The Second Amendment protects nuclear weapons!

[CBlackjr]

no meat eh. Well at least we agree on something battler.

I don't want to go on saying the same thing here but here some more stuff some might be interested in. Nukes are relatively easy to make. This is just stating what i believe to be true this is not part of the argument. Here is the basic principal. You take some nuclear matireal and put it on a plate facing another plate. On the other plate you put some more nuclear material. You set a charge of maybe c4 behind heach plate and detoniate it at the same time. The nuclear material smashes toghter and bam you you a nuclear reaction and a big explosion. In the US nuke the mateiral is put in the inside of a sphere. At the center of the shpere is a ball of nuclear material. When an explosive charge goes off the sphere is compacted an another boom. Like I said they are easy to make the only thing is getting the material and with more and more countries becoming nuclear capabile the chance of someone getting the materials is getting better by the year.

It is likley that in the next ten years someone will have an opportunity to set off a nuke probably in a port city. I though long and hard about how this be a reason to let citizens have nukes. are private citizens going to get on a plan with a nuke and fly down to whatever city or country where a terrorist bomber lives and set it off. One would still be killing too many inncoent people. I would rather that person go with some buddies there loaded up with M4, M16 or what ever full auto weapon they can get their hands on and wipe out that one person.
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here is some more food for thought. Lets take Timmithy Mcveigh Ok someone that would do something like he did. A person that probably believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and believes its time for what some may call a reveolution. But because you guys did such a good job arguing the 2nd A before the Supreme Court They allowed private citizens to have nukes, this bomber decides drop of his 5 megaton nuke in front of the Hoover Building in DC. Besides totally killing all the FBI people he also kills every body within three city blocks including someons daughter having a birthday party at the Hardrock Cafe across the Street.

Yes Yes I know I have already given a example like this but I like to paint in different ways. Criminals will always have guns you and I know that and that is one reason why we retain the right to keep and bear arms. But are you so sure that a criminal or terrorist wouldn't have a problem getting one if hypotheticaly it where legal to have them.

[Dangus]

Nukes are relatively easy to make. This is just stating what i believe to be true this is not part of the argument. Here is the basic principal. You take some nuclear matireal and put it on a plate facing another plate. On the other plate you put some more nuclear material. You set a charge of maybe c4 behind heach plate and detoniate it at the same time. The nuclear material smashes toghter and bam you you a nuclear reaction and a big explosion.

Nope, that won't do it. The material will react yes, but not go thermonuclear. It will create heat, flow to the sides and spray radioactive particles into the air. It could be quite deadly, but it's no hiroshima bomb.

In the US nuke the mateiral is put in the inside of a sphere. At the center of the shpere is a ball of nuclear material. When an explosive charge goes off the sphere is compacted an another boom.

Well, first off, you need to make a VERY perfect sphere, and you need to encase it with a completely linear charge. This takes a lot of careful planning and just the right explosive. Then you have to add a HUGE amount of electrons to the soup, which means you fire another piece of weapons grade material through a magnetic gauntlet, then it impacts the sphere, creating critical mass and detonating the bomb. This is all quite simple, but it's not as easy as it sounds, see next point.

Like I said they are easy to make the only thing is getting the material and with more and more countries becoming nuclear capabile the chance of someone getting the materials is getting better by the year.

There's a huge difference between weapons grade plutonium and normal radioactive elements like Uranium. It takes a great deal of facilities and money to create it. Also, finding suitable uranium to convert into it is not totally simple either, it takes the right base material, and fortunately that's pretty rare. Moreover, making a fission bomb is necessary to making a fusion bomb, a fusion bomb requires so much heat that you actually use a fission bomb to get it going.

Making nukes is no basement or even machine shop project. You're working with materials that just sitting there could kill you and your whole family, and you're trying to make something that has to be VERY precise. It's no easy chore. Many people have actually tried to do it and failed. I'm not sure exactly how many people have been arrested for it, but there's been a few nerds out there arrested for building half-assed nuke attempts.

[AnotherPundit]

Another point worth noting is that you *do* have the right to keep and bear nuclear weapons, at least in a de facto sense, under current American law -- at least, you do as long as you don't give anyone else a reason to believe you have one, and as long as you don't threaten or damage anyone else with one. The fourth amendment ensures that -- since they can't break open your house to search for nukes without just cause, you obviously have the right to have nukes as long as you don't give just cause for a search.

[Don Gwinn]

Sigh.....I think we've all had enough. Why don't we drop this for awhile? Whether you think nuclear weapons are protected by the 2nd or not, it just ain't practical to worry about it. If the tide turned today we'd have an uphill battle for the next 50 years just to get the right to own military small arms (full-autos and machine guns.) I promise that if y'all pull together and get us to that point, I'll go to law school and argue the case for private ownership of nuclear weapons before SCOTUS myself.

