Comment by hoarseAAPL | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoarseAAPL | Hacker News Reader

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SCOTUS has ruled before that 2A does not afford freedom to own any kind of weapon. There are limits on explosives for example.

They tend to lean on whether it is reasonable that the Founders might have had access to such a weapon with their technology. Machine gun is just a rifle with automatic rechamber. Not an unreasonable upgrade for 1700s technology. Maybe, I dunno; political people don't have to actually care about the details.

There are limits. And if cases like this made it there they might rule that no Founder was smelting the materials. That they would have had to collaborate, in some "market dictates options" ruling to limit hermits going in a rampage. Also everyone a weapons assembly line in their home is anti-corporate capitalism.

"George Washington understood the value of civic life and sound economics! He would not have tolerated such insular selfishness! He did not make his own weapons! He engaged in trade!"

Not saying it's realistic but politics is not never controlled by people living in reality. Making shit up seems as reasonable as anything.

>SCOTUS has ruled before that 2A does not afford freedom to own any kind of weapon. There are limits on explosives for example.

This is largely machine guns and explosives. Pistols, rifles, etc are ordinary weapons in common use*

*NYC authorities may not agree

https://ammo.com/research/list-of-banned-guns-and-ammo-by-st...

Sawed off shotguns seems arbitrary and that was ultimately my (pre-coffee) point; government is fine with coming up with an arbitrary restriction when they want.

They could outlaw the means of production. Gen pop is not allowed to own that.

There is, in fact, a good question wrt how much of NFA is actually constitutional. A funny thing about this is that ATF has dropped cases on several occasions where the defendant tried this angle, presumably because they didn't want something contrary to their current regulations as written to be overturned in court, and because they had plenty of other charges to throw at those guys anyway.

Given that it was modeled on gun control legislation from pre-WWII Germany, it's _not_ something which they want looked at too closely.

This absurd belief that "If the jews had guns they wouldn't have been genocided" is just that: Absurd and utterly unsupported by history.

Not only did jews have guns, but Polish jews had an entire military and state and that did not protect them.

Because guns do not protect you, other people willing to die for you protect you.

The only weapon class I know of that's outright illegal to own is anti-aircraft missiles. That carries life imprisonment just for possession, with no violent intent. Because the government never wants to give up its air supremacy. This is why whenever you hear of feds concocting an international weapons conspiracy they always have to add anti-air bazookas to the charges because it's the only thing that actually can unequivocally be proven as illegal to own[0].

Basically everything else can be owned with an NFA tax stamp. Nuclear weapons my understanding is the difficulty is more with laws on handling the material than specifically owning one as a weapon, so I'm unsure those are even outright illegal either.

Explosives are actually one of the ones with looser restrictions. Even felons can own and re-instate their explosives rights, because bafflingly when congress de-funded the firearms rights restoration process for felons they forgot to do the one for explosives. Felons can also own and manufacture explosive black powder without scrutiny or paperwork, even ones intended to go in a black powder gun.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68365597

Here the law https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332g it says "shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment not less than 25 years or to imprisonment for life." Even conspiring to acquire them is as illegal as possession!

Fully automatic assault rifles, anti-aircraft guns (that still operate), anti-aircraft missiles (that still operate), land mines over a certain size, or any Comp B. Those are on the naughty list.

There’s a whole community of folks building semi-automatic auto-return triggers that are “technically” semi automatic, but with just a gentle squeeze, fire off another. If you maintain that grip, the return mechanism engages, returning the trigger to firing position, where your pressure causes it to fire again… it’s called a Forced Reset Trigger.

Sawed off shotguns, sawed off barrels in general.

My point overall was government is fine with arbitrary exceptions that would get Stan's dad going all "Oh I'm sorry, I thought this was America."

When and where can I buy a cannon with grapeshot? They had that during the revolutionary war, and the founding fathers probably owned at least one, so I want to be able to yell "Tally Ho!" too.

Here, among other vendors:

https://southbendreplicas.com/

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