New Zealand Acts To Implement Assault Rifle Ban - Why Not The U.S.?

The late SC Justice Antonin Scalia - your total conservative - asserted in the Heller case that no citizen has the right to own an assault-style weapon.  New Zealand PM Jacinda Ahern announcing the assault weapons ban proposal.

"Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can’t even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8.

Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market.This is what leadership looks like" - Alexandra Ocasio -Cortez this morning

The real question, now that New Zealand has acted to have an assault rifle ban within 6 days of the Christchurch massacre   (which saw 50 Muslims slain by a white nationalist nut) is: What is taking the U.S. so long to implement a similar ban?    

For those behind the news curve- understandable in the Trump era with its endless histrionics, BS and daily flouting of laws and norms -  assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics are on track to be banned in New Zealand.  This is after Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, announced sweeping and immediate changes to gun laws following the Christchurch mosque shootings.  Ardern yesterday said point blank:

“I absolutely believe there will be a common view amongst New Zealanders, those who use guns for legitimate purposes, and those who have never touched one, that the time for the mass and easy availability of these weapons must end. And today they will,”   

Adding: "In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country,”

And wonder of wonders, even the gun sellers there seem to get it. In a text this a.m. - from the CEO of New Zealand Hunting & Fishing Co. (one of the island nation's largest gun retailers) we saw:

 "Any government measure to permanently ban such weapons merits support. Weapons of war have no place in our business or our country."

How far do the new regs go?  Parts that are used to convert guns into military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs) have also being banned, along with high-capacity magazines and parts that cause a firearm to generate semi-automatic, automatic or close-to-automatic gunfire.  

P.M.  Ardern also directed officials to develop a gun buyback scheme for those who already own such weapons. She said “fair and reasonable compensation” would be paid.  This is analogous to an Australia scheme implemented after the infamous Port Arthur massacre in 1996.

On April 28, 1996, a 28-year-old Australian,  Martin Bryant,  ate lunch at Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a historic penal colony and popular tourist resort. After his meal, Bryant returned his tray, removed a semiautomatic rifle from his bag, and opened fire. By the time Bryant was caught a day later, 35 people were dead and 23 wounded in what became the worst mass shooting in Australian history.

Unlike the U.S., the Aussies got serious about controlling their military-style weapons. Among other things, the Australian government banned automatic and semiautomatic firearms, adopted new licensing requirements, established a national firearms registry, and instituted a 28-day waiting period for gun purchases. It also bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms, in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising taxes. The entire overhaul took just months to implement.

The  New Zealand buyback scheme is estimated to cost between $100m and $200m. P.M. Ardern said the government was still working out how to fund it.

New Zealand, a country of less than 5 million people, has an estimated 1.2-1.5m firearms. The number of MSSA weapons is not known, but there are 13,500 firearms which require the owner to have an E-Cat licence, which the government is using to estimate the number of MSSAs.

We also know, as reported also this a.m. (CBS) that New Zealand has no constitutional right to bear arms.  But technically, neither does the U.S.  A point I've belabored in multiple earlier posts. And given the U.S. has some 400 million guns in circulation, and has had 1,988 mass shootings since Sandy Hook in 2012, there is a need for the nation to get its collective head straight.  

What does that mean? Let's go through the salient points again.  I begin with the claim anyone has the "right" to own an AR-15 or any other military-style assault weapon.

In 2008, then Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, delivered a dual opinion still not absorbed by most gun owners. The court said the District’s ban on handguns in private homes went too far, but that regulation of gun ownership was compatible with the Second Amendment:

Scalia wrote at the time:

"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.”

To get the language straight, and in Scalia's terms, it is useful to replace "assault weapons,”  with  the phrase:  “the kinds of weapons that Justice Antonin Scalia has defined as ‘dangerous and unusual’ and subject to regulation or an outright ban under the Second Amendment.”  And, if these weapons are subject to regulation, then they do not make for a "constitutional right".

As Joe Scarborough put it the morning of Feb. 21, 2018, just after the Parkland massacre:

 "Some say this is embedded in the constitution. It is not!"