Until we get that far, nukes are pretty well irrelevant. If you can't own a battle rifle what the heck do you care about the right to own a weapon of mass destruction? I'm not saying you don't have that right, I'm just saying that it serves absolutely no practical purpose to argue about it for now. It's like a guy who, when he's unable to fix the cracked head on his Honda, sets out to build an electric engine for it. He's leapfrogging his problem and it ain't gonna work.

Either way, the next personal insult closes this thread. Consider yourselves forewarned and forearmed.

[Battler]

CBlackjr:

"But because you guys did such a good job arguing the 2nd A before the Supreme Court They allowed private citizens to have nukes"


could this read:

"But because you guys did such a good job arguing the 2nd A before the Supreme Court They allowed private citizens to have assault weapons all those kiddie got shot up".
??

Poses a question:

Does making a principled defense of a right make one responsible for a criminal's activity?


Quote:
"It is likley that in the next ten years someone will have an opportunity to set off a nuke probably in a port city. I though long and hard about how this be a reason to let citizens have nukes. are private citizens going to get on a plan with a nuke and fly down to whatever city or country where a terrorist bomber lives and set it off."


BTW - I never said private ownership of nukes was justified through being a defense against getting nuked (i.e. it's not). Nor does upholding the second amendmed have anything to do with what's legal or illegal in terms of assaulting someone else. Your right to your bolt-action 22 has nothing to do with retaliation (not self defense, retaliation) against someone who did <whatever> and then ran away (who should instead be subject to objective law).

The second amendment (pretty much gone anyway) can only be upheld via a principled defense. Most people have submitted this to mean a tradeoff against weapons being able to be used by a nutball to kill X people. Remember, "if it saves one life" - the second amendment does not currently enjoy a principled defense, and consequently many types of weapon (even "small" arm) have been castrated to varying degrees/owners harassed out of buying them - precisely due to general public perception (right or wrong, as we saw with "assault weapons" or "50 cals") of how good they are at killing people.

I am not arguing this out of getting any warm and fuzzies thinking of ANYONE else with a nuke.

BTW - nobody worry about anybody nuking any city. Nukes are illegal now, right?


Battler.

[Battler]

This thread really says it all:

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/...threadid=67956


NRA guy: I recognize that we don't have any rights at all to own guns that can kill a lot of people. But please don't take away our guns that we shouldn't be allowed to own that kill a lot of people until you harass more people who still have the guns you decideded we shouldn't have (because they can be used to kill a lot of people) in 1993.



Gun control guy: "I don't know why we have to wait until someone walks into a bank and shoots up the place to ban the guns," said Senate Majority Leader George C. Jepsen, D-Stamford.



"Despite the seemingly lopsided vote, the bill suffered harsh criticism from some lawmakers and pro-gun-rights activists who argued that measure would do little to reduce gun violence because it fails to crack down on the types of weapons that criminals actually use. "

Translation (NRA guy
Since I don't actually have a right to own guns, if a criminal uses a gun and I have one just like it you SHOULD take it. But since he's using a different type of gun, you shouldn't be banning my type of gun. So this bill, which is otherwise just fine and good is a waste of time.



No principled defense, whatsoever.


Battler.

[AnotherPundit]

Ok, I've attempted to write out an at-length essay that covers this whole question from an innocent's perspective and which is suitable for use in online debates -- something that every time I run into someone going off about the "mystic nuclear weapons exception," I can can point them to this and not have to endlessly reiterate myself. Feedback appreciated.

http://www.anotherpundit.com/cgi/vie...1642523,85167,

[ctdonath]

Methinks it is a relevant question, at least in academic terms, because a good answer is built on fundamental principles applicable to all arms, which are the basis for restoring rights to more mundane arms like machineguns.


You have the right to keep and bear arms - including nuclear weapons.
I have the right to defend myself from anyone who, without good cause, points a weapon at me - including by bringing a nuclear weapon in range of me.
While you have the right to own a nuke, I have the right to defend myself against you if you "point" your nuke at me...and so will an awful lot of other innocents.

It's really not much different than any other weapon: if you point it at innocents, they (and others acting on their behalf) have the right to use deadly force to neutralize the threat. The only difference is the scale of area of effect: a sword's area is a circle with a radius of a few feet, a machinegun's area is a line several hundred yards long, and a nuke's area is a sphere a few miles in diameter plus downwind effect. The extreme area of effect of the nuke makes threatening innocents virtually unavoidable.

