Originally Posted by geneven

Did you read about the eight-year-old kid who killed his father and someone else recently? The newspaper said his dad had trained him to use a weapon.

On the other discussion, I am surprised to hear someone say that provisions in the Constitution can override something in an Amendment. Isn't it the other way around? According to the Amendment and the simplistic interpretation urged in this thread, every citizen has a right to carry any arm. Therefore, any prisoner has the right to carry any arm, as long as he is a citizen, it seems to me.

(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it
connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
......
Like most rights, the right secured by the Second
Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through
the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely
explained that the right was not a right to keep and
carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever
and for whatever purpose.
..........
It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful
in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be
banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely
detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said,
the conception of the militia at the time of the Second
Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens
capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of
lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia
duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as
effective as militias in the 18th century, would require
sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at
large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small
arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and
tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited
the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the
protected right cannot change our interpretation of the
right.
.....
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
...................
The First Amendment contains the
freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified,
which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure
of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely
unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second
Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very
product of an interest-balancing by the people—which
JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew. And
whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely
elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding,
responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and
home.

27 JUSTICE BREYER correctly notes that this law, like almost all laws,
would pass rational-basis scrutiny. Post, at 8. But rational-basis
scrutiny is a mode of analysis we have used when evaluating laws
under constitutional commands that are themselves prohibitions on
irrational laws.

Originally Posted by geneven

Benson:

Yes, there are a LOT of distinctions and contexts that must be observed, and after you observe them all, you get something remarkably similar to the current legal system, prisoners don't have the right to be armed, we don't have the inalienable right to carry machine guns into the local elementary school, and maniacs don't have the right to carry guns, nor do White House tourists nor rough cowboys riding into Dodge City.

And people don't have the right to keep just any kind of arms in their houses. For example, nuclear arms. But dum-dum bullets are another thing I think is illegal, and some kinds of armor-piercing weapons.

By the way, did you ever hear of the shootout on Laurel Canyon street in Van Nuys, CA? Two bandits robbed a bank and were wearing protective clothes and shooting armor-piercing (illegal) weapons so that even policemen hiding behind cars weren't safe. It took forever for the police to bring them down.

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

Rational-basis scrutiny... sounds like a fancy law-term for Common Sense.

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

And to penguinbait: What possible use is the so-called "assault weapons"? Store owners during the LA riots paced their rooftops with these weapons after the police abandoned entire sections of the city to the rioters. Millions/billions of dollars in damage were done by rioters.. but these store owners were some of the ONLY stores not touched. During Katrina, people went crazed and panicky, stealing, looting, crime was everywhere.. and the police couldn't even get to the people needing help because of floods..

Originally Posted by fatalsaint

But you do have the right to not have the stuff you've worked hard for and paid for and own to not be stolen from you in any circumstance.

As I said before.. as long as you are perfectly OK with the fact that any emergency preparation kits that you have for disasters or whatever - being stolen and having you and your family left for dead, killed, or starving..

Then so be it. But I procure my food and my water and my emergency kits so that my family can survive a natural disaster. That doesn't include you unless I conjure it does... and you don't have the right to barge into my home or my store and just take whatever you want because you failed to prepare for it yourself. Just because there happens to be a natural disaster running around doesn't grant you, or anyone, the right to just trample over everyone else around you to save yourself.