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and you can't kill many school kids with a car. You might whack one or two if you are lucky. This is why Hamilton used guns instead of attacking with his little van. Dunblane massacre - Wikipedia

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Indeed. Logically (in order to be able to be able to rise up successfully against a tyrannical government) the 2nd Amendment should be revised to include miniguns, tanks, ground attack helicopters and all associated armament, A-10s, cruise missiles etc etc. Otherwise it is obsolete.
I must confess that was an argument that had occurred to me, and of course is entirely logical if you accept the tyrannical government as an ongoing threat. Doesn't bear thinking about !
 
Back in the 1700s a muzzle loading musket was the pinnacle of cutting edge technology and rightly or wrongly it was broadly accepted that a freeman had the right to own one.

Later Samuel Colt invented a six shot revolver giving a single man the firepower of six.

Walter Hunt came up with a repeating rifle

Winchester lever action rifles

John Moses Browning produced the 1911

Gaston Glock. etc etc etc

Nobody said O hold on the constitution only applies to muskets.

Why now?
 
I think some are putting two unrelated things together.
The second amendment is not the cause of school shootings.
We all know of other heavily armed societies where mass shootings are rare.
If the 2nd amendment was repealed tomorrow there are enough guns in circulation to kill everyone ten times over.
What's the reason for mass shootings?
Agree up to a point. The problem is that easy access to these sort of weapons makes the outcome of someone who is mentally disturbed or whatever going on the rampage much worse. I suppose the argument would be that removing access to these weapons would be a relatively quick way to mitigate the risk, whilst you embark on the much longer and more difficult task of addressing the problems behind it. Having said that, as you point out, in the USA there are so many of these weapons in circulation that practically speaking it would be very difficult, even if the will was there from the legislature. I think some kind of further control will come in time, sadly many more will have to be killed before sufficient numbers of people decide enough is enough to actually make it happen.
 
Back in the 1700s a muzzle loading musket was the pinnacle of cutting edge technology and rightly or wrongly it was broadly accepted that a freeman had the right to own one.

Later Samuel Colt invented a six shot revolver giving a single man the firepower of six.

Walter Hunt came up with a repeating rifle

Winchester lever action rifles

John Moses Browning produced the 1911

Gaston Glock. etc etc etc

Nobody said O hold on the constitution only applies to muskets.

Why now?

The current interpretation as I recall it is that reasonable measures can be used - as in, you're not going to be able to shoot explosive shells for recreation out of never-deactivated military hardware. But this was inferred from English law from several hundred years ago.

Determining where the line is otherwise is well above my pay grade. The only time that I personally woke up was when the ATF decided that a stock that turns an AR into a machine gun (that functions the same way as a sear and action that fires automatically) wasn't the same thing. But that got solved, at least for any newly made bump stocks.

https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/bump-stocks
Actually, they did one better with the final rule - they required destruction of those already in existence.

Trump was an enormous nuisance, but there are two things that I liked about him. One was this, and the other was less posturing for war or getting involved in pointless military skirmishes. If there is a bigger waste than pointless wars with nothing to win, I don't know what it would be.
 
If there is a bigger waste than pointless wars with nothing to win, I don't know what it would be.
I agree entirely. However, wars are never pointless if you're an arms manufacturer. How many cruise missiles (@$800k a pop) were loosed off in the two Gulf Wars? How much gear was left behind in Afghanistan? It all has to be replaced. Nice little earners there.
 
Back in the 1700s a muzzle loading musket was the pinnacle of cutting edge technology and rightly or wrongly it was broadly accepted that a freeman had the right to own one.

Later Samuel Colt invented a six shot revolver giving a single man the firepower of six.

Walter Hunt came up with a repeating rifle

Winchester lever action rifles

John Moses Browning produced the 1911

Gaston Glock. etc etc etc

Nobody said O hold on the constitution only applies to muskets.

Why now?
I can see your point, however I think there has to be a stage where you have to ask if things have gone too far, and does this still reflect the intentions of those who drafted it. If we keep on extending your time line then should everyone be permitted to have a mini gun on the front porch? Or if you really believe it should apply to absolutely anything then how about a nuke?
I can't think of any similar case where something written over 200 years ago has not been revisited to reflect changes that have occurred in the meantime.
I am quite sure those who drafted this would have thought of a readily portable machine gun, capable of firing hundreds of rounds a minute, as pure fantasy, just as I am sure they would have considered the idea that in years to come people would go on the rampage killing children in schools completely inconceivable. I certainly doubt they would have believed how quickly both would become reality.
 
The current interpretation as I recall it is that reasonable measures can be used - as in, you're not going to be able to shoot explosive shells for recreation out of never-deactivated military hardware. But this was inferred from English law from several hundred years ago.

Determining where the line is otherwise is well above my pay grade. The only time that I personally woke up was when the ATF decided that a stock that turns an AR into a machine gun (that functions the same way as a sear and action that fires automatically) wasn't the same thing. But that got solved, at least for any newly made bump stocks.

https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/bump-stocks
Actually, they did one better with the final rule - they required destruction of those already in existence.

Trump was an enormous nuisance, but there are two things that I liked about him. One was this, and the other was less posturing for war or getting involved in pointless military skirmishes. If there is a bigger waste than pointless wars with nothing to win, I don't know what it would be.
I hadn't realised they had mandated destruction of existing ones, good call. I do remember reading that when Trump initially decided to ban them he put it from a date some weeks in the future, and that every gun shop in America sold out overnight! Don't know how true that is.
Agree with you about wars, high time the US, and ourselves, stopped sticking out noses in other people's business. It rarely ends well for either party.
 
