You are afforded rights such as a presumption of innocence. Your property however, not being a person, has no rights. That's why they sue your property, not you.
Most of the US legal practices regarding the constitution are legal sophistry of the worst kind.
Take the "right to bear arms" for example, which is clearly stated that it applies to citizen militias (something important at the time it was written). Through tons of applied sophistry it was decided that it also means the right for every redneck to buy military grade automatic weapons for "self-protection"...
"Take the "right to bear arms" for example, which is clearly stated that it applies to citizen militias...."
Only to those with fundamental failures in English comprehension, which does not include the Supremes, who in Heller agreed 9-0 that it's an individual right.
And the Federal courts have been implacably hostile to "assault weapons"/civilian semi-auto assault rifles and the like (full auto has been covered elsewhere in this subtread; I'll just add there are about 200K legal ones out there, and two known crimes committed with them, one by a police officer). Not a single favorable opinion prior to Heller, and none that I can remember after it.
That's two crimes committed with NFA weapons in the 80 years since the NFA has existed. One committed by an active duty police officer and the other by a former police officer.
And to the previous poster I'll add that production of AR15-pattern rifles and carbines alone for the commercial market averages about 380K units per year since 2008. Adding in non-AR pattern "military style" rifles brings that number to about 480K per year, or about 20% of all rifles produced and sold commercially in the U.S. The AR15 is undoubtedly the most popular rifle in the U.S. and that includes a hell of a lot of folks who can't reasonably be classified as "rednecks."
I think, to the typical anti-gun bigot, by definition nearly all of us gun owners are "rednecks", in spirit if not quite so the stereotype.
Quoting production and sales numbers isn't likely to help with them, except to possibly scare them away from trying to pass gun grabbing laws that will result in massive resistance and/or civil war. We're holding our breath right now with Connecticut, which was surprisingly quite pro-gun in practice pre-Sandy Hook and which, due to passive resistance, has now created an estimated 300K felons, with the usual suspects calling for all of them to be prosecuted.
And a cherry on the top with Connecticut State Police Spokesman Lt. Paul Vance telling a newly made subject of the state, after she said "You're the servant, we're the master", that "I'm the master, ma'am. I'm the master"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUxjuz2o9Gk; jump to the end).
I don't think these people understand the forces they putting into play.
The problem with HN comments is not just new users who do not know that the expectation is of colleagues discussing a problem to work to a solution, but also of long standing accounts that allow themselves to be "trolled" by emotive subjects.
Some people should stay away from gun control; abortion; Israel / Palestine; vi vs emacs; etc etc.
It'd be great to see some research on online communities where approaches to this have been tried.
>Only to those with fundamental failures in English comprehension, which does not include the Supremes, who in Heller agreed 9-0 that it's an individual right
Or you know, to those that can understand history, and know exactly the context under which it was said, plus they know that when the justification is no longer there, the "right" is not meaningful either.
There is no longer a justification for self-defense in the US?
That would be news to a whole lot of people. In terms of effective self-defense we're now to the point that if Peruta v County of San Diego is not struck down by a 9th Circuit en banc hearing or the Supremes, 90% of the US population will live in "shall issue" or better concealed carry regimes. Did you miss the nationwide sweep of this, in the modern period starting with Florida in 1987 and ending with Wisconsin and Iowa in 2010, with the courts forcing Illinois (which is now mailing out thousands of permits), and now California and Hawaii? (Sucks to be on the East Coast, Maryland and New York I think cert denied by the Supremes, New Jersey and Massachusetts cases still pending. Add the ones where it's not an issue, that's all of the Federal Appeals circuits!)
Those of us with a detailed knowledge of the relevant history know the dependent militia clause was a sop thrown to those who feared standing armies and e.g. "select militias", which are exactly what our modern police have become. They lost because e.g. George Washington, who had very detailed knowledge of the merits of militiamen and regulars, said "no way".
Might as well mention the U.K. since some of our correspondents hail from there: as I understand it, effective self-defense, that is, using a disparity of force, was judicially nullified in the '50s, and was enshrined in law in the '60s or '70s (this is what the recent "have-a-go" stuff is about). I doubt any of you have lived in a time when you could effectively defend yourself, and therefore the concept could be quite alien to you.
