Once again, a person with access to high-powered weapons has killed a large number of people, this time in Las Vegas. What struck me was that this person fired from the 32nd floor of a hotel at a crowd on a plaza below who were attending a country music festival. The fact that there seemed to be only one shooter and yet over fifty people died and scores more were injured despite the shooter being about 400 feet away from them suggests a highly dense crowd and powerful, rapid-fire weaponry.
Law enforcement officials have yet to confirm what kind of firearms Stephen Paddock used to shoot from his Mandalay Bay hotel room into a crowd of people at a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing at least 58 people, though early reports suggest he had as many as 10 guns, including some rifles.
The rapid pace of the gunfire suggested that the shooter was using either a fully automatic weapon, tightly restricted under US law, or that he had attached a device to a semi-automatic gun to make it fire more continuously, said Massad Ayoob, a firearms expert, instructor and author.
“It’s faster than almost any human being is going to be able to pull a trigger on a semi-automatic,” Ayoob said.
…For the Las Vegas shooter, though, the accuracy of these devices would not have mattered, since he was “hosing a two-acre area with 30,000 targets,” nearly every shot he fired would have hit someone.
The shooter is reported to be dead, apparently after shooting himself. Police found at least 10 guns in his hotel room.
Now there will be the usual post-mortems. Gun control opponents will say that this is not the time to talk about gun control (it never is) and will instead send their ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the victims and their families, the only thing they seem to be capable of doing, despite the fact that it achieves absolutely nothing in terms of preventing any future actions.
I have long given up trying to understand the mentality of the people who commit such crimes.
I fear that giving up on understanding this mindset is condemning it to persist. The mindset is the crucial thing, it seems to me. Yes, gun control laws are very important. They’ve made a huge difference in places like Hawaii and Australia. But stopping people from getting the idea into their heads that murdering dozens of others makes your suicide all the more meaningful would probably work better. Some other countries, like Switzerland, have very lax gun control laws too, and yet don’t see anything like these levels of mass murder. When you’re talking about things like accidental firearm deaths and one-off shootings in the heat of the moment, gun control laws are the key issue, but for mass murder sprees like this there is a cultural issue too.
I would not want to make authoritative pronouncements on the subject, untrained as I am in psychology, but I would be surprised it America’s culture of individualism, competition and one-upmanship doesn’t play a role. When people from most countries want to commit suicide they just kill themselves -- possibly a spouse or their family too. They don’t think that murdering others before killing themselves will somehow tip the scale and turn them from a failure into a success. But American films, TV shows, politicians and the military glorify killing others, and lionise those who get their revenge on their enemies. This surely can’t be unconnected?
To cartomancer
I’m sympathetic to your arguments. One nit: I’m in favor of stronger gun control of certain kinds. Switzerland, what little I know of it, is a great example. There is mandatory militia training for every citizen. I would love if some version of that was done here. Specifically, I imagine mandatory militia training, including gun safety training, and training the ethics and legality of use of firearms for self defense and defense of others, plus a default opt-out for militia training, but make the militia training a requirement for obtaining a gun owner’s license, which is sort-of like a driver’s license.
PS: This is totally constitutional based on American history and practice, i.e. the second federal militia act of 1792.
@1 cartomancer:
Gun ownership rates might be relatively high in countries like Switzerland or Austria (by European standards), but firearm regulations are far from lax. *
And of course it’s not as much of a fetish as in the US, people who own guns are considered a little weird and maybe dangerous.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Switzerland
@EnlightmentLiberal:
Oh, how I so want to agree with your postscript.
Unfortunately, what’s actually true is
I agree that it should be easy to find this constitutional, but given the recent decision declaring the opening of the 2nd amendment to be an impotent prefatory clause that merely announces a purpose, I doubt that lower-courts would be willing to rule so, and if it makes it as far as a Circuit Court of Appeals, well, the 9th and a couple others might uphold it, but by that time it will be considered seriously enough in question that I can’t see SCOTUS denying cert. Once SCOTUS gets hold of it, I don’t think that you and I would prevail. Yes, Scalia wrote Heller and yes, Scalia is gone, but Gorsuch is probably worse on this issue and Kennedy voted with Scalia.
Something like this won’t get a friendly hearing in SCOTUS for a good, long time. Even those on the court who disagree with Heller are likely to give at least a small bit of deference to the decision for at least a few more years. No one on the court wants 5-4 decisions revisited every time a seat is vacated.
Anyway, I’m with you and opposed to Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito. I’m just pessimistic about the likelihood such an act would be upheld in the current judicial context.
To be clear: when I say I’m with you, I mean I’m with you on what the answer to the constitutional question *ought* to be.
