Based on the summary, this was strictly a Fourth Amendment case and not the direct result of violation of state law.
Arguably, the suspects might have a stronger argument of "expectation of privacy" in a state where two party consent was required than in a state where no party needed to consent to recording in a public place. However, the fact the suspects appeared to attempt to keep their conversations private probably make such a claim unnecessary.
The county prosecutor could, of course, try to charge the FBI agents with a violation of state law if they in fact broke the state law, but that's not what the Federal judge is adjudicating here.
I believe it's likely in the case of the reporter that even if recording the conversation was illegal for her to do it, the recording would be admissible if police got hold of it legally (such as if the reporter, unprompted, sent it to them). Fourth Amendment restrictions on evidence generally only prevent government actors (or their agents) from gathering evidence without consent or warrant in a situation where they don't have the right to.
Suppose you, as a private citizen, simply have a hunch that your neighbor is killing people in the neighborhood and storing their bodies in his basement freezer. You therefore break into his house and, in fact, discover the bodies of some of the "disappeared" people in the neighborhood. You are, regardless of what you find, guilty of breaking and entering (although, in this case the prosecutor might cut you a great deal - 1 day probation and wipe your record clean if you don't violate the probation). If, however, a policeman driving by sees the broken window you entered through and investigates and then finds you in the basement, the bodies that are in plain view in the freezer you opened are admissible (the police didn't enter the residence illegally, YOU did without any prompting or coordination).
Those variances are due to state law. Since this was a Federal judge finding on U.S. Constitutional grounds, I don't believe the state laws have any bearing here (but, of course, I haven't RTFO).
Both my Citibank and Bank of America cards have this feature. Set the limit and the expiration date. Only the merchant who initiates the first charge can charge to it again (I don't think either one offers "allow only one charge" though). You can close the number at any time.
I was responding to Trailer Trash's (what an appropriate name for this topic!) assertion that "They sell the same stuff as the other grocery stores around here, just at lower prices." which isn't quite true in my area as quality of produce and selection overall are not as good at Walmart.
Agreed that any food product bought in any major chain store is going to be "safe" to eat almost all the time.
My local Walmart doesn't have the selection of my local major chain -- but then I don't really need six different brands of capers, especially none of the six are actually the brand I'm looking for specifically.
Produce is, of course, by nature more variable than packaged foods. However, my Walmart has less selection of produce and poorer quality than any of the major supermarket chains around me - but it is cheaper.
Some of the produce issues at Walmart appear to be storage problems. For example, Walmart bananas frequently turn light brown overall a day or two after purchase -- it doesn't affect the flavor or texture, but it's a bit ugly. I suspect this is because they get exposed to excessively cold temperatures in the distribution centers, during transportation, or in storage at the store. At least one other major chains in the area have specially designed and isolated controlled climate rooms just for bananas in their warehouses, I suspect Walmart does not.
Some of the produce issues at Walmart seem to be that they buy a different "grade" of product. This is quite noticeable with russet potatoes ("baking potatoes"). Walmart's potatoes are wildly inconsistent from week to week. Sometimes they are all tiny, sometimes mostly huge and sometimes are all oddly shaped (for example, looking a bit more like dumbbells or curved). Sometimes they all have cuts on them, some "healed over" and some not -- the former may be from damage from farm equipment some time before harvest, the latter from damage during harvest or processing. Oddly, it seems that the defects vary from week to week (and I even open the boxes under the display areas so it's not just the customers have "picked over" the selection). It seems that Walmart buys "rejects" if they can find them. I almost never see such oddly shaped/damaged potatoes at any of three other local (chain) grocery stores I shop at, let alone entire displays and boxes full of potatoes with "this week's" defect. Oh, the Walmart potatoes also regularly have "bad spots" inside them, something I've only encountered VERY rarely in literally decades of eating baked potatoes about once a week from other sources but which I experience about 1/2 the time with Walmart potatoes.
Some of the produce issues at Walmart are freshness issues and I can't tell if these are the result of the product just not being purchased fast enough and sitting on the display too long (and not being purged) or something upstream - either buying produce that is already on its last legs or buying trailerfuls when it's cheap and storing it too long. I suspect the problem in some cases is upstream though -- for example, bulk carrots seem to sell pretty well and they are quite durable, yet the ones at the Walmart are often so rubbery and limp that if you pick up a typical sized carrot by the "fat" end and extend it out parallel to the floor, the other end will droop up to two inches. It's hard to imagine that in a fairly busy Walmart carrots would be sitting for a week or more "on display".
