Federal Judge Strikes Down California's AR-15 Ban

[Ancestral Republican]

Rare good decision from our judicial system

Buddy, this incompetent judge's gift to his gun lobby employers isn't going to help the workers seize the means of production.

[Horus]

Rare good decision from our judicial system

Buddy, this incompetent judge's gift to his gun lobby employers isn't going to help the workers seize the means of production.

Disarming the working class won't either.

[Ancestral Republican]

Rare good decision from our judicial system

Buddy, this incompetent judge's gift to his gun lobby employers isn't going to help the workers seize the means of production.

Disarming the working class won't either.

Stop.

[Joe Republic]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

[Joe Republic]

While I don't support AR-15 bans, I don't see how they are unconstitutional. Can someone give a TLDR of the ruling?

The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

A well regulated militia

[pbrower2a]

Before you knock the AR-15, this one was not all bad:



I actually had a pair of these during the 1980's.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

It's unclear to me why so many liberals were convinced that the March for Our Lives protests were anything more than the last dying gasp of resistance against gun culture. Contrary to expectations, the young are the most likely to have adopted the view that gun ownership is an inviolable right, whereas the elderly are much less likely to believe this.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

As institutions lose trust across the political spectrum, even the most ardent gun control activists begin to waver.

[Ancestral Republican]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

It's unclear to me why so many liberals were convinced that the March for Our Lives protests were anything more than the last dying gasp of resistance against gun culture. Contrary to expectations, the young are the most likely to have adopted the view that gun ownership is an inviolable right, whereas the elderly are much less likely to believe this.

That's just not accurate. There's definitely a sizable contingent of lolbertarian cringelords who watch too many Punisher movies, but the current march towards destruction started with the cultural alienation of the '70s. Many people lived in suburbs where they didn't know anyone and were convinced they were at a constant threat from their neighbors and needed to load up on Rambo guns to protect themselves. Meanwhile little Timmy upstairs didn't take his ritalin and is getting ready to borrow mommy's Uzi for homeroom.

[Ancestral Republican]

As institutions lose trust across the political spectrum, even the most ardent gun control activists begin to waver.

The least trustworthy institution in America is the NRA. They have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to preserve their backers' profits, and have an entire generation of idiots convinced that unlimited access to their products is worth gun death statistics that Assad would be ashamed of.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

It's unclear to me why so many liberals were convinced that the March for Our Lives protests were anything more than the last dying gasp of resistance against gun culture. Contrary to expectations, the young are the most likely to have adopted the view that gun ownership is an inviolable right, whereas the elderly are much less likely to believe this.

American liberals' self-image relies upon them seeing the youngest generation as supportive of their goals, even if that flies in the face of all reality.

[Ferguson97]

Awful decision

[Joe Republic]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

It's unclear to me why so many liberals were convinced that the March for Our Lives protests were anything more than the last dying gasp of resistance against gun culture. Contrary to expectations, the young are the most likely to have adopted the view that gun ownership is an inviolable right, whereas the elderly are much less likely to believe this.

In the sense that "unrestricted gun ownership is a universal right" is a very modern view that only existed on the fringes of society until recent years, and therefore the older generation remembers when this wasn’t so, you might have a point.

However, the widespread increase in gunlust is also a sign of the left just… giving up.  If the only people stocking up their own personal armories are the right-wing lunatics who have no qualms gunning down black people in the street, and have already attempted to overthrow the government once this year (and are eager to try again), then it only makes sense for them to supposedly feel a need to be prepared to fight back.

Definitely a sign of a healthy, functioning first-world democracy!   Not at all on the verge of internal collapse or anything.  And certainly not what Vladimir Putin has been working towards for two decades (with surprising ease).  What a silly idea!

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Awful and ridiculous decision. It's a weapon of war that only belongs in the hands of the military or potentially FBI Swat Teams; who needs this for self defense or hunting?

An AR-15 is definitely not a weapon of war, tho for marketing purposes it is made to resemble one.

[LtNOWIS]

The AR-15 is about as deadly as any other semi-automatic firearm, so this makes virtually no difference to anything.

Bans on certain types of guns and certain types of features are mostly pointless. High capacity magazine bans and bans on exotic features can very slightly mitigate the deadliness of spree shootings, so are worth considering, but it's still a whole lot of squeeze for very little juice.

