The framers didn't have a problem with privately owned warships, complete with naval artillery; why do you think they would treat handguns differently?
They didn't say much before then, because there were no cases that hinged on the interpretation of the Second where it mattered.
One case that I can think of that was related was US v. Miller (1939). In that case, SCOTUS ruled that a sawed-off shotgun was not legal, because it was not a standard military weapon, and thus was not "particularly suitable for use by militia". Because the weapon itself was found to be out of the scope of the amendment, they didn't have to decide whether the right was collective or individual.
Another was Printz v. United States (1997), which ruled parts of the Brady law unconstitutional. But that actually had very little to do with guns, and mostly about whether the federal government could enact a law that forced state and local LEO agencies to enforce some federal provisions (SCOTUS ruled that it couldn't).
As far as divining the precise meaning of the Amendment itself, and the intent of those who authored it, it's instructive to take a look at state constitutions. Many of them include RKBA provisions, and those that were enacted later than the original Bill of Rights are clearly influenced by it, but often use more explicit language to clearly define the right as individual. Some examples:
"That the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." (Kentucky, 1792)
"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" (Indiana, 1816)
"That every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Alabama, 1819)
"Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms for the common defence; and this right shall never be questioned." (Maine, 1819)
"Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Connecticut, 1818)
"Every citizen shall have the right to bear arms in defence of himself and the republic" (Texas, 1836)
"The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons." (Colorado, 1876)
"The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired" (Washington, 1889)
I think that given all these, there's a clear trend here towards interpreting RKBA as an individual right with self-defense as explicitly valid application. It would be rather surprising if the federal constitution would diverge radically on that.
ACLU is honest about what they do - they defend "civil liberties", and they don't consider 2A to be one. So they don't promote it, but they don't oppose it either. They're just neutral on it.
Given that, why would you care about their lack of pro-2A stance when deciding whether to support or not their activities to protect the other assorted freedoms? It would be like refusing to eat in your local Chinese restaurant because they don't have pro-2A posters. You don't go there for your gun rights - you go there for food. Similarly, you don't go to ACLU for gun rights - you go to them for freedom of speech, privacy etc.
So this whole "never give them a fucking dime" thing is utterly absurd. In my experience, most people who voice it, when you actually push them on it, admit that they hate ACLU for other reasons - for example, because they want Christianity to be a privileged religion in US, and don't like the fact that ACLU fights for the complete and unambiguous separation of church and state, or because they're anti-abortion and don't like ACLU's pro-choice stance.
Given the current uber-polarized environment, I find it doubtful that it would be possible to even arrange a convention, much less that it would actually agree on anything worthwhile.
And in a non-polarized environment that was more common in the days of yore, constitutional amendments were passed and ratified without the need for a convention. I mean, we're at, what, 27th right now? Disregarding the BoR, this makes it 17 amendments in 230 years, or a new amendment every 13 years. For something as fundamental as the constitution, it sounds like a reasonable rate of change.
There's nothing hard about using whitespace to structure things: humans do it all the time, on paper and whiteboards etc. So it's much more natural for someone completely new to writing code compared to, say, curly braces.
I have yet to find a case where GOTO would be preferable to break, continue, return, etc.
In C, you pretty much have to use goto to perform cleanup for early returns, for any resource that you might have acquired up to that point. Well, or else you repeat the cleanup code before every return (which is a recipe for bugs, because then a new resource gets used, and you forget to update some of that duplicate code).
There are ways to do that that are just as effective in conveying the message, without making you sound like an ass.
"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."
I used to think that paternalistic conservatism is very weak in America. Then I've seen what Trump voters say, and I now firmly believe that to be a myth.
The ultra-religious conservatives are the minority - they turned out for Cruz, by and large, and lost.
At the same time, I have considerable personal interaction with ultra-conservative Tea Party types (I happen to have some intersecting hobbies, such as a collection of "assault weapons"). And I have found that their patriotism is rooted neither in individualism nor in freedom. Oh, they want both for themselves, and other people like them, but they emphatically deny it to anyone who thinks differently. They believe in the freedom to worship the flag and Jesus, and not much else.
Of course, it's not necessary for "them or their immediate family" to be violated, either. Authoritarianism does not necessary trample everyone's freedom's equally - indeed, that is largely how Putin still has pretty insane approval ratings. Trump voters are making a conscious decision that they want authoritarianism that operates in their interest, by repressing the "others" whom they believe to be the source of their plight.
It cannot lead to a more than a two party system in long term (like, more than a couple of electoral cycles) - the math doesn't add up. The electoral system of this country only permits two major parties sucking everything else in their orbit.
So the most you can expect is that a different party replaces GOP.
I don't care if it convinces anyone or not, but Trump does remind me of Putin and his rhetoric, back when he was taking power in my country. People were mad at all the old politicians, and wanted a "strong hand" that would just "fix things" quickly - and they sure got one, for decades to come.
