I have never understood why the USA anti-gun lobby doesn't go after ammunition rather than guns. Just ban ammunition and a gun just becomes a not so dangerous club.
Well unless the anti-gun lobby can change the constitution they need to find some way around it. I was not suggesting that this should be done, just asking why not?
The right to "keep and bear arms" pretty clearly implies the right to use arms (guns) in the way they were intended to be used, which means access to the ammunition as well. No one in their right mind believes the Second Amendment was written with the idea that militiamen would use their guns primarily as clubs.
It's not done partly because the "anti-gun lobby" knows it would be a fruitless endeavor, and partly because most gun control advocates don't actually want to render guns useless by any means possible.
I was under the impression that certain types of ammunition are able to be banned without any constitutional issues arising [1].
If you wanted to be really clever you could still allow ammunition, but limit the materials the bullet could be made from or limit the powder load. Attacking ammunition has got to be a more workable strategy than trying to restrict gun ownership without consitutional change.
Sure, but I think a strategy like that only avoids constitutional issues because it's not a general attack on the efficacy of firearms. Anything that has the effect of making guns less effective en masse would probably run afoul of the Second Amendment.
Banning armor-piecing bullets certainly makes firearms much less effective - after all this is why the law was brought in as it made guns too effective against the authorities (the infamous “cop killer bullets”). Why has this law [1] not fallen afoul of the second amendment?
Not if the bullets come out of the barrel at less than 10 feet per second. Just make a law limiting the bullet’s velocity to below the skin piercing speed. You have your arms, but you can't do much with it beyond killing flies.
Admittedly, I'm not a constitutional scholar, but the Second Amendment was written at a time when the fledgling country wanted to ensure a distributed defense against potential threats like Spain and England, and Native American tribes. My naive reading of it leads me to believe that the part where the bullets can kill people is kind of non-negotiable.
My understanding is the second amendment has been “interpreted” quite a bit over the years - after all the original intent of the law was that people could own arms (i.e. military grade weapons), not just handguns and the like.
I interpret the first amendment to mean we have a right to make sounds come out of our mouths. The content of those sounds, however, is not protected. Since there are an infinite number of combinations of sounds, banning political statements does not impact that right. You are still free to make infinite sounds. The amendment also does not cover the right to record that sound or to write thoughts down on paper. And while the amendment does preserve the right to petition the government for grievances, it does not specify what form that petition must take or for the government to act on such grievances. Therefore, a law which requires all such grievances to be voiced at lowest point of the Atlantic Ocean is constitutional as well.
>Not if the bullets come out of the barrel at less than 10 feet per second. Just make a law limiting the bullet’s velocity to below the skin piercing speed. You have your arms, but you can't do much with it beyond killing flies.
Not much of a question. Although this is clearly hyperbole, I think the implication that our rights be "nerfed" through loopholes is unconstitutional.
He said nothing about it being ruled unconstitutional. I assume what parent is trying to say is that the restriction on their 2nd amendment rights (which is what this law is-- a restriction of a right) is, in many people's opinion, contrary to the intended purpose of the 2nd amendment. Now, there is a difference between restricting of a right and a ban of a right, but it becomes a very fine line.
There are already a large number of restrictions on the ownership of arms. Try to go and buy any true arms (military grade weapons) and see how far you get. The intended purpose of the second amendment was gutted long ago.
My question is why have the anti-gun lobby not gone after ammunition. So far I have not had one good response answering this question.
Because without ammunition there are no guns, without guns there is no second amendment. If you believe restricting "true arms" has been effective, why do you think it is necessary to restrict ammunition?
You seem to be really keen about this. If your goal is to make the world a safer place, and not only taking away other people's rights try mandating locking or safes for all but the first one or two guns in a house instead.
Around here you are required to have a weapons safe to store almost any kind of weapon at home. This limits the risk of more guns getting into criminals hands as well as the risk of children toying around with them.