So, 100% of your income (and hence your property) belongs to the government to spend as the majority sees fit and anything you get to keep is a benefit granted to you by the government?
I think you are a little confused on the concept of private property, freedom, and several other topics. You do realize that this is a US Congresswoman, not a DPRK politician?
Also, see "tyranny of the majority" to help understand why the Founding Fathers of the United States of America built a system with a very limited national government.
Note that if you want to share all your resources with others communally, no government is required. You can start this today and (maybe) see it come to fruition in weeks.
You can pool all your assets with other like minded people who do the same. Those assets could be put into some entity (trust, corporation, or partnership perhaps) where each person giving up all their assets gets one vote on all matters (regardless of what they contributed initially or contribute on an ongoing basis). The assets of this entity then would be used to buy a piece of property to set up the Utopian society. Everything, including the clothes on your back, would be owned by the communal entity. One hundred percent of all members' work product would be relinquished to the common entity. You would probably owe Federal income taxes on the value of what the community gives you for personal use so to survive the entity probably needs to be a net exporter of goods and/or services (as taxes must be paid in US dollars and your entity can't print those) -- but that's fair since you would be enjoying the US Military's protection from being attacked and sold into slavery by the Canadians. Each person would be free to leave at any time (or be expelled for breaking the rules such as failing to turn over one hundred percent of their work product to the common entity) but would receive no compensation for their "share" of the entity. Children born to parents who were both a member of your utopian entity would become members automatically until one or both parents left the community or the child reached the age of majority (at which time they could, of course, leave under the standard terms).
See how easy that was and it didn't require confiscating anyone's property or income against their will! You get what you want, everyone else gets what they want. A win-win all around!
(However, you might want to google about Plymouth Colony before embarking on your experiment.)
Yes, and if you're interested in being approached for interesting jobs, once the LinkedIn acquisition is complete, Microsoft will probably punish anyone not running Windows 10 by burying their names in search results. Get with the program - NOW!
Yep, in the 1800s there were no electronic medical records. In fact there were no electronic devices, communication, or records of any type. Therefore, obviously, the Fourth Amendment doesn't prevent searching all of those without a warrant.
As well, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment obviously couldn't have applied to electronic communication. When all you could do was stand on a street corner and shout or print leaflets and then distribute or post them, the speed of this limited communication meant that it posed little threat to society as stupid and wrong headed thoughts would take a long time to percolate through society. Obviously with Twitter, these stupid and wrong headed thoughts can percolate through society (and not just in the US, but around the world) in seconds. Therefore, it would be reasonable to require a government permit to Tweet and specific government approval of each Tweet.
Those who accept "reasonable" exceptions to the Second Amendment should not be surprised when "reasonable" exceptions to the Fourth (or any other) Amendment are also accepted.
After all, these exceptions are all "for the good of society" - who can argue with that?
If one decides to kill themselves, a gun is not required. Japan has a much higher suicide rate than the US does and guns are virtually unavailable to private citizens in Japan. As well, self defense has nothing to do with suicide (except, of course, that it could be considered suicidal to not have an effective means of defending yourself if attacked). The 60% of gun deaths in the US that are suicides are not relevant to the question of if guns are effective for self defense.
Many, perhaps most, self defense uses of firearms never result in a shot being fired let alone the death of anyone -- the criminal often either retreats or is apprehended without incident when faced with a defensive threat. An effective self defense does not require killing or even injuring the attacker. When comparing whatever numbers you have about "less likely to survive an attack", one must include cases where no physical attack occurred because the potential victim was armed.