Adding:

"Go back and read Heller, 2008, what Scalia and the Supreme Court said. You're right, you can have handguns in your home, and shotguns to protect your family. But the court has allowed states  - like Maryland (2017)  to ban assault style weapons.  They let this and other laws stand   - without challenge - as constitutional "

Scarborough went on to further clarify, which I can't render any more transparent:

"If you want to make the argument that the Supreme Court should protect your rights to have military style weapons, that's legitimate.  But if you say it is your God-given constitutional right to have an AR-15 that is not what the second amendment says. And it's not what Justice Scalia says or the Supreme Court says."

Now let's get to the core of the matter, the wording of the Second Amendment itself:

"A self-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."

If one claims to be an "originalist" - which most of the Right does in terms of constitutional interpretation  -  it ought not take an astrophysics degree to comprehend the amendment.   At the time this was written, muskets were the primary weapon, and no major organized standing army existed such as we have today. Indeed, the Continental Army of Washington, though it prevailed over the British, had massive war debts to pay off. There was no way to keep thousands of men under arms for sustained periods, as well as clothing and feeding them - far less recycling them with newer equipment each year!

It therefore became necessary to authorize the basis for a non-centralized force or "Militia" in order to supplement any governmentally- organized army called up. This "Militia" originated in the countryside, from citizens living across the land in various villages, towns and states. In effect, the 2nd amendment drafters were asserting the necessity for a subsidiary people's army to assist the main one. Citizens then became in effect, necessary to the security of the nation. One could then describe the state militias as "adjunct armies".

Indeed, some interpreters of the amendment believed the original content was even more diluted than I portrayed. They see the "well regulated militia" provision as actually devised as protections from any marauding, "loose cannons". These interpreters insist the framers would never in a million years have envisaged people (individuals) possessing permanent private weapons in their own homes.  And the notion of individuals owning military-style weapons like the AR-15 would have been as foreign to them as Moon rockets.

In  a controversial 1939 case, FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument to the Court:

"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous.  This was barely 79 years ago, so what happened in the interim to debase the amendment to be unrecognizable today?

While the Court's decision prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s as various Right wing extremist groups coalesced to challenge "gun control"  based on spurious private gun ownership  interpretations. By virtue of the infusion of millions of bucks  into state legislative campaigns they successively overturned laws in legislatures - much like the abortion opponents are now doing in many red states.

Chief Justice Warren Burger himself was adamant that  the claim of a right to keep special weapons on one's own was bogus. writing:

"This is one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Alas, as the strength and political power of the NRA metastasized, it was just a matter of time before more and more state legislatures (like in Florida) were bought out and their NRA political slaves passed laws contravening Justice Burger's and the earlier 1939 ruling. This is why the only way things will change is to vote out the NRA political slaves, as David Hogg and the other Parkland school massacre survivors have maintained.

In the meanwhile, this nation can only dream of  having a leader like Jacinda Ardern, who had the courage to act as opposed to letting the bodies pile up from cowardice and offering mere "hope 
and prayers".

See also:

Conservatives and the Right

White Nationalism, Born in the USA, Is Now a Global Terror Threat

David Hogg Is 100 Percent Correct On His Gun Control Stance - Never Mind The Right's Haters

After the Laura Ingraham faceoff with Parkland survivor David Hogg, with the conservo guntards and snowflakes still melting down in screaming fits, it behooves us to try to get it into their thick skulls that Hogg is not against the Second Amendment.   As Hogg and fellow classmate Cameron Kasky made clear last month on HBO's Real Time, neither condemns the Second Amendment or wants it repealed.

It's not the Second Amendment that needs  condemnation or rejection but rather ignorant and juvenile interpretations  of it, i.e. which claim that one is entitled to own an AR-15 or any similar military type assault rifles under that banner. I had previously skewered this balderdash in my citation of the 2008 SC case District of Columbia vs. Heller:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

The majority opinion was written by arch-conservative Justice  Antonin Scalia who - while upholding the right to own arms - adamantly asserted that those weapons "most useful in military service" fall outside the scope of the 2nd amendment. What exactly is there about this ruling the guntards don't get - or are they plain and simple "gun-tarded"? Do they need to be spoon fed and walked through it paragraph by paragraph, or sentence by sentence? 

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal ("Ban On Military  -Style Rifles Upheld", April 7-8, p. A3) notes that earlier SC ruling was once again upheld in a Massachusetts case whereby:

"A federal judge ruled that the Constitution offers no protection for the military style rifles used in recent mass shootings - dismissing a legal challenge by gun owners and dealers in the state."

