[ceejayoz]

Kavanaugh's dissent is kinda hilarious in this context.

> The original constitutional principles do not change absent a constitutional amendment, but the relevant principles— both the rules and exceptions alike—must be faithfully applied not only to circumstances as they existed in 1787, 1791, and 1868, for example, but also to modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.

This, of course, doesn't include machine guns.

[qingcharles]

I've laughed ever since United States v. Jones (2012), the GPS tracker-stuck-to-vehicle case.

The justices actively debated what the historical equivalent of 24/7 digital tracking would look like in 1791. This prompted the famous hypothetical of an officer secretly squeezing into the trunk of a horse-drawn carriage to track someone's movements over several days.

The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century. Bug or feature?

[semiquaver]

  > no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century

What on earth do you mean? The practical way is the same as it always was: subsequent amendment. The fact that it requires consensus is a feature.

This reads the same way as people who say things like “we just have to accept that Congress is broken and can’t pass new legislation.” Like hell we do!

[lazide]

They mean ‘have you seen congress? Good luck’, not that the mechanism is mechanically harder to use.

[qingcharles]

This. Getting enough states to agree on a change would be a fool's errand I think. It seems like the reds and blues can't agree on anything at all any longer.

[graveemaster]

I agree 99% with you, except when it comes to these enormous data centers. When you look at the local zoning committee meetings, you're seeing Reds, Blues and Ind mostly calling for a moratorium on build sites in their communities.

[lazide]

What does that have to do with anything that would plausibly be in the bill of rights?

[Henchman21]

I mean, after decades of manufactured cultural rifts, we're right where the powers that be want us to be. Disorganized and ripe for exploitation.

[expedition32]

People in my country hate eachother yet nobody pretends it's still 1848- the year the Dutch constitution was written.

[lazide]

Count yourself lucky.

[cucumber3732842]

>The justices actively debated what the historical equivalent of 24/7 digital tracking would look like in 1791.

Redcoats in your home, comparing notes with all the other redcoats who live in your buddies house and hassle your bartender, watch the comings and goings of everyone else around town, etc, etc.

[watwut]

> The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century. Bug or feature?

Of course there is, it is just being done - the constitution is being rewritten out right now by supreme court. All you need is a majority on a 9 person commission.

[krapp]

>The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever update the Bill of Rights in the 21st century. Bug or feature?

Given that this isn't an issue in any other modern democracy, I'd say "bug."

[nradov]

The slow pace of change is a feature, not a bug. It's fine to wait decades or centuries until we have broad consensus before making amendments. While this might seem maddeningly frustrating or unjust in the short term, in the long term it makes our republic more stable. The USA has had an uninterrupted system of government since 1789. How many other major countries can say the same?

[ceejayoz]

> The slow pace of change is a feature, not a bug.

To a point. It seems to have ground to a halt.

> The USA has had an uninterrupted system of government since 1789. How many other major countries can say the same?

Quite a few of them can say "we took those good ideas and built on them".

[nradov]

In what sense has it ground to a halt? Eight amendments have been ratified in the past 100 years. I think some people are taking a very short-term view here and lack a historical perspective.

Let's see how those other countries are doing 100 years from now.

[redserk]

A government structure that changes isn’t inherently bad. The US has gone through multiple iterations just by reinterpreting a document. Other countries tend to be a bit more explicit in this.

The US in 2026 operates fundamentally differently than in 1910, and both are unrecognizable to 1801.

The document was written when there were 13 states, and at best, appetite for a mere handful of others to join. For example, the degree of the weaponization of state-carving in the mid-19th century wasn’t in the cards. A 26 member upper legislature operates substantially different than one comprised of 100 members.

[UncleMeat]

> The USA has had an uninterrupted system of government since 1789.

Sort of. We had a civil war. We had a second founding. Then we had violent overthrowing of the reconstruction governments in the south. It has been less than 100 years since the US has provided the franchise to everybody, and even then this is a bit questionable.

Instead of constitutional amendments we get aggressive reinterpretation of the text by politically motivated efforts to change the courts. Despite no change to the constitution itself we've created criminal immunity for presidents and overturned interpretations regarding separation of powers than have been in place for a century.

[harimau777]

Ya, screw all those people who have to suffer in the short term!

[willturman]

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation...

[lazide]

Eh, since it would most likely be used to remove some key right….

[0xbadcafebee]

Well it's a feature in that the ratification rules were part of an intentional illicit rewrite of the constitution. We could make it easier to modify like other nations, but that also makes it easier to repeal.

I think the fix is to require more political parties to be involved, so a 51% majority of a single party can't remove federal laws whenever they have a majority. Then you wouldn't need an amendment to solve controversial problems.

[semiquaver]

Anything requiring bipartisanship can be gamed with synthetic parties, the legitimacy of which will surely be deemed a nonjusticiable political question.

[anamax]

Radio, TV, cameras

That said, breech loaders were used by the British during the Revolutionary War (the Ferguson Rifle) and multiple shots from a single barrel using multiple "touch holes" was well known.

