Ok, you said "primarily", not "only". Sorry I misquoted you. However, "primarily" is not correct either. Instead of quoting a long string of statistics, reference the "Assault Weapons: The Weapons of Choice?" section on this page. If assault rifles are built primarily for crime, it seems as if people aren't using them as you claim they're primarily intended.
"But let me ask this. Do you believe that the second amendment gives individual citizens the right to keep and bear nuclear missles?"
First to argue the semantics: the Bill of Rights doesn't give rights, it merely recognizes our inalienable rights. Second, in answering your strawman nuclear missle question, it's "keep and bear arms". Arms means weaponry. Nuclear missles are weaponry, so yes, they're included. As for the probable response of "But missles are so big and nasty, they only meant weapons one person could carry", take a look at Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11. This refers to the power of Congress to grant letters of marque, which is permission given to private citizens to fit an armed ship and use it to attack and capture enemy merchant ships in wartime. How does that apply you ask? Well, in order for one ship to attack another, it's going to need some rather large cannon. The Framers would hardly give Congress the ability to grant letters of marque if they didn't expect private citizens to have the ability to effectively use those letters. So in short, the Framers expected private citizens to have the ability to own the largest weapons currently available in their time.
But honestly, if there was no law banning ownership of nuclear weaponry, would that really matter? Please estimate the number of private citizens in the United States that:
A. Have the money to buy B. Have the opportunity to aquire C. Have the will to use
a nuclear weapon. There's plenty of people that fit in at least one of the above categories, and some that fit into two. However, I doubt if there are any that fit into all three. Even if there are, I doubt a law would stop them. Finally, if it did become a problem, the solution would be a Constitutional amendment saying "no privately owned nukes".
Finally:
No, states can't make laws that "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".
Please explain how the Bill of Rights are not privileges or immunities.
"rather than ones which are created for the primary purpose of committing crimes."
If assault rifles are only created to commit crimes, then why are the police the only civilians allowed to own currently-manufactured assault rifles? Following your logic, then the police would only be using them to commit crimes, as that's all the those rifles can be used for. Are you suggesting the police are criminals? I doubt it. However, that means assault rifles (and other guns) are produced for reasons besides committing crimes. They're used for defense, for target shooting, for competition and for hunting, to name a few.
But strike the last three reasons. The most important reason is defense, and that's why the Framers enumerated it second in the Bill of Rights. Having just finished the Revolutionary War, they wanted to make sure that in the future, if need be, citizens would have the ability to do the same again.
As for your assertion that firearms regulation should be left to the states, the states have no more right to limit the 2nd Amendment than anything else in the Bill of Rights. From Section 1 of the 14th Amendment:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
Simply put, states can't make laws that contradict the Bill of Rights. If it's not listed, it's fair game (see the 10th Amendment), but if it is, the states can't do anything.
As an aside, I was in my aparment complex's office yesterday talking to the manager, and while I was there another renter came in and wanted to pay his ~$10 water bill with cash, because he was out of checks. The manager wouldn't let him; personal or cashier's checks only. The first thing I thought of was the "legal tender for all debts, public and private" phrase on the dollar bill. I don't see where they could legally refuse cash...
"I am not sure if giving the details of a home made gun is legal or not"
If code is speech, and code describing how to illegally defeat DVD encryption is OK (as most on Slashdot here seem to believe,) speech describing how to make an illegal gun would fundamentally be no different.
The M16 never used 7.62mm. Swapping barrels wouldn't work. The magwell on the M16 receiver is too small to accept magazines that hold 7.62mm. The M16 design was based on the AR10, which shoots 7.62mm, but the AR10 and AR15/M126 are two separate rifles.
Just look at hate crimes laws in the US. If someone commits a crime against a person in their same group (whatever that may be), there's no thoughtcrime. However, if a member of one group commits a crime against a member of another group, it's a "hate" crime, and therefore subject to harsher punishment. The harsher punishment is MERELY based on what the perpetrator of the crime is supposed to have thought at the time of the crime.
My point is, if we can make thoughtcrime illegal in one area, it doesn't take much to make it illegal in other areas too. (This isn't to equate the severity of losing a domain name to violent crime, however.)
9 buttons doesn't seem like enough. In my Quake config, I have at least 17 buttons that I use relatively often (8 weapon buttons, duck, jump, forward, back, strafe left, strafe right, scoreboard, and talk) and more that I don't use as often. Plus, you'd have to take your hand off the Claw to type if you were in talk mode.
CmdrTaco == Rob Malda's handle Hemo == Jeff Bates' handle yet... JonKatz == Jon Katz's handle Why couldn't/didn't you come up with a handle like the rest of the Slashdot authors?