Adding:

"Judge William G. Young's ruling followed the reasoning of an opinion last year by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a Maryland law similar to Massachusetts."

The piece also noted that Judge Young  cited the 2008 Heller case that assault style weapons fall outside the province and protection of the Second Amendment. As he wrote in the ruling:

"The AR-15 and its analogs - black, semi-automatic rifles with pistol grips and other military features - are simply not weapons within the individual constitutional right to bear arms."

The same legal cases are now also being invoked  (according to a Denver Post report two days ago) to ban all AR-15s and other assault type rifles in Boulder, Colorado-  along with bump stocks and high capacity magazines.

Seems to me if the guntards want to whine, piss and moan about gun control "infringement" on their rights, they'd do better to condemn Scalia's 2008 ruling on the unconstitutionality of  a "right" to own AR-15s in  the Heller case.   As long time conservative pundit Joe Scarborough put it two months ago, soon after the Parkland shooting:

"If you want to make the argument that the Supreme Court should protect your rights to have military style weapons, that's legitimate.  But if you say it is your God-given constitutional right to have an AR-15 that is not what the second amendment says. And it's not what Justice Scalia says or the Supreme Court says."

But the guntards ignore all reason, and all legal basis for limiting military grade weapons, preferring to scream like banshees on their blogs and spew hate at Hogg. who is merely the messenger. All Hogg is really demanding is that the same standards Antonin Scalia already upheld in D.C. vs. Heller, be implemented nationwide.

The biggest howler in all the protracted hyper reactions of the Right, is the absurd belief that Hogg  is being fed prompts and scripts by Left groups, George Soros, or Media Matters.  Again, as I noted before, because these knuckle draggers can't conceive themselves speaking articulately and knowledgeably at the age of 17, they refuse to accept David Hogg can do it. Hence, he must be part of a halfwit "conspiracy"  - as confected by the dunces -  like Steve Duncie- ...errr Doocy...on 'Fox and Friends'. (Doocy is the resident genius on "Fox and Friends" who once tried to roast marshmallows using just his bare hands and a plastic spoon, e.g.
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2010/11/19/fox-amp-friends-attempt-to-roast-marshmallows-w/173553

He also once averred that the Swedes are "pure" because they only marry other Swedes, not "other species".)

All this is part of the  disproportionate vitriol directed at Hogg, much of it driven by pure envy given Hogg's motley crew of haters wish they had  half  the brains he has. The Right's snowflakes' hate is also spurred by the kid's resolve, given  he has not been deterred by their attacks. He continues to speak and write in whatever venue allowed for the limits on military style weapons with pistol grips and high capacity magazines..

Among the Right's vitriolic haters is Virginia Lamp, aka Ginni Thomas, the wife of the dumbest, most unqualified candidate ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court (as the classic token black). Lamp wrote  on Monday - in one of the most lame brained posts ever - accompanied by images of Holocaust survivor shoes:

"To all the kids that walked out of school to protest guns. These are the shoes of Jews that gave up their firearms to Hitler. They were led into gas chambers, murdered and buried in mass graves. Pick up a history book and you’ll realize what happens when u give up freedoms and why we have them," 

Well, at least we can see she's a good I.Q. match for hubby, Clarence! She doesn't even know that Jews were allowed to keep their guns until  November 11, 1938, when the German Minister of the Interior issued the Regulations Against Jews Possession of Weapons.    Assuming she can count  using the fingers on one hand this was five years after Hitler was appointed to the Chancellory by Paul von Hindenburg.  Why didn't the Jews rise up in those intervening years? Huh? Speak up, Lamp and fellow cretins!

Again, NO one has any intent to  "take guns away" or make anyone "give up freedoms", as the hysterical Hogg haters  (and Parkland activist haters) like Lamp  insist. They can still stock all the other weapons they want:  shotguns, pistols,  bolt action rifles, you name it - just not ARs or their cousins (like the Bushmaster .223).  Maybe, these complainers and Hogg attackers need to go back to school and study some of the legal aspects related to the Heller case. They'd sure as hell make much more constructive  use of their free time than spamming juvenile Hogg -Hitler images!

