Wall O Guns (courtesy chicagotribune.com)

“How many more students will weep over murdered classmates before opponents and supporters of gun controls get beyond splitting hairs over what the Second Amendment says, or might have said, or should have said. The starting point for a more fruitful discussion of the issue is obvious. Just recall what Justice Scalia said about ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.'” – Ron Grossman in What the Second Amendment says — and doesn’t say — about guns [via chicagotribune.com]

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44 COMMENTS

  1. Lets not quibble about the first amendment. Speech is very dangerous so lets cut off you hands and cut out your tongue.

  2. Yeah, that AR design from the 50s is _so_ unusual.

    Idiot. Or moron. It’s difficult to tell.

  3. When will people understand that the 2A IS THERE to keep students from being shot and killed?

    Like a fire extinguisher it is there as a tool for us to defend ourselves, our families and sometimes others from tyrannical governments, wild animals, evil people and well, just plain evil.

    There were women at Sandy Hook, men at Stoneman Douglas. a 70 year old professors at Va. Tech all willing give their lives to protect students.

    They were denied the tools to do it effectively.

    • P.S. Scalia was flat wrong and barely a friend of the Second Amendment! He flat made law up to pretend to be “judicious” and to allow continued BLACK ROBE legislation. All weapons ARE DANGEROUS when abused or misused, UNUSUAL” is a matter of novelty.

      • Either way, Scalia didn’t say that an AR15 should be illegal. He didn’t even say that M16s (the weapon he actually referenced in passing) should be banned.

      • Scalia carefully worded the ruling so as not to endanger other infringements on rights upheld by the SCOTUS.

        • @ Vic Nighthorse
          Correct !
          “Scalia carefully worded the ruling so as not to endanger other infringements on rights upheld by the SCOTUS.”

          That was my take ,he was certainly no friend of the second not to mention the Constitution he was sworn to uphold.

      • He put that in there because some idiot is going to have rusty tanks full on nerve gas in their garage and then claim second amendment.

      • Or….that’s the sort of threading the needle wordplay necessary to navigate the realpolitik of Supreme Court rulings and, in this case, to get that doddering old fool Kennedy on board to make a majority. Real world decision-making relies on trade-offs and consensus building. It’s a far cry from the litmus test ideological purity of comment board chitchat or late night dorm room bull sessions.

        Moreover, it was Scalia who wanted to go further, after Heller and McDonald, but faced a court that refused to hear any other 2A cases. For example, Scalia dissented from the court’s refusal to grant certiorari in Jackson vs. County and City of San Francisco, a case in which the lower courts had let stand a law mandating that prohibited the keeping of a handgun at home unless it was disabled (as with a trigger lock, or carried on the person of an adult. in Jackson vs. County and City of San Francisco, a case in which the lower courts had let stand a law mandating that prohibited the keeping of a handgun at home unless it was disabled (as with a trigger lock, or carried on the person of an adult.

        Geez, after two centuries of silence or actual antagonism toward the Second Amendment, we finally get recognition out of the Supreme Court of a 2A individual right and incorporation on the states in back-to-back rulings. And what do the POTG do? Whine and cry and bitch and moan about how someone who devoted his LIFE to fighting for the Constitution and made these rulings happen somehow isn’t up to your personal, facile standards. Good F’ing grief!

  4. The anti-gunners always used to bring up dangerous and unusual from Scalia’s writing in Heller, now they just use dangerous because the AR is the most commonly owned and sold rifle in America. That fact eats them up!

  5. I want to apply the “dangerous and unusual” standard to the speech of reporters. They advocate weird, radical Marxism that’s dangerous, let’s shut them up. See how that plays.

  6. Mr. Grossman I have nothing against the horse you rode in on. You on the other hand are a stunning example of what happens when an abortion is aborted part way through and that fetus somehow survives. The rest of us are left wondering if your parents begat any children that lived while also pondering just how it is so many intelligence and honesty challenged people made their life’s work journalism. You sir should be ashamed of yourself as your writing lowers the intelligence of all those exposed to it and offers nothing of value or substance to mankind as a whole. Of course, guns are dangerous! They contain a small explosion loosed by every squeeze of the trigger do you even realize the pressures we’re asking said gun to contain? even if it weren’t for that they’d still be dangerous but so are knives, cars, cigarettes, wild women, whiskey, stoves, ovens, camp fires, water, air, rocks, ok surely you get the point sir. Now please for the sake of mankind’s continued existence and intelligence place your pen in the trash can and never pick it up again.

    • Why in the world would he ever put his pen down? He makes a very comfortable living with it, writing whatever lies his master’s tell him to.

  7. We all know that the 2A only applies to the military and National Guard, just like the 1A only applies to PBS.

  8. In Soviet Union, 2a means right to join Red Army. In Holy Mother Russia, 1A means reading and agreeing with Pravda, Tass, and Red Star. Bill of Rights is KGB and NKVD.
    All is good in Soviet Scientific Socialist State.

    • You do realize that all of that bias is 30 years out of date don’t you? The USSR is no more. Gone. Went the way of the Dodo.
      Russia, ofc, still exists, and always will. Just as Montana, and other free states, will after the Feds completely consume themselves, which they are busily doing right now.

