Rhetoric question...why should machine guns be okay, but not nukes?

[Scottmkiv]

Groups of people don't have any rights that individuals don't. If it is immoral for a single man to do, then it is immoral for a group, no matter how large, to do.

In the time of the founding of the country, this meant that heavily armed warships were lawfully owned by individuals (and in fact the constitution provides the option of issuing letters of marque and letting these individuals effectively wage a private war against an enemy country. Today it means that individuals or corporations should be allowed to own, and even use in certain contexts, nuclear bombs.

 

[ctdonath]

you are mistaken that a people cannot have a collective right unless each individual also has that right. That is simply not the nature of it.

How? Collectives are merely abstract psychological constructs. Individuals are real.

Can you legalize prostitution on your property? Can you legalize drugs? I can't make any sense out of your statement.

Of course you can't. You are a collectivist; your principles are based on the faulty notion of collective > individual.

It is not that I can legalize prostitution or drugs, it is that other people have - under threat of force - deemed them punishable. Such a power is NOT granted by the Constitution to the collective. If I am wrong, please specifically detail how.

Running off tresspassers is not "war".

What is the difference? Others invade defined property - whether that boundary is an individuals' or a group of individuals'.

You cannot draft me and make me participate.

Of course - you are not part of my "collective" (my family). I can't draft you any more than the USA can draft Swiss.

You cannot organize an army on your own property.

Too late. Me, my wife, and my dog - small a group as we are - are armed, coordinated, and ready to defend ourselves and our property.

You do not choose what weapons you can have on your own property.

Um...yeah I do. And yes I do.
Importation is occasionally a problem, though - but that's an issue between my micro-nation (so to speak) and other collectives.

The collective has powers beyond that of any individual.

Show me such in the Constitution. The collective only has powers granted by the sum of individuals in cooperation. The total may be greater than the sum of the parts - but only because individual rights multiply when joined.

I just can't make any sense out of what you're saying.

Of course you can't. You axiomatically hold that the collective - an abstract construct - has "rights" which individuals don't. I disagree; I hold axiomatically that individuals have rights, and groups of individuals have powers mutually delegated from their rights.

So long as you don't recognize axioms which our Founding Fathers held as fundamental, you won't understand me or the Constitution or the nature of individual rights.

 

[jlbraun]

In short, my position is: "Want to own a nuke like a nation-state? Then expect to be treated like one."

Just like you have the right as a private property owner to restrict what people do on your property, expect that a nation will have a problem if you ride up to their border with a nuke in your trunk an expect them to grant you safe passage. Of course, you have the inalienable right to own such a weapon. I'm not going to step on your right - that is, as long as you don't try to get it over my border. You can make as many big booms as you like, just don't do it here, please.

I get certain protections from living in the USA, and part of that contract is that I don't own nuclear weapons. This seems like a reasonable trade to me. I have delegated my right to own nukes to my government. If you don't similarly delegate your right to own one just like the rest of us upon entering our polity, that means that you're not part of our collective, because you didn't delegate your right to own nukes, and don't get the same protections as the rest of us. You still have your rights, understand - we're just not going to protect them for you. And because a nuke is so very powerful, you give up damn near every protection you ever had if you decide to own one. You're taking back the protection of all of your rights from the state that you originally delegated that protection to, and if an actor decides to violate your rights, say, by killing your whole family in some horrible manner, the state will do nothing for you, because you have not delegated to them the ability to do so under a social contract.

If someone decides to exercise their right to own a nuke, no gov't in the world will take them in and protect their rights for them. They have to do it themselves - and that's a very lonely, dangerous, and brutal way to live.

Like it or not, you have to give up something to the state in order to get its protection. Ownership of nukes means you are a state, because that's the highest level of force a state can wield. The whole point of a republic is that no one individual can hold the power to destroy the state, it has to be a supermajority of people acting in concert in order to be politically legitimate. You have to make it such that millions of people have to be politically dissatisfied enough to rise up to take the government back, not just ten guys with 10Mt of BOOM in the trunk. You've got to have just enough force in the hands of the people such that the number of individuals needed to overthrow an existing government comprises a supermajority of the public, and not just a few people.

 

[ctdonath]

Nicely put, jlbraun.

Sure you can own a nuke. Go ahead. So long as you bring it in range of me or my property (or I reasonably expect you will), I'm gonna darn well do something about it - along with everyone else I can scare up who is also equally threatened.

Foot-pounds? Googling...