Kudos to Hogg for taking on almost single handedly the entire vile NRA-linked  network of fools, lobbyists, hacks and yahoos who'd rather spend time creating fake images of Hogg with Hitler than learning more on specific legal cases limiting the ownership of assault- style weapons. 

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jill-richardson/78566/this-popular-pro-gun-argument-doesn-t-make-any-sense

Excerpt:

"As our nation debates gun rights vs. gun control, there’s a stupid argument that keeps resurfacing on the anti-gun control side. I’m not anti-gun, but I am anti-stupidity, so this is bugging me.

It’s the idea that because criminals, by their very nature, do not follow laws, we should not pass any laws limiting gun rights.

The thought goes that if we, say, require universal background checks, good, law-abiding people will follow that law, but criminals will still buy illegal guns. Therefore, why bother with the background checks?

This is ridiculous for several reasons.

First, that’s not how laws work. We don’t say, “Well, we could ban rape, but rapists would still do it anyway. I guess rape should be legal.”

Second, it could deter some people. There are some people who believe in following laws, or at least don’t want to get punished for breaking them. Even if the illegal gun buyers are unethical, many gun sellers will refuse to violate a law.

Third, not all criminals plan their crimes in advance. Some gun violence is done in a fit of passion.

Yes, the person premeditating murder might go get a gun in advance.

But let’s say it’s someone who would not be able to get a gun legally if there were universal background checks. Maybe they’re a convicted felon, or they have a mental illness that predisposes them to violence, or they’re a domestic abuser.

If this person flies into a murderous rage, it’s harder to get a gun quickly, because nobody can legally sell them one."

Stoneman Douglas Students Make Big Impression On HBO's Real Time

David Hogg, left, and Cameron Kasky, take Bill Maher's questions on 'Real Time' Friday night.

"The students of Parkland are like veterans coming home from the bloody front of the N.R.A.’s de facto war on children. They’ve seen their friends, teachers and coaches gunned down in the halls. To them, powerful Washington lobbyists and United States senators suddenly look like what they are: cheesy TV spokesmodels for murder weapons. It has been inspiring and thrilling to watch furious, cleareyed teenagers shame and vilify gutless politicians and soul-dead lobbyists for their complicity in the murders of their friends. Last week Wayne LaPierre was reduced to gibbering like Gen. Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” about a “socialist” takeover and “hardening” our schools. You could see the whites all around his irises. That look is fear."  - Tim Kreider in NY Times Op-Ed (March 2)

Bill Maher's Real Time, Friday night, was the setting for the appearance of two Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, David Hogg and Cameron Kasky. Even as the Right's trolls continued to cast aspersions on them as  "crisis actors" (too dumb to actually check the school's rolls), the pair again displayed their media savvy in the opening interview with host Bill Maher.

Maher, after the first few responses, was so impressed that he told Hogg and classmate Cameron Kasky:

“I honestly thought kids were a lot stupider.  You’ve really given me faith that the kids today are actually very bright, way brighter than we were.”

Oh yeah, and way brighter than the Right's naysayers will ever be, because that lot can't fancy anyone brighter than themselves at that age.   Kasky himself also lambasted critics who dismiss the students because of their youth.

“We’ve seen our friends text their parents goodbye. We are the experts.”

Regarding the conspiracy slander claiming the Parkland students are actors, well true, but not in the way the wingnuts believe.  In other words some of the students are part of the school's Drama Club and enjoy putting on plays. As Kasky told Maher:

“I’m in Spring Awakening at Parkland Performing Arts Center. Great show.”

And  Maher's praise  was before Hogg revealed that he hung up on the White House last week, angered that Trump refused to attend CNN’s town hall meeting with survivors of the February 14 mass shooting that left 17 students dead at their high school.


Said Hogg of his White House phone call (they called him, as he emphasized to Maher):

“I ended on this message: 'We don’t need to listen to President Trump, Present Trump needs to listen to the screams of the children and screams of this nation.”

Wow! You have to give this kid credit for cojones as well as composure and media savvy (though the Right wingers never will, preferring to slam these kids for "not respecting their elders". )

Maher then told the students about their impact on the nation’s gun reform debate, averring:

“We have never seen change like this,”

The Parkland FL students – co-founders of the student advocacy group Never Again MSD – are among the organizers of nationwide marches and the March for Our Lives rally outside the White House on March 24. What many may not know is that the event has drawn considerable support from Hollywood, with George and Amal Clooney, Eli Broad, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw and Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg each pledging donations of at least $500,000.