Keep in mind that Castro/Chavez/... is the guy that they already have. And the only way to remove them, usually, is through violence. So the bar for any other guy would be relatively high to justify all that. People might not like their leadership or its platform, but it takes a lot of dislike to get to the point where one is willing to wage war to topple the leaders.
Sure. But they only have real power insofar as states agree to treat them as the ultimate authority. Which is very unlikely to be the case if they tried to implement such policies.
Consider that we have a UN-managed organization that handles mail and post on international level - Universal Postal Union. In fact, it's over 130 years old, predating UN itself. And yet no censorship resulted out of it, aside from what the countries themselves implement in their respective jurisdictions (which they can always do regardless, as sovereign states). Why? Same reason - if UPU were to get too heavy-handed, the drawbacks would outweigh the benefits of a single standardized mail exchange system, and large players would simply withdraw.
IANA doesn't issue individual IP addresses. It allocates blocks of addresses, and assigns them to regional Internet registries, which then in turn allocate them in their respective regions. So it can't deny you personally an IP address. At most, it can deny your entire country an IP address block, but that is basically the cyber equivalent of nuking someone - it's just not going to happen, because the whole thing will go down if anyone tries.
This is bullshit. Nothing that's being discussed would affect things like zombo.com - those would still be under the purview of the national registrar (for the domain) and the regional Internet registry (for IP allocation).
How exactly then will this work when one DNS server has a record for one Ip address and another points to another such as an anti Putin site?
In exactly the same way it works with the mail system.
The top-level international agency - Universal Postal Union (which is a UN agency) - defines the overall standard for what an address looks like (and they allow for plenty of leeway), and how mail addressing and routing works between countries.
Then every country defines how mail addressing and routing works inside the country.
So suppose I live in US, and me and my neighbors successfully petition to rename our street to "Putin Sucks St". Does the UPU block such an address? No, because they operate on a level where it's not even visible. On the other hand, if I send a letter from this address to Russia, or if someone in Russia sends a letter to me, then Russia can block it at/within their boundary.
What we're talking about here is the management of top-level domains and IP block allocations. So the international organization that'll take over will be dealing with the questions like "should we assign a domain and allocate some IPs to this country, that doesn't have unanimous international recognition of independence". Not questions like "should we DNS-block this politically subversive subdomain". The only way they could do the latter is by blocking entire countries.
The crusades were a defensive response to the armed conquest of over half the ancient world by a group that converted by the sword and who attacked Europe as recently (before modern times) as the 15th century.
They were? I didn't realize that e.g. Prussian pagan Slavs and Balts were trying to convert European Christians by the sword.
With this particular law it is, actually. The problem is that the class of weapons banned by SAFE Act, and other similar "assault weapon" bans, is fuzzily defined, but more importantly, that definition doesn't have any rational explanation. An Australian-style full semi auto ban is at least justifiable on the basis of increased lethality, and there is an objective difference between semi-autos and manual action. Banning "military style" rifles with features that are mostly or wholly cosmetic does nothing useful whatsoever.
To remind, the firearm used in the single deadliest mass shooting spree to date - the one perpetrated by Breivik - was done by a firearm (Ruger Mini-14) that is not considered an assault weapon under any existing or past AWB laws, nor under any AWB proposals on either federal or state level, that I'm aware off. That alone should tell you all you need to know about those laws.
Why it's a slippery slope? Well, if you can enact a ban without a rational justification for the list of banned features, then that list of banned features can be extended arbitrarily in random directions at a whim.
Worse yet that these laws are usually written by people who have no clue about guns, and so they e.g. ban "barrel shrouds", and define them in such a way that practically every forend on any shotgun or rifle manufactured to date would be considered one (and so make it banned). That's not a hypothetical - it actually happened with an AWB bill that was proposed in Washington State this year:
"A shroud attached to the barrel, or that partially or completely encircles the barrel, allowing the bearer to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being burned, but excluding a slide that encloses the barrel"
This definition practically implies that it's illegal to shoot a firearm while gripping it anywhere around or under the barrel. Makes you wonder if the person that wrote this have ever shot a rifle or a shotgun, or at least seen one being shot.
Slashdot Mirror
The framers didn't have a problem with privately owned warships, complete with naval artillery; why do you think they would treat handguns differently?
They didn't say much before then, because there were no cases that hinged on the interpretation of the Second where it mattered.
One case that I can think of that was related was US v. Miller (1939). In that case, SCOTUS ruled that a sawed-off shotgun was not legal, because it was not a standard military weapon, and thus was not "particularly suitable for use by militia". Because the weapon itself was found to be out of the scope of the amendment, they didn't have to decide whether the right was collective or individual.