The energy released by the complete combustion of one kiloton, of TNT is 3.1x10^12 foot-pounds

There's something on the order of 12M gov't employees, so your weapon power cut-off theory is about 24 billion ft-lbs. Not accounting for problems of efficient application (most of a nuke's energy is, to be stupidly picky, wasted), a 1kT bomb is about 1000 times more powerful than a vaguely reasonable cutoff for individual physical power.

Theory needs much refining, but is interesting from the beginning.

 

[jlbraun]

(moved to a separate post)

Consider that it takes about 2000ft-lbs of energy to put a human down reliably (think deer rifle) Take the size of your government X, multiply by 2000ft-lbs, and that's the energy threshold of a single-shot weapon that an individual can't exercise the right to possess under that government. The US has 300 million people, of which 122 million voted in the last presidential election. Technically, that's our government - those that showed up to vote. Times 2000 ft-lbs, and that's 244 gigafootpounds of energy, or about 79 tons of TNT.

That's your limit. No individual citizen of the United States shall own a weapon with a yield greater than 79 tons of TNT.

Let it be so.

 

[jlbraun]

Also consider that setting the threshold for individual weapons at "that needed to kill the entire government" means that in a dictatorship... you necessarily must restrict all weapons capable of killing just one guy - ie. citizens can't own firearms!

Secondly, that means that in a democracy - the government IS the entire voting public, so we can own pretty damn powerful weapons without each one of us individually being able to topple the government.

Suddenly, this theory of mine is starting to make sense...

 

[JohnKSa]

They also probably couldn't have envisioned the internet, or, it could be argued, fully automatic weapons. There are literally thousands of things that we take for granted that the Framers probably didn't envision.

There's a difference between technological evolution/logical progression of existing items and the jump between owning a gun vs owning an item that can convert small amounts of matter into unthinkable amounts energy.

You can argue there isn't to extend the discussion, but the second simpler response in my post that you conveniently ignored really cuts to the quick of it.

 

[jlbraun]

@ctdonath

What I'm trying to get at is that there has to be SOME cutoff for individual physical power within a state - you have to make some sort of compromise with the state in order for it to protect some of your rights for you. If you want to exercise your right to use weapons that are on par with the most powerful a nation-state can wield, then of what use is a state to you at all? You ARE a state.

Saying that "everyone should be able to own and use a nuclear weapon while still being a citizen of a given country" invalidates the social contract that allows us to form governments in the first place.

 

[Zen21Tao]

The problem is, the 2nd amendment doesn't say "small arms" or "firearms" or "guns." It says "arms."

According to the Webster's dictionary, arms means "a means (as a weapon) of offense or defense." That doesn't really specify that "arms" means "small arms" either.

In interpreting Constitutional rights you have to look at the original INTENT of the text. You can’t do so by applying today’s definitions to historical text of the past. You have to use other writings (most common being The Federal Papers) by the original authors to determine what they meant by the text they used.


The first thing to note is that the 2nd doesn’t bestow a right it limits the governments authority to infringe upon a (what was believed to be) God given right. The original intent of the 2nd was to insure that Citizens retained the ability to keep the government “in check” and from becoming tyrannical and oppressive like the government they had just won their freedom from. To accomplish this, citizens need to have access to the same degree of weaponry that the government has.

The argument isn’t over whether this was the original intent of the 2nd it is whether or not this intent is still needed today. Hence the (rediculous) “living breathing” interpretation of the Constitution held by the left today.

 

[Koobuh]

"I seem to recall that the Founders had private citizens with their own battleships and artillery - hence the "letters of marque" in the Constitution.

'Twould seem to indicate that "arms" meant more than just hand weapons."

Indeed. Arms are arms; each and every of the terrible implements of war, from Liberator pistols to MIRV mounted hydrogen bombs.
It's awfully generous of you people to say 'oh sure, small arms, because that's what I have'. Because of course small arms are sooo vital to war.
Even at the time of the Revolution small arms were secondary pieces, which while necessary, were not the deciding factor in battles. Who has more maneuverability, and who has more field pieces (not just blackpowder cannons today- aircraft and WMD also are in the mix); these are what determine the outcome of a battle.

Arms means ARMS. Artillery, and counter-artillery. Tanks, and anti-tank weapons. Warplanes, and anti-aircraft weapons. Warships, and anti-warship missiles. Atomic weaponry, and their respective countermeasures.

Small arms are nice, and cheap, and fun, and flexible. But they are not 'terrible implements of war'. They alone will not win a battle against a trained military.
It was the intention of the founders that Americans be not only belligerent and suspicious of government, but at least as well armed, hopefully better on a collective basis.