Hyperbole. Most folks want to keep (at home) and bear (in public) a safety device not dissimilar to owning a fire extinguisher. Having fire-suppression gear in my house doesn't get me branded a redneck or violence-freak. I don't have to consider myself a fireman to imagine using an ABC extinguisher to save my home and family. Yet I want to carry a pistol, I'm some nut apparently.
Its not sophistry because others interpret things differently than you would like. And saying 'military grade' is silly; might as well say 'commercial grade'. What, should people only own badly-made pistols and rifles? That'd be very hazardous.
A fire extinguisher can't murder 15 civilians in half a minute. I know that "power" makes you feel like a big man, but there are people who care about public safety and don't have weird inferiority/paranoia complexes.
If you find this weird, just wait until 3d printed open source weapons platforms for consumer uavs with instructions in english and mandarin become a thing. Then you may find that big cars, "assault" rifles, and such uavs will all be grounds for "compensating for small penis" attacks (assuming only self described males are interested in such things) when not in the hands of c̶o̶p̶s̶/̶s̶o̶l̶d̶i̶e̶r̶s̶ "mercenaries" (as quoted from the grand parent post).
I disagree. The psychological element of gun ownership is a substantive issue. I find your post attributing to me an interest in "small penis" arguments inflammatory and unconstructive.
Are you are aware that you appear to be yelling at gun users that they are compensating for small penises when you say things like "weird insecurities"?
I never brought up penises at any point. Are you aware that you yourself said "I'm in the UK and I find the US obsession with owning guns weird"? How is my comment different from yours? HN swings fairly hyper-individualist / libertarian / conspiracy theorist so data-backed, rational gun regulation comments are going to get downvoted. But I don't think the comment was wildly out of line as you seem to think.
You think your comments are making rational data-backed points and are only being down voted by libertarians?
I am anti gun, pro gun control. I down voted your comment because it added no value to the discussion, it was purely inflammatory, and certainly had no data to support it.
You may wish to re-read your posts in this thread.
Let's just be clear: when I call gun ownership "weird", it's "purely inflammatory", but when you do, it totally adds value to the discussion.
I invite you to reread this thread and determine who derailed an enlightening discussion regarding the psychology of US gun ownership and police militarization with ad hominmen and completely off-topic attacks on another's commenting style.
>I invite you to reread this thread and determine who derailed an enlightening discussion
I just did and it appears to be you. You are making 2 kinds of comments in this thread: 1) inflammatory comments that appear to be deliberately written to cause a derailing flamewar, and 2) comments accusing everyone else of making inflammatory comments written to cause a derailing flamewar.
>A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The first statement is not at all a limitation of the second, but is rather a justification of the second. I agree that there needs to be gun control, but it should be done through a constitutional amendment, rather than by a misinterpretation of what is currently there.
And the interpretation of 'militia' is often muddied. Consider the definition below. Which was meant? Plenty of room to argue there. It was likely the 3rd definition meant 200 years ago, and continues to be the threshold required to earn a 'carry permit' in many states.
n. An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers.
n. A military force that is not part of a regular army and is subject to call for service in an emergency.
n. The whole body of physically fit civilians eligible by law for military service.
Well, the same Congress that passed the Bill of Rights also passed the first militia act, basically all able bodied men up to age 45 as I recall. As it stands today, per 10 U.S. Code § 311:
"The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard. (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/311)
Following that, the unorganized militia are the above minus those in the National Guard or the Naval Militia. Per modern interpretation of Federal law, this now probably includes women.
Indeed, and as I recall there's some Federal case law pertaining to that, which is why I said "perhaps".
But the flip side is that attitudes today would not say that a woman "taking up arms" like men do is illegitimate. See, e.g., the one law that failed in the recent Colorado gun grabbing batch, that would have banned concealed carry at public colleges (note the minimum age for a licence is 21).
