(Part 3) Top products from r/Firearms

Dude. This is potentially THE next big US Supreme Court case. Lemme summarize.

In 2008 we got a US Supreme Court ruling stating that we had a personal civil right to KEEP arms, as in-home ownership is what was at issue. That was the Heller case.

In 2010 we went back to the Supreme Court and got the 2nd Amendment applied as a limit against the states. The fact that it wasn't (automatically) is part of a very old scam the US Supreme Court played in 1872-1900ish more or less, low point in 1876 in the case of US v. Cruikshank. Want to know more? Read this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bill-Rights-Creation-Reconstruction/dp/0300082770

Written in 2000 by an ANTI-gun flaming lefty liberal law professor, he turned out to also be an honest one and fairly reported what he'd found. More than any other factor, this was the "go signal" to start bringing the series of cases to the Supreme Court that we're talking about: Heller, McDonald and a "carry case" of some sort which we're hoping is Drake.

OK. So where that leaves us now is, a lot of lower courts are trying to say "OK, you damn gun nuts have a right to KEEP arms, but the US Supreme Court hasn't yet said you have a right to BEAR arms and we think you shouldn't have it so you're fucked".

The Federal court system is broken down into "districts". At the top of each district is descisions made by three-judge-or-more "panels" of judges hearing appeals from lower courts. This is the last stage before a case can be appealed to the US Supreme Court. (I've left out two complications: "En Banc" review and the decisions from state Supreme courts...we don't need to worry about the latter and google the former if you care.)

The EXACT list of cases at the circuit court level goes like this...note that I may not have these in the exact right order but it doesn't matter:

Woolard was a challenge to the Maryland extreme limits on CCW permit issuance - the idea that states can have judges or police chiefs or sheriffs or whatever decide who gets to pack on an individual basis. We lost at the circuit level, appealed to the US Supremes and were "denied cert" - meaning the Supremes decided not to hear that case, we got fucked. That was in the 4th Circuit.

Kachalsky was very similar to Woolard but in New York under the 2nd Circuit. Same result as Woolard.

Moore v. Madigan was a challenge in Illinois against that state's total ban on carry. We WON that one at the 7th Circuit. But what we won was a ruling that said "states have to allow some level of carry"...didn't say what kind and in theory that shitty "may issue" in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachussetts, California and Hawaii and...I'm probably missing one, whatever, might be OK. So the ruling in Moore was "not exactly incompatible" with the rulings in Woolard and Kachalsky. The bad guys (the ones against carry) decided not to appeal Moore so we didn't get a statement from the Supreme Court on carry rights out of this one.

Drake is out of New Jersey and the 3rd Circuit - same result as Woolard and Kachalsky at the circuit level and we are now appealing this one to the Supreme Court. And this time we think they're going to hear it, because...

The latest circuit to rule is the 9th affecting "may issue" laws in California, Hawaii, Guam and a few other Pacific island territories. (All the rest of the states in the 9th have good carry laws already...Arizona, Nevada, etc.) And we fucking WON that one, the Peruta case, less than two months ago. It hasn't taken effect yet because the bad guys are pondering appeal options.

Here's the kicker. Once the Peruta ruling came down we gained a condition known as a "circuit split" - the 9th is disagreeing with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th circuits. Moore and the 7th circuit kind of lean towards the 9th, more or less. Oh, and the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico of all places decided the same way as the 9th so it's possible to get a carry permit in Puerto Rico now. So there's this major disagreement between circuits, a "split", and when that happened the odds that the US Supremes will agree to hear Drake went up like a rocket, even though they declined to hear this issue in Woolard and Kachalsky.

So us "gunnie law geeks" are on pins and needles waiting to hear whether the Supremes will agree to hear Drake next.

If they do, we think we'll win on at least a 5/4 vote, in which case the existing limited-carry states (MD, NY incl. NYC, Calif, HI, MA, etc.) suddenly have to recognize a basic civil right to carry. If the decision is worded the right way out way, and we have clues in the Heller case what the language will be, we might even be able to have an epic open carry party in fucking Times Square the day after the decision, expected in the fall if they agree to hear Drake.

But what if they "deny cert" (refuse to hear) Drake?

Well we could launch another challenge in MA which is in the 1st Circuit, or push the case we have now stalled in a lower court in DC. Or maybe there'll be an appeal path in Peruta, or maybe not...hard to say.

We really, really want them to hear Drake. We'll know more this coming Monday, unless they stay the decision yet again.