It is obviously not the case that one having a gun "automatically escalates ANY encounter with a criminal to lethal force" (display of a gun is not, in common usage, "lethal force" - when a police officer pulls his gun but never even puts his finger inside the trigger guard, it is not considered a use of "lethal force"). Surely, even in your cocoon you have heard of at least ONE case where a gun was used to deter a threat and NO one was killed or the gun even fired? If not, here is a sampling (links to the underlying media reports are included) of self defense uses of firearms that often never result in a shot being fired. Note, of course, that this list is by necessity incomplete. It only includes cases that are actually reported to the police, then reported in the media, then noticed by someone and reported to the list maintainer, and that the list maintainer decides to include in the list. Note that many such instances wouldn't be reported on in the media in an urban area in part because they are not very unique and, hence, sensational enough to be newsworthy -- just as shoplifting violations are rarely reported in the media except maybe in "police blotter" listings that provide insufficient detail to make the list above.
Since many defensive uses of a firearm are not reported to police if no one is injured just as many thefts are not reported to the police, it's not possible to come up with an accurate number of defensive uses of firearms for self defense. Although if you want to play "dueling estimates", many are available (ranging, as I recall, from around 100,000 per year to around 3,500,000 per year - both ends of which I'm sceptical of).
Your statement of "It's simply a scientific fact that having a gun does not help you defend yourself, it mostly helps criminals kill you - and it also ensures they WILL kill you." can only true if there is a nationwide conspiracy with people reporting defensive uses of firearms to police (by your logic anyone who actually used a gun for self defense would be dead since you state that as an absolute outcome of such an encounter). To support this conspiracy some people actually are voluntarily shot (and sometimes die at the scene they are so devoted to the grand conspiracy). Some allow themselves to be arrested and put in prison for years for the crime that never happened but they agreed to allow themselves to be imprisoned for. I find this far fetched -- but of course I also believe that we landed on the moon and that man may have an impact on the climate and perhaps you don't.
Although you don't cite any references so I can't find out where your data comes from, the way you phrase and use the data suggests that you are not understanding the full picture. It appears you have jumped to "scientific fact" a bit too early.
The only questions that are actually RELEVANT is whether guns are actually effective for self defence purposes (they are not) and whether an armed citizenry produces a more ordered, safe and peaceful society (it doesn't).
In terms of defending oneself from attacks by private citizens, there's no question that firearms are effective. Yes, they can be (and sometimes are) misused just like baseball bats and kitchen knives (esp. pointed ones) but that is on those who misuse them and not a reason to ban their legitimate use. As you probably know, the courts have long held that the police (or government in general) has no specific obligation to protect you from anyone - that's your responsibility should you desire to maintain your safety.
The US was not founded on the notion that an individual's safety and rights are secondary to that of a "ordered, safe and peaceful" society overall (if anything, the opposite is the case). If it was, the fourth amendment would not exist (and certainly not be interpreted as broadly as it is today). If the police could search anyone and their effects at any time for any (or no) reason, society would undoubtedly be safer and more ordered. However, we don't allow that because we are willing to sacrifice the overall safety and order of society to avoid inconvenient searches of individuals without specific cause. Preventing individuals from having an effective means of defending oneself is not a mere inconvenience (as a police search is), it puts the individual at substantial risk of life and limb. The Second Amendment is much more important than the Fourth Amendment for the safety of an individual (esp. since the latter is actually a hindrance to individual safety).
No, a well armed populace does not need every weapon (such as nuclear bombs) to defend themselves against their own government if a significant percentage of the people believe such defense is called for.
First, the soldiers will be vastly outnumbered.
Second, if the people have the means to escalate the battle, the soldiers will have to kill many people who look like (and may be) their own parents, siblings and children -- the more ethical of them will soon switch sides (taking the government's, possibly more advanced, weapons with them). Without the ability to effectively escalate, the people will have little choice but to submit meekly and the inflection point will not be reached.
Third, the people will know "the lay of the land" in their home territory better than government soldiers will (esp. since, due to the second point, the government would have to attempt to deploy soldiers who are least likely to identify with the people in a particular area). This gives the people, even if somewhat less well armed, a substantial defensive advantage. If 50% of the people in the Warsaw ghetto had firearms and ammunition (instead of about 0.1%), things might have turned out differently -- and as it was, with just a few real weapons, the defenders did make life difficult for Hitler's men.
Fourth, while obviously the government could "nuke" every major city and kill the vast majority of the population in order to "control" the (now virtually nonexistent) population, that just wouldn't make any sense - and there is virtually no defense against such a case except removing the nut jobs before they have infiltrated deep into the upper levels of the government - esp. military. That may require a armed uprising earlier before it's too late.