The only effective policy solution would be to make it much harder for the wrong people to get guns. A very large proportion of spree shootings and gun crimes are done by people who shouldn't have firearms, so implementing an effective background check system to own a firearm is the logical course of action if we actually want to have effective policy here.

Yeah, you've written this before.

And as I said to you in the other thread, a ton of/most gun crime happens because Rambo wannabes get their guns stolen. Not producing and selling the guns in the first place would be the best way to keep it out of their hands. Any idea that somehow dumping even more money into the police will make the current situation of selling unlimited guns a safe policy is delusional.

In the other thread, you said that most guns used in Chicago crimes came from Indiana. To me that indicates that it isn't random Hoosiers who had their guns stolen, it's straw purchases by gunrunners who resell them on the streets.

I'm not saying "give more money to random municipal police departments to work on guns," since I don't trust them to do it right. But these are federal crimes. A felon having a gun is a federal crime, a drug user having a gun is a federal crime, and straw purchases and illegal resales are federal crimes. So, if federal lawbreaking is killing a ton of Americans, then maybe some more federal attention to arrest and imprison these lawbreakers is in order. If you want guns off the streets, have the government start taking away these ones that are already illegal.

Similarly, a new in-depth background check scheme would mitigate things and would be constitutional. Especially for spree shootings, where a fair number are committed by guys who legally owned firearms, despite being obviously crazy and violent.

By contrast, I don't think your "stop producing guns for civilian sale and wait 50 years for the existing guns to wear out" is at all viable. I don't think it's constitutional even under a liberal understanding of the 2nd Amendment. You're eliminating civilian gun ownership writ large, just at a slower rate than if we did confiscations.

While I don't support AR-15 bans, I don't see how they are unconstitutional. Can someone give a TLDR of the ruling?

From my skim, it looks like the primary argument is that the AR-15 is “a normal gun used for normal purposes” and the judge is saying that according to Heller you are only allowed to ban “extraordinary weapons used primarily for military purposes”. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me constitutionally. Obviously 9. Cir. will be reversing this and I’m not sure there will be appetite for SCOTUS to take it. The supremes have been on the cautious side of taking even gun cases where striking down the restrictions would (imo) be much easier to justify than this.

Hollis v. Lynch already said that people have a right to weapons "commonly used for lawful purposes like self defense," which would seem to allow all "normal" guns while providing no constitutional protections to "exotic" guns. And as discussed the AR-15 is very normal at this point. That was in the 5th circuit, not the 9th, but it seems like a logical way to parse it out.

[Ancestral Republican]

The AR-15 is about as deadly as any other semi-automatic firearm, so this makes virtually no difference to anything.

Bans on certain types of guns and certain types of features are mostly pointless. High capacity magazine bans and bans on exotic features can very slightly mitigate the deadliness of spree shootings, so are worth considering, but it's still a whole lot of squeeze for very little juice.

The only effective policy solution would be to make it much harder for the wrong people to get guns. A very large proportion of spree shootings and gun crimes are done by people who shouldn't have firearms, so implementing an effective background check system to own a firearm is the logical course of action if we actually want to have effective policy here.

Yeah, you've written this before.

And as I said to you in the other thread, a ton of/most gun crime happens because Rambo wannabes get their guns stolen. Not producing and selling the guns in the first place would be the best way to keep it out of their hands. Any idea that somehow dumping even more money into the police will make the current situation of selling unlimited guns a safe policy is delusional.

In the other thread, you said that most guns used in Chicago crimes came from Indiana. To me that indicates that it isn't random Hoosiers who had their guns stolen, it's straw purchases by gunrunners who resell them on the streets.

I'm not saying "give more money to random municipal police departments to work on guns," since I don't trust them to do it right. But these are federal crimes. A felon having a gun is a federal crime, a drug user having a gun is a federal crime, and straw purchases and illegal resales are federal crimes. So, if federal lawbreaking is killing a ton of Americans, then maybe some more federal attention to arrest and imprison these lawbreakers is in order. If you want guns off the streets, have the government start taking away these ones that are already illegal.

Similarly, a new in-depth background check scheme would mitigate things and would be constitutional. Especially for spree shootings, where a fair number are committed by guys who legally owned firearms, despite being obviously crazy and violent.

