Texas: Gun love mows down eight more people

Kevin, I didn't expect you to be a Scalia fan..or a fan of the court's majority interpretation in that case. The pendulum swings..and we tax-paying citizens take turns eating rutebagas.

Wow..this looks way worse than anything Boilerman and his friend came across in Old Town, Chicago.    But at least the perp wasn't black...so there's that.

Charles, as the current Supreme Court has demonstrated, case law doesn't carry much weight in the modern Supreme Court.  Heller was a 5-4 decision. Justice Scalia built a career on the farce that he only considered the actual words of the Constitution when making rulings.  His philosophy, according to him, was that the text of the Constitution was sacrosanct and Justices cannot simply read a new meaning into them or modify them willy-nilly. They are limited to what the founders wrote and in the context of the times they were written.   He wrote the opinion in the Heller case and totally disregarded his prior strict constructionist philosophy. He said the part before the comma could simply be disregarded as the founders just decided to put a little meaningless text in there. It is a highly suspect decision and could and should be disregarded in future cases like Roe was. 

If a future liberal Supreme Court wanted to preserve precedent but yet still crack down on guns they could use the opening the more recent Bruen case provided. That case changed the test for gun regulation and required looking at gun regulation through a historical lens. If gun regulation didn't exist at the time the Consitution and the 2nd amendment were enacted it is an impermissible regulation.  Pass a Federal law that says anyone can own a gun based upon technology that was available in 1789 but any new technology since then can be regulated in any manner state and local governments deem fit. So gun nuts can own as many 1789 hand-crafted single-shot rifles that require one to manually load the powder but newer guns like the AR-15 could be outlawed. 

''An individual citizen's rights to 'keep and bear arms'?

No one is questioning that, Chuck.

The question is which arms an individual has a right to.

No one needs a semi-auto AR-15 to fit that narrative.

Unfortunately, that would lead to the decent states being safer places but the goober states devolving into free-for-all kill zones. Not that I dislike the idea of the Confederacy turning into Mad Max Land, but some of us have to travel through those places.

"Rutabaga" (that's how it's spelled, nitpick nitpick) was the code word I convinced our boy scout troop to use. I pointed out that no one would ever accidentally say that word in casual conversation.

I don't think the pendulum should swing or there should be such a thing as an interpretation of a fundamental human right. The right to privacy and control over one's own body is at the core of our national ethos. But the "right" to blow away someone who annoys you? Not so much.

Scalia's logic in that decision was ghastly and should have been grounds for his impeachment. Those who swoon with gun love never take even a glance at how truly awful that opinion was.*

*And I do NOT say that because I don't like the outcome of that decision. I said that because of the horrible justification that was used to make it.

Todd...So, if AR-15's and similar types are banned, you left-leaners would be semi-content? Is that the cooking I'm smelling? Or, is that just a first action trigger ( see what I did there?) for an additional cascade of gun law changes ( that's what NRA types often counter with)?

Kevin, like it or not, the political pendulum has always and will continue to swing  ..at least if we employ history as a base line. The voting public grows weary ( and eventually possibly even irate) when the opposing party is in power..so they / we dance a jig to climb back up the mountain. It's reciprocal..sorta, despite the incidences where one party dominated one or both houses for longer stretches of time in our history. Verifiable at this link, if ya want  https://history.house.gov/Institution/Presidents-Coinciding/Party-Government/

 I think maybe the founders must have assumed this back and forth tendency would somewhat naturally occur, since humans seem to enjoy pissing contests.

Mark..as you hint at in your last post, state gun law conditions literally and figuratively vary all over the map. I suspect state variance in gun control legislation is a huge wedge in  federal legislative attempts at significant law change.

Edit above. The link didn't work for party government changes, even though it was entered perfectly ( or so I thought). Upon arrival at the landing page, just type in "historical Party Government " in the upper right search box ( after hitting the prompt for house.gov on the landing page)..for anyone who might actually be interested. *l*

No. No. NO. There should NOT be a time when all US adult citizens can vote and a time when they can't. There should NOT be a time when one race has more rights and privileges than the others and another when they're truly equal. There should NOT be a time when women are second-class citizens and another when they have the same rights as men. And yes, yea verily, there should NOT be a time when it doesn't matter if the President is a con man, thief, and rapist and another when it does.

In case my point isn't clear, some things are sacrosanct, not in a "democracy" (or whatever poor substitute for that we have), not in AMURRICA, but in decent, functional human society. There are principles and ethics that shouldn't be used as poker chips or as balls to be batted back and forth over a net. I've been horrified how the RepubliQ treat ethics and principles as merely gaming tokens.

And to answer your question you posed to Todd, slippery slope arguments are grossly stupid and unfortunately, intellectually typical of the gun love crowd--you know, the same bunch that snorts "THAR TAKIN AWAY OUR GUNZ!!!!!!" every time anyone poses an initiative like "no guns for toddlers." So ya sure, when we advocate for universal background checks or bans on high-capacity military-style weapons, that's really just part of the grand liberal scheme to take away ARE PRESHUS SECOND AMENDEMENT FREEDUMS.

Or maybe we're just saying that maybe we should at least make it hard, or impossible, for someone with his bolts not fully torqued down to stroll into a gun show or a pawn shop and waltz out with enough firepower to slaughter 100+ people. I personally favor that baby step. It's better tham doing nothing.

Oh, and make anyone who sells such a weapon an accessory to every murder committed with it.