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I'll try to find time to reply to the rest of your post, but I did want to make two quick comments:
I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone here has argued that the death penalty is cruel or unusual.
I oppose it not because of its cruelty (I actually think it's more humane than life in prison), but because
- It's permanent and leaves no possibility to correct false convictions. Look at how many people have been exonerated many years later by new evidence, or old evidence that is re-examined.
- It's more expensive than life in prison without parole. Capital trials and their appeals take many, many years and are incredibly expensive.
These are ethical and practical objections concerning innocent people and cost. My objections to the death penalty do not stem from cruelty concerns.
To be clear: I think the death penalty is stupid and counterproductive, not unconstitutional.
And for all your bluster and talk about gun owners ... you're the one who is openly advocating torturing people to death.
And this, in a nutshell, is exactly the problem.
You have very strong opinions on subjects you know absolutely nothing about.
You're ranting about banning machine guns, when the fact is, they're already restricted to an incredible degree. Let me explain.
Machine guns require registration and an ATF tax stamp like other weapons regulated by the National Firearms Act ... but are unique in that the 1986 Hughes amendment banned the registration of new guns. Consequently, there has been a FIXED number of legal machine guns in the United States for nearly three decades now.
To buy a select fire AR-15 (or any other machine gun), this is what you need to do.
1) Live in a state where they aren't banned outright.
2) Find one for sale. They are collector's items and the market is very, very small.
3) Pay for it. These days a legal, transferrable AR-15 will cost somewhere between $15-25,000. Fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars. Constant/shrinking supply + increasing demand ... I'm sure you understand what that does to prices.
4) Undergo an extensive ATF background check. Regardless of how many other guns you already own, this process must be started at step 1.
{edit to add}
4b) Get written permission from the chief law enforcement officer in your area, who may subjectively choose not to sign your paperwork, without due process of any kind. He can say 'no' for no other reason than he doesn't feel like saying 'yes'. Alternatively, spend the time and money to form a legal trust.
{/edit}
5) Wait for the ATF to process the paperwork. Roughly 6-8 months these days.
Or, if you're a criminal, spend a few minutes with a file in your garage (which may require no skill, or a lot of skill, depending on the specific weapon).
You have this silly idea - it'd be kind of cute, actually, if it wasn't so misguided - that machineguns are easy to obtain. They're not. They're prohibitively expensive, except for rich people. There's an incredibly long (many months) waiting period to buy one. They're very rare.
But still, you want more laws, more regulation on them.
I haven't even touched on the argument that the artificially raised cost is a deliberate, racist, and classist move to prevent poor minorities from owning this type of gun.
You summarily dismissed what I wrote about the California high-capacity magazine bans with a, 'oh, that doesn't work only because OTHER states aren't doing the same' ... yet you seem ignorant of the decade-long federal assault weapon ban from 1994 - 2004 (which also included magazine size restrictions) and how it utterly failed to decrease the number of guns being used in crimes.
What you don't seem to get is that the kind of gun control you're proposing has been tried, in this country and in others. It has universally failed to reduce violence and crime, not because the laws weren't written just right - but because the entire concept of restricting, registering, crippling, or banning guns is fundamentally flawed.
One of the things that's the most frustrating about talking to people like you is that you rail on and on about the need for more laws, more regulation, more restriction - and you don't have the first clue about existing laws.
How can any of us possibly take you seriously when you're proposing a road map for the future, and you don't even know where we are now?
Few people are as dangerously misguided as those who have strong opinions about subjects they know nothing about.
Not at all. Death Penalty is constitutional. Firmly. Totally. I just want, less than death. How could that be more cruel or unusual? Let's make it USUAL.
I may have missed it, but I don't think anyone here has argued that the death penalty is cruel or unusual.
I oppose it not because of its cruelty (I actually think it's more humane than life in prison), but because
- It's permanent and leaves no possibility to correct false convictions. Look at how many people have been exonerated many years later by new evidence, or old evidence that is re-examined.
- It's more expensive than life in prison without parole. Capital trials and their appeals take many, many years and are incredibly expensive.
These are ethical and practical objections concerning innocent people and cost. My objections to the death penalty do not stem from cruelty concerns.
To be clear: I think the death penalty is stupid and counterproductive, not unconstitutional.
And for all your bluster and talk about gun owners ... you're the one who is openly advocating torturing people to death.
And this, in a nutshell, is exactly the problem.
You have very strong opinions on subjects you know absolutely nothing about.
You're ranting about banning machine guns, when the fact is, they're already restricted to an incredible degree. Let me explain.
Machine guns require registration and an ATF tax stamp like other weapons regulated by the National Firearms Act ... but are unique in that the 1986 Hughes amendment banned the registration of new guns. Consequently, there has been a FIXED number of legal machine guns in the United States for nearly three decades now.
To buy a select fire AR-15 (or any other machine gun), this is what you need to do.
1) Live in a state where they aren't banned outright.
2) Find one for sale. They are collector's items and the market is very, very small.
3) Pay for it. These days a legal, transferrable AR-15 will cost somewhere between $15-25,000. Fifteen to twenty-five thousand dollars. Constant/shrinking supply + increasing demand ... I'm sure you understand what that does to prices.
4) Undergo an extensive ATF background check. Regardless of how many other guns you already own, this process must be started at step 1.
{edit to add}
4b) Get written permission from the chief law enforcement officer in your area, who may subjectively choose not to sign your paperwork, without due process of any kind. He can say 'no' for no other reason than he doesn't feel like saying 'yes'. Alternatively, spend the time and money to form a legal trust.
{/edit}
5) Wait for the ATF to process the paperwork. Roughly 6-8 months these days.
Or, if you're a criminal, spend a few minutes with a file in your garage (which may require no skill, or a lot of skill, depending on the specific weapon).
You have this silly idea - it'd be kind of cute, actually, if it wasn't so misguided - that machineguns are easy to obtain. They're not. They're prohibitively expensive, except for rich people. There's an incredibly long (many months) waiting period to buy one. They're very rare.
But still, you want more laws, more regulation on them.
I haven't even touched on the argument that the artificially raised cost is a deliberate, racist, and classist move to prevent poor minorities from owning this type of gun.
You summarily dismissed what I wrote about the California high-capacity magazine bans with a, 'oh, that doesn't work only because OTHER states aren't doing the same' ... yet you seem ignorant of the decade-long federal assault weapon ban from 1994 - 2004 (which also included magazine size restrictions) and how it utterly failed to decrease the number of guns being used in crimes.
What you don't seem to get is that the kind of gun control you're proposing has been tried, in this country and in others. It has universally failed to reduce violence and crime, not because the laws weren't written just right - but because the entire concept of restricting, registering, crippling, or banning guns is fundamentally flawed.
One of the things that's the most frustrating about talking to people like you is that you rail on and on about the need for more laws, more regulation, more restriction - and you don't have the first clue about existing laws.
How can any of us possibly take you seriously when you're proposing a road map for the future, and you don't even know where we are now?
Few people are as dangerously misguided as those who have strong opinions about subjects they know nothing about.
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