Remember, nuclear weapons are a massively expensive, incredibly complex, and insanely dangerous weapons system, yet we seem to decide that nation states, as unpredictable and pathological as nation states always are, are the only entities 'responsible' enough to own these items.
Nation states are only beholden to the will of others by means of threat-of-force- the balance of power. That balance has shifted completely in favor of the government vs. the citizen since WWII.
This is not exactly a recipe for happy things.

Yes, individuals or corporate entities should be able to own nukes. These weapons are too expensive and complex to be used in an act of passion or eccentricity- rather they are the trump card of a responsible, pragmatic citizenry against the ultimate recourse of their government.
The founders didn't promise us complete safety; only the means to secure our liberty.

 

[crazed_ss]

Nuclear Weapons in the hands of random citizens if a threat to liberty.

 

[strambo]

These weapons are too expensive and complex to be used in an act of passion or eccentricity-

They are? How much did the 9/11 operation cost Al Queda from start to finish? Over a million I bet.

That statement tries to align logical limitations with illogical emotional and/or mentally pathalogical motivations.

To accomplish this, citizens need to have access to the same degree of weaponry that the government has.

No they don't, a government can be toppled without nukes and those nuke won't stop it. Where, and on whom would the govt. target them? Are the 22nd Century (I hope nothing happens before this ) revolutionary "geniuses" gonna mass formations conveniently for that? Maybe take over entire cities with just a large percentage of revolutionaries in them?

You don't "kill everyone in the govt" to overthrow it. Heck, we never came close to that in Iraq or Afghanistan and they're small. You just get rid of the guys at the top...then for everyone else in govt. they flee or it's "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

 

[44AMP]

oringinal intent

of your post, as I read it, is that you are looking for a good sounding argument to use, for a situation where an anti escalates to nukes when you talk machineguns.

Certainly no one would want just anybody to have a nuke. We have way to many unstable people for that. Unfortunately, I happen to fall into the camp that says, (technically) the Second Amentment allows nukes.

However, the Govt can prohibit us from owning nukes (legally) without using any laws which infringe on our rights. Bear with me.

1) Govt can prohibit importation of nuclear devices. So, to buy a foreign made nuke would be a crime. Govt has this authority. Can't be challenged.

2) No US made nuclear device is (or has ever been) available for sale. Therefore, if you had one, it would be stolen property. A crime.

3) You could build your own. But, the material needed for the nuclear part is already regulated under law. (Atomic energy act, IIRC), and as an ordinary citizen you can't legally posess more than trace amounts. Plus, while the science behind a nuclear weapon is rather simple physics, the engineering of the bomb to get it to work is quite complex. And since you can't legally possess enough U or Pu to make it work, if you had one that could work, it would be a crime.

So, unless you are willing to commit a crime, there is no way a private citizen could have a nuke. There, that settles it!

As to the "arms" argument, my opinion is to include howitzers and tanks. These guns are operated by men. Things that shoot. I would put bombs in a different category.

And, while there has been quite a lot of developement with "tactical nuclear weapons", none have ever been used, nor put up for sale in a legal market. AND if one were to go on the block, it is ilegal for a US citizen to get one (see above).

The reality is that (because of the way mankind views nuclear weapons) they are strategic weapons. It doesn't matter if the weapon name has the word tactical in it, use of any nuclear weapon has strategic consequences.

And that it why machine guns are ok and nukes aren't, nukes are strategic weapons, machine guns aren't.

 

[goosegunner]

From the revolution viewpoint, who is ,as I understand, the driving force behind creating the 2nd. A, the meaningful arms for the people to keep will change with time. The Govt have nukes, aircraft, tanks, infantry, poison gas etc. and will always be stronger than You, the people, in material resourses. Hence will private aircrafts, tanks, artillery etc. be of little or no use. Look to the current war/insurgency/police action in Iraq: what is causing you problems? Tanks, (heavy)artillery, infantry and aircrafts was fast and effectively eliminated whithin days or weeks after the invation. The same would have happened in a revolution on american soil, any (if exsistent) larger troop consentration, tank formations or aircrafts would be destroyed pretty fast.
What a revolutionary force needs is counter measures to the Govt. weapons. They don't need tanks, they need RPG's and mines. They don't need battleships, but a hellfire missile battrey would be nice . They don't need helicopters, but AA missiles.

If the possibility for a successful revolution is the force behind the 2nd A, times have changed since privately owned battleships had any point.

 

[Fosbery]

I think the 2A does cover all arms, including nuclear arms.