BTW another nice touch around here is you are required to have a reason for having a gun. That either means hunting, target practice or serving in the police or military. Reasons tends to be understood leniently (ie no one cares if you don't go hunting for a few years), except for handguns that requires the local chapter of a target shooting club to vouch for you.
I almost think you could get a good chunk of NRA behind something in these directions if you could somehow make sure it wouldn't be used for racketeering. After all NRA doesn't exactly look like raging bloodthirsty madmen, do they? Just like we aren't very fond of criminals just because we want to keep our encryption?
I am actually not really that keen on it other than as how to tackle an issue like gun control. If you are in favor of gun control why not go for the weak point (the ammunition) rather than the strong point (the second amendment). It is like the anti-gun lobby is not trying to win and are just in a culture war with the NRA.
The problem with trying to tax ammunition out of existence is this has previously been found to be constitutional invalid.
My idea is to not try to get rid of ammunition by banning or taxing, but just degrade it's killing power via regulation to the point that it is harmless. You could still buy arms and ammunition, but you would not be able to kill anyone.
I don't understand this response. Why wouldn't banning the sale of ammunition and ammunition components not work to stop most of the bad problems of guns? A gun is still arms even if it does not have ammunition so this avoids the constitutional problems, but it makes them much safer.
I should add that I am not arguing for the banning of ammunition, just why has this not been used as an attack vector on the gun lobby?
Because it wouldn't work. You're purposefully trying to work around the intent of things. Judges tend to take ill view of cute things like that.
Besides, ok you ban the sale of ammunition. Now are you going to ban reloaders and selling of ammunition components too? How far are you willing to go down that rabbit hole? Noting that it isn't that hard to make ammunition are you going to ban the knowledge of that as well? It would be pretty easy for a lawyer to point out the whole idea is an end run around the spirit of owning armaments. For that reason alone its not any better of an idea than trying to ban guns outright.
I thought a lot of laws were cute intents to work around the constitution.
Any such law would work its way up the legal chain until it got to the supreme court (assuming they chose to take it up the case). As the federal law on armor piercing bullets shows [1] there does not seem to be anything stopping congress passing a law regulating or banning ammunition. Instead of just limiting the ban to armour piercing it could be extended to a ban on ammunition that can pierce the skin.
If you are able to ban ammunition you could certainly ban the sale of the components to make ammunition. Sure there might be some individuals that choose to break these laws, but it would be pretty effective.
Ultimately the choice to do something like this would be politically, not constitutionally constrained. If you oppose the widespread availability of guns [2] why not try to think around the problem rather than bashing your head against the constitutional rock?
> I thought a lot of laws were cute intents to work around the constitution.
And this is why judges exist: to go "hey, that law is trying to work around the Constitution and therefore is unconstitutional." And I say this as someone very much in favor of gun control. But it must be approached legally, not with the mindset that the law is some kind of computer program executed by idiot minds.
The bans of armor piercing bullets have their own reasoning behind them. Banning all bullets would ensure any arguments presented would amount to banning of armaments.
It would be akin to banning cars by banning the sale of wheels. You will be hard pressed to say your intent is to stop people getting run over by stopping wheels from running people over. It is patently obvious your goal is to stop cars from being used. Even if you ban wheels with spikes on them that obviously only ever get used to destroy other cars, that doesn't mean that it is ok to ban all wheels using the same logic.
You'll probably want to ask a lawyer the legal situations behind your proposal. They'll be better able to elaborate. But in talking to some lawyer friends in the past, they note judges are really good at sniffing out attempts to work around the spirit or intent of a law.
I think you might have missed the point of my question. I am not suggesting banning ammunition, but asking why legislating their killing power be restricted as an approach to gun-control has not been tried. It appears that it is constitutional to limit the killing power of ammunition (i.e the armor piercing bullets) - what interests me is how far this approach can be taken and still be constitutional.
I will say once again I am not personally in favor of gun control, just asking why the anti-gun lobby is not trying to go after the weak point in the regulation of guns (the ammunition) rather than the strong (the second amendment).