I hadn't realised they had mandated destruction of existing ones, good call. I do remember reading that when Trump initially decided to ban them he put it from a date some weeks in the future, and that every gun shop in America sold out overnight! Don't know how true that is.
Agree with you about wars, high time the US, and ourselves, stopped sticking out noses in other people's business. It rarely ends well for either party.

The magazine capacity figure has come and gone here. When magazines were limited to 10 rounds under the Clinton admin, the number of "pre-ban" magazines in later years seemed to be endless. "pre ban" bump stocks would've showed up for years like new fender "unplayed" vintage guitars seem to be popping up from vintage guitar dealers.

Something like a bump stock is far beyond just increasing the capacity in a gun magazine (it turns a legal gun into a legal machine gun - legal at the time before amending the definition of machine gun). I guess gatling guns would be curio and relic, but it would be like saying a gatling gun isn't automatic because you have to turn the crank. It's a machine gun.

No clue if they were moved to Class III and then allowed to be kept by Class III holders, but Class III holders have a lot of requirements both in terms of records and storage, so I can't get cranked up about those folks owning weird toys.
 
Agree with you about wars, high time the US, and ourselves, stopped sticking out noses in other people's business. It rarely ends well for either party.

The dippiest part of it is "hey, they haven't been raised like us at all, but if we go in and topple their government, they'll want to operate society just the same way we do".

Instant corruption follows, disillusionment follows that and everything is akin to putting on a musical and pretending the people in the musicals really are the characters.
 
The magazine capacity figure has come and gone here. When magazines were limited to 10 rounds under the Clinton admin, the number of "pre-ban" magazines in later years seemed to be endless. "pre ban" bump stocks would've showed up for years like new fender "unplayed" vintage guitars seem to be popping up from vintage guitar dealers.

Something like a bump stock is far beyond just increasing the capacity in a gun magazine (it turns a legal gun into a legal machine gun - legal at the time before amending the definition of machine gun). I guess gatling guns would be curio and relic, but it would be like saying a gatling gun isn't automatic because you have to turn the crank. It's a machine gun.

No clue if they were moved to Class III and then allowed to be kept by Class III holders, but Class III holders have a lot of requirements both in terms of records and storage, so I can't get cranked up about those folks owning weird toys.
I hasn't realised until very recently that the Gatling was offered from very early on with an option to be electrically powered. Presumably this would have been for installation in fixed fortifications, I can't imagine the battery technology of the day would have made it practical in any other scenario.
 
The dippiest part of it is "hey, they haven't been raised like us at all, but if we go in and topple their government, they'll want to operate society just the same way we do".

Instant corruption follows, disillusionment follows that and everything is akin to putting on a musical and pretending the people in the musicals really are the characters.
You are so right, "all these poor people need is to be shown the American (or British) way, and they will live happily ever after". Utter nonsense, and totally disrespectful.
 
I hasn't realised until very recently that the Gatling was offered from very early on with an option to be electrically powered. Presumably this would have been for installation in fixed fortifications, I can't imagine the battery technology of the day would have made it practical in any other scenario.

Interestingly, my 1895 Montgomery ward catalog has a lot of household batteries. They are primitive (and large), but I get the sense that battery power was temporarily popular due to lack of electricity distribution. Your thoughts about portability are probably right.
 
Interestingly, my 1895 Montgomery ward catalog has a lot of household batteries. They are primitive (and large), but I get the sense that battery power was temporarily popular due to lack of electricity distribution. Your thoughts about portability are probably right.
Completely off topic but does your catalogue have any adverts for Waterbury watches? I collect these and love some of the old adverts for them.
 
Completely off topic but does your catalogue have any adverts for Waterbury watches? I collect these and love some of the old adverts for them.

I don't have it at hand right now, but will tomorrow late day and will take a look. There are a LOT of watches in the catalog, but less like adverts and more like a dense listing.
 
If we keep on extending your time line then should everyone be permitted to have a mini gun on the front porch? Or if you really believe it should apply to absolutely anything then how about a nuke?
The point of the 2nd Amendment is to limit the power of government. Actually all the original amendments did just that. The idea of every household having a mini nuke is the logical conclusion taken to its absurd extreme, but think about SWAT teams conducting no - knock entries to serve warrants for non payment of parking tickets, which has actually happened: if every house was fortified to repel violent government overreaching and abusing its powers, things might be different. Until then we get babies killed by flash - bangs thrown into cots and similar craziness.

The USA runs its legal system as a for - profit, massive employment and wealth extraction system - they lock up even more people than the evil chinese do, for example. Is that that a sign that government needs limiting? Or just that all Americans are mad, violent lunatics who need locking up all the time? I could accept either argument, because American culture seems to work on the basis that you fix your problems by killing people (see virtually any Hollywood film for details, and explains why Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/262961/countries-with-the-most-prisoners/
Is it possible that the American culture has been created by the revolutionary fervour so deeply ingrained in the culture? If so, why don't the French shoot each other all the time? Unanswerable questions that are fun to mull over. Did WWI and then WWII cull europe of its violent genetics? It's an idea I have seen put forward a few times over the years, but somewhat off topic for this thread.
 
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