Asked by Maher about the goal of the rally, Kasky said:

 “We want Americans to stop being afraid of demanding our politicians to take action. They work for us, we don’t work for them and the march is us coming out and saying to our employees ‘You guys suck at your job.’ “


Interestingly,  neither Hogg nor Kasky would condemn the Second Amendment, even at Maher’s urging- but then they shouldn't have had to. It's not the Second Amendment that needs  condemnation but rather juvenile, ignorant interpretations  of it, i.e. which claim that one is entitled to own an AR-15 or any similar military type assault rifles under that banner. I had previously taken this balderdash down in my citation of the case District of Columbia vs. Heller, where Antonin Scalia delivered the majority opinion, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/02/sorry-you-have-no-constitutional-right.html

Reinforcing this limited 2nd amendment take was a recent NY Post essay by a former army infantryman, Ralph Peters, who wrote:

"I believe on moral, practical and constitutional grounds that no private citizen should own an automatic weapon or semiautomatic weapon that can be easily modified for automatic effects. These are military weapons. Their purpose is to kill human beings. They're not used for hunting unless you want to destroy the animal's meat. They're also lousy for target shooting. But they're excellent tools for mass murder. No one has the right to a personal arsenal of weapons designed for mass murder."

This view was, of course, that invoked by Antonin Scalia who wrote the majority opinion in the Heller case. It was also cited by WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan in her own piece (Mar. 3-4, p. A13) where she asserted:

"We have an estimated 300 million guns in America. An estimated 50 million of our households keep them. For now that is enough, even for whatever terrible day comes. Stop selling military weapons in America.. Just stop.  Revisit the issne in five years. See what happens."

What she is proposing is a moratorium- style experiment in national gun policy. In other words, cease all purchases of such weapons for a time and see what the effects are.  But first make sure the  N.R.A.-backed Dickey Amendment, -  which was passed in 1996 - is neutralized so the CDC can investigate gun death stats objectively  over the 5 years.  Then, if there is a true statistically significant reduction in killings from military style weapons, we can ban them..

What Noonan got wrong was her expectation Dumpster Donnie was a serious actor when he met with a bipartisan group about gun control and promised things would change, e.g.

"He treated the mass shooting like a crisis, not a tragedy."

But as we've seen, he went running for a change in diapers after NRA honcho Chris Cox talked him down - or rather - back under the NRA's thumb.  Yeppers, this disgusting drooling turd - who couldn't even stand up to an NRA blood money purveyor and who had earlier bragged he'd have faced the AR-15 shooter at Stoneman Douglas  "even without a weapon".  In a pig's eye.,  especially if he couldn't even handle an unarmed NRA flack
.
But even Noonan half expected Doturd would change his stance when she wrote:

"His presentation were undisciplined, scatty....And as always the question is whether he meant any of it. His opinions rest on impulses. He likes to say words. You never know which you can believe."

Actually, you can pretty well assume 100 percent of what he says is wrong, outright lies or bonkers and be secure.  To fix ideas, if he said a North Korean attack was coming tomorrow I wouldn't believe it. Not one word! As   NY Times writer Charles Blow ('The Chaos President', March 3) put it:

"Believing anything Trump says is a recipe for a headache and heartache."

Adding  this explanation of why all his "ideas"   come a cropper:

"I believe that this chaos is the perpetual result of the absolute incompetence and idiocy of a preening philistine who has faked his way through life pretending that he knows more than he does and is tougher than he is.....He wants so desperately to be right that he says whatever his audience — whether that be a small group or a filled arena, whether that be members of Congress or fans at a rally — want to hear and will respond to..  This is how you can get wildly vacillating positions and bold, empty promises in bipartisan meetings with the man — whether those meetings are about addressing DACA and immigration or about addressing gun control after the school shooting in Florida.."

And all this occurs as this degenerate stirs up even more chaos with his twitter threats of trade war and steel tariffs. Now aimed at Canada and Mexico, as if he is pointing a gun to those nations' heads re: a new NAFTA deal.  Be advised, our northern and southern neighbors, we have a psychotic at the helm - now clearly trying to deflect attention as the Mueller noose tightens around his orange neck.

