Mass shootings in New Zealand mosques

Part of the trouble here is the Second Amendment.

Another is that even if we banned gun sales tomorrow, there's still a gun in America for every man, woman and child.

 

The idea that there are people that understand that this is a dangerous world and think it should be "every person for themselves" whether guns, environment, business fraud etc. is weird.

 

On the contrary, they doubled down, led by the victim with the most serious injuries, Scalise. He essentially said, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
Their guns are the most important things in their lives.
I am still waiting for the Trumpist Christians to answer if they have ever prayed for the meltdown of assault weapons or any other non hunting weapons.

 

There are no trumpist Christians. It’s either one or the other. They are mutually exclusive.

 

For all the "strict textualists" on the Supreme Court these days, they never have a problem ignoring that "well-regulated militia" part of the 2A. Or viewing firearms as they did back in colonial times.

 

I looked at my wife and said "We ought to move to New Zealand. It's freaking beautiful there, they speak English, they're going to pass better gun laws now, and it isn't Alabama." OTOH, we'd basically have to sell everything we own, leave all friends and family behind, and move halfway around the world with zero safety net. We'll never do it, but it's a nice thought.

 

One of the problems with Constitutional 'originalism' is that it runs right up against another truth of that document - which is its built-in adaptability and dynamism.

So the Constitution often stalemates itself when we rely on it alone for change.

Which is why we leave a lot of legislative experimentation up to Brandeis's laboratories of democracy, the individual states.

The trouble with that when it comes to guns, however, is their portability. The borders between states are porous, so guns go pretty easily from where they're legal to where they're not.

Like Indiana to Chicago or Virginia to New York.

A state-by-state patchwork of gun laws is unlikely to solve our gun problem.

So we go back to the Constitution for a set of federal restrictions and start this circular argument all over again.

 

I’m not sure why people on both sides of the 2d A. debate consistently ignore what SCOTUS has actually said about it:

District of Columbia v. Heller held a complete ban of handguns was unconstitutional. It held the 2A protects an individuals right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and "to use for traditionally lawful purposes." The Court then said that since handguns were chosen most often for self-defense and self-defense is a legal purpose for owning a firearm, individual ownership of handguns couldn't be banned.

However, the Court, in a decision written by Scalia, said the licensing, registration, permitting is constitutional. He also noted the following with regard to permissible regulation under the 2d A:

"Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

 

I don't know. God wanted Israel to be set apart. We see that as soon as the people get a chance they will turn away and follow other gods. He didn't want the next generation to have a Canaatine parent because I guess he knew they would seek the Canaanite god.

I guess the easy answer is the people were evil and placed under God's punishment.

It's hard for me to understand too. I can't imagine what that was like on the ground when he commanded they kill everyone in the Holy Land before entering.

 

If it actually happened.

Given the time lapse between events depicted in the Bible and when they were written down, you've got generations of the telephone game happening. And that's before you mix in authors twisting things to fit political messages of the time and translation problems.

 

The easy answer logically fails because how could babies and fetuses be evil and deserve God’s punishment.

Which illustrates one of many contradictions in the Bible. Yet you, and others, seem to want to use literal translations as excuses for laws to be imposed on everyone even though you, as you admitted yourself, don’t know.