Also, it is NOT treason to protect yourself from a government which is not following the rule of law (including the Constitution). If government troops begin to systemically search houses without warrants and for no particular reason, Jefferson would not have labeled a defense against that as "treason" (he would have instead considered the soldiers and their leaders to be the tyrants committing treason).
In fact, solely for economic (vs. psychical safety) reasons, America had recently committed what you call "treason" against the English -- and the English were even following the law. It's hard to believe that the Founding Fathers considered what they had done "treason" so its unlikely that they would have considered an armed uprising against a government which refused to follow the Constitution to be "treason".
As Thomas Jefferson (who, presumably, understood the rational behind the Constitution) said: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." The goal is that, if needed, that blood is mostly that of the tyrants, not the patriots -- and that requires that there be some parity in arms.
Yet, the USPS still has exclusive access to the mailbox at your home -- the mailbox YOU paid for in most cases. Hard to feel much sympathy for the USPS with that sort of advantage over other carriers.
No, that's not the argument I made - it appears to be one you may be making and I look forward to your defense of it.
The nature of an H-bomb that you could carry (i.e., "bear" in the ordinary meaning of the word at the time the Second Amendment was drafted -- one did not refer, for example, to individuals "bearing" large cannons in that timeframe) is not effective for self defense - it tends to obliterate everything around it, including the person carrying it (making "self defense" a bit meaningless). Such weapons are also fairly useless to the government in suppressing their own people as a "scorched earth" policy doesn't make much sense as the government would be left with no one to lord over and exploit.
Therefore, reading my entire comment including "allow the people to defend themselves from the government" would have been helpful to you in understanding. It wasn't a long comment, it wasn't complicated, it was in English. Read it instead of picking sentences out of context.
I am familiar with that case. The weapons that the robbers had were illegally converted to allow full auto - they were not sold that way. Until we ban steel, there will always be people making illegal weapons out of steel. (Just as until we ban castor beans, and enforce the ban, we will always have people making Rican).
In any event, even that episode does not figure measurably in the debate because of its rarity and the fact that no civilian died in that shootout whereas thousands die every year due to impaired driving yet we don't ban alcohol or very effectively enforce bans on illegal drugs.
People who worry about "fully automatic weapons" in the hands of civilians are like people who, to avoid flying in a large commercial jet within the US on a domestic carrier because they recall plane crashes that get a lot of coverage, instead drive to their destination -- which is WAY more dangerous. Sensationalism != Effective Policy.
Not where I live - if it's hands free, you can chat all day as you drive. You can also use the phone's map app for navigation freely just as you can use your Garmin unit or ask a passenger where to turn.
I don't know where you live, but I live in one of the largest states in the country and the arrangement you describe doesn't happen here. Yes, there are private roads that wind through condominium complexes and the like that, for convenience, the HOA has not gated. The HOA is free to gate these roads at any time (subject to fire department access regulations etc) which would solve the Waze problem for those few situations where such roads actually get picked by Waze (which I'd bet is rare, these roads tend to be a very indirect way to get anywhere outside the area under the control of the HOA).
And, in exchange for excluding "outsiders" who didn't pay a special assessment for your street maintenance, you will agree to stay off all streets which others, but not you, have paid a special assessment for the maintenance of?
Probably a pretty good trade off for all of us because you likely be unable to go much of anywhere and that will reduce congestion for the rest of us.
(It will be a damned shame when the homeowners a couple blocks over refuse to let the fire trucks through to your house because the fire trucks are acting on your behalf and you didn't contribute to the special assessment for their road maintenance - but, again, the world might be better off as a result of your demands for exclusive use of "your" roads.)
There are very few automatic assault weapons in the hands of private citizens today and I don't recall one ever being used in a crime. They are so rare as to not even figure measurably in the current debate over private ownership of firearms.
And since the internet and phones and motorized printing presses didn't exist in 1791, the government can obviously ban any speech the desire via those mediums.
See where that logic gets you?
One purpose of the Second Amendment was to allow the people to defend themselves from the government. In the 1790's, the government and ordinary citizens had pretty much equal access to arms. To protect all the rights the Second Amendment was meant to protect, the people's right to keep and bear arms that are equivalent to those possessed by the government must not be infringed.
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Based on the summary, this was strictly a Fourth Amendment case and not the direct result of violation of state law.
