On Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:53:11 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Mar 19, 2:33*am, Ed Huntress wrote:


So what? Assault rifles are despised by more than half of the US
population and they want to ban them (data on request) because they're
the vile weapons used in mass murders by lunatics.

Ed Huntress

Just because more than half of the U.S. population despises assault
rifles and wants to ban them is not a valid argument for banning
assault rifles.

It's a valid argument to be aware that you're on the losing side of a
political debate, in which more than half of the voters are against
you.


Assault rifles are the sort of rifles that armies use.

Well, with the addition of select-fire, yes. But they're close enough
to attract Rambo wannabees, Walter Mitty Minutemen, and mass-murdering
lunatics. They're the best tools for those jobs, if you include
Bushmaster's argument that they'll "Renew your Man Card."

They're the guns that fulfill the desires of a wide variety of
sociopaths.

The sort of
gun that a well regulated militia should have. So banning them goes
against the Constitution.

You could try that argument, but based on court precedent, I think you
would lose. It would be an even better argument for M-16s, but as the
Court said in Heller:

"It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military
service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second
Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But
as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the
Second Amendment ’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable
of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that
they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that
a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would
require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at
large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be
useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern
developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory
clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the
right."

So the principle has already been foreclosed. Then you're left with
the question of whether AR-15s are in "common use" for lawful purposes
(another provision of Heller), and you then have the fact that
miltiary-style semiautos defined as "assault rifles" by state statutes
make up only about 1.3% of the guns in circulation. And I doubt if the
Court would overturn state laws that defined high-capacity ARs as
"dangerous weapons" or "destructive devices," as some do now.

As long as you have handguns for home defense, the Court hasn't put
any other limits on federal or state laws -- so far. We'll have to see
if a challenge ever gets to the Court. After more than 20 years for
some states, there hasn't been a successful challenge yet.

And the rifles are just rifles. There is
nothing vile about them.

That's a matter of opinion. I think they're pretty vile, because
they're designed to appeal to some pretty ugly instincts. But your
opinion is your own business.

What is vile is the movies and video games
that show people killing each other.

I don't watch them, myself.

--
Ed Huntress