There are a lot of very simplistic points made for and against the positions presented by the libertarian/anarchistic intellectual traditions, and internet comments especially can devolve very quickly. Some people who've taken the time to research the arguments related their own questions or opinions about anarchy have sophisticated responses against steel-manned positions, but the majority are radically oversimplified and woefully short of awareness just like this. It's disheartening to spend so much effort to find out where exactly you stand in a political sense, and find that there appear to be legions of people continuously washing up against you who, though they might claim rationality, are perfectly content to drop an opinion as a decisive conclusion into a soundbyte space with no real argument. And this applies to the person you're speaking to above, not just you. It's just a really poor exchange. I'll see what I can do to help in this case, and maybe something interesting will happen.

To be very up-front, I would also describe myself as an anarchist. I came to that conclusion first by exposure to powerful moral arguments that required no acceptance of any special moral theories, but simply pitted my own morality against my belief in the political authority of the State and exposed total conflict. However, half the anarchists I've met didn't come by this approach, but by pragmatism instead. I would say that approach occupies most of the anarchist literature out there, being things like legal theory, game theory, economics, solutions to public goods problems, market failures, basically a consequentialist's playground. The reason for this is probably that a lot of folks demand quite a complete and detailed explanation for most facets of a theorized anarchist society where today they can only imagine coercive (State) solutions to the same problems. Since both of the above comments appear to be approaching from a pragmatic perspective, that's the kind of resource I'll be providing.

The claim in question is one of the most common refrains first uttered in response to the idea of a stateless society. "Without government, warlords would take over." Luckily for anyone interested in that claim here, it is also addressed in most places where people bother to ask about it. I'll present some of the shorter resources, and one or two longer ones, and then at the end I'll even contribute a tidbit of my own thoughts on the matter, which take a little bit of a different angle.

The most direct address is an article by Dr. Robert P. Murphy (economist) which you can find in written form here, or as a 12-minute narrated audio upload which someone has posted here. It doesn't take long to get through, and I don't need to reproduce its arguments here. I'm interested to hear what you think of it.

Edit: I also realize that in the article above, Murphy mentions some concepts which are common to discussions of polycentric (stateless) legal systems, but not common outside it. Things like private defense and arbitration agencies. While these too are discussed in the link below, to help provide context for anyone who feels a little confused with the above, there are some great youtube videos that give a quick introduction to these as well. The Machinery of Freedom: Illustrated Summary and Law Without Government. Hopefully this doesn't muddy the discussion, but provides some useful context if something was missed in the above article.

Further resources that cover the "warlord" question, though with the greater context of a detailed surrounding system, would include the freely available 2nd edition or Amazon-purchasable 3rd edition of The Machinery of Freedom by economist David Friedman (Milton Friedman's son). I would consider his discussions of stability questions certainly related to that, though he presents things in terms of a Mafia-like setup, and the concerns given his particular premises are not exactly the same.

I think you'd also find Chase Rachels' chapters about Law & Order and Defense & Security from A Spontaneous Order relevant as well -- you might even skip the rather boring and rigorous argumentation ethics the book leads with to get to that spot.

And I think that's more than good for a starter. Now my own tidbit. Please read/listen to the first article I linked before moving on here.

Something I think all of these guys miss even in their own objections is the public's idea of the belief in political authority. Were we to assume that a given -- let's say "Western" -- society actually opted for a truly stateless existence (whether an existing one "transitioned" or a new one was created, like a seastead community), it stands to reason that the people comprising it would have given up any belief in the legitimacy of political authority. If they hadn't, there's no reason they would've gone anarchist in the first place instead of just replacing one government with another. And if they did actually go through all the trouble to rid themselves of a State, and they indeed did not tolerate claims of political authority on that scale, there's no reason to assume they will turn right around and tolerate it on the local scale either. "Warlords" here, like kings and barons, need people to actually believe they have a right to do what they do in order to maintain any kind of power base. It's unclear why a people who disbelieve in this right of rulership would listen to them in the first place, much less tolerate them when they would not tolerate a modern State. This is my same argument against another common question: "If you eliminated the state, wouldn't a new one simply rise in its place?" or "Wouldn't a corporation just turn into a state?", etc.

If you assume a simple disbelief in political authority, a necessary precursor, for a people who were not already degenerating into moral barbarism (in which case a state comprised of those people doesn't help anyway, as Somalia had before it ripped itself apart), then the re-emergence of States on any scale doesn't seem likely to me, including that of the local warlord.

> First, It specifically says "Shall not be infringed". The constitution doesn't give a shit what purpose people have for their firearms, only that the we are able to posses and use them.

Actually the purposes were for membership in a "well regulated Militia", which had a specific, technical meaning at the time that 2A was written. In modern terminology, it basically meant that if you were a member of the National Guard, you were to provide your own weapon, and the Feds could not prevent you from owning a firearms for said membership.