As far as gun laws, I’d be even more restrictive. I’d get rid of all handguns under individual private ownership. The constitution clearly allows the government to pick and choose which types of armaments are too dangerous for civilian hands and which are not. Bans of full-auto weapons have been upheld repeatedly. There is no reason in principle that the courts would be compelled to reject a ban on handguns that allows shotguns for home defense and single-shot rifles for hunting.
I might be convinced to allow a certain amount of non-individual private ownership of pistols/handguns even where not strictly required for safety (a gun club, say, where the guns must be kept in a gun safe on the premises except when the guns are checked out to a club member who is using that pistol at the club’s indoor target shooting range). I might also be convinced (it’s not that likely, but I could be convinced) that certain private companies might be allowed to own a certain number of guns usable by employees who are on duty in a safety capacity if there is reason to think that the threat against the company’s employees is large (private security for a controversial CEO who travels to dangerous locations overseas, say, might require such permits just so that the security officers accompanying such a CEO can legally get the guns to and from the CEO’s jet before and after trips). Likewise, if the threat to employees is small, but the threat posed to others by a successful attack is abnormally large (I’d like to shut down all the commercial fission reactors, but so long as they exist the theft of radioactive materials or the sabotage of a reactor can both threaten community members whether or not any employees were injured/killed along the way).
But that’s all fantasy anyway. Heller makes it quite clear that even a jurisdiction that permits other firearms (e.g. shotguns) for home defense cannot ban handguns specifically because the 2nd amendment, as currently understood by SCOTUS, is grounded in a natural right to self-defense that somehow mandates access not merely to gunpowder weapons, but to handguns specifically.
Ah, me.
Ah, the Second Amendment. Written by people with no concept of a building with a 32nd floor, let alone a gun that could shoot hundreds of people, killing dozens, from that 32nd floor hundreds of meters away.
***
“Gun control? What next, knife control?”
I’ve seen this argument before, I saw it again today. Here in Edmonton this weekend, we had a terrorist attack. The perpetrator used a knife to try to kill a police officer and failed. He then got away in a truck and tried to kill four more people. He failed.
A single man with a gun 32 FLOORS UP in a hotel managed to kill 58 people and injuring hundreds more. It’s about time we start replying to “What next, knife control?” with all the contempt it deserves.
They already are saying that. From the Grauniad’s live blog (19:23 mark):
# 6 Tabby Lavalamp
Ah, the Second Amendment.
Never let social, cultural and technological change affect the sacred text.
BTW, did you ever notice that what passes for the printed parts of our constitution never even mentions a prime minister?
“Gun control? What next, knife control?”
I remember a great line in a gun control debate, “It is difficult to do a drive-by with a battle axe”.
One has to wonder what that idiot in Edmonton was doing. His behaviour sounds distinctly unhinged. Come to think of it, attacking a police officer outside a CFL game sounds as much like road-rage as any planned terrorist attack.
Though there has been some suggestion of radicalism my suspicions are that he will be some poor mentally disturbed character as we have seen before. I don’t mean to discount the possible influence of radicalism, just that it may not be all that big factor. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say in court.
Just heard that he received five attempted murder charges but no terrorism for the moment.
No meaningful progress can be made in a country that mainlines the mantra of narrow minded selfishness over your duty towards a safe society for everyone.
To Crip Dyke
In my world of proper jurisprudence, there’s no way in hell a handgun ban would pass constitutional muster.
However, I recognize that we regularly license constitutionally-protected rights, such as the right to drive, and I don’t see gun ownership and possession as any different. Similarly, the second federal militia act of 1792 more or less required every person to individually purchase a gun and ammo, and a laundry list of military equipment, and there was verification once or twice a year that this legal obligation was fulfilled, in the form of mandatory militia training. Assuming that the act was constitutional, I fail to see how it could not be constitutional today to mandate militia training for everyone. Admittingly, the weakest part of my argument is tying gun ownership rights to completion of militia training, but I think I rest well on the practice of the founders generation, the purpose and text of the amendment, and on contemporary licensing for other constitutionally protected rights, i.e. the right to drive a car on a public road.
Is this how SCOTUS would see it? Dunno. That’s a harder question to answer, at least for me, and I defer to your interpretations for the moment.
I don’t think it does. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. Remember that the constitution itself grants the power to congress to grant letters of marque and reprisal, I’m pretty sure that the system that they actually had was privately owned ships of war, cannon and all.
Now, call me radical, but I’m totally ok and in favor of judge-created exceptions, i.e. nuclear, chemical, biological, explosives (with some context), etc. (Explosives is the really hard one, because modern fertilizer is basically explosives, and we really, really need modern fertilizer.)
