I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is also a very dangerous approach in my opinion. What you seem to be saying is: "as long as only the well-off - and therefore likely to be educated - people had the means of mass expression, dangerous ideas could not proliferate". Should it be one group of people, preferably "us", who decides what the other groups are allowed to think and discuss? To me this is much more ripe for abuse than the other extreme. Doubly so because the dangers in free speech can be much better solved with education and removing the ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
So I disagree vehemently that the solution is to limit free speech. That to me is akin to cutting off our own noses because we have a flu. The root of the problem is elsewhere.
What does pretty much every malicious and totalitarian regime start with?
1. Ban free speech 2. Institute the concept of thought crimes 3. Limit education
Concentrating knowledge and intelligence in the hands of a few, and reducing information and idea flow to the masses.
Dangerous and radical ideas can proliferate mostly among marginalized groups who have been excluded from welfare for one reason or another. People who are gripped by existential fears and see little to no possibility of improvement or solution to their problems will naturally gravitate towards radical opinions because they have nothing to lose, no other options and nobody else listens to them. Banning their voice will do nothing just push them further away and radicalize them even more.
And then again, it is mass democracy, which was always a mistake, and if it didn't exist many of the problems we have now won't exist either, it's entirely fair if voting is limited to landowners who have land giving no less than $X annual rent, the way it was in late 1700s-early 1800s America. And even more so when we have massive social programs so democracy becomes a death trap of freeloaders voting for even more free stuff.
What is the realistic exit from it? I believe that Chinese way relies too much on individual obedience so culturally impossible in any Western country. Returning to democracy for the elites and human rights for the (sub)elites too, is impossible because it's a catch-22: people won't vote for it.
Maybe something like Putinism is a good way out: keep democracy on paper but make sure actual voting is irrelevant, keep free speech on paper but make sure "right" content is ranked better than "wrong" (this is how Russian social media, which is KGB-owned, works, after VK.com acquisition). Of course it can't also work without some countries remaining true democracies - just kept afloat, with their social programs, with massive amounts of stolen money - because the elites need safe places to live in, after all.
This way, we will return to the "good old" American system of 200 years ago - except geographically, rather than racially, segregated.
When the 2nd amendment was written there were privately owned battleships
People always had the right and capacity to make conspiracy theories. They deeply believed myths, and could just as easily be manipulated. Look at the Salem witch trials. Look at the conspiracies that sprung up from the moon landing or the assassination of JFK.
Most serious media outlets care about the truth of the content they share. Facebook simply does not.
Generally, when people talk about "assault weapons" they're actually thinking of automatic, military-style weapons with large magazines. Those are "assault rifles", which have been legislated at the federal level for a long time. The laws are indeed complicated, but in general these weapons are hard to get legally.
Here's an decent explainer: https://www.ajc.com/news/national/assault-weapon-assault-rif...
The threshold to be considered a dealer is fairly low. If it's someone with a table, they're going to be a dealer. It's just that if an individual sells their personal firearm, they're not required to do a background check, and at gun shows you'll see a few people walking around with a rifle slung over their shoulder and a sign saying they're selling it.
But that's semi-auto only (one bullet per trigger pull). Fully automatic weapons have stringent federal requirements.
There is a ban on the import and manufacture of new ones (for civilian use) in place since 1986, so the ones available for purchase (by anyone, again, no "special federal permit" required) cost about 10-20x more than they would cost otherwise, which effectively restricts them to "rich people only".
They're freely available, though.
Florida, in particular, has banned machine guns like the AK-47 which is to say weapons that fire multiple bullets with one pull of the trigger.
Semi-autos are the dominant technology in firearms; when a bullet is fired, the energy released forces a fresh bullet into the chamber, ready to fire but you must pull the trigger again. This is known as "semi-automatic" and is legal everywhere, for now.
It's a federal felony, however, good for the better part of a decade in jail.
This is a false statement. Only manufacture of automatic weapons for civilians is banned in the US.
Many automatic weapons are manufactured in the US for police/military/law enforcement.
I know people claim "hunting" with these rifles, but I think there's a shiny toy thing at play more than utility.
And every gun I’ve seen with a detachable magazine comes in a variety of sizes. Hell. A Ruger 22 rifle accepts a 100 round magazine. Is that an assault rifle?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon
The AR 15s come in various configurations and are quite modular from what I gather.
Collapsible stocks and vertical front handles etc. Clearly originally made for use cases that differ from hunting animals.
They look cool though!
Fully automatic allows multiple shots with one pull of the trigger.
The anti-gun lobby has conflated the terms to push a blanket ban on anything that looks remotely military. But functionally, it's two separate categories and fully automatic weapons require a federal permit that takes about a year.
> Yes, assault weapons are a different category, legally and technically, from semi-automatic weapons
What's the clear legal definition of an assault weapon?
E.g. as referenced elsewhere in the comments here, the federal assault weapons ban clearly talked about "semi-automatic assault weapons", suggesting the legal definition was not so clearly "only full-automatics"?
https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/oct/02/difference-be...
Whereas past laws that used the term clearly considered it not to be fully-automatic only. E.g. the law that's commonly known as the "Federal Assault Weapons Ban" (1994-2008) literally regulated "semiautomatic assault weapons", a category which doesn't make any sense if you insist that assault weapons always are fully-automatic. So what's changed that you now can insist that including semi-automatics doesn't make sense? I won't claim I know all relevant legislation, but it seems pretty obvious that not that long ago, it wasn't as clear-cut as you present it.
Certain military-grade rifles that are semi-auto but can also be made to fire fully auto are classified as assault weapons, officially and militarily speaking.
Civilian anti-gun activists just call anything "assault" that even looks kind of military, like a black AR-15 that might only fire .22 bullets, one at a time. By the way a .22 bullet might not stop a man unless it's a heart hit; this is why police (and bad guys) tend to use .45 or other larger caliber weapons. A .22 is quieter, less kick, cheaper ammo, and is good for killing rabbits.
This