This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
I thought the 2nd was designed for a state’s right to arm. You know militias.
ETA:
WTF? 1st in Callie?
The firearms industry has raked in big on the so-called “crisis of manhood” where apparently too many young men don’t have good role models of “masculinity.” Everybody, it seems, is making money off of young men wondering what it means to “be a man.” Whether it’s quack nostrums and devices, how-to books, or guns, that’s where the big money is.
It’s somewhat reminiscent of how women have been suborned by the “beauty industry” into buying cosmetics, hair treatments, clothing, support clothing, diets, and even surgery. But the men’s “identify crisis” is killing the rest of us.
Okay, second but trying harder:
I had a paper route, I was an independent contractor @ 12, and thus a man.
Reading a Torah portion at age 13 isn’t enough? I guess I need to add “Uzi” to my bar mitvah gift list.
The industry 15 years ago would not even allow the AR-15 to be used or displayed at its own trade shows. I mean, they were locked up in a corner. You had to have military or police credentials to even go in there. Now, they’re spread around like crazy, and the marketing campaigns are so aimed at young men that in some ways, it’s not shocking that Uvalde or Buffalo or [the July 4 shooting at a parade in the Chicago suburb of] Highland Park, all three heinous crimes, all three committed with AR-15s, all by very young men. It’s not shocking to me that those happen; it’s shocking to me that they don’t happen every day.
I love Pro Publica but I could only get a third of the way through the article. When I read things like this and realize that it is nothing but greed that has gotten us to this point, I get nauseated and depressed. It is so dark it is beyond my comprehension.
You’re confusing the actual original text of the Constitution with the fascist right’s “originalist” bullshit, which is just a smokescreen for “whatever we say it is.”
Ultimately, greed can get us out of this mess. That is, after the penultimate event of undivided progressive supermajority government. Then, accounting for inflation during the requisite decades of social evolution, a $5,000 per gun buyback coupled with a $2.00 per gram tax on powder.
Of course, social chaos, fascism, climate change, artificial intelligence, artificial viruses and/or a big fat asteroid may have done US in before then
It’s a good article, opening a window into the twisted thinking that took us to the insanity currently infesting the body politic. A couple of quibbles, though, related to each other:
“[The Bruen decision has been called one of the court’s most significant rulings on guns in decades. It struck down New York’s concealed carry law as unconstitutional, saying it conflicted with the Second Amendment.]”
It was, of course, the Bruen decision, not the New York law, that conflicts with the Second Amendment’s text, its history, and with more than 200 years of SCOTUS decisions that ruled that the Second Amendment was exclusively about the militia, as is clear from both the text and the fact that since after the Second was ratified, the government was repeatedly petitioned to add another amendment that would extend the right own weapons to the general public. Those petitions were rejected each time, as the matter was seen as a state and local issue, not a Federal one.
And the second, related quibble is that Busse described the Bruen decision as “foolish originalist reasoning” when the decision is actually a total refutation of originalist thinking on the subject. I realize that the SCOTUS majority in that case has tried to label their decision as “originalist”, but those hypocrites try to attach that label to every unsupported fiat they impose on the public, to add gravitas that the ruling in no way deserves. They must be called out on it, every time.
Nah man it was Scalia in the 00’s who decided that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” meant individuals not organized state militias.
In the wee hours of the morning (1:30 AM) on Thursday, we were awakened by the sound of gun fire. It was loud and close and unmistakable. Three shots which seemed to be just outside our home (they were) and two a bit further away. Most of the neighbors heard the shots, police were called, and three shell casings were retrieved from the parking strip of the home directly across the street from ours. Per the SPD (Seattle), it was likely people joy riding with the added danger of randomly shooting a gun from a window. No one was injured and no property damaged but it left us all rattled and my husband and me had a less than restful night. I’ve lived in this neighbohood and house for 45 yrs. This was a first. There are way too many guns in circulation and this Propublica piece proves it.
I would like to take the conversation farther. About 20 years ago the Missouri legislature was debating on loosening the state’s gun laws. The legislation was either written by the NRA or another organization that believed that “a polite society is an armed society” While this legislation was going through the process of hearings and comments there were many local sheriffs that went and testified that by loosening the state’s gun laws will make their jobs harder, and change the way officers will interact with the public. And so it came to pass what they warned about.
I wonder if some entity that tracks officer involved shootings has seen a correlation in the increase of officer shootings and the loosening of state gun laws.
I am a gun owner. I hunt and shoot with my boys. I want to continue doing that. I believe and I think that I have a right to do those things. On the other hand, I do not believe that right can exist without a commensurate amount of responsibility. And that responsibility either has to be voluntary or it has to be legislated.
I keep thinking on this part, where’s the holding someone responsible for their actions, before someone gets killed? How many gun deaths will it take to wake the judges the fuck up?
wow, a very illuminating article. Thanks.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
If the framers had meant “the right of each individual (man, person, citizen)” then don’t you suppose they would have written it that way?
Everyone supposed that for over 200 years until Scalia divined our Founders’ intent. We wait centuries for men of such wisdom to tell us we were doing it wrong.
As I’ve said before, In my mind, Scalia and his ilk are little more than legal haruspices pouring over text as if it were the gyres and sulci on poops or animal entrails to divine “original intent”.
No flight patterns of the birds? I guess Scalia couldn’t pass the test to take that course.
“Is it true when you say no you really mean yes?”
-Benny Hill
Now we have a gun called the Wilson Urban Super Sniper. We now have a gun called the Ultimate Arms Warmonger. We now have an AR-15 company called Rooftop Arms, as in when you don’t get what you want, you vote from the rooftops.
How utterly American.
Men with giant pickup trucks.
