Chief enforcer of US gun laws fears Americans may become numb to violence with each mass shooting
Chief enforcer of US gun laws fears Americans may become numb to violence with each mass shooting
The head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says he fears that a drumbeat of mass shootings and other gun violence across the United States could make Americans numb to the bloodshed.
The head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says he fears that a drumbeat of mass shootings and other gun violence across the United States could make Americans numb to the bloodshed, fostering apathy to finding solutions rather than galvanizing communities to act.
Director Steve Dettelbach’s comments to The Associated Press came after he met this past week with family members of some of the 18 people killed in October at a bowling alley and a bar in Lewiston, Maine by a U.S. Army reservist who later took his own life.
He said people must not accept that gun violence is a prevalent part of American life.
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We keep trying, but the courts and legislatures are packed with 2A nutters who believe that "a well regulated militia" means there shouldn't be any restrictions on gun ownership.
To be fair to those legislators, that amendment is fairly clear with its ‘shall not be infringed’ statement. The only way out of that issue is to pass a new amendment invalidating the old one.
Except that's not how it was interpreted until District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008.
Up until then, the right to bear arms was directly connected to the necessity of a well regulated militia. Then the Court reinterpreted it to say that the right is completely unconnected to service in a militia, and now guns are much more difficult to regulate.
Don't fall for the propaganda. The Supreme Court can just make up whatever shit they want. All that matters is who the Justices are.
Those other words must be there by accident.
No, that's not being fair at all. The amendment in full reads:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A full half of that single sentence is talking about "a well regulated militia" being the justification for allowing people to keep arms. There have been decades of flim-flammery ignoring that completely and trying to imply that the intent was to say "Militias are good for national security given how we just went through a rebellion that depended on them. Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, everyone should be allowed to carry portable machine guns and concealed hand-cannons the likes of which were never even imagined in our time."
This is a nutty interpretation.
Obviously the founders meant people should only focus on shall not be infringed /s
Well regulated obviously means not regulated at all.
I am still confused what militia is supposed to mean.
It's the common definition, part-time military, not a standing army. The founders of the United States didn't want a permanent military. The Constitution itself says "no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years". They felt it would tend toward militaristic authoritarianism. They wanted the national defense to be the people in general, and those people would obviously need to be armed. Thus, the second amendment, to ensure that Congress could not say "okay now only our guys can have weapons" and oppress the people.
Of course that didn't really last because it wasn't realistic, and a regular army was created almost right away.
The founders of the United States didn’t want a permanent military.
One could say the US drifted just a tiny tad bit off the original vision then.
Ok so why is it a right? Seems to me you are describing basically a volunteer fire department and if that is the case clearly 90 years old aren't going to be part of it. I don't know any other right that you lose by being too old.
Samuel Whittemore was fighting the British at 80. He got shot in the face but lived to 98.
That case is a bit unusual, but in times of war, anyone who can fight, does. And not everyone is a front-line infantryman; any military needs something like six to ten times as much support staff as fighting force. Those people are usually armed in combat zones too, because the fighting might come to them (and like the Marines say, every Marine a rifleman).
Cool. Now I am just going to point to the blind. Got some anecdote from history about a blind soldier?
Also if they aren't frontline I am a bit confused about why they need a gun. I have done a bit of work on some Navy stuff as a civilian and a rifle wouldn't have help me much in that task.
Can you name another right that vanishes based on physical fitness?
I'm sure there have been blind soldiers, but I don't know any off the top of my head.
Like I said, any servicemember in a combat zone might be armed, because the fight could come to them. If the other guys try to overrun your defense, you don't want all those people sitting around helpless, you want them to fight back.
It's not specifically dependent on physical fitness, it's about service in a militia, despite what SCOTUS said in Heller. Conscientious objectors, for example, would probably not be militiamen and therefore would be looked at with suspicion if they didn't have another good reason to own firearms (e.g. sport shooting, gunsmithing, or hunting, though I'm not sure they'd want to participate in those either).