Arguably, the suspects might have a stronger argument of "expectation of privacy" in a state where two party consent was required than in a state where no party needed to consent to recording in a public place. However, the fact the suspects appeared to attempt to keep their conversations private probably make such a claim unnecessary.
The county prosecutor could, of course, try to charge the FBI agents with a violation of state law if they in fact broke the state law, but that's not what the Federal judge is adjudicating here.
I believe it's likely in the case of the reporter that even if recording the conversation was illegal for her to do it, the recording would be admissible if police got hold of it legally (such as if the reporter, unprompted, sent it to them). Fourth Amendment restrictions on evidence generally only prevent government actors (or their agents) from gathering evidence without consent or warrant in a situation where they don't have the right to.
Suppose you, as a private citizen, simply have a hunch that your neighbor is killing people in the neighborhood and storing their bodies in his basement freezer. You therefore break into his house and, in fact, discover the bodies of some of the "disappeared" people in the neighborhood. You are, regardless of what you find, guilty of breaking and entering (although, in this case the prosecutor might cut you a great deal - 1 day probation and wipe your record clean if you don't violate the probation). If, however, a policeman driving by sees the broken window you entered through and investigates and then finds you in the basement, the bodies that are in plain view in the freezer you opened are admissible (the police didn't enter the residence illegally, YOU did without any prompting or coordination).
Those variances are due to state law. Since this was a Federal judge finding on U.S. Constitutional grounds, I don't believe the state laws have any bearing here (but, of course, I haven't RTFO).
Both my Citibank and Bank of America cards have this feature. Set the limit and the expiration date. Only the merchant who initiates the first charge can charge to it again (I don't think either one offers "allow only one charge" though). You can close the number at any time.
Just make sure to remember to put your plane ticket to Mexico on another card!
It sounds like you should just switch to writing your code in APL - or maybe you already did...
I was responding to Trailer Trash's (what an appropriate name for this topic!) assertion that "They sell the same stuff as the other grocery stores around here, just at lower prices." which isn't quite true in my area as quality of produce and selection overall are not as good at Walmart.
Agreed that any food product bought in any major chain store is going to be "safe" to eat almost all the time.
My local Walmart doesn't have the selection of my local major chain -- but then I don't really need six different brands of capers, especially none of the six are actually the brand I'm looking for specifically.
Produce is, of course, by nature more variable than packaged foods. However, my Walmart has less selection of produce and poorer quality than any of the major supermarket chains around me - but it is cheaper.
Some of the produce issues at Walmart appear to be storage problems. For example, Walmart bananas frequently turn light brown overall a day or two after purchase -- it doesn't affect the flavor or texture, but it's a bit ugly. I suspect this is because they get exposed to excessively cold temperatures in the distribution centers, during transportation, or in storage at the store. At least one other major chains in the area have specially designed and isolated controlled climate rooms just for bananas in their warehouses, I suspect Walmart does not.
Some of the produce issues at Walmart seem to be that they buy a different "grade" of product. This is quite noticeable with russet potatoes ("baking potatoes"). Walmart's potatoes are wildly inconsistent from week to week. Sometimes they are all tiny, sometimes mostly huge and sometimes are all oddly shaped (for example, looking a bit more like dumbbells or curved). Sometimes they all have cuts on them, some "healed over" and some not -- the former may be from damage from farm equipment some time before harvest, the latter from damage during harvest or processing. Oddly, it seems that the defects vary from week to week (and I even open the boxes under the display areas so it's not just the customers have "picked over" the selection). It seems that Walmart buys "rejects" if they can find them. I almost never see such oddly shaped/damaged potatoes at any of three other local (chain) grocery stores I shop at, let alone entire displays and boxes full of potatoes with "this week's" defect. Oh, the Walmart potatoes also regularly have "bad spots" inside them, something I've only encountered VERY rarely in literally decades of eating baked potatoes about once a week from other sources but which I experience about 1/2 the time with Walmart potatoes.
