areas and municipalities that have tried to ban all guns have had those laws overturned by the Supreme Court. Sure. But you can't simultaneously adopt the position that we could and should amend the Constitution to allow the sort of gun reform you advocate, and then assert that we don't need to amend it to allow the sort of gun reform you advocate. The Second Amendment is an obstacle to sweeping gun bans, because your understanding of the Amendment is deeply at odds with how it has been interpreted by basically everybody else.

I don't think those are qualities that define how dangerous a gun is or what constitutes an "assault rifle", so your insistence that I want to have a conversation about those irrelevancies is a misrepresentation. In what country has it been successful? Yours? Not so:

quote:

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LETHAL assault rifles like the one used in America’s Sandy Hook school massacre are being LEGALLY sold in Britain.

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A Welsh-based firm is advertising a Ruger SR-22 semi-automatic as a clone of an AR-15, the gun loner Adam Lanza used to kill 26 people.

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http://www.thesun.co.uk/...ns-on-sale-legally-in-the-UK.htmlSemi-automatic "military-style" weapons with accessory rails such as these were used in spree killings as recently as the 2010 Cumbria shootings. The firearms license for "hunting" guns such as shotguns and rifles (section 1) would allow the ownership of such a gun as this, as well.

The point of the Second Amendment isn't to make it possible to arm the military. The military doesn't need a Constitutional amendment to have guns; they get to have guns simply by virtue of being the military.The point of the Second Amendment is to maintain a deep reserve of armed citizens who can be called up if the standing army proves insufficient. We can debate the wisdom of that, but that's what the amendment was put in there for. If you asked me to vote on repeal I don't yet know how I'd vote. But currently the Second Amendment is the law of the land, and gun control legislation has to be consistent with it or the Supreme Court will overturn it.

Well, ok, but you didn't.

We haven't "since" done away with that, Oni. There was a standing Federal army when they drafted the Constitution. If the need for a "well-regulated militia" was something you could meet with a standing, regimented army then why didn't the Framers of the Constitution think the standing regimented army they had obviated the need to write the Second Amendment? Yeah. The right of the people. Not the right of the people in the army, who don't need a Constitutional amendment to be armed by the United States.

Amended how? Amended to what extent?"People can go back in and fix it if we fuck up" isn't a reason to do something.

Ok, technically you couldn't have a "Federal army" before the constitution since before the constitution there was no federal anything. It was the Continental Army to which I was obliquely referring. I don't see the need, though. They had a Continental Army. If they had thought that a national army would be sufficient to protect the rights of a free state, then they would have had no reason to draft the Second Amendment since they already had a national army.

That's not what I asked. Once what is done? Remember, we're still at the point where your proposal for new legislation is "{placeholder for what unspecified experts will determine 'best' meets unspecified goals.}" Handwaving everything off to the "experts" is all very well and good, but I think we can stipulate that "have experts figure it out" is, broadly, the solution to all problems.

Can't it be both? Wasn't it both?

But the Second Amendment doesn't outline a right for the militia to be armed. It outlines a right of the people to be armed, justified by - but not subject to that justification - the necessity of an armed militia to the security of a free state.The Second Amendment is just not properly construed as an amendment about militias. That interpretation is contrary to the plain sense of the words and to the purpose of the Bill of Rights as a document that constrains government power to the benefit of the people. Like Jon says, the bizzarre backbending you have to do not to see an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment is just something no reasonable person can support. You're engaged in motivated reasoning based on your desire to see an America with strong laws against the private ownership of powerful firearms.

But of course they would have no need of the Second Amendment for that, so clearly the Second Amendment is not an amendment about arming government-operated militias. It's an amendment about an individual right to bear arms that applies to people, even absent any connection to any government militia or army.

What do you mean "kill efficiently"? I don't follow that. It's not at all obvious what you could mean. If you mean "people killed per rounds fired", that seems like you're talking about accuracy, that is, does the round go where you're aiming the gun.But accuracy is a function of a weapon's safety, not it's danger. Inaccurate, random weapons are far more dangerous than accurate ones.If you mean something else - that is, if you perceive the phrase "kill efficiently" as actually having meaning as opposed to just being an empty scare-phrase then I'd ask you what design elements of a firearm contribute to "kill efficiency" in your view, particularly among those classes of weapons broadly labeled as "military-style" or "assault rifles."My understanding is that militaries determine which battle rifles to outfit their troops with on the basis of the weapon's accuracy, weight, reliability particularly under harsh conditions, and versatility in terms of meeting the requirements of different missions and battlefields. Accuracy, reliability, and versatility don't strike me as particularly dangerous qualities. In fact they strike me as qualities that make guns safe. Why would we all be safer with only unreliable and inaccurate firearms?