Good catch! You are 100% correct.

I’ll update the message, but strikethrough the original so this still makes sense.

Wow, that’s a lot more complicated than I would have expected!

Our system, although it’s basically the way it is because things change slowly here, kind of works for us. Between 16-18 here, you’re no longer in school, you go to college (different meaning than in the US!) or vocational training. It’s an in-between child and adult stage, where most people start doing grown-up things for the first time.

But isn’t the age of consent 18 in the US? How does that work?

In the UK you used to be able to get married at 16, but the age of consent is 16, so it kind of made sense.

Probably. I mean, not based on data or anything, but probably.

The fact that there is no equal-but-opposite version of Piers Morgan shows how skewed our media really is. The guy was already dodgy from his Mirror days, well before he was a TV host - the fact he’s been able to build himself up into this “voice of the people” is nothing short of mind-boggling.

I don’t know why you posted that image, but I’m glad you did. I didn’t know about Quasimodox before - they’re fantastic!

The main image on their landing page is of Makoto, my favourite SFIII:3S character, so that’s 100 points before even entering the site.

I’ll admit, I didn’t know the Supreme Court had said that.

It’s an insane interpretation - and I see that many justices said so at the time.

I guess whether or not the writers of the amendment actually meant every able-bodied man when they wrote “well-regulated militia”, or whether they meant a militia, is impossible to know for sure.

But to say that the word meant something different at the time is patently untrue. Around the English speaking world at that time, local militias - with that specific word used - were used to keep order. It was a common world for an actual thing people would have been familiar with.

That’s half right.

Militias were always things that you joined and they had a chain of command. Just because they were volunteer forces, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t an organisation. The Peterloo Massacre (1819) was conducted by the local militia. They were all volunteers, but they operated as a paramilitary group.

“Well-regulated militia” literally meant what it sounds like today - a well-regulated volunteer armed force.

The amendment is saying that the government shall not prevent people from joining well-regulated armed militias. Which admittedly sounds terrifying to modern ears but, historically, armed militias helped keep the peace in the days before police forces.

It depends.

Are the people actually part of a well-regulated militia, necessary to the security of a free state? Or had the government spent the last century reframing that right as “any idiot can own a lethal weapon without training”, and as a result the people are a disorganised and easily-suppressible rabble?

“The” priority, not “a” priority. The majority of people do not think it is the single most important thing the government should do, which is fair. We have people choosing between heating and eating, the majority of the country one paycheck away from homelessness and an electoral system that doesn’t represent the people. I’d agree it isn’t “the” priority, but it certainly is “a” priority.

I’d tell a reduction reaction joke, but I want to stay positive.