What are the limits to the second amendment?

Nukes are ok, but they have to be open carry.

Swords not a problem; however bazooka, RPG, fully automatic and howitzer No !
I’m not a nuke expert.

Pretty much as it stands now. You could make the argument that select fire is covered but most reasonable people don’t see a need for it. What mandates “well regulated” is highly debatable except that “militias” are not to be federally or state sponsored. I find that problematic in 2018. It was commonly understood to cover the types of arms an infantry soldier would carry. I don’t think we want people running around with hand grenades nor do we want jimbo the gun nut running the local “militia”

It doesn’t extend to Canada.

I suppose you can own a bazooka, but not the rounds to fire through it. You can own grenades, just not ones that have C-4 or black powder in them, or live fuses. You can’t own a nuke, too controlled and radioactive. Yes you can own swords! You can own machine guns but only if you have a license to own one/them. (machine guns being guns that fire on “full automatic”.) There are certain reasonable limits. You could, supposedly, own a howitzer but the firing pin may have to be removed and you can’t have rounds for it.

depends on your skin colour.

I mean, when you are black, you can not even hold a mobile phone in your hand without getting shot by the pigs.

The 2nd Amendment, when it was originally written, meant that you could own whatever gun you liked. The SCOTUS determined, with the Heller decision, that the interpretation was that it applied to guns that a normal person could own for self defense and defense of their families. In other words, things like flame throwers and bazookas were not reasonable, but a semi-automatic rifle or a handgun were. That is why automatic weapons are strictly regulated, but those scary look-alikes aren’t.

Way back when in the late 1960’s through the 1970’s there was a landowner out in the Terlingua area of Texas who used to have a mortar. He would buy junk cars and set them up on his property and lob mortars at them. We used to go caving there and I always thought that was a little quirky but not that unusual or unexpected considering it was Terlingua.

There is a segment of society that believes any and all are allowable and no one can tell them differently. For the rest of us, there’s rifles and handguns, that’s pretty much it.

Yes there has to be some sanity brought to this situation.

@KNOWITALL theoretically, the second amendment would allow citizens to own weapons that they might need to defend themselves from bad guys and bad government. If the government can bring machine guns to the party, why can’t we? That is the thinking. The Heller decision put a halt to that. And realistically, if you are at a point where you need a bazooka to defend yourself, you have probably already lost…things have gotten way too out of hand.

@Seawulf I don’t think stockpiling is necessarily wrong but I have concerns about the intentions of some. It’s a thin line imo.

Any one stockpiling weapons has a screw loose, IMO.

Happens every time the second is debated, don’t fool yourself.

Would hand grenades be covered under the 2nd? What about fertilizer and gun powder?

I guess the question is “what is stockpiling?” Some people believe that if you have more than one gun, you are stockpiling. Some believe that if you are trying to amass enough firepower to arm a small country, that is stockpiling. And that is where some of the debate comes in. Those that are for gun control want to push for as much control as possible. And we all know how things work…if you move the window a little, you now have a new standard that will be challenged and you have already shown that moving is acceptable.
But the other part of the debate continues to be ignored. It is always about gun control, but there is no evidence that more gun control laws will do anything to slow down gun violence. We ignore that gun violence has been going down for the past decade or two because that doesn’t play into the gun control arguments. We don’t want to even consider looking at the commonalities of some of the mass shooters or the things that influenced them into thinking that was acceptable action. All we can do is argue that guns are bad and guns kill people. A valid, healthy debate/discussion would look openly at all arguments. We, in this country, cannot get there, apparently.

That’s not true @seawulf575. Have you ever wondered why they aren’t using hand grenades? It’s because they are heavily regulated, heavily taxed—$200 per round just for the tax, another $200 for the round. $400 for something you’re going to use one time.
If we treated guns the way we treat hand grenades the results would be the same. Many fewer people would have them.

Gun violence overall may be going down (a source would be nice) but the amount of people killed in individual shootings is going up. 17 people in a matter of 3 minutes. Unreal.