Some of the produce issues at Walmart are freshness issues and I can't tell if these are the result of the product just not being purchased fast enough and sitting on the display too long (and not being purged) or something upstream - either buying produce that is already on its last legs or buying trailerfuls when it's cheap and storing it too long. I suspect the problem in some cases is upstream though -- for example, bulk carrots seem to sell pretty well and they are quite durable, yet the ones at the Walmart are often so rubbery and limp that if you pick up a typical sized carrot by the "fat" end and extend it out parallel to the floor, the other end will droop up to two inches. It's hard to imagine that in a fairly busy Walmart carrots would be sitting for a week or more "on display".
So, 100% of your income (and hence your property) belongs to the government to spend as the majority sees fit and anything you get to keep is a benefit granted to you by the government?
I think you are a little confused on the concept of private property, freedom, and several other topics. You do realize that this is a US Congresswoman, not a DPRK politician?
Also, see "tyranny of the majority" to help understand why the Founding Fathers of the United States of America built a system with a very limited national government.
Note that if you want to share all your resources with others communally, no government is required. You can start this today and (maybe) see it come to fruition in weeks.
You can pool all your assets with other like minded people who do the same. Those assets could be put into some entity (trust, corporation, or partnership perhaps) where each person giving up all their assets gets one vote on all matters (regardless of what they contributed initially or contribute on an ongoing basis). The assets of this entity then would be used to buy a piece of property to set up the Utopian society. Everything, including the clothes on your back, would be owned by the communal entity. One hundred percent of all members' work product would be relinquished to the common entity. You would probably owe Federal income taxes on the value of what the community gives you for personal use so to survive the entity probably needs to be a net exporter of goods and/or services (as taxes must be paid in US dollars and your entity can't print those) -- but that's fair since you would be enjoying the US Military's protection from being attacked and sold into slavery by the Canadians. Each person would be free to leave at any time (or be expelled for breaking the rules such as failing to turn over one hundred percent of their work product to the common entity) but would receive no compensation for their "share" of the entity. Children born to parents who were both a member of your utopian entity would become members automatically until one or both parents left the community or the child reached the age of majority (at which time they could, of course, leave under the standard terms).
See how easy that was and it didn't require confiscating anyone's property or income against their will! You get what you want, everyone else gets what they want. A win-win all around!
(However, you might want to google about Plymouth Colony before embarking on your experiment.)
Yes, and if you're interested in being approached for interesting jobs, once the LinkedIn acquisition is complete, Microsoft will probably punish anyone not running Windows 10 by burying their names in search results. Get with the program - NOW!
Yep, in the 1800s there were no electronic medical records. In fact there were no electronic devices, communication, or records of any type. Therefore, obviously, the Fourth Amendment doesn't prevent searching all of those without a warrant.
As well, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment obviously couldn't have applied to electronic communication. When all you could do was stand on a street corner and shout or print leaflets and then distribute or post them, the speed of this limited communication meant that it posed little threat to society as stupid and wrong headed thoughts would take a long time to percolate through society. Obviously with Twitter, these stupid and wrong headed thoughts can percolate through society (and not just in the US, but around the world) in seconds. Therefore, it would be reasonable to require a government permit to Tweet and specific government approval of each Tweet.
Those who accept "reasonable" exceptions to the Second Amendment should not be surprised when "reasonable" exceptions to the Fourth (or any other) Amendment are also accepted.
After all, these exceptions are all "for the good of society" - who can argue with that?
If one decides to kill themselves, a gun is not required. Japan has a much higher suicide rate than the US does and guns are virtually unavailable to private citizens in Japan. As well, self defense has nothing to do with suicide (except, of course, that it could be considered suicidal to not have an effective means of defending yourself if attacked). The 60% of gun deaths in the US that are suicides are not relevant to the question of if guns are effective for self defense.
Many, perhaps most, self defense uses of firearms never result in a shot being fired let alone the death of anyone -- the criminal often either retreats or is apprehended without incident when faced with a defensive threat. An effective self defense does not require killing or even injuring the attacker. When comparing whatever numbers you have about "less likely to survive an attack", one must include cases where no physical attack occurred because the potential victim was armed.