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View 2: Yes of course. That is not subject to the terms of the GPL, you are not distributing it. The problem with this view is that what if Iwant to sell modified GPL code? I can say: $10 to join NickSoft, Inc. Then I will send you code, but you may not distribute as terms of 'employment' with NickSoft. Boom, there goes GPL.
Well, even if that is a loophole, if even one "employee" of NickSoft let the code out, there's not much NickSoft could do other than "fire" the employee, is there? Since they already have the code, what do they care? How would you even prove one particular person was the person who released it?
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But companies with the simple domain names aren't targeting people who've been on the 'net for awhile. They're targeting your Aunt Lula Mae who just got a Compaq and AOL...
Hrm. At a lifespan of say, 75 years, you'd have to walk approximately 400 miles a day to walk 11 million miles in your life. Even if you were walking 16 hours a day, you'd have to go at an average speed of 25mph. That makes me tired just thinking about it...
This isn't Episode 2, but takes place after ROTJ - Episode 6, so it would be either Episode 7, 8 or 9 that Chewie dies. Didn't Lucas say awhile back that most likely Episodes 7-9 would bever be filmed? Plot lines in some stupid paperback don't matter to me.:)
I'm currently evacuated from my house because of Hurricane Bret. What was the one thing I threw in my car before I left (other than a bag of clothes)? My PC. What was the first thing I did when I got in my hotel room? Plug said PC in so I could get my email. Heh.
Supposedly there's a government surplus, right? So if there's a surplus, that means the government has more money than it should. It should be looking for taxes to *cut*, not brand new types of taxes to implement. The only problem is that too many in government view taxes as a way to control the populace, not merely as a revenue generator.
1. How are they going to collect the tax? Force everyone to use "UN email tax"-compliant MTA's? Riiiight. What if I don't want to install the UN compliant MTA on my mail server? Do I have to pay the tax when a cron job on my system mails me a log file? Only when it's to another user? Only when it's to a user on another server?
2. Personally, I don't use email much. ICQ is so much more efficient for most things. Anyway, the bandwidth I suck up from playing Quake in one day is probably more bandwidth than all my email uses in a month. Taxing only email makes no sense.
3. The last thing we need is another pork barrel UN program where the local 3rd World dictator takes all the money from the UN that's supposed to go towards 'net access for all the little 3rd World children, and instead puts it in his Swiss bank account.
Exactly. To newbies, everything is.com. I work for a local non-profit professional organization, and accordingly, our website ends in.org. I can't count the times I've told people our URL, ccbor.org, and they say something to the effect of "Oh, you must mean ccbor.org.com, right?" Bleaach.
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Ok, you said "primarily", not "only". Sorry I misquoted you. However, "primarily" is not correct either. Instead of quoting a long string of statistics, reference the "Assault Weapons: The Weapons of Choice?" section on this page. If assault rifles are built primarily for crime, it seems as if people aren't using them as you claim they're primarily intended.
"But let me ask this. Do you believe that the second amendment gives individual citizens the right to keep and bear nuclear missles?"
First to argue the semantics: the Bill of Rights doesn't give rights, it merely recognizes our inalienable rights. Second, in answering your strawman nuclear missle question, it's "keep and bear arms". Arms means weaponry. Nuclear missles are weaponry, so yes, they're included. As for the probable response of "But missles are so big and nasty, they only meant weapons one person could carry", take a look at Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11. This refers to the power of Congress to grant letters of marque, which is permission given to private citizens to fit an armed ship and use it to attack and capture enemy merchant ships in wartime. How does that apply you ask? Well, in order for one ship to attack another, it's going to need some rather large cannon. The Framers would hardly give Congress the ability to grant letters of marque if they didn't expect private citizens to have the ability to effectively use those letters. So in short, the Framers expected private citizens to have the ability to own the largest weapons currently available in their time.
But honestly, if there was no law banning ownership of nuclear weaponry, would that really matter? Please estimate the number of private citizens in the United States that:
A. Have the money to buy
B. Have the opportunity to aquire
C. Have the will to use
a nuclear weapon. There's plenty of people that fit in at least one of the above categories, and some that fit into two. However, I doubt if there are any that fit into all three. Even if there are, I doubt a law would stop them. Finally, if it did become a problem, the solution would be a Constitutional amendment saying "no privately owned nukes".
Finally:
No, states can't make laws that "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".
Please explain how the Bill of Rights are not privileges or immunities.
"rather than ones which are created for the primary purpose of committing crimes."
If assault rifles are only created to commit crimes, then why are the police the only civilians allowed to own currently-manufactured assault rifles? Following your logic, then the police would only be using them to commit crimes, as that's all the those rifles can be used for. Are you suggesting the police are criminals? I doubt it. However, that means assault rifles (and other guns) are produced for reasons besides committing crimes. They're used for defense, for target shooting, for competition and for hunting, to name a few.