Further, there were plenty of laws concerning open carry and concealed carry, brandishing, and there were plenty of safety laws regulating the storage of certain weapons inside city limits (for example, the rules governing the safe storage of gunpowder that was cited in the Heller decision text). If we extrapolate to today, it seems quite easy to say no possession or storage of explosives, RPGs, grenades, etc., in city limits. Similarly, bans on gun possession at stadiums and other crowded areas should be an easy “yes, it’s constitutional”.
Having said all of this, if you want to discuss: “Should we repeal or amend the second amendment?”, I am weakly “no”, but it is a relatively weak “no”, and I feel undecided on some days. I am, however, quite adamant that as long as it’s there, we should protect the rights guaranteed by it, in order to protect the other rights guaranteed by the constitution and bill of rights.
…
To Tabby Lavalamp
Nit:
I would rate this as “mostly false”. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puckle_gunhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifleIt was pretty clear what could be done, and advances were happening every day. I have very little doubt that if the founders were here today, basically all of them would say that, at a minimum, whatever is standard issue to individual troops should be permitted for private civilian ownership. That is the purpose and point of the second amendment. That’s also the very clear text. I’m pretty sure that a large majority of the founders and people of the founders generation would be very adamant on this standard: whatever a typical soldier in the military gets to have, I should be able to have it too.
To Crip Dyke
I’m sorry if this is disrespectful, but I just wanted some clarity. I know you’re more knowledgeable than most, but I find that most people are misinformed on this topic. What you wrote earlier makes me suspect that you have a misuderstanding of the text and meaning of the federal second amendment.
The militia clause is not a limiter on the rights clause. The militia clause is mostly just political rhetoric. It has some substance in determining the effect of the law, but only very little.
People who wrote laws at the time, including today, often include political advertisement and arguments for their law in the text of the law itself. Today, it’s common for representatives to include quotes from the historical founders in the laws, even though these quotes have very little to no legal effect. Back then, it was no different. The second amendment was both a proposed law, and a mini-pamphlet that argued for passing the law. Now, this might seem like quite a bold and unsubstantiated claim, because none of the other bill of rights is phrased this way. True. However, many state constitution guarantees of various civil libarties were phrased in exactly this way.
Example:
For a citation on this, and many more, please see:
“The Commonplace Second Amendment”. By Prof. Eugene Volokh, from UCLA Law School. (73 NYU L. Rev. 793 (1998)). Link: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm
A couple facts:
Circa 1800, and for close to a millenia before that, the common usage of the word “militia” was to refer to the whole population, in a military context, as seen as a military fighting force. The difference between “militia” and “army” was “militia” was simply the whole body of citizenry, who had day jobs outside the military, whereas “army” was used to refer to professional soldiers whose day job is military. See: Assize Of Arms of 1181, English Bill Of Rights of 1689, American Militia Acts of 1792, and so forth.
Initially, militia duty was a legal duty put on the people by the monarch -- the duty to partake in milita training, and to respond to militia service calls, and to personally store military weapons. However, in England, this duty morphed into a simultaneous duty and right -- the duty to partake in militia training and respond to militia service calls, and the right to personally own and keep military weapons. Again, see: English Bill Of Rights of 1689. This practice continued in America, where militia duty was simultaneously a duty and a right. See: American Militia Acts of 1792, the American federal second amendment, and the numerous States guarantees circa 1800.
With this in light, the second amendment, read most naturally, reads as follows:
“A well-regulated militia”
a properly-functioning citizenry that is well-armed and well-trained in war
“being ncessary to the security of a free State”
is necessary to prevent tyranny and oppression, whether internal or external
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”
The right of every person to individually own, possess, carry, and use military weapons of war and other military implements of war, shall not be unduly infringed.
There is no other reading that is coherent, and that also takes into account the historical context.
With all of this, the federal second amendment is basically an unrestricted right to own, possess, carry, and use weapons of war. However, like all rights, i.e. free speech, there are many implicit limits on the right -- limits that were well understood by the founders. Other limits sometimes also need to be imposed, like what happens with free speech, but such other unwritten exceptions must be subject to extremely strict standards.
So, one of the well understood “exceptions” is that the federal government can and will call your ass up once or twice a year to inspect your military equipment. Similarly, I’m sure that there were exceptions for certain kinds of convicted criminals. Combine this together, especially with modern precedent ala driver’s licenses, and voila -- you get licenses to own guns.
For my working document on all citations for the federal second amendment, please see my own google doc here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ak6bx8jyDxIlsLuFHHevw-4RQ7R5vJb15RtTNG5d79w/edit
EnlightenmentLiberal: then the Constitution is already being breached by the laws in place right now.
You say:
And for the avoidance of doubt you reiterate:
Can you buy, today and in every state, a fully automatic M4?
Many disagree with me (usually to justify their personal possession of guns), but I’ll say it again:
The US’s “second amendment” does not refer to or permit individual gun ownership. It refers to national defence against a foreign invader.