As for the Parkland students, their main job right now is to: 1) understand they are going to have to play the "long game" in changing gun laws in this regressive nation, and 2) learn much more on the limits of second amendment rights especially as they pertain to military style rifles (whether one uses the controversial term "assault" or not).  They can start with the 2008 Supreme Court case of District of Columbia vs. Heller in which Justice Antonin Scalia clearly set the limits on rights to own AR-15 and similar weapons.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/miles-mogulescu/77940/gun-control-legislation-is-constitutional

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/henry-giroux/78018/killing-children-in-the-age-of-disposability-the-parkland-shooting-was-about-more-than-gun-violence

Jon Caldara Tries To Use Skewed "Gun Math" To Defend AR-15s And Other Semi-Automatics

Jon Caldara is at it again, in his recent (Nov. 12) Denver Post op-ed ('The Assault Weapon Attack On Math') in which he attempts to diminish the impact of semi-automatic weapons based on the much more prolific stats of killings by other means.

He first cites the 374 "killed by rifle" last year -but points out it is only a small fraction of the 11,004 total killed by "firearms". In other words, 10, 630 were killed by handgun - not rifle So his argument is the media attention to semi-automatic weapons is skewed. He then goes on with:

"Shouldn’t there be over four times the media coverage on the 1,604 people killed with knives last year? Some 472 were killed with blunt instruments like clubs and hammers, some of which had polymer, not wood, handles. And nearly twice as many people were killed with hands, fists and feet?"

Err no, because you are mixing chalk and cheese. Human homicides - given the variety of circumstances (and potential weapons available)-  will always show a diversity of usage, of instrument. But that diversity of assorted killing instruments does not refute the fact that semi-automatic (and  automatic) rifles are an anomaly in terms of the Second Amendment.  By that I mean the authors could no more have imagined such weapons than they could imagine Space Shuttles.

The informal fallacy employed by Caldara is the ignoratio elenchi fallacy also known as irrelevant conclusion. This is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may or may not be logically valid, but fails nonetheless to address the issue in question. The issue in question here before us is whether semi-automatic or automatic rifles are truly allowed under the provisions of the 2nd amendment as originally interpreted.  More on this later.

Even on its own logical terms, Caldara's arguments can be challenged, say in terms of  "the proportion of the mode of killing dictates media and legal attention."  Hence, if the proportion of kills by an assault rifle is low - say compared to other modes of killing - it should receive less attention (including legal) and the others more. Never mind more people can be killed at one time, as we beheld in Vegas.  But if this argument were solid, then - in the arena of air accidents- the FAA would do little or nothing in the way of investigation after plane crashes in which 50 - 60 were killed (say matching the numbers mowed down in the Orlando and Las Vegas mass shootings.)  But the fact is they take such plane crashes very seriously and go over everything - including recovering black boxes. This despite the fact that in the tragic sphere of accidental deaths many more people (37,000) are killed in auto crashes each year., or lightning strikes - as Caldara references.

The takeaway is that single events in which many dozens of people are killed bespeak such anomaly that they cannot be ignored or minimized. This is even more crucial when human motivation is behind the mass killing, i.e. in the case of use of semi-automatic or automatic rifles -  weapons putatively allowed under the 2nd amendment. This is exactly why Australia, after its April 1996  Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre, bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms. This was in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising Aussie taxes.  In other words,  they took this mass shooting deadly seriously. They didn't diminish its import by false analogy or conflating with other types of killing, e.g. by knives, fists, etc.

Recall that  FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument to the Supreme Court thusly:

"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous in agreeing with that take..

While this sane interpretation prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s. Then various Right wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control based on spurious "private gun ownership" interpretations, and successively overturned laws in state legislatures.  This despite the fact then Justice Warren Burger had clearly stated this later interpretation was "one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Well, it's good Justice Burger didn't live to see the arrival of semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks and the claim that the 2nd amendment provides for the ownership of those too! A cockeyed notion that has been pumped by the NRA ever since, more recently with the batshit crazy ad that "your man card is reissued". If you need an AR- 15 to be a man, then decidedly you've a long way to go to reach that phase.

