Since Bruen, lower court judges applying its test have been, to use a legal term of art, all over the place, a fact repeatedly highlighted during oral arguments by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who sought some, any, guidance on how the court should understand its own ruling. Again, lower courts are equally confused. One court, for example, decided that Florida’s ban on the sale of guns to 18-to-20-year-olds passed constitutional muster; another concluded that a federal law disarming people convicted of certain crimes perhaps did not.

A few judges have publicly aired their frustrations with the sudden analytical primacy of law-office history. “We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791,” wrote one in 2022. “Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.” Another castigated the court for creating a game of “historical Where’s Waldo” that entails “mountains of work for district courts that must now deal with Bruen-related arguments in nearly every criminal case in which a firearm is found.”

Just goes to show how shitty, stupid, and partisan this Trump Supreme Court is.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You grab those, I’ll grab an AR-15. Let’s see who wins.

    The idea that even the most advanced guns of the 1790s would even be in the same league as even the most basic semi-automatic rifle of today is preposterous. You know how many bullets an AR-15 is going to fire off before the Girandoni gets off anywhere close to 19 shots? And after that, let’s compare bullet damage. A Girandoni kills people. An AR-15 leaves people as little more than a bloody splattermark where they once stood.

    And how many people had access to these advanced weapons in an era before modern industrialization was a thing?

    My point stands. There is no possible way the founding fathers had any idea about the weapons that exist today, nor could they possibly have planned for it. Just like the Constitution gives no guidance on how to handle things like flying, colonizing the moon, nuclear weapons, or a host of other things that simply did not exist at the time.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You obviously don’t know very much about what you’re talking about, so I’m not going to keep wasting my time on this discussion.

      Regardless of your ignorant opinions, there is nothing you can do about the fact that those guns are legal and American citizens have the right to own them. There’s zero chance the 2nd Amendment will be repealed, and our Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the right to bear arms is an individual right unconnected to military service.

      Since homicides by firearm are not even in the top 10 most common causes of death in the USA, it would be more helpful to focus on the other issues that Americans have like access to affordable healthcare and housing. We’re not giving up the guns, so you should move on.

      • BURN@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As long as innocent schoolchildren are being murdered in cold blood by people who should not have access to guns we won’t stop.

        Americans are the only ones with this problem, and we’re also the only ones with this lax of gun control. There’s a pretty strong correlation here.

        I don’t care about your right to own firearms if it impedes the right to life for children.

        • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I think it’s pretty safe to ignore this troll at this point.

          He almost, kinda-sorta started off with a semi-legitimate argument, then went off track, and is now just rubbing in a mix of GOP rhetoric and childish taunts.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well you don’t have to care about our rights but they will remain intact because there’s still nothing you can do about it.

          But you should care about our rights, because rights are not something that is easy to obtain. You know they’re not just handing out new rights on the regular.

          • BURN@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I simply do not give a shit. Your right to a gun is infinitely less important than the right to life. You’ll live without your guns. You don’t need them for your day to day life. You carry them because you’re scared of the world.

            I support the removal of every gun in civilian hands and bans on manufacturing of new ones. There should not be any way for guns to be widely available to a populace that has consistently proved over the last 20 years that they are incapable of using and maintaining them safely.

            • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Well tough shit, because that’s just a useless fantasy. Won’t happen in the lifetime of anyone who reads any of this.

      • Dr. Bob@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Oh Lord I do not want to insert myself in this conversation but… I’m curious about the death stats.

        Far and away the most common causes of death are disease based - and most are chronic conditions like heart disease or diabetes. You have to get well down the list before things like suicide appear. But suicide appears as a category, not disaggregated by cause (overdose, asphyxiation etc.). The same is true for homicide etc. To get the numbers you reference you’d have to disaggregate the categorical data and then re-aggregate by method.

        Do you know of such a data source?