Well if I was asked to draw up the law (unlikely since I am not a lawyer) I would just follow the current law on armor-piecing bullets [1], but add a clause that limited the powder load to ensure that the bullet’s muzzle velocity could not exceed 10 feet per second. Probably equally effective would be to limit the weight and/or density of the bullet such that bullets could only be made out of aerogel [2]. Once you attack the weak underbelly of the ammunition the fun you could have is almost limitless.
Your argument fails intermediate scrutiny, which is the minimal level of scrutiny a constitutionally enumerated right must be held to.
In brief, strict scrutiny is the most stringent level of scrutiny, and rational basis the least stringent. Operating a vehicle on public roads is decidedly a right, but not a constitutionally enumerated one, so it is only held to rational basis. Rational basis scrutiny allows a right to be curtailed it, on a rational level, the curtilage is related to a legitimate government interest.
When strict scrutiny is applied, it means that a much more stringent justification must be met. Not only must it further a legitimate government interest, but it must also be the least restrictive possible means of doing so, and not fundamentally burden the right.
Banning teflon coated bullets does not fundamentally infringe the right, and is narrowly tailored enough that it survives the least restrictive means test. Banning all ammunition cripples the right, fundamentally, and is nowhere near tailored enough to survive heightened levels of scrutiny.
>Banning teflon coated bullets does not fundamentally infringe the right, and is narrowly tailored enough that it survives the least restrictive means test. Banning all ammunition cripples the right, fundamentally, and is nowhere near tailored enough to survive heightened levels of scrutiny.
Just to nit pick it is not teflon coated bullets that are banned (at the federal level), but bullets made of certain hardened materials that are banned. The teflon is there just to stop the gun barrel being damaged.
I am not suggesting banning all ammunition (as a tactic), but degrading the killing power of bullets by legislating what they can be made from and how fast they can leave the muzzle. How much could the killing power of bullets be degraded before the law would be considered an infringement on the second amendment?
In the words of Alan Gura, the attorney who successfully argued in D.C. v Heller (the pivotal modern firearms case) -- because banning bullets is a backdoor ban on firearms. Firearms without bullets are no longer firearms, they are simply bludgeons.
I don't know. How much can you impede the ability for minorities to vote before it becomes unconstitutional? How much torture can you get away with before it becomes unconstitutionally cruel and unusual? How much can you restrict the abortion rights of women before it runs afoul of the constitution and pre-existing precedent?
It's people asking questions like that, and failing to respect the spirit of the constitution that explains exactly how we've become a nation in which federal power is effectively unrestrained by the constitution.
Endorsing gun control means being an enemy to the bill of rights. Wiggling past scrutiny by playing legislative "I'm not touching you" games as you're doing weakens the whole of protections to the citizenry. Whatever semantic games you like playing against the second amendment sets precedent for those same games to be played by the other side for speech, privacy, abortion and marriage rights. It is the failure of the left to respect some rights, paired with the failure of the right to respect the others that has gotten us where we are.
Just because the government doesn't like a right doesn't mean they get to ignore it. Because people like you let them selectively ignore the rights you don't like is what gives them the power to ignore the rights you do. If you want to be constitutional (and you should), you can ban bullets by repealing the second amendment, or amending the constitution to state that bullets aren't protected by it.
I think you missed my statements several times that I am not a supporter of gun control, but asking why those that are in favour of gun control don't go after ammunition rather than guns.
As for the second amendment it has basically been totally gutted long ago since people have no access to true arms.
I know people with hundreds of thousands of rounds of reloading supplies, some with as much ammo.. They're not unique.
We've been making "modern" repeating firearms and ammunition for over 100 years - it's foolish to think that with modern precision technology being so cheaply available that the people would be unable to craft ammunition at home.
Not really. In any real civil war, some police forces would side with the rebels. That's already happened in connection with Public Lands issues in the Southwest. Also, at least some National Guard armories would be liberated. It could get very messy.
