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Comment by digi59404 | Hacker News Reader

The sentence is only ambiguously defined if you look at the sentence by itself. Thankfully courts don’t do that and shouldn’t. When an interpretation is hotly contested you need secondary supporting documents to interpret it properly.

Of which we have numerous writings and documents to show what that sentence means. We have documents which break down what the Founders at the time meant by militia and what they thought about ownership.

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Yep, turns out "shall not be infringed" meant exactly what it says. I keep trying to find where they say that we only need single shot hunting rifles, or that any scary-looking guns should be banned. But I haven't been able to turn anything up.

well considering those types of weapons didn't exist and weren't even a possibility for another like 70 years, your argument is pointless and irrelevant. The landscape the founding fathers were in was so different it's stupid to take everything they said literally.

I consider nuclear weapons to be arms, I should be able to have my own nuclear weapon for hunting. The second amendment makes no mention of it, thus I should get one.

> well considering those types of weapons didn't exist and weren't even a possibility for another like 70 years

At the time the Second Amendment was ratified, private individuals could, and did, own field artillery pieces and fully-armed and -crewed ships of war.

When it comes to inducing a mass-casualty event, a 32-pounder full of grapeshot is going to beat the hell out of an AR-15.

Edit: an AR-15 bullet masses somewhere around 4 grams, depending, so a 32-pounder would fire roughly the equivalent of 3,500 AR-15 rounds in one shot.

>I should be able to have my own nuclear weapon for hunting

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting.

> The second amendment makes no mention of it, thus I should get one.

I strongly suspect than anyone with the financial resources, technical infrastructure, and desire to own a nuclear weapon already has one, laws or no laws.

This completely misses the point at what the issue is. Try to commit any act of mass murder with it and you’ll fail. It’s unreliable, and you won’t be a let to reload. An semi automatic weapon is going to be far more lethal. Also the odds of someone with the know how of how to use one and committing to it is extremely low.

The argument always comes up, well someone could commit an act of mass murder with xyz do limiting firearms won’t do anything. And yet, it absolutely will. Firearms are the path of least resistance by a long shot for the goal. So limit that path and it’s much less likely people will do it with anything else.

Just admit you like your guns more than you want lower murder rates

During the War of 1812, American civilian mariners used large cannons to commit mass murder against British sailors. It was pretty common at the time.

Depending on what you are considering the defining features of an AR-15 type there was for example a 20 round repeating airgun that was around during the period [0]. Lewis and Clark are believed to have used one.

Although using a fixed magazine, I don't think it would have been too much of a stretch to imagine a detachable one - especially as the air reservoir was.

Energy-wise it's about 10% of a standard 5.56x45mm round, but still apparently quiet effective.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girardoni_air_rifle

There was disagreement at the time of writing between the founding fathers, which was a factor in ending up with its somewhat quirky phrasing[0]. Most of this disagreement does seem to be about State vs Federal power rather than the topics in contemporary discussions about it.

The Supreme Court does seem to have settled upon it being an individual rights[1] issue. Considering all the other rights in the bill of rights are individual, there does seem to be some consistency to that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp0-g-cjxmM

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...

>Considering all the other rights in the bill of rights are individual, there does seem to be some consistency to that.

But it could be argued that we would be a safer country if all of the rights in the bill of rights were collective rather than individual.

Safety was never the primary goal.

I would be interested in hearing that argument. On the surface it appears to be an argument of creating special privileged groups who are the only ones who have freedom of speech or the ability to avoid having troops billeted in their dwellings. Maybe that would lead to more safety?

That makes me think of the society from Heinlein's Starship Troopers where you had to earn citizenship through civic duty. He certainly portrayed the non-citizens having a safe existence (during peacetime).

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