Another was Printz v. United States (1997), which ruled parts of the Brady law unconstitutional. But that actually had very little to do with guns, and mostly about whether the federal government could enact a law that forced state and local LEO agencies to enforce some federal provisions (SCOTUS ruled that it couldn't).
As far as divining the precise meaning of the Amendment itself, and the intent of those who authored it, it's instructive to take a look at state constitutions. Many of them include RKBA provisions, and those that were enacted later than the original Bill of Rights are clearly influenced by it, but often use more explicit language to clearly define the right as individual. Some examples:
"That the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." (Kentucky, 1792)
"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State" (Indiana, 1816)
"That every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Alabama, 1819)
"Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms for the common defence; and this right shall never be questioned." (Maine, 1819)
"Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." (Connecticut, 1818)
"Every citizen shall have the right to bear arms in defence of himself and the republic" (Texas, 1836)
"The right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons." (Colorado, 1876)
"The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired" (Washington, 1889)
I think that given all these, there's a clear trend here towards interpreting RKBA as an individual right with self-defense as explicitly valid application. It would be rather surprising if the federal constitution would diverge radically on that.
ACLU is honest about what they do - they defend "civil liberties", and they don't consider 2A to be one. So they don't promote it, but they don't oppose it either. They're just neutral on it.
Given that, why would you care about their lack of pro-2A stance when deciding whether to support or not their activities to protect the other assorted freedoms? It would be like refusing to eat in your local Chinese restaurant because they don't have pro-2A posters. You don't go there for your gun rights - you go there for food. Similarly, you don't go to ACLU for gun rights - you go to them for freedom of speech, privacy etc.
So this whole "never give them a fucking dime" thing is utterly absurd. In my experience, most people who voice it, when you actually push them on it, admit that they hate ACLU for other reasons - for example, because they want Christianity to be a privileged religion in US, and don't like the fact that ACLU fights for the complete and unambiguous separation of church and state, or because they're anti-abortion and don't like ACLU's pro-choice stance.
Given the current uber-polarized environment, I find it doubtful that it would be possible to even arrange a convention, much less that it would actually agree on anything worthwhile.
And in a non-polarized environment that was more common in the days of yore, constitutional amendments were passed and ratified without the need for a convention. I mean, we're at, what, 27th right now? Disregarding the BoR, this makes it 17 amendments in 230 years, or a new amendment every 13 years. For something as fundamental as the constitution, it sounds like a reasonable rate of change.
There's nothing hard about using whitespace to structure things: humans do it all the time, on paper and whiteboards etc. So it's much more natural for someone completely new to writing code compared to, say, curly braces.
Don't worry. We will elect her because at least she's not an obvious idiot.
If you insist on calling yourself an atheist, please learn the difference between "I believe there's no god" and "I don't believe there is a god".
I have yet to find a case where GOTO would be preferable to break, continue, return, etc.
In C, you pretty much have to use goto to perform cleanup for early returns, for any resource that you might have acquired up to that point. Well, or else you repeat the cleanup code before every return (which is a recipe for bugs, because then a new resource gets used, and you forget to update some of that duplicate code).
There are ways to do that that are just as effective in conveying the message, without making you sound like an ass.
"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."
Well, they deemed it worthy enough of time to hype the new "sapphire" lens (the sole point of which is to prevent this sort of thing, in theory).
So what you're saying that Americans were ignorant about political geography en masse back in the 90s - what else is new? They still are today.
I used to think that paternalistic conservatism is very weak in America. Then I've seen what Trump voters say, and I now firmly believe that to be a myth.
The ultra-religious conservatives are the minority - they turned out for Cruz, by and large, and lost.
At the same time, I have considerable personal interaction with ultra-conservative Tea Party types (I happen to have some intersecting hobbies, such as a collection of "assault weapons"). And I have found that their patriotism is rooted neither in individualism nor in freedom. Oh, they want both for themselves, and other people like them, but they emphatically deny it to anyone who thinks differently. They believe in the freedom to worship the flag and Jesus, and not much else.
Of course, it's not necessary for "them or their immediate family" to be violated, either. Authoritarianism does not necessary trample everyone's freedom's equally - indeed, that is largely how Putin still has pretty insane approval ratings. Trump voters are making a conscious decision that they want authoritarianism that operates in their interest, by repressing the "others" whom they believe to be the source of their plight.
Not coincidentally, authoritarian thinking is the strongest single predictor of whether one is supporting Trump or not.
It cannot lead to a more than a two party system in long term (like, more than a couple of electoral cycles) - the math doesn't add up. The electoral system of this country only permits two major parties sucking everything else in their orbit.
So the most you can expect is that a different party replaces GOP.
it is hard to imagine anything that might be in his taxes that are worse for him, politically speaking, than not releasing them.
You mean, like the fact that he didn't contribute anything to his own charity in 8 years?
Or any charity, for that matter? The latter we don't have a proof for, yet, but a tax return would be one.