  9. When there are armed guards with AR 15’s in the schools, then there will be no more school shootings
    Fixed it for him

  10. If you assert that the AR15 is inherently dangerous because of the death toll in which it was used, but do not similarly assert that knives and baseball bats are likewise inherently dangerous, then you might be an idiot.

    If you don’t believe that knives and baseball bats need to be regulated as a matter of public utility, then you have absolutely no logical reason to believe that rifles of any kind need to be regulated as a matter of public utility.

  11. Well, since ALL firearms were designed to stop heart beats, they are all intentionally dangerous, as Scalia and our Founders knew well. That’s the point of the Second Amendment, that We the People have the ability to be DEADLY DANGEROUS if/when the appropriate time comes.

  12. “Invoking the Second Amendment effectively ends even modest proposals for gun control,” Ron Grossman.

    “If it only were true,” millions of Second Amendment supporters.

  13. Chicago is a warzone and the liberal enemies of America live there. So with that being said we must stop all democrats from moving to red states by force. These illegal citizens do not belong in red States nor do they belong in America in general. Any citizen that does not follow all amendments has denounced their citizenship! They are not part of our laws or country! They are carpetbaggers and they do not belong here.

    • Colorado is a classic example of a once red state now turning blue as thousands of lib’tard’ Californicators are moving to Colorado and bringing their liberal agenda with them including their spawn.

      • Same happening to Vermont only the Left Tard’s are from S’holes such as Commiechusetts ,New Effing Jersey,Ct.,and Shummerhole state and city.

    • The elite Liberals live in the northern part of Chicago and Cook County where they are safe. They left the middle to southern parts of Chicago and Cook County residents endure the drug trade that causes the violence to themselves. Not many homicides are investigated and go to court. Revolving door criminal system for offenders, weak sentences, and they pay criminal $1000.00 or more dollars of tax payer money not to be bad. Not a bad thing for criminals in Chicago and Cook County. They enforce gun control and ban weapons in the Chicago and Cook County for law a abiding citizens, but criminals get out of jail free cards

  14. In a list of individual rights, Mr Grossman thinks the one that is specifically specifies ‘the people’ really means ‘the states’ even though the amendments that do mention states rights specify “the states”. He completely glosses over that it is the people that form the militia not the states. He was correct that the 9th does also protect the right to self defense though.

  15. He also conveniently ignores that the Bill of Rights were added to the Constitution specifically to protect individual rights from overreach by federal government. Which includes the second amendment, unfortunately, for him.

  16. Liberals cannot be reasoned with. Their hearts are twisted and cruel. Nor can they think logically or comprehend facts. They are a lost cause.

  18. Fuck all of IL with SChitcago, and its Tribune.

    When is anyone going to prosecute the lawless violators of the Constitution?

  19. If it’s not dangerous, it’s not a weapon, which leaves us with the second adjective: unusual. AR-15s are the most popular rifle platform in the US today, and have been available for 50 years. It takes some pretty serious mental contortions to paint them as “unusual”.

  22. The elite Liberals live in the northern part of Chicago and Cook County where they are safe. They left the middle to southern parts of Chicago and Cook County residents endure the drug trade that causes the violence to themselves. Not many homicides are investigated and go to court. Revolving door criminal system for offenders, weak sentences, and they pay criminal $1000.00 or more dollars of tax payer money not to be bad. Not a bad thing for criminals in Chicago and Cook County. They enforce gun control and ban weapons in the Chicago and Cook County for law a abiding citizens, but criminals get out of jail free cards

  23. Sent the guy an in-depth e-mail explaining how he is wrong, but did it very polite and with proper punctuation and grammar and all that, so hopefully he will read the whole thing and see that the issue is at least more complicated than he thinks. Too many seem to think that Scalia just made up his conclusion in the Heller decision, that it was all his own custom scholarship, when he was just summarizing the 40+ years of scholarship that have been done on this issue.

  24. Mr Grossman I have a simple answer for you….

    No.

    We have been adding more and more rules, regulations, interpretations, and laws for over eighty years now. And by your own words the situation is getting worse instead of better.

    We tried it your way and your way isn’t working. It’s time to go a different direction, it’s time to do it differently. This time let’s try adding freedom instead of reducing it.

  25. “How many more students will weep over OVERDOSED classmates before opponents and supporters of THE 4TH AMENDMENT get beyond splitting hairs over what the FOURTH Amendment says, or might have said, or should have said. The starting point for a more fruitful discussion of the issue is obvious. Just recall what SUPREME COURT JUSTICE said about ‘dangerous and unusual SEARCHES.’”

    imagine in the above case we are living through a case where a 10 yr old bought drugs from a drug dealer on campus, that the school KNEW sold drugs, had a rule he was to not be on campus, etc, yet they had no real evidence to lead to a search warrant. the lefts would be arguing to search with no warrant. the above argument is what ANYONE would put forth to dismantle and dismiss their totalitarian discipline system.

    see, its just doesnt hold water when ANY other amendment is inserted either, so go fuck yourself.

  26. An AR-15 is certainly not unusual. There are more AR-15’s than F-150 pickups (the most popular vehicle), and something like 1/2 of new rifle sold. They are a rifle and semiauto — nothing unusual about any of that. What differentiated them from their predecessors is materials (aluminum and bakelite/plastic), ergonomics, and a smaller, lighter, less powerful cartridge. They are not more dangerous than any other firearm.

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