By contrast, I don't think your "stop producing guns for civilian sale and wait 50 years for the existing guns to wear out" is at all viable. I don't think it's constitutional even under a liberal understanding of the 2nd Amendment. You're eliminating civilian gun ownership writ large, just at a slower rate than if we did confiscations.

While I don't support AR-15 bans, I don't see how they are unconstitutional. Can someone give a TLDR of the ruling?

From my skim, it looks like the primary argument is that the AR-15 is “a normal gun used for normal purposes” and the judge is saying that according to Heller you are only allowed to ban “extraordinary weapons used primarily for military purposes”. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me constitutionally. Obviously 9. Cir. will be reversing this and I’m not sure there will be appetite for SCOTUS to take it. The supremes have been on the cautious side of taking even gun cases where striking down the restrictions would (imo) be much easier to justify than this.

Hollis v. Lynch already said that people have a right to weapons "commonly used for lawful purposes like self defense," which would seem to allow all "normal" guns while providing no constitutional protections to "exotic" guns. And as discussed the AR-15 is very normal at this point. That was in the 5th circuit, not the 9th, but it seems like a logical way to parse it out.

Your addiction to abstract concepts over facts and logic is very typical. And as I said. Your theory about trying even harder to enforce our existing joke laws has been tried and doesn't work.

There is simply no talking point the gun lobby can sh**t out that addresses the fact that not mass producing guns is the best solution to gun crime.

[Ancestral Republican]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

It's unclear to me why so many liberals were convinced that the March for Our Lives protests were anything more than the last dying gasp of resistance against gun culture. Contrary to expectations, the young are the most likely to have adopted the view that gun ownership is an inviolable right, whereas the elderly are much less likely to believe this.

American liberals' self-image relies upon them seeing the youngest generation as supportive of their goals, even if that flies in the face of all reality.

Whatever makes you feel better about being on the wrong side of this issue. And as I said above, that theory's wrong. Boomers are more likely to be moronic gun fetishists than the generation that grew up watching massacre after massacre.

[LtNOWIS]

The AR-15 is about as deadly as any other semi-automatic firearm, so this makes virtually no difference to anything.

Bans on certain types of guns and certain types of features are mostly pointless. High capacity magazine bans and bans on exotic features can very slightly mitigate the deadliness of spree shootings, so are worth considering, but it's still a whole lot of squeeze for very little juice.

The only effective policy solution would be to make it much harder for the wrong people to get guns. A very large proportion of spree shootings and gun crimes are done by people who shouldn't have firearms, so implementing an effective background check system to own a firearm is the logical course of action if we actually want to have effective policy here.

Yeah, you've written this before.

And as I said to you in the other thread, a ton of/most gun crime happens because Rambo wannabes get their guns stolen. Not producing and selling the guns in the first place would be the best way to keep it out of their hands. Any idea that somehow dumping even more money into the police will make the current situation of selling unlimited guns a safe policy is delusional.

In the other thread, you said that most guns used in Chicago crimes came from Indiana. To me that indicates that it isn't random Hoosiers who had their guns stolen, it's straw purchases by gunrunners who resell them on the streets.

I'm not saying "give more money to random municipal police departments to work on guns," since I don't trust them to do it right. But these are federal crimes. A felon having a gun is a federal crime, a drug user having a gun is a federal crime, and straw purchases and illegal resales are federal crimes. So, if federal lawbreaking is killing a ton of Americans, then maybe some more federal attention to arrest and imprison these lawbreakers is in order. If you want guns off the streets, have the government start taking away these ones that are already illegal.

Similarly, a new in-depth background check scheme would mitigate things and would be constitutional. Especially for spree shootings, where a fair number are committed by guys who legally owned firearms, despite being obviously crazy and violent.

By contrast, I don't think your "stop producing guns for civilian sale and wait 50 years for the existing guns to wear out" is at all viable. I don't think it's constitutional even under a liberal understanding of the 2nd Amendment. You're eliminating civilian gun ownership writ large, just at a slower rate than if we did confiscations.

While I don't support AR-15 bans, I don't see how they are unconstitutional. Can someone give a TLDR of the ruling?

