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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla
And somebody predictably always tries to slippery-slope me on this point.
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That's because it's a stupid point to try to make. You said that citizens should be able to be armed comparably to the best-equipped militaries. That includes everything from nukes, to MOABs, to conventional missiles, to warships, to fighter jets, down to the handheld weapons. Your claim was that it doesn't matter that newer weapons are more powerful as long as all parties possess them.
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In actual real-world effect, this means sidearms. Selective fire should not be forbidden, as indeed it is not, merely restricted to what I think is an undue degree.
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That's the distinction that xoxoxoBruce made a while back- handheld weapons that you can "bear" rather than "operate" (Which is why I made the point that the destructive power of handheld weapons is always increasing). Of sourse, SAMs don't realy meet this distinction.
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I draw the line at nuclear weapons. Now somewhere on the other side of the line would be my neighbor having a surface-to-air missile battery all his own. I don't have a problem with that unless he tries taking my roof off with it. He's quite crossed the line then.
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So private ownership of missiles would be OK, as long as they aren't nuclear.
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The reason I draw the line is rather a philosophical one: many weapons may be used as designed and intended in a moral manner. Point weapons, with a small area of effect, may be used, even lethally, in a moral manner. By contrast, a nuclear weapon is an area weapon.
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How big of an area is too big? Conventional missiles and bombs are also area effect weapons.
There's nothing in the second amendment separating area-effect weapons from point weapons, so it looks to me like you decided that there is a level of destructive power that, outside of the wording of the Constitution, would not be safe to leave in the hands of civilians. I contend that almost everyone makes that decision, and the only disagreement is what that power level is. High-minded pronouncements about principles unchanged by time fall flat.