And then there's Puckle's gun.

[lazide]

The Gatling gun also predates any widespread gun control.

Notably, the Gatling gun is still legal almost everywhere, including California (lulz!).

If that is legal, what is the actual point of 99% if the rest of the bans, etc?

[harimau777]

The main point is that there isn't an epidemic of gatling gun crimes in America.

[lazide]

There isn’t an epidemic of any other gun crime, by the numbers.

[ceejayoz]

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/31/1209683...

> The U.S. has the 28th-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world: 4.31 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. That was more than seven times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.57 deaths per 100,000 people — and about 340 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.013 deaths per 100,000.

https://everytownresearch.org/graph/the-u-s-gun-homicide-rat...

> The US gun homicide rate is 26 times that of other high-income countries.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26551975/

> US homicide rates were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher. For 15- to 24-year-olds, the gun homicide rate in the United States was 49.0 times higher. Firearm-related suicide rates were 8.0 times higher in the United States, but the overall suicide rates were average. Unintentional firearm deaths were 6.2 times higher in the United States. The overall firearm death rate in the United States from all causes was 10.0 times higher. Ninety percent of women, 91% of children aged 0 to 14 years, 92% of youth aged 15 to 24 years, and 82% of all people killed by firearms were from the United States.

We have more firearm homicides per capita than other prosperous countries have total homicides via all methods.

[lazide]

We were talking specific models, yes?

[AngryData]

Fully automatic guns maybe not, but the founding fathers definitely knew about repeating firearms, they had more than a few offers to purchase them, both for military uses and as private citizens. They just denied to because it was expensive to purchase and maintain.

[camgunz]

No. While originalists and textualists purport to refuse to extend any principle into the modern day ("no right to privacy in 3A, 4A, etc"), one they do is that 2A doesn't merely apply to arms of the day, but also to modern arms. It's... pretty blatant.

[anamax]

Electric presses seem to be covered by the 1st amendment, and there's a much bigger "output" difference between electric presses and manual presses than there is between machine guns and flintlocks. (Not to mention that flintlocks weren't the most sophisticated personal firearms in the 1770s, just the most common.)

[anon373839]

Trump v. United States tells you everything you need to know about the jurists who claim to follow those doctrines. There isn’t a shred of originalism or textualism supporting it.

[xnx]

Humans are rationalizing animals, not rational ones.

[zeroonetwothree]

Machine guns are illegal in the US. SCOTUS has never ruled there is an individual right to own machine guns.

[ceejayoz]

Yes, that's precisely the point.

The textualists turn out not to be so textualist when they feel like it.

[monocularvision]

How doesn’t include machine guns?

[ceejayoz]

Keep reading!

> In Second Amendment cases, this Court applies the Amendment to semi-automatic handguns even though those did not exist in 1791 or 1868.

"Shall not be infringed" apparently applies to unimaginably better weaponry, but they couldn't have anticipated immigrants being pregnant.

[fakedang]

Does the right to bear arms extend to stuff like MANPADS, tanks and fighter aircraft?

[ceejayoz]

I think that’s the only logical conclusion of the “shall not be infringed” absolutists. They shy away from admitting it, though.

“Oh, those aren’t arms. They’re, uh, destructive devices!”

[lazide]

Most would be happy to allow them. Let god sort ‘em out, and all.

[ceejayoz]

I tend to doubt it. Reagan and the NRA were quite happy to regulate guns when the Black Panthers showed up with them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

[camgunz]

The motivations underlying 2A are:

Protection

Participation in military / national defense

Resistance of tyrannical government

Hunting

Depending upon whether or not you think the Constitution is a living document, a modern reading of 2A could reasonably include things like explosives, drones, radar, etc., but maybe exclude things like nukes, fighter jets, biochemical weapons, other purely offensive things. I'm very pro-gun regulation, but I think this would be a fine reading as long as we're doing the same thing across the Constitution, i.e. substantive due process.

But while conservatives love modern readings of 2A, they deny modern readings of anything else. So they have to find some way to fit their desired outcomes into originals/textualism, leading to absurd dilemmas like "either the founders meant muskets or they meant nukes", or tortured standards like scanning all firearm or self-defense laws in effect around the late 18th century to discern intent, which predictably do not emerge from consistent foundational principles because their authorship is scattered across space and time and thus really are no help... unless of course you cherry pick shamelessly.

[nradov]

It's an interesting legal question. Around the time that the US Constitution was written there were private citizens who owned artillery pieces and even entire warships.

[cucumber3732842]

It ought to.

If you can afford either of those you have enough invested in the system that you probably won't use it lightly and if you don't you should and that's kind of the system's problem.

[ubertaco]

Ah yes, that well-known link between having immense wealth and being characterized by restraint and regard for the well-being of others.

That's why Elon Musk is both the richest man in modern history and also the most upright, caring, and self-restrained one too!