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It’s pretty annoying that every gun case now is constitutionally required to be an 18th-century literature review, especially if we have to do the extra work of figuring out which laws were and weren’t racist.
Unfortunately that is primarily because the 2A has been a red headed stepchild in SCOTUS forever - with SCOTUS not taking almost any 2A cases - so they haven't built up much precedent. Going back in history to see what laws were around is how SCOTUS does all the constitutional interpretation, but because they have a ton of built up caselaw they point to those cases (which should eventually point back to founding era stuff) it just seems less like that is what its doing on its face. If SCOTUS were to take up a couple 2A cases each term, like they do for the 1A, we'd have a similarly built up rulings to make things seem more obvious based on previous rulings.
Before Bruen, the 2A was primarily considered using "interest balancing" unlike every other constitutional amendment. Can you imagine the courts doing "interest balancing" on whether the government can restrict your speech?
As far as laws being racist or not, once a law has been ruled unconstitutional it is considered as though it was always unconstitutional - so citing an unconstitutional law for evidence is a really bad argument. Hence why using the Black Codes for evidence was a nonstarter.
The difficulty with 2A is that a straightforward reading is not really compatible with a stable modern society. A crazy man with a flintlock musket can only do so much damage, despite it having been the state of the art weapon system for the bulk of military forces. A crazy man with a flock of explosive drones or a fission bomb can do much more damage, and no country can survive engaging in mutually assured destruction diplomacy with the craziest 1% of their citizens individually. Different people may draw the line in slightly different places for 2A, but very few believe that no line should be drawn at all.
This is not so much different from limitations on the 1A. Should it be allowed to promise people rewards for committing crimes? Should it be allowed to make fraudulent bomb threats or SWAT people? Should a mob boss go free as long as all he did was talk to his underlings? All of these are restrictions on free speech, but they are obvious restrictions which are required to have a functioning state at all.
I would say that a fission bomb, or any weapon of mass destruction, is not a weapon you can "bear". (But you still have a point about drones.)
Also, people were allowed to own cannons back then and they could probably do more damage with one than with a musket.
Not only cannon, but privately owned warships were an entire thing.
So if we really want to argue that we should return to the founders' intent, no automatic guns, but Amazon can mount weaponry on its delivery vehicles?
...You understand that "automatic guns" are already unregulatable, correct? As in, it is no longer possible in any practical sense to regulate the ownership of automatic weapons in the United States of America. You can purchase a legal, full-auto AR-15 from Palmetto State Armory for a reasonable sum. Several companies are producing belt-fed light machine guns for the unregulated civilian market. Criminals have been mass-importing high quality auto-sears and full-auto lockwork from China by the container-load for years now. The government is incapable of keeping full-auto weaponry out of the hands of anyone who wants it, and is almost entirely incapable of prosecuting even those who gain such weaponry illegally, or even simply those who commit crimes with such weaponry. They are at the point of prosecuting a small fraction of carefully selected cases in a vain attempt to maintain keyfabe that meaningful prohibitions still exist.
Do you mean true select-fire, or some kind of workaround? I certainly missed this happening.
My understanding is that they're selling AR15 rifles with factory-installed and -tuned FRTs. Setting aside the legal arcana, it is not clear to me what the difference between these and "true select fire" is in any practical sense. I'd imagine they shoot a little rougher?
On the criminal side, my understanding is that it's just straight-up Chinese-manufactured auto-sears and auto-lockwork, no workaround at all.
fixed the link in the previous post. Here's a link to discussion of the new generation of belt-feds: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFtgEVkaQY&t=3s
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