Caldara also tries to muddy the waters regarding the use of semi-automatics vs. automatics  as when he writes:

"There’s no better example of the media’s ability to emotionally bait an issue out of all mathematical proportion than that of “assault rifles". Lett’s clarify again what most reporters don’t, likely since it runs counter to their anti-gun bias. Very, very few people own assault rifles. They are nearly impossible to get due to the limited supply and regulatory burden to get one. An assault weapon is capable of firing several rounds of ammunition with one pull of the trigger. What is falsely reported as an assault rifle is just an average semi-automatic rifle, where only one round is fired with every trigger pull. "

This bit of sophistry ignores a number of hard facts, and hence makes it easy for those not rifle savvy to gloss over his claims. For reference let me quote part of a WSJ article dealing with the AR-15 (Caldara's semi-automatic rifle) published on 12/9/15. It noted:

"The AR-15 re-cocks itself immediately after firing. The only thing keeping the gun from firing again on its own is a sear, a piece inserted in the gun that stops the cycle from continuing. By replacing the sear and a few other key components, an AR-15 can be made fully automatic."

Note then that although Caldara glosses over it, the AR-15 is not any old  single shot rifle, certainly not like the bolt action rifle I used to own and fire when I lived in New Orleans. In other words, it took time - measured in seconds - to work the bolt action to fire again, it did not "immediately re-cock itself after firing"  There IS a qualitative difference. My argument is that if any Founders could be brought back to inspect either type of rifle - and how it works - they'd more surely side with my old bolt action as the one allowed under their  2nd amendment, but not the AR-15.

In Murdock, FL, ca. May, 1986, with an AR-15. 

Once more I am not an anti-gun nut. I have owned and used rifles and fired off shotguns as well in target practice.  (Including in 1968 in New Orleans when testing the "jet effect" nonsense peddled by JFK conspiracy deniers). However, I've never owned anything semi-automatic, or with multi-capacity clips.  This is all by way of full disclosure.  My sticking point here is how the Founders themselves would have interpreted semi-automatics like the AR 15 under the 2nd amendment.

Unlike the whacko contingent of gun owners, I also don't believe the 2nd amendment gives people the "right" to own rocket propelled launchers, bazookas, .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns, or military assault type weapons - capable of mass slaughter. The Second Amendment authors - inhabiting a world where single load muskets were the rule - would have been flabbergasted to see the extent to which their amendment had been misconstrued today, such as by the NRA and their denizens.

As for Caldara's nitpicking about the difference between semi-automatics and automatics, let's just say it is tweedledum vs. tweedledee. As Stephen Paddock showed, one only needs to include a LEGAL bump stock to effectively transform a semi-automatic into a functional automatic. One doesn't  need to be a genius or legal guru to understand the enhanced efficiency and lethality when a bump stock is affixed to a normal semi-automatic.

The argument that the new high powered rifles - such as AR-15s, and Bushmaster .223s are entitled to be owned as a "right" is just plain bollocks. No, you can own a true single shot 30.06  bolt action as a right, because it's a legit rifle with which to go out hunting. You can own a .22  bolt action as a right, and it does a nice job of killing small game especially if you use hollow points.  But you don't need semi-automatic weapons, or AK 47s

Even  though I don't believe the 2nd justifies such powerful weapons, I do acknowledge our laws have been distorted over decades and realize that  - once the horse has escaped the barn- it is difficult if not impossible to get it back in. Thus, I am not for banning such guns, but properly regulating them, using a national registry system such as adopted in Australia and similar to what we already have for auto vehicle ownership. Thus you receive your gun owner ID with photo, and registration number (with serial nos., of all weapons) entered in a national (or state) database and computer -connected to the Homeland Security fusion centers across the country.

Once any mass shooting then occurs, the fusion centers will instantly be able to pick up on the serial number(s) of the weapon(s)  used, the perp and his background. No fuck ups as with the military not reporting certified psychos to the FBI for the current national database.  At that point of infraction in the new system,  the perp is facing justice - if not meted out at the scene - and his gun license permanently revoked.  I would also assert licenses need to be revoked for reckless actions, such as target practicing on trees  (near camp sites) as occurred near Pike National Forest several years ago.

That father, shot in the head, would still be alive today with his family had stringent registration requirements been in effect. Those would have deterred the gun crazy lunatics from firing their Bushmasters in a forest- near camping grounds.


See also: 'What Jon Caldara Gets Wrong About Assault Weapons':

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/17/what-jon-caldara-gets-wrong-about-assault-weapons/