Why do pro-Gunists still defend guns despite all the mass shootings and school shootings?

@SusanInFlorida Bingo!

@SusanInFlorida Legal approach?

We had two centuries where no one in their right minds thought that there was an individual right to bear arms that superseded every other provision in the Consitution and gave individuals a right to take up arms against not only each other, but a "lawfully" elected government .


Granted, shit's changed, now that might makes right, and and personal liberty even to kill, Trumps the common good, but can you really blame generations of folks expecting to deal with a basically moral populace?

Yeah, I get it. They could have said the Second Amendment didn't Trump the entire rest of the Constitution and even the f-ing Ten Commandments, and they didn't.

Originalism prevails, I guess.

@MistyCee not sure which "two centuries" you have in mind. do they include:

- the wild west
- bootleg era
- the civil war

@SusanInFlorida You should read the majority opinion in the Heller v. DC case by Justice Scalia, where he discusses limitations on the individual right to gun ownership. That is the current legal approach at the moment, subject to future clarification or reversal.

@windinhishair yeah, i don't typically read SCOTUS decisions on any topic when i get home from work. why are you dodging the obvious resolution of the amendment process? the primates fighting over Roe are making the same mistake. instead of reading conflicting supreme court decision minutiae, maybe people should be better acquainted with the constitution? when an immigrant is applying for citizenship, they aren't asked about supreme court split decisions. they ask straightforward stuff about the constitution, bill of rights, etc.

@SusanInFlorida No amendment is needed. SCOTUS clearly recognizes that gun ownership has limitations and these may be employed in certain situations. If you want to understand what the law is, you should read it instead of going off half-cocked about the constitution, which SCOTUS has the job of interpreting on the basis of cases brought before the Court. The Heller v. DC case [b]IS [/b]the constitution as interpreted by the Court that existed at the time of the decision. Congress can create new legislation that limits gun ownership and could come before SCOTUS in the future. Future decisions could differ from that made in the Heller case and revert to the original interpretation of the Second Amendment. As we know from the Dobbs decision, SCOTUS can reverse previous rulings and change existing legal frameworks.

@windinhishair according to your theory, no constitutional amendment would ever be needed. it would be acceptable to have past scotus decisions constantly reversed every time the majority of the court slipped one justice to the left or right. what a hilarious world you imagine.

@SusanInFlorida The job of SCOTUS is literally to interpret the Constitution. Their rulings have the effect of law. The Constitution can be amended, but amendments are also subject to SCOTUS interpretation. The Court has reversed their rulings on a number of major topics in the past, including school segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and its reversal in the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision. I don't find that hilarious. It is how things work. Reversals are fortunately not very common, and do not follow the pattern you suggest would be hilarious.

@SusanInFlorida For your education, here are several portions of Scalia's majority opinion on the Heller case:

[quote]Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited," Scalia wrote as he laid out certain exceptions. History demonstrates, Scalia said, "the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.[/quote]

[quote]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.[/quote]

This reflects the current state of the law on gun ownership. Clearly, additional laws on sale of arms (such as an assault weapons ban) are legal, as are other limitations.

@SusanInFlorida yup, to all of those.