But the constitution isn't always 100% right, let's be honest.

Nukes have no real use for individuals unless you take things to silly extremes. You cannot topple your own government with nukes, nor defend yourself from domestic attackers (muggers, rapists, looters etc). It would be virtually impossible for an individual to use a nuclear weapon recreationally without causing massive enviromental damage. Using a nuclear weapon against an attacking nation is questionable at best given that it would be virtually impossible to avoid massive civillian casualties.

So, there's no reason to have one other than "Just because". But we all say that we should be able to own arms because they are our private property. You would never use a minigun to defend yourself and I can't imagine anyone seriously using it to overthrow the government, yet I am sure most of us would say we should be able to own miniguns. Revolver carbines are pretty useless, but why should you be denied one?

The difference with nukes, for me, is that there is no security. They are unique really. It only takes one accident, one drunken moment of stupidity, one terrorist or one suicidal maniac to wipe out a city. With guns, they'll probably just kill themselves, if anything, or kill a couple of people before being gunned down themselves (assuming everyone carried in public). Nukes are just on a whole other level compared to anything else.

I strongly believe in the individual's right to do whatever they like, just so long as it does not hurt anyone else. Well, owning a nuke isn't hurting anyone else but somehow I just couldn't subscribe to a law allowing people to own nukes.

 

[Lucky]

Sounds like most people are wrestling with the morality of nuclear weapons existing at all, and trying to shrug it off by limiting the availability to individuals. It's almost funny how the standard gun-grabber slogans are suddenly being brushed off and re-cycled, but it's not funny.

HighRoadPoster:"A psycho with a bomb could do much more damage than one with a gun."

Gun-Grabber:"A psycho with a gun could do much more damage than one with a knife."

And then yet others are suggesting that individuals shouldn't even be allowed anything except rifles, not cannons or ships or airplanes or hand grenades. Even though there's ample historical evidence against it... I'm not even American and I know about the importance of private cannons used by the South during the civil war.

Might I suggest an alternative solution, that would soothe the consciences of those 'nuke grabbers'? I'd suggest that if you allow your government to own and use weapons, then the 2nd amendment automatically grants civilians to own those same weapons, in fact the civilians are supposed to be BETTER armed than your government. In theory you should be debating whether the FBI should be allowed to use 'citizen-killer hollow-point bullets', and what magazine capacity they really need.


Look at it another way, would it be OK if you bought a nuclear weapon, but hired a specialist to look after it for you? You and your neighbour, owning and operating a nuke between the two of you. If that's not OK then it's not OK for you to contribute to a group fund, and do the same thing on a much larger scale.


...Government of the people, by the people, for the people... And you think that it's OK for THEM to own and use nukes, but not 'the people'.

Sigh, gun grabber mentality might simply be limited by personal prejudices

 

[crazed_ss]

Great discussion.. it looks like we're stuck with two camps here.
People should be able to own anything, up to and including nuclear weapons
Perhaps, there should be some limits on what citizens can own.

IMO, some people take the "shall not be infringed" part too literally. I mean the 1st Amendment says Free Speech can't be abridged, yet you can be sued/arrested for slander or libel or for making threats. There are limits on free speech and it is feasible that there can be limits on some arms that doesnt automatically lead to banning and confiscation of all arms.

 

[Lucky]

Is your government made of robots? Of the People, by the People, for the People. They're People. It's People in the buildings and it's People in the silos. People people people.

I agree that there could be catastrophic consequences from nuclear proliferation, but there's two ways to deal with that. #1)The gov't renounces nukes, and that would suggest that they are not suitable as arms. #2)You get the 2/3 vote, amend the constitution, and be done with it. Specify just what doesn't count as 'arms'. Or just as easily, specify what does, that won't be abused, right? Or maybe delete the 2nd all-together, because if one psycho gets ahold of some weapon out there, they could hurt people, so for that reason no-one should be allowed to have weapons.

Hell in this very thread one person already honestly said that his opinion is that you have the right to keep arms, as long as they're on your person at all times (meaning no gun-safe collections for you), while a majority agree that no larger calibres than rifles (let's call them 'destructive devices') are really needed by honest men.

Lol, it's just the hypocrisy that I find amusing, and depressing, how quickly so many renounce the core aspect of this very forum. I don't have this right you do, in my country, and I see so many people so willing to throw it away

 

[glummer]

Interesting thread. I like the "one-man State" argument.