Similarly, "bear arms" also had a specific, technical meaning, and it was related to military members. Separating the two words into individual terms, like Scalia did in his decision, is incorrect if you're going to go with originalism meaning (as Scalia did); it is a compound two-word term.

The 2A, as originally written was a collective right, whereas starting in about 1965 (and especially after the 1970s, post Cincinnati revolt NRA) it started to be espoused as an individual right. This individual right was codified by Heller, but it is a novel idea.

A good book on the history is The Second Amendment: A Biography:

• https://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-Biography-Michael-Waldman/dp/147674744X/
  
  If you want a more abbreviated version, this PDF law review article from 2000 (pre-Heller) goes over the literature:
  
  > [...] from the time law review articles first began to be indexed in 1887 until 1960, all law review articles dealing with the Second Amendment endorsed the collective right model.
  
  
• http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3286&context=cklawreview
  
  

Regulations I’m more sympathetic to. Hearing friends talk about Oregon’s approach to Colorado’s Wild West... regulations can certainly hamstring businesses.


Taxes though... I’d recommend “Does Atlas Shrug?” https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrug-Economic-Consequences-Taxing/dp/0674001540

> we'd won, it was all over and capitalism and democracy would give us a bright modern future

Francis Fucking Fukuyama deserves a huge share of the blame for propagating this bullshit.

You made me chuckle. Honestly, I think it would be cool if somebody made candy in the shape of crayons.

EDIT: Found some. https://www.amazon.com/School-Crayon-Filled-Fruity-Flavored/dp/B07T86BW26/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=crayon+candy&qid=1569368193&s=gateway&sr=8-5

Not sure why the downvotes for some very valid information. Classes rank number 1. Youtube is an excellent resource as well. There are plenty of channels that eliminate the signal to noise ratio. Reading books has never done anything for me personally on firearm instructions. Nothing beats hands-on.

One quick search yielded this for informative books.
https://www.amazon.com/Gun-Digest-2017-Jerry-Lee/dp/1440246580

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ACSNQE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813124379/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9562915719/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this one so you know what will be used against you https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226841510/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

From Mao Tse-tung
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0252068920/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this one would be one of the better ones for HK https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813124379/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873649214/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1574885553/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There are others, but these were handy from my collection.

Same in this book. Police not so much, armed homeowner, yes.

https://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Job-Streetlife-Residential-Break-ins/dp/1555532713

There is a book on this I read once : https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Paul Revere's Ride https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195098315/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_kSYhDb86H9XQZ

Book.

Some articles for him:

Gun control's racist past and present

The racist origin of gun control laws

Then you could follow up with the role that civilian firearms played in protecting african-americans during the civil rights movement. Here are a few books on the topic:

We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms

This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Not that I think you'll change his mind, but it'd be fun.

Ideally we would have stayed Neutral during ww1 and mirrored our military like the Swiss's militia system. Iran is a problem because the CIA & British fooled around with Iran which blew up in their faces. We still feel the repercussions of their mess up yet the organizations who caused the mess in the first place say that things will be different this time.

https://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial/dp/0691152640/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=different+this+time+stock+market&qid=1567395501&s=gateway&sr=8-1

> When you're an illegal alien you don't deserve fair treatment, you deserve jackboots kicking down your door at 3 am to pack you up and send your ass back across the border.

And why is that? What makes them deserve that?

Oh funny, as we all know libertarianism ends so well, that why the US economy has done so well since Reagan and Clinton abolished all the new deal programs. How about you get some real learning

Until I read the OP's post I couldn't reconcile the news, having never seen or heard a verfiable instance of an AR that could shoot more than 30 rounds w/o jamming severely and requiring minutes to unjam.

In Vietnam the AR killed a lot of men because it jammed. The AR is one of the reasons we lost the war. It is tough to fight when you're lying on your back trying to clear a jam with a stick down the barrel of your new M-16 (AR-15) and your enemy is blazing away with ultra-reliable AKs. C. J. Chivers' book, The Gun, and his article in Esquire tell the story. The article is titled "The Gun: A Violent History of the AK-47" but it's about the M-16(AR) too, and the difference between how the two guns came to wars. It's a good read and one necessary to really understand what happened in Vietnam and the limits of blind greed and power.

M-16s (ARs) jammed because they were a poor design, one that never did work properly. Even to this day the AR is far less reliable and less powerful than the AK on a battlefield.

In Vietnam it wasn't the ammo and it wasn't the training that failed, although the manufacturers and military brass would like you to think so - it was the gun that failed our fellow men. Read Chivers' book or read the article to find the ugly truth.