Since it's very difficult to possess a nuke without "pointing" it at innocents, don't be surprised if you don't last long as a lot of others exercise their right to bear arms.

[Dangus]

In regards to attacking someone for bringing their nuke "within range", does this mean if anyone has a nuke within 5 miles you will kill them? Cause you see... a nuke of modern yeild will have a blast area killing radius of 5 miles or more, and extreme falloout problems even beyond that. A nuke sitting even that close to you is a threat.

[AnotherPundit]

That's the thing. . to my mind, a nuclear weapon is a threat to anyone living on the same planet -- fallout from Chernobyl was ruining milk in Sweden. It's pretty much impossible, given the randomness of the weather etc., to say that anyone could possibly detonate a modern-day nuclear weapon without endagering pretty much everybody else to at least some degree. There might be a better case for hiroshima-scale, relatively small-effect nukes, as those might be more "controllable." Hard to say.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Another Punit:

Therefore we have our rule: people have the right to own whatever weapons they can obtain and use, provided that those weapons are of the sort which can be used without agressing against innocents.

Missing a "g" in aggressing.

Also, I think you should explore distinctions further... weapons of mass destruction are on one end of the scale but what about grenades, rockets, machine guns - arguments could be made that these all present an unavoidable danger to innocents and so should be restricted.

[Country Boy]

Bump to Top

[ninenot]

Christopher II:

For a serious argument about the 'right to own' nuclear weapons, you must go to the level of moral theology. That's where all the serious arguments take place, anyway.

In THEORY, the 2A is worded so that ordinary citizens may own 'weapons of the militia.' One could conceivably argue, rightly, that F-15's and nukes are 'militia weapons.' HOWEVER:

there is a 'morality' regarding ownership and that morality's underlying predicate is "necessity."

Just as owning a few garden-variety weapons (.30-06, .45, .22, etc) can easily be justified under 'necessity,' whether for hunting, self-defense, or legitimate recreation (targets,) and ASSUMING that such ownership does not deprive one's family of the necessities of food, shelter, etc.,

....the converse is that there is no discernible 'necessity' for a citizen to own a nuke.

Perhaps the National Defense requires nukes--then it is a 'necessity' for the National Defense establishment to have them. However, just as killing someone who steals a loaf of bread is not justifiable, a citizen owning a nuke for 'self-defense,' or even 'defense of one's family' is not justifiable under ANY moral law.

This law of 'necessity' has some fine lines which may not be popular in the US of A. For example, it is hard for a childless couple to maintain that they need a 35-room house. It is hard for a family with 5 members to maintain a 'necessity' in having 12 cars. You get the drift.

So there is a restriction, but it is not Constitutional. Rather, it falls under the "laws of nature and nature's God."

[tyme]

Obtaining and/or smuggling WoMD into the U.S. right now is only limited by economics.

Anyone with enough money and resources can obtain almost any WoMD they want. I don't have much doubt that Bill Gates could buy or build a nuclear weapon and get it into the U.S. if he really wanted to.

Cooking up a modest amount of sarin would probably cost way less than $1m, since there are no extraordinarily expensive components and no need to smuggle necessary chemicals into the country. And any clown with appropriate protective equipment and storage can make HCN virtually for free simply by breaking into any college chem storage area and stealing some acid and a cyanide salt.

And then there was the research team that constructed the polio virus last summer using mail-order gene sequences.

I guess the question is how many incompetent criminals WoMD laws will catch, and is that benefit so enormous that the requisite erosion of liberty is not only justified, but practically invisible next to the threat.

[Justin]

George Orwell wrote an essay on atomic weapons shortly after the conclusion of the second World War.
Regardless of whether you agree or not, his point of view is interesting nonetheless.
George Orwell talks atomic bombs

In an online debate with an ardent anti-gunner I had recently, he said that my philosophy would have to allow for private ownership of nukes, otherwise I was a hypocrite.

My response was "When we are no longer throwing people in jail for attaching a bayonet to a rifle made after 1994, then I will debate the pros or cons of private nuke ownership."

That's how I feel about it. Debating this is nothing more than an intellectual exercise at best, and a waste of time at worst. There's really not even any point in getting worked up about it.

[dZ]

The advent of the Field Process shield and the lasgun with their explosive interaction, deadly to attacker and attacked, placed the current determinatives on weapons technology. We need not go into the special role of atomics. The fact that any Family in my Empire could so deploy its atomics as to destroy the planetary bases of fifty or more other Families causes some nervousness, true. But all of us possess precautionary plans for devastating retaliation. Guild and Landsraad contain the keys which hold this force in check. No, my concern goes to the development of humans as special weapons. Here is a virtually unlimited field which a few powers are developing.
--Muad'Dib: Lecture to the War College