Women did not like being told they weren't fit to carry to defend themselves against rape and made a compelling case. Evie Hudak, the woman legislator who took point on the opposite side, had to resign so that she wouldn't be recalled like two previous state senators, replaced with a Republican, and flip control of the state senate.
and most of their desire for guns stems from the problems this article highlights, government out of control stomping on people for no other reason than they can.
Oddly enough, those rednecks you mock are more likely one of the most responsible groups who do collect guns. Inner city youths and those backed by the drug trade are the real problem.
Yet people are more than willing to pass laws to make acts that are illegal even more illegal without fixing the underlying problems; namely the drug war.
I agree that some people who collect and use guns have excellent ideas of safety, and that giving all children a gun safety course would prevent some negligent discharges.
But do armed citizens really still think they can defy an out of control state? Didn't that line of thinking die with Waco?
The counter argument to Waco would be Afghanistan and Iraq. In both areas volunteer militias have successfully countered exclusive control by what is arguably the worlds most powerful military force.
They have demonstrated that if enough of the population disagrees with the notions of government and are provisionally armed, they can prevent a permanent change in control.
So at some level there is validation of the idea that an individual right to bear arms is a check on totalitarianism. I hope we don't ever have to test that idea of course.
Exactly. To quote Jerry Pournelle some time before Waco, "I don't plan to conduct a point defense against the government".
Heck, even the first day of Waco supports the point, the BATF goons came in shooting (by their own admission they started first) and were repelled. A lot more than 4 would have been killed (note, some were own goals) if the Branch Dividians hadn't ceased fire when they retreated. It has been noted since then to not make that mistake....
Also think about acceptable costs to the foot soldiers, so to speak. Take the Connecticut example I mention elsewhere: how many officers would die trying to take away the guns of 300K civilians before they'd mutiny? What small fraction of point defenses taking an officer's life would be sufficient for that?
There's an apropos Solzhenitsyn quote from The GULAG Archipelago that also speaks to the very different cultural DNA we have:
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?
After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
I look more at the Ukrainian situation, or maybe Libya or Syria, when I think about defying an out of control government.
Waco could have easily happened 150 years prior and had a similar outcome; fundamentally a small group cannot resist the power of the state in a head-to-head confrontation. It's only a popular uprising that can put real pressure on the power of the state. If a group of people in one place resort to violence, the state can crush them, but as with terrorism, you cannot wage war against an idea, unless the idea is held only by completely powerless people.
I hear that being under the influence of alcohol while underage is illegal since you are "in possession" of alcohol: Your body is a container, and it contains alcohol. Is this true?
That was, and still is, the case where I went to school in New Hampshire. The decision to treat the body as a container is made at the state level, I believe (as the drinking age is determined by the individual states, although effectively federally-mandated by the threat of withholding significant federal funding).
The second amendment isn't a great example, since everyone on both sides of that debate claim that the other's constitutional justification is sophistry.
You're oversimplifying the rationale. The cops have to prove that the property is the fruit of a crime. Thus, even if they don't have enough evidence to pin you to the crime, they can prove you don't have a legitimate right the property.
> "You're oversimplifying the rationale. The cops have to prove that the property is the fruit of a crime."
The meaning of "prove" in this case is the far more permissive "preponderance of the evidence" standard. But of course you already know that. You are lying by admission.
Say I sue you for the tort of conversion (use of property inconsistent with someone else's property rights). Even if that property is most of your net worth, I still just have to prove my case by a preponderance of the evidence.
I think civil forfeiture is a bad idea because it is ripe for abuse. But its underpinnings are not "legal sophistry" nor are they unconstitutional. I stress the distinction because its useful to understand that not every bad idea is unjustifiable or unconstitutional.
I think that the state attacking a citizen should have a higher bar, not necessarily that all civil suits should (though I do think that as the penalties get steeper as a percentage of someone's net worth, the bar for proving wrongdoing should rise, or the judge should scale the damage award by the level of certainty provided by the evidence).
Agreed that many bad ideas have some plausible justifications.
we aren't talking about damages awards or punishment. We're talking about suits to contest the ownership of property. if I claim in a civil suit that you obtain your house by fraud from me what should be my standard of proof?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture#United_States