Two hundred years ago, a full time professional army was hard to maintain and individual gun ownership was necessary in case a militia needed to be formed. But today, there is no such need -- neither for a militia, nor individual gun ownership.
To sonofrojblake
In some states yes. In some states no. Of course the federal second amendment is not properly being upheld. I cannot think of a single of the federal bill of rights which is properly being upheld.
…
To Intransitive
This is a subtle argument: There is a difference between “what the law is”, and “what the law should be”. Generally speaking, we should decide things according to predefined general rules, aka laws. This concept is known as the “rule of law”. The alternative is rule by individual fiat or decree, where the ruler decides on a case by case basis what should happen, without regard to prior general rules. The rule of law requires that there be judges that decide things according to the question “what is the law?” and not “what should the law be?”. This is the foundation of the democratic form of government and modern civilization (circa last 300 years).
As I already stated, I’m sympathetic to your position that individual gun rights don’t make sense any more. I’m conflicted on that position, but I totally understand and sympathize with you on that. However, that’s not the question which judges should be answering. They should be answering the other question, and it’s undoubtably true that the federal second amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own and possess weapons without undue infringement.
So, every time that you wish judges would decide contrary to the law, you’re proverbially digging your own grave, and enabling those same judges to deny you your other rights, and to break down the rule of law itself. Almost always, the solution to a bad law is not for a judge to pretend it doesn’t exist, or to pervert it, but for the law to be changed through the normal legislative process. In this case, a constitutional amendment.
To clarify, I can think of examples for all of the bill of rights where they have been wrongly infringed. Some are standing the test of time better than others, but there have been bad court judgments on basically all of them. (Even the third. I don’t remember the outcome of the court case, but there was a modern violation of even the third amendment. I should look into that.)
Crip Dyke @ # 5: I’d get rid of all handguns under individual private ownership.
I live in a semi-rural swamp area neighborhood with small children and dogs. Do you want me to have to get rid of the occasional water moccasin (for non-US-southerners: an aggressive and highly venomous snake) with just a machete?
How about a shotgun? They are better at it than a handgun firing a single bullet.
Holms @ # 17: How about a shotgun?
I can & do also fire shot pellets from a .22 cartridge.
Can’t tell if Crip Dyke’s proposed ban of “handguns” includes just pistols -- irrelevant to the Las Vegas slaughter -- or all individual firearms, or what.
Why not just repeal the stupid second amendment and implement some sane gun laws?
@Tabby Lavalamp #6:
The answer to that is most states in the US already have a variety of restrictions on knives.
# 5 Crip Dyke
private security for a controversial CEO who travels to dangerous locations overseas, say, might require such permits just so that the security officers accompanying such a CEO can legally get the guns to and from the CEO’s jet before and after trips
So they can be arrested for illegal weapons as soon as they step off the plane?
To be clear:
1. I know my preferred policy is unconstitutional with the constitution currently as written/interpreted and would require a sea change in legal climate and/or (probably “and”) a new constitutional amendment revising or repealing the 2nd before such a law could be upheld.
2. Yes, I was referring only to pistols. As I said in the same proposal that mentioned the possibility of banning pistols, shotguns might be allowed for home defense and single-shot rifles for hunting without creating the same level of concern for public safety as handguns currently justify.
3. Water moccasins? Why not just use the home-defense shotgun that my proposed law allows? Why does it have to be a pistol?
4. @JRKrideau: I’m not sure you even read what you quoted. The idea is that if a person with enough money to hire private security really does have serious security problems outside of the protection of law enforcement, then there would have to be permits issued to those security employees in order to get to and from the plane (or other transport) so that that sort of arrest doesn’t happen.
Of course, such an arrest could happen if the company doesn’t bother registering the weapons or applying for the special carry permits, or if they’re idiotic enough to apply for a permit that allows a pistol and then they try to carry an RPG. But the point of the policy -- the exact portion of the policy that you quoted -- is to prevent the necessity of arresting someone who travels overseas to a place where firearms are legal who wants to return home to the US and place those firearms back in a secure gun safe.
… more in a bit.
Thanks Crip Dyke for the clarification. I’m still a little concerned that you seem to be hedging concerning proper jurisprudence, but I’ll take what I can get.
Re: nuclear safety, the UK has a simple solution: armed police. This, mark you, in a country where the police are as a rule NOT armed.
Re: if you’re a “controversial CEO”, again the solution seems simple. In a civilised country, you rely on and liaise with the local law enforcement. If you wish to risk travel to a dangerous, uncivilised country (e.g. Libya, South Sudan, the USA), then there will certainly be weapons available for purchase, storage and operation in that territory. All it requires is that your security personnel take care of this small logistical matter before your trip. You have no need of weaponry in your civilised point of departure or in the aircraft. Your armed escort can meet you on landing. No problem.