How about this?
It is impossible, as a practical matter, to USE a nuke without harming innocent people (poisoning the air, soil, & water, at the least - many collateral damage deaths also likely.)
Therefore, mere POSSESSION of a nuke, is a form of assault; i.e., a threat of violence against innocent people. Sort of a super-brandishing. Which is generally recognized as something which can legitimately be restricted/criminalized.
This would also apply to most forms of WMD.

(Note that this argument would NOT apply to firearms, since they CAN be used without harm to innocents. Or, put another way, in a world where EVERY gunshot harmed innocent people, the 2A would never be written.)

 

[Otherguy Overby]

Seems to me that if we dug up the founders, revivified them and showed them what politicians in DC had done to the country they created, they'd be appalled. If we then told them about nuclear weapons, they'd want to be the first to push the button to nuke DC.

 

[Sistema1927]

One of the most thoughtful posts thus far has been Lucky's (#91).

He touches on something that I have been grappling with, and that is this: Is there some knowledge that we would be better off without possessing?

Please bear with me as I try to string my rambling thoughts together.

The nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and it is never going back. Yes, we saw that the use of the Atom bomb in WWII might have saved millions of lives, both Allied and Japanese, at the end of that terrible war. At the same time, if we had not developed the A bomb, would German scientists have finally developed one and used it against us? We have seen advances in nuclear medicine, and the generation of electricity from nuclear power plants. There have been many advances coming out of the Manhattan project, but we have also paid a great price for those, possibly will still pay in unimagineable ways in the future.

Yet, at the end of the day, we need to note that nuclear weapons do exist, and they are not going away. Who are the "governments" that we trust with these weapons? Are they not us, the citizens of this Republic? Our government has no rights, it only has powers granted by those possessing the rights. In other words, if it is OK for our nation to possess nukes, then it is OK for us to possess them. If it is not OK for us to possess them, then it is not OK for our government to possess them.

Some knowledge might prove too dangerous to possess. IIRC, there were some physicists in the Manhattan project who feared that the splitting of the first atom might lead to a catestrophic chain reaction that would annihilate the planet. Yet, they persisted and unleashed the terrible power with which we now have to contend.

We can not undo the past, we can not forget nuclear weapons technology. We must live with it, and pray that we have not bitten off more from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil than we can handle.

 

[jlbraun]

I think that glummer lands closest to the mark.

Nukes are strategic weapons. They're big, messy, and polluting WAY outside of any "private range" you as an individual could construct to set one off "recreationally". Basically, you have to have a range big enough to set one off without infringing on others' property rights. Is it possible for an average individual to own property where you can light off machineguns, mortars, explosives, and artillery safely? Absolutely.

What about a range safe enough to set off a nuke? You need an evac area hundreds of miles on a side, the radioactive plume will drift far beyond that, and you're probably still going to EMP someone's heart monitor somewhere. Is it possible for someone to own a range this big as an individual, within the bounds of an existing country. I think not.

And if you just happen to have nukes, as well as a range hundreds of miles on a side - well lookit that - you're a government!

For those who are saying that "If the state can own nukes, so can I", I still stand by my statement that you have to delegate some of your unfettered freedom as an individual to a government so that you don't have to exist in a state of nature (ie. tooth and claw). If you don't delegate to the government your right to own nuclear weapons (the most powerful weapon in existence currently), then you preclude even forming a state at all.

(FWIW, the total yield of all the bombs dropped on both sides total in WWII is about 2 megatons, which is a merely average nuclear device.)

And there is literally no such thing as "knowledge we're better off not possessing". Knowledge is value-neutral.

 

[kfranz]

I mean the 1st Amendment says Free Speech can't be abridged, yet you can be sued/arrested for slander or libel or for making threats.

The constitution doesn't grant authority to arrest for making threats. Slander/libel are after the fact situations, not preventative measures.

 

[RealGun]

You can't own nukes legally, because they aren't a commercial product, sold as surplus, or legal to import. The government very appropriately keeps all that as secret information or secured rights to the design. It is tiresome to see this subject continually come up. It is rhetorical, because one couldn't buy one if they wanted to.

The difference with machine guns is that one might realistically go up against police or military with full auto guns and should have the right to own the same weapons. It was no different when the Henry rifle was introduced, and the military obtained the Winchester version of the lever action, repeating rifle. I am not sure of the history of the Gatling gun, but there may be some parallels.

 

[Lucky]

Good points. Maybe a better title for the thread would be "If you were to amend the constitution to exclude WMDs, how would you do it?"

That's obviously assuming that your constitution can't simply be ignored and side-step the issue.