Licenses to exercise constitutional rights

Private sales numbers: here's a Time magazine story from 2013 that gives their estimates for how many guns are available just on Armslist alone. and here is the 2013 Mayors Against Illegal Guns report which gives a detailed methodology on how they went about measuring how many sales are on Armslist, and importantly, how many buyers who post "want to buy" ads on Armslist are in fact prohibited. yes, they actually went and looked them all up. the answer was about 1 in 30 were prohibited.

The others only protect it from not being violated, which is a binary of allowing.

i've never heard the word 'binary' used in this context. i looked the word up in a couple online dictionaries, and nothing seemed to mention it. then i searched for the phrase "a binary of", and looked for uses of this phrase to mean something along the lines of how you used it. it seems like you're using it to mean something akin to "to group two related, but not identical things together". ok, cool. so let's see, is that the authors of the Constitution were doing? when they say "Congress shall make no law...", does this seem like it would be related to things they were wanting to "allow"? to me it does not. please elaborate, because i'm failing to see on what you base your big categorical distinction between "Congress shall make no law that does such-and-such", and "such and such a right shall not be infringed". still seems like they mean pretty much the same thing to me. unless you can figure out some way to make a directive like "you shall not do X" to mean "you are allowed to do X". and if this is something that the word 'binary' is capable of, then wow---what a word! (somebody better tell the computer scientists tho, cuz if there's no distinction between one's and zero's, then Houston we gotta problem :)

DC did until just recently :) or did you not know that law?

i did, which is why i used the present tense.

First, their perception does not change the fact that their rights are being violated

you're right that the general public's opinions don't officially set what is and isn't a violation of the rights protected by the USConst. but the federal courts' opinions do. therefore they supercede your opinion, since you are merely a member of the general public. which, as you're correctly pointed out, doesn't get the privilege of deciding what does and doesn't constitute a rights violation.

re our link, haha, i read it, and it contains the following droll line:

The legislative measures that inspire most Second Amendment discussions are Gun Control laws. Since the mid-nineteenth century, state legislatures have been passing laws that infringe a perceived right to bear arms. Congress has also asserted the power to regulate firearms. No law regulating firearms has ever been struck down by the Supreme Court as a violation of the Second Amendment. Historically, the academic community has largely ignored the Second Amendment. However, gun control laws have turned many laypersons into scholars of the Second Amendment's history.

i love it! these guys have a good sense of humor. thanks for sharing, that last bit alone was worth the price of admission.

btw, re ignoring the other guy's sources because you determine just from the name of the source that it's 'biased': i've read quite a bit that John Lott has written, because i think he's a dishonest shill and i'd like to dissect his BS and identify for myself the gaps and flaws in his logic that cover up his dishonest conclusions. if you just know that you're not capable of doing this, even with an easily digestible 13-page report, then i suppose it wouldn't be kind of me to criticize you if you decide that nothing in the MAIG report i've provided could possibly be honest or based on anything but lies.

that said, i have every confidence that many others will be able to do so, and will be able to see that the methods employed by Mayors Against Illegal Guns in their report on the scope of online sales in the US were both straightforward and sound. but of course, if you never read it, and intentionally never read anything that doesn't guarantee right on the title page that its intention is to reinforce your pre-existing world view, then i suppose you're safe from ever having to develop your faculties any further. and if i continue to waste time debating with someone who's made this clear about himself, then i suppose i deserve what i get.

/r/gunpolitics Thread Parent Link - ashingtonpost.com