It doesn't matter whether Trump willingly did his tax dodge or not.
The point is that in order to do so, he had to suffer a massive fucking financial loss. Running a casino.
That depends entirely on just how paranoid the leader is.
There were many people who thought they were safe because they were zealously loyal to Stalin, for example. Most high-ranked ones didn't outlive him.
I don't care if it convinces anyone or not, but Trump does remind me of Putin and his rhetoric, back when he was taking power in my country. People were mad at all the old politicians, and wanted a "strong hand" that would just "fix things" quickly - and they sure got one, for decades to come.
Keep in mind that Castro/Chavez/... is the guy that they already have. And the only way to remove them, usually, is through violence. So the bar for any other guy would be relatively high to justify all that. People might not like their leadership or its platform, but it takes a lot of dislike to get to the point where one is willing to wage war to topple the leaders.
Sure. But they only have real power insofar as states agree to treat them as the ultimate authority. Which is very unlikely to be the case if they tried to implement such policies.
Consider that we have a UN-managed organization that handles mail and post on international level - Universal Postal Union. In fact, it's over 130 years old, predating UN itself. And yet no censorship resulted out of it, aside from what the countries themselves implement in their respective jurisdictions (which they can always do regardless, as sovereign states). Why? Same reason - if UPU were to get too heavy-handed, the drawbacks would outweigh the benefits of a single standardized mail exchange system, and large players would simply withdraw.
IANA doesn't issue individual IP addresses. It allocates blocks of addresses, and assigns them to regional Internet registries, which then in turn allocate them in their respective regions. So it can't deny you personally an IP address. At most, it can deny your entire country an IP address block, but that is basically the cyber equivalent of nuking someone - it's just not going to happen, because the whole thing will go down if anyone tries.
This is bullshit. Nothing that's being discussed would affect things like zombo.com - those would still be under the purview of the national registrar (for the domain) and the regional Internet registry (for IP allocation).
How exactly then will this work when one DNS server has a record for one Ip address and another points to another such as an anti Putin site?
In exactly the same way it works with the mail system.
The top-level international agency - Universal Postal Union (which is a UN agency) - defines the overall standard for what an address looks like (and they allow for plenty of leeway), and how mail addressing and routing works between countries.
Then every country defines how mail addressing and routing works inside the country.
So suppose I live in US, and me and my neighbors successfully petition to rename our street to "Putin Sucks St". Does the UPU block such an address? No, because they operate on a level where it's not even visible. On the other hand, if I send a letter from this address to Russia, or if someone in Russia sends a letter to me, then Russia can block it at/within their boundary.
What we're talking about here is the management of top-level domains and IP block allocations. So the international organization that'll take over will be dealing with the questions like "should we assign a domain and allocate some IPs to this country, that doesn't have unanimous international recognition of independence". Not questions like "should we DNS-block this politically subversive subdomain". The only way they could do the latter is by blocking entire countries.
The crusades were a defensive response to the armed conquest of over half the ancient world by a group that converted by the sword and who attacked Europe as recently (before modern times) as the 15th century.
They were? I didn't realize that e.g. Prussian pagan Slavs and Balts were trying to convert European Christians by the sword.
There's no context in which Indians aren't Asians, except ignorance. Contrary to what some people believe, India is not an "African country in Asia".
With this particular law it is, actually. The problem is that the class of weapons banned by SAFE Act, and other similar "assault weapon" bans, is fuzzily defined, but more importantly, that definition doesn't have any rational explanation. An Australian-style full semi auto ban is at least justifiable on the basis of increased lethality, and there is an objective difference between semi-autos and manual action. Banning "military style" rifles with features that are mostly or wholly cosmetic does nothing useful whatsoever.
To remind, the firearm used in the single deadliest mass shooting spree to date - the one perpetrated by Breivik - was done by a firearm (Ruger Mini-14) that is not considered an assault weapon under any existing or past AWB laws, nor under any AWB proposals on either federal or state level, that I'm aware off. That alone should tell you all you need to know about those laws.
Why it's a slippery slope? Well, if you can enact a ban without a rational justification for the list of banned features, then that list of banned features can be extended arbitrarily in random directions at a whim.
Worse yet that these laws are usually written by people who have no clue about guns, and so they e.g. ban "barrel shrouds", and define them in such a way that practically every forend on any shotgun or rifle manufactured to date would be considered one (and so make it banned). That's not a hypothetical - it actually happened with an AWB bill that was proposed in Washington State this year:
"A shroud attached to the barrel, or that partially or completely encircles the barrel, allowing the bearer to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being burned, but excluding a slide that encloses the barrel"
This definition practically implies that it's illegal to shoot a firearm while gripping it anywhere around or under the barrel. Makes you wonder if the person that wrote this have ever shot a rifle or a shotgun, or at least seen one being shot.