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Comment by hypeatei | Hacker News Reader

Machine guns are banned at the federal level, though, and it's been consistently upheld by the courts. I'm not sure I follow the argument anyway; the US constitution consists of negative rights (e.g. freedom to do something) rather than positive rights (e.g. entitlements)

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> Machine guns are banned at the federal level, though…

Semiautomatics, if you prefer. (And plenty of Second Amendment purists feel that limit is unconstitutional, and SCOTUS may well soon agree. As they just did with silencers - https://www.npr.org/2026/08/17/nx-s1-5935562/firearms-law-la...)

> I'm not sure I follow the argument anyway; the US constitution consists of negative rights (e.g. freedom to do something) rather than positive rights (e.g. entitlements)

That's what the Ninth Amendment is for.

The limit on machine guns is unconstitutional and most of the argument against ignore the ninth amendment (e.g founding fathers couldn’t imagine a weapon past the musket, therefor any weapon made after 1776 is illegal)

I doubt the ninth amendment applies to entitlements, as these are fundamentally different from liberties

> The limit on machine guns is unconstitutional

If so, the argument upthread about "well cholera" fails for similar reasons.

> I doubt the ninth amendment applies to entitlements, as these are fundamentally different from liberties

The Ninth Amendment doesn't use either term. Just rights. (Which I am, *ahem*, entitled to.)

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