But strike the last three reasons. The most important reason is defense, and that's why the Framers enumerated it second in the Bill of Rights. Having just finished the Revolutionary War, they wanted to make sure that in the future, if need be, citizens would have the ability to do the same again.
As for your assertion that firearms regulation should be left to the states, the states have no more right to limit the 2nd Amendment than anything else in the Bill of Rights. From Section 1 of the 14th Amendment:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
Simply put, states can't make laws that contradict the Bill of Rights. If it's not listed, it's fair game (see the 10th Amendment), but if it is, the states can't do anything.
Yeah it does.
As an aside, I was in my aparment complex's office yesterday talking to the manager, and while I was there another renter came in and wanted to pay his ~$10 water bill with cash, because he was out of checks. The manager wouldn't let him; personal or cashier's checks only. The first thing I thought of was the "legal tender for all debts, public and private" phrase on the dollar bill. I don't see where they could legally refuse cash...
"I am not sure if giving the details of a home made gun is legal or not"
If code is speech, and code describing how to illegally defeat DVD encryption is OK (as most on Slashdot here seem to believe,) speech describing how to make an illegal gun would fundamentally be no different.
The M16 never used 7.62mm. Swapping barrels wouldn't work. The magwell on the M16 receiver is too small to accept magazines that hold 7.62mm. The M16 design was based on the AR10, which shoots 7.62mm, but the AR10 and AR15/M126 are two separate rifles.
My point is, if we can make thoughtcrime illegal in one area, it doesn't take much to make it illegal in other areas too. (This isn't to equate the severity of losing a domain name to violent crime, however.)
9 buttons doesn't seem like enough. In my Quake config, I have at least 17 buttons that I use relatively often (8 weapon buttons, duck, jump, forward, back, strafe left, strafe right, scoreboard, and talk) and more that I don't use as often. Plus, you'd have to take your hand off the Claw to type if you were in talk mode.
Strong encryption won't do squat when they record your keystrokes straight off your PC.
Ok, that was /real/ lame. :p
Umm, that doesn't explain why a whois doesn't work...
Their web design could use a little work, it's is straight out of the stock Frontpage template....
Doh. s/Hemo/Hemos
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CmdrTaco == Rob Malda's handle Hemo == Jeff Bates' handle yet... JonKatz == Jon Katz's handle Why couldn't/didn't you come up with a handle like the rest of the Slashdot authors?
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South Texas' premier Quake server
Well, even if that is a loophole, if even one "employee" of NickSoft let the code out, there's not much NickSoft could do other than "fire" the employee, is there? Since they already have the code, what do they care? How would you even prove one particular person was the person who released it?
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South Texas' premier Quake server
CmdrTaco, you got it wrong. Quake3's source wasn't GPLed; it was Quake1 you're thinking of.
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But companies with the simple domain names aren't targeting people who've been on the 'net for awhile. They're targeting your Aunt Lula Mae who just got a Compaq and AOL...
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Hrm. At a lifespan of say, 75 years, you'd have to walk approximately 400 miles a day to walk 11 million miles in your life. Even if you were walking 16 hours a day, you'd have to go at an average speed of 25mph. That makes me tired just thinking about it...
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This isn't Episode 2, but takes place after ROTJ - Episode 6, so it would be either Episode 7, 8 or 9 that Chewie dies. Didn't Lucas say awhile back that most likely Episodes 7-9 would bever be filmed? Plot lines in some stupid paperback don't matter to me. :)
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I'm currently evacuated from my house because of Hurricane Bret. What was the one thing I threw in my car before I left (other than a bag of clothes)? My PC. What was the first thing I did when I got in my hotel room? Plug said PC in so I could get my email. Heh.
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Supposedly there's a government surplus, right? So if there's a surplus, that means the government has more money than it should. It should be looking for taxes to *cut*, not brand new types of taxes to implement. The only problem is that too many in government view taxes as a way to control the populace, not merely as a revenue generator.
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2. Personally, I don't use email much. ICQ is so much more efficient for most things. Anyway, the bandwidth I suck up from playing Quake in one day is probably more bandwidth than all my email uses in a month. Taxing only email makes no sense.
3. The last thing we need is another pork barrel UN program where the local 3rd World dictator takes all the money from the UN that's supposed to go towards 'net access for all the little 3rd World children, and instead puts it in his Swiss bank account.
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Exactly. To newbies, everything is .com. I work for a local non-profit professional organization, and accordingly, our website ends in .org. I can't count the times I've told people our URL, ccbor.org, and they say something to the effect of "Oh, you must mean ccbor.org.com, right?" Bleaach.
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