@Dutchess_III Thank you for making my point for me. I was just talking about how we get polarized and how one side can only pick up gun control and not want to discuss anything else.
As for the discussion part, that is where address all sorts of angles for it. To start, my statement of lowering gun murders comes from FBI stats. Meanwhile there are still basically the same number of guns in the country. As for the number killed in an individual shooting, yep, it is tragic. Even one child getting killed is a tragedy. But the guns are only a tool. Everyone gets hyped up about the AR-15, yet they miss the fact that rifle deaths (and the AR fits into that category) are relatively low. They rank lower than knives, they even rate lower than hands and feet. Again…FBI. And let’s not forget that most legal gun owners are law abiding. Something to the tune of 99.99%...possibly more. It isn’t the guns nor the gun ownership that is the problem. The questions that everyone wants to avoid are the ones that really need to be answered. What about the majority of gun homicides…What is the driving force? Where are the majority of gun homicides committed? What are the criminal histories of the ones committing the gun homicides? Is there a commonality among victims?
To really dig in and find a cure, we need to understand the problem and that only occurs when you look at all the facts, not just stopping with “guns are designed to kill”. I found this website that had a lot of interesting data in it. It is research like this that really needs to be discussed more often.

https://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

I agree. Gun control is only one aspect. There has to be other measures taken as well. But making it difficult for the emotionally / mentally challenged people to get their hands on a gun is better than nothing, until we can figure out how to deal with the mental issues. I have a feeling there really is no cure.

There are some areas that specify mental health may be adjudicated and that is a reason to deny gun purchases. Not sure if it is a national thing or not. I’m also for not letting convicted felons purchase guns, at least until they have been out of jail and clean for a length of time. Given recidivism rates, it is unlikely that felons would be able to purchase guns legally anyway. But again…we are dealing with legal purchases and trying to set laws that criminals won’t follow anyway. There are already gun laws about not taking them into schools. There are laws about not killing people. Apparently those that shoot up schools don’t want to follow laws so really, would more gun laws help?

Yes @seawulf575. Stricter and more well enforced laws would help. It’s been proven.

Tell that to Chicago.

Drunk driving deaths have been reduced by half since we enacted stricter laws in the 80’s.

Japan has almost eradicated gun crimes because of their strict laws. Handguns aren’t allowed, period.

Stricter laws do work.

Interesting you bring up drunk driving. The drunk driving laws were not about elimination of alcohol or cars, though both were required for a drunk driving death to occur. However the laws did make for more strict punishments for drunk driving. I have stated before that if you want gun deaths to go down, you make a mandatory death sentence for using a gun in the commission of a violent crime (assault, armed robbery, rape, murder), whether the gun was actually discharged or not. Of course when I brought this idea up, everyone thought it was too cruel to the criminal. But if you make the penalties impact the criminal instead of making the law punish those that follow it, you will start hitting at the solution to gun violence.

That’s a good idea too. Make it REALLY severe.

Good laws, well enforced laws, do work.

I would suggest that if a gun is used during a crime but not fired, then the punishment should be automatic 25 years without parole. If the gun is discharged, automatic death sentence. It won’t make the gun crime less offensive, but it would certainly remove those committing the crimes from being able to impact society anymore. And that would go for armed robbery or home invasions, or even domestic abuse. I would not include self defense, though.

I kind of agree, however, I don’t think that’s really feasible. I mean, it would never pass whoever it would need to pass to become law.

That is true, especially since it would have to happen at the state level. But it would be interesting to see what happened if Illinois passed a law like that. Would the gun violence in Chicago drop off?

@all Sounds like everything that could be said has been said on this topic? Maybe we could do a little experiment in one state or city to get more info on what works and what doesn’t? So as not to steal peoples guns or leaving a school defenceless?

I don’t think we are capable of doing a little experiment in some city or state!

Well, Chicago proves you cannot do it if you are surrounded by those that do not.

@Dutchess_III maybe in another country? Or a protectorate of USA? Or we could make an educated guess about the effects of common sense solutions.

If we could just get down, like Japan and Australia does, our problems would be virtually resolved. <<<And that’s proof, not an educated guess.