From my skim, it looks like the primary argument is that the AR-15 is “a normal gun used for normal purposes” and the judge is saying that according to Heller you are only allowed to ban “extraordinary weapons used primarily for military purposes”. Seems like a bit of a stretch to me constitutionally. Obviously 9. Cir. will be reversing this and I’m not sure there will be appetite for SCOTUS to take it. The supremes have been on the cautious side of taking even gun cases where striking down the restrictions would (imo) be much easier to justify than this.

Hollis v. Lynch already said that people have a right to weapons "commonly used for lawful purposes like self defense," which would seem to allow all "normal" guns while providing no constitutional protections to "exotic" guns. And as discussed the AR-15 is very normal at this point. That was in the 5th circuit, not the 9th, but it seems like a logical way to parse it out.

Your addiction to abstract concepts over facts and logic is very typical. And as I said. Your theory about trying even harder to enforce our existing joke laws has been tried and doesn't work.

There is simply no talking point the gun lobby can sh**t out that addresses the fact that not mass producing guns is the best solution to gun crime.

"lol just ban the firearms industry." That's not remotely constitutional or politically viable. You'd also have to ban imports, which are up threefold from 20 years ago.

This is like those schemes where people say "just have a 1,000% tax on guns, then we can ban guns without banning guns!" It's a loophole the courts see through in an instant.

[Calthrina950]

Whenever anybody tries to argue that the US is steadily marching left, just point to its gunlust.  As a nation, we’re just too far gone.  Now that I have a family, it’s quickly become a factor as to whether we should stay here.

It's unclear to me why so many liberals were convinced that the March for Our Lives protests were anything more than the last dying gasp of resistance against gun culture. Contrary to expectations, the young are the most likely to have adopted the view that gun ownership is an inviolable right, whereas the elderly are much less likely to believe this.

American liberals' self-image relies upon them seeing the youngest generation as supportive of their goals, even if that flies in the face of all reality.

Whatever makes you feel better about being on the wrong side of this issue. And as I said above, that theory's wrong. Boomers are more likely to be moronic gun fetishists than the generation that grew up watching massacre after massacre.

Are you calling for each and every single privately-held firearm in the United States to be confiscated and for all gun production to cease? I don't think such measures would be constitutional, and I'm not sure what a gun confiscation program would look like or how feasible it would be.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Regulating ammunition sounds more viable than regulating guns themselves.

[brucejoel99]

Regulating ammunition sounds more viable than regulating guns themselves.

Chris Rock agrees!

[darklordoftech]

Hopefully civil forfeiture, the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, and the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 are next to be struck down.

[politicallefty]

While I don't support AR-15 bans, I don't see how they are unconstitutional. Can someone give a TLDR of the ruling?

The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

A well regulated militia

That means nothing to the right-wing lunatics. It might as well not even be part of the Second Amendment. I have always found it ironic how so-called originalists interpret this to be an absolute right in a way the Founders could have never conceived.

I want to know where the line is drawn. Most largely agree on where free speech ends. Why does the right to bear arms preclude owning weapons of war, such as machine guns, bazookas, or even nuclear arms? The 2nd Amendment had little to do with personal defense or hunting and everything to do with the ability of the people to protect themselves from tyrannical government. That is why the prefatory clause exists. Without a limiting principle on the operative clause through the prefatory clause, there is no limit on an individual right. But we do have the prefatory clause and many choose to ignore it. No other amendment of the Bill of Rights is structured in such a manner and ignored in the same manner.

[Damocles]

Guns have no morality other than that of their owner. Banning an entire class of weapons because of perceived use case is stupid and idiotic. It’s the owners that are the problem. If you want to have gun regulation, regulate the owners and the market they exist in.

There is no doubt that many marketers in the armaments industry use racist, pseudo-patriotic, Islamophobic advertisements. There is no doubt that some people believe gun ownership makes them more moral or righteous than others, and that their privilege to own this type of property should not be regulated.

You can register titles to guns with an associated license carried by the owner in question, and make the maintenance of the license conditional on continuing education and regulations (ie. you must read what the new regulations are every year).

The blowback from red avatars acting as though the sky is falling is just ridiculous and puritanical. I like money, guns, drugs, and sex just as anyone else. So be it. With great power comes great responsibility. They aren’t mutually exclusive.

[CookieDamage]

all the pro gun nuts in this thread