Leighton Smith
Matthew Haugheythe obvious answer is unfettered access to weapons capable of mass murder for any american because of a bad faith reading of a 250yo law about muskets from a new country without a standing army
Bill Hooker@mathowie I'd just edit one thing: ...bad FAITH reading...
@sennoma I meant to say that, editing now, thanks!
urig
John Infante@mathowie *Why* do people do it? Reasons too numerous to count. *How* can people do it? Nailed it.
acm@mathowie pithily put!
Scott Andrews@mathowie …and poor mental healthcare
Tony Snyder@mathowie @marcoarment whew…the SPEED with which I smashed the Boost button on this.
Jeff Byrnes
Jonathan Barcus@mathowie I'm still not convinced it was actually about "muskets". The term "firearms" was in use to describe firearms since the late-1600s at least(from what I was able to find) in both England and the American Colonies. The founders chose "arms" which, being short for "armaments", would be inclusive of melee weapons.
I don't think the 2nd Amendment explicitly/exclusively covers firearms because there was a term known to them for them to use if that had been there intent.
justpeachy@mathowie to be fair, the person who asked that question was a 10 y/o girl who had a bullet graze her leg in the attack. Absolutely heartbreaking.
Nicole ParsonsRepublicans don't owe their allegiance to the Constitution or even their own constituents.
They owe their loyalty to the billionaires funding them, including the gun lobby.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3511518-nra-contributions-underscore-grip-in-gop/
NRA contributions underscore grip in GOP
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has funneled millions of dollars to Republican senators over the past decade and beyond, contributions that shadow the debate over new gun restrictions following the mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y. and Uvalde, Texas. The NRA contributed roughly $149,000 to Senate recipients in the 2020 cycle, with nearly all the funds…
Don Hawkins - W7DAH@mathowie and corporate profits insure no change.
Ben Waber@mathowie The Onion always posts this article after each mass shooting 😢 https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1850961776
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
LEWISTON, ME—In the hours following a violent rampage in Maine in which a lone attacker killed at least 16 individuals and injured numerous others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from …
Jessica 
🇺🇦 🇵🇸 ✡️@mathowie As many others have said, you have named the 'how' as clearly as anyone can. The 'why' is toxic masculinity. And we scream it from the rooftops, and nobody listens.
spmatich vk3spm 
@mathowie false security: The feeling that if you have more weapons than the other guy, you will feel safe.
Erik@mathowie turns out having the normal distribution of mental illness and 400 million guns in one country is an issue
KaisoArt@mathowie
We will never ban our way out of this, but bans and holding manufacturers to account can be a part of the solution. The real answer is creating a society of empathy and kindness where the angry and hate filled people who aspire to this don't reach that point. That is impossible in our society that finds empathy and kindness not profitable, so the bodies of infants and anyone else is an acceptable price.
We have one "right" and one "freedom" in this, sick nation. The right to commerce, and the freedom to consume everything -- people and planet -- in furtherance of that commerce. We are all to blame for believing/accepting this.
Will@mathowie As a thought experiment I read the Confederate States of America constitution, which was nearly identical to the US constitution with the exception of slavery and the bill of rights being added to the main body. The CSA version of the second amendment omits all the ambiguous commas and reads exactly how gun control advocates interpret it. So from at least 1779 to the 1860s no one believed in an individual right to guns.
Randy Slaveyfor anyone wondering:
CSA constitution:
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.
US constitution:
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.
Darwin Woodka@mathowie because they have access to AR-15s and are told that shooting people makes them macho men. Duh.
LaloofahWhen the law is not clear, it will be twisted over time.
The Animal and the Machine@mathowie @marcoarment
You nailed it.
The first thing you learn in studying law, the one that flawed me and turned my world upside down, is that the law isn’t a list of ironclad rules. It’s actual the opposite. It almost doesn’t matter what is actually written, it’s entirely on how those in authority choose to read it.
As I’ve said before, you can, if you so choose, interpret the US second amendment entirely differently.
“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.”
• You could interpret the right of the people as the collective population, and so the right is with the elected governments.
• From there you read this as the right to have an army.
• From there you say it ends and therefore it does not entitle any civilian to any gun whatsoever. It is simply not mentioned. Put bluntly, no right to a gun.
I’m not even saying you should interpret it that way. That is not my point. My point is that any argument that it’s an enshrined right is actually to shut you down, making it a variant of ‘shut up’.
Additionally, as the interpretation can be redone any time, this is a current and ‘right now’ choice made by politicians. It means that right now some US politicians are choosing to put trench assault rifles in civilian hands.
Juan Per¢ent,🇲🇽 🍉,🇻🇪@mathowie ..."Police search for 'armed and dangerous' man BEFORE Maine shooting" That would be a better title... but finding armed and dangerous men is I suppose unconstitutional or something...
KanaMaunaCan't see what you choose not to look at.
StarkRG@mathowie Yep. The "well regulated militia" that single, poorly-written sentence refers to has been superceded by the national guard and army reserves. Also by killing most of the people they needed those militia for.
Dave Mandl@mathowie Completely agree. But it's worth investigating why mere access to these weapons is enough to make thousands of these people shoot up elementary schools every day.
Kadin@mathowie Sure, in the sense that obviously guns are a necessary condition for a mass shooting.
But they don't seem to be a sufficient condition, because we had ready access to semiautomatic rifles to basically anyone who wanted one for decades, and we didn't have mass shootings on a weekly basis until well within my lifetime.
Something really weird and bad happened within the last few decades, but it doesn't seem like there's a ton of appetite from anywhere on the political spectrum to look into it.