It is obviously not the case that one having a gun "automatically escalates ANY encounter with a criminal to lethal force" (display of a gun is not, in common usage, "lethal force" - when a police officer pulls his gun but never even puts his finger inside the trigger guard, it is not considered a use of "lethal force"). Surely, even in your cocoon you have heard of at least ONE case where a gun was used to deter a threat and NO one was killed or the gun even fired? If not, here is a sampling (links to the underlying media reports are included) of self defense uses of firearms that often never result in a shot being fired. Note, of course, that this list is by necessity incomplete. It only includes cases that are actually reported to the police, then reported in the media, then noticed by someone and reported to the list maintainer, and that the list maintainer decides to include in the list. Note that many such instances wouldn't be reported on in the media in an urban area in part because they are not very unique and, hence, sensational enough to be newsworthy -- just as shoplifting violations are rarely reported in the media except maybe in "police blotter" listings that provide insufficient detail to make the list above.
Since many defensive uses of a firearm are not reported to police if no one is injured just as many thefts are not reported to the police, it's not possible to come up with an accurate number of defensive uses of firearms for self defense. Although if you want to play "dueling estimates", many are available (ranging, as I recall, from around 100,000 per year to around 3,500,000 per year - both ends of which I'm sceptical of).
Your statement of "It's simply a scientific fact that having a gun does not help you defend yourself, it mostly helps criminals kill you - and it also ensures they WILL kill you." can only true if there is a nationwide conspiracy with people reporting defensive uses of firearms to police (by your logic anyone who actually used a gun for self defense would be dead since you state that as an absolute outcome of such an encounter). To support this conspiracy some people actually are voluntarily shot (and sometimes die at the scene they are so devoted to the grand conspiracy). Some allow themselves to be arrested and put in prison for years for the crime that never happened but they agreed to allow themselves to be imprisoned for. I find this far fetched -- but of course I also believe that we landed on the moon and that man may have an impact on the climate and perhaps you don't.
Although you don't cite any references so I can't find out where your data comes from, the way you phrase and use the data suggests that you are not understanding the full picture. It appears you have jumped to "scientific fact" a bit too early.
In terms of defending oneself from attacks by private citizens, there's no question that firearms are effective. Yes, they can be (and sometimes are) misused just like baseball bats and kitchen knives (esp. pointed ones) but that is on those who misuse them and not a reason to ban their legitimate use. As you probably know, the courts have long held that the police (or government in general) has no specific obligation to protect you from anyone - that's your responsibility should you desire to maintain your safety.
The US was not founded on the notion that an individual's safety and rights are secondary to that of a "ordered, safe and peaceful" society overall (if anything, the opposite is the case). If it was, the fourth amendment would not exist (and certainly not be interpreted as broadly as it is today). If the police could search anyone and their effects at any time for any (or no) reason, society would undoubtedly be safer and more ordered. However, we don't allow that because we are willing to sacrifice the overall safety and order of society to avoid inconvenient searches of individuals without specific cause. Preventing individuals from having an effective means of defending oneself is not a mere inconvenience (as a police search is), it puts the individual at substantial risk of life and limb. The Second Amendment is much more important than the Fourth Amendment for the safety of an individual (esp. since the latter is actually a hindrance to individual safety).
No, a well armed populace does not need every weapon (such as nuclear bombs) to defend themselves against their own government if a significant percentage of the people believe such defense is called for.
First, the soldiers will be vastly outnumbered.
Second, if the people have the means to escalate the battle, the soldiers will have to kill many people who look like (and may be) their own parents, siblings and children -- the more ethical of them will soon switch sides (taking the government's, possibly more advanced, weapons with them). Without the ability to effectively escalate, the people will have little choice but to submit meekly and the inflection point will not be reached.
Third, the people will know "the lay of the land" in their home territory better than government soldiers will (esp. since, due to the second point, the government would have to attempt to deploy soldiers who are least likely to identify with the people in a particular area). This gives the people, even if somewhat less well armed, a substantial defensive advantage. If 50% of the people in the Warsaw ghetto had firearms and ammunition (instead of about 0.1%), things might have turned out differently -- and as it was, with just a few real weapons, the defenders did make life difficult for Hitler's men.
Fourth, while obviously the government could "nuke" every major city and kill the vast majority of the population in order to "control" the (now virtually nonexistent) population, that just wouldn't make any sense - and there is virtually no defense against such a case except removing the nut jobs before they have infiltrated deep into the upper levels of the government - esp. military. That may require a armed uprising earlier before it's too late.
Also, it is NOT treason to protect yourself from a government which is not following the rule of law (including the Constitution). If government troops begin to systemically search houses without warrants and for no particular reason, Jefferson would not have labeled a defense against that as "treason" (he would have instead considered the soldiers and their leaders to be the tyrants committing treason).
In fact, solely for economic (vs. psychical safety) reasons, America had recently committed what you call "treason" against the English -- and the English were even following the law. It's hard to believe that the Founding Fathers considered what they had done "treason" so its unlikely that they would have considered an armed uprising against a government which refused to follow the Constitution to be "treason".
As Thomas Jefferson (who, presumably, understood the rational behind the Constitution) said: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure." The goal is that, if needed, that blood is mostly that of the tyrants, not the patriots -- and that requires that there be some parity in arms.
Yet, the USPS still has exclusive access to the mailbox at your home -- the mailbox YOU paid for in most cases. Hard to feel much sympathy for the USPS with that sort of advantage over other carriers.
No, that's not the argument I made - it appears to be one you may be making and I look forward to your defense of it.
The nature of an H-bomb that you could carry (i.e., "bear" in the ordinary meaning of the word at the time the Second Amendment was drafted -- one did not refer, for example, to individuals "bearing" large cannons in that timeframe) is not effective for self defense - it tends to obliterate everything around it, including the person carrying it (making "self defense" a bit meaningless). Such weapons are also fairly useless to the government in suppressing their own people as a "scorched earth" policy doesn't make much sense as the government would be left with no one to lord over and exploit.
Therefore, reading my entire comment including "allow the people to defend themselves from the government" would have been helpful to you in understanding. It wasn't a long comment, it wasn't complicated, it was in English. Read it instead of picking sentences out of context.
I am familiar with that case. The weapons that the robbers had were illegally converted to allow full auto - they were not sold that way. Until we ban steel, there will always be people making illegal weapons out of steel. (Just as until we ban castor beans, and enforce the ban, we will always have people making Rican).
In any event, even that episode does not figure measurably in the debate because of its rarity and the fact that no civilian died in that shootout whereas thousands die every year due to impaired driving yet we don't ban alcohol or very effectively enforce bans on illegal drugs.
People who worry about "fully automatic weapons" in the hands of civilians are like people who, to avoid flying in a large commercial jet within the US on a domestic carrier because they recall plane crashes that get a lot of coverage, instead drive to their destination -- which is WAY more dangerous. Sensationalism != Effective Policy.
Maybe that's the law in your state. Not in mine though.
Not where I live - if it's hands free, you can chat all day as you drive. You can also use the phone's map app for navigation freely just as you can use your Garmin unit or ask a passenger where to turn.
That's certainly how it works everywhere I've ever lived. The city won't pave your driveway or your private road.
I don't know where you live, but I live in one of the largest states in the country and the arrangement you describe doesn't happen here. Yes, there are private roads that wind through condominium complexes and the like that, for convenience, the HOA has not gated. The HOA is free to gate these roads at any time (subject to fire department access regulations etc) which would solve the Waze problem for those few situations where such roads actually get picked by Waze (which I'd bet is rare, these roads tend to be a very indirect way to get anywhere outside the area under the control of the HOA).
And, in exchange for excluding "outsiders" who didn't pay a special assessment for your street maintenance, you will agree to stay off all streets which others, but not you, have paid a special assessment for the maintenance of?
Probably a pretty good trade off for all of us because you likely be unable to go much of anywhere and that will reduce congestion for the rest of us.
(It will be a damned shame when the homeowners a couple blocks over refuse to let the fire trucks through to your house because the fire trucks are acting on your behalf and you didn't contribute to the special assessment for their road maintenance - but, again, the world might be better off as a result of your demands for exclusive use of "your" roads.)
There are very few automatic assault weapons in the hands of private citizens today and I don't recall one ever being used in a crime. They are so rare as to not even figure measurably in the current debate over private ownership of firearms.
And since the internet and phones and motorized printing presses didn't exist in 1791, the government can obviously ban any speech the desire via those mediums.
See where that logic gets you?
One purpose of the Second Amendment was to allow the people to defend themselves from the government. In the 1790's, the government and ordinary citizens had pretty much equal access to arms. To protect all the rights the Second Amendment was meant to protect, the people's right to keep and bear arms that are equivalent to those possessed by the government must not be infringed.