Most of this is not true, but to address what I consider the most false. Marshals are not out gunned by the public, they have access to handguns shotguns and many types of rifles. They are also a government entity, which can call on backup from many different agencies or local police. What would have changed on Jan 6th if bumpstocks were legal at the time? You mean someone would have killed a bunch of rioting conservatives? Many people owned bumpstocks while they were illegal, some people don't just toss out their equipment because the government says to.

Bump stocks making semi-automatic guns operate like machine guns, means that law enforcement will not be able to return fire at anywhere near the same rate. Which means law enforcement can be easily outgunned, which is why machine guns were outlawed in the first place.

You're riding on a technicality. It's the overall effect that is important. 800 rounds per minute is machine gun speed. A Revolutionary War musket could get off maybe 3 shots in a minute, in the hands of a very proficient operator. That was the state of the technology when the Second Amendment was written, for all you originalists out there.

@Flyingsaucesir who cares about muskets? You seem to think people are walking around with 800 round mags. Standard capacity magazines for the ar platform for example are generally 30 rounds. As far as I can tell only one mass shooter used bumpstocks. Criminals can buy or make switches for certain handguns making them function like an automatic, go after them.

@Tejas So your answer is to make it legal for the criminals to have machine guns. Genius!

Oh look, our resident ammosexual is defending the indefensible again.

Tell that to the slaughtered children who are only guilty of going to school. Tell that to the families of the people in Las Vegas. You are the nut not us. Oh and BTW I own guns.

@Flyingsaucesir I don't see how you got that from what I said but ok.

@Druvius I don't need to defend the constitution. Maybe you should try not to be a fascist.

@Mikeb56 tell what exactly? Congratulations you're a Fudd and a hypocrite at the same time.

The Gatling gun of 1886 would fire about 400 rounds per minute, and it was, at the time, the deadliest firearm in the history of human warfare. By 1893, they were getting over 800 rounds through it in 60 seconds. The mini guns mounted on a Vietnam-era Huey spit out over 4,000 rounds per minute, but they're motor-driven.

@Flyingsaucesir I was referring to the ones we had on the AC130. 20 mm.

@glennlab Thank you for your service!

@glennlab That is one badass weapons platform. I read about one engagement, I think it was in Syria, where a contingent of Wagner Group, with tanks and armoured personnel carriers, were on their way to assault an oil refinery held by our allies, the Kurds. US local command contacted Russian local command, asking if the assault force was theirs. The Russians said they didn't know who's it was. So then one of our AC130s got the green light, and that was the end of that Wagner Group. Boom!

@glennlab This is not the same article I read but it discusses the same battle.

[nytimes.com]

I mis-remembered. It wasn't just one AC130...

@Flyingsaucesir That is the newest version that uses the 25mm spent uranium armor piercing shells. It's fully computerized, and has a ton of safety features we never saw in SEA. Still the most impressive thing on the bird is the 105 howitzer, good from about 8-10 miles away. You can orbit on station and give 360 degree relief to troops on the ground. The only thing the VC hated worse than us was the B52, 80,000 lbs of bombs raining down from a clear sky

@Flyingsaucesir I always found it interesting that the inventor of the Gatling gun's purpose was to create a weapon so terrible that it would end warfare. He greatly underestimated the horror humans are willing to cause.

The 2nd amendment is greatly outdated. At the time it was written there was no national standing armed forces, and so defense of the country relied on state militias for national defense. This changed after the Civil War, which altered state autonomy, and a Federal armed forces was established, in part to discourage states from withdrawing from the union, but also because U.S. territory without statehood was pretty lawless at that time period.

So, the primary purpose of the 2nd amendment, which was for national defense, was no longer needed.

Also, at the time of the writing of the 2nd Amendment, the most advanced firearm was a single shot flint lock, which took about 20 to 30 seconds to reload. That the second amendment includes the words "well regulated" implies that the writers never intended for persons to have personal armories which could wipe out hundreds of people on a whim.

Now, just because only one mass shooter opted to use bump stocks, doesn't mean more won't. As ever investment company will tell you "past performance does not indicate future performance". It was the high casualties of that one shooter in Las Vegas that caused bump stocks to be made illegal in the first place. That we haven't had any mass shooters using bump stocks since them is mostly due to their having had been much more difficult to obtain. The court's decision means we will have more mass shootings with casualties in the hundreds, instead of the tens as we have grown accustomed to. It will be truly sad if we also grow accustomed to casual rates in the hundreds as well. We are being conditioned to accept inhumane acts as "normal".

I am old enough to remember when mass shootings happened less than once every few years. Now they happen on average just under two every day. We are being conditioned to accept inhumane acts as "normal".

I am not witnessing the making of a better world or a better nation.

That's because they are NOT different things. An AR-15 with a bump stock IS a machine gun.

@Flyingsaucesir To a human’s mind, they differ. To a bureaucrat’s mind, they are the same.

@yvilletom You are invited to explain yourself sir.

@Flyingsaucesir I don’t know how to explain bureaucrats. You’ll have to experience a few of them. Look for a bureaucracy.

@yvilletom The post is not about bureaucracy or bureaucrats.

@Flyingsaucesir The post is about the kind of thinking being done at SCOTUS.

Your full bio mentions Sagan and Tyson. Their positions on whether gravity alone, or electricity and gravity, explains the universe suggests groupthink.

@yvilletom The post asks this question: how is a rifle that can fire up to 800 rounds per minute not a machine gun? Mind you, nobody gives a damn about the internal workings of the device, whether a bolt engages a sear, or whatnot. That's not the issue. The issue is how many bullets can be fired by one person with one gun in X amount of time. Clearly, an AR-15 with a bump stock operates at the speed of a machine gun. If you want to quibble about arcane nomenclature (as @Tejas tried to do above), that's fine. Just remember that a quibble is essentially the same thing as a lie.

[linkedin.com]

@Flyingsaucesir I will ignore your fine quibble.

@yvilletom (sound of dusting off hands)

@Flyingsaucesir you can admit you are wrong any time now. Maybe with some firearms knowledge you'd know better. In the meantime I expect you to be overly opinionated on things you know little about. Willfull ignorance, shame.

@Tejas I've been a gun owner for over 50 years

@Flyingsaucesir doesn't mean you know the first thing about them. Sometimes people who think they know it all are the worst types, I've met former military and police who know jack out guns when they should be well acquainted. Plus there are liars, I've met at least one on this site.

@Tejas Look, you are invited to answer the posted question. If you don't want to do that, fine! Most of the members here can see right through your crab-walking evasions. So have at it.

@Flyingsaucesir I've answered, and you admitted I was technically right. You are the one who can't drop it by tagging me in someone else's comment.

@Tejas Hewing to a very narrow definition that ignores the actual essence of the thing does not make you "right." It reveals a narrow mind. But I understand you have a reputation to maintain, so knock yourself out.

@Flyingsaucesir calling something a thing that it is not is ridiculous.

@Tejas Machine guns are not illegal because a sear is repeatedly pushed by a bolt with a single movement of a lever. (An infinity of innocuous devices could incorporate such design elements, e.g. a water sprinkler, an automatic pickle seeder, a power Pez dispenser, a turbo-charged dildo, etc.). No. Machine guns are illegal because of their rates of fire, because they are such efficient killing machines. Fin.

Best not play semantic games. Someone will mistake you for one of Trump's loser lawyers.

@Flyingsaucesir to go back to technicalities, automatic weapons are legal to own if you have the money.

@Tejas OK, if you insist on splitting hairs, then we can use the word "restricted." But it doesn't change the fact that an AR-15 with a bump stock is essentially a machine gun, a weapon of war, and as such should not be generally available to civilians. The fact that the SCOTUS ruled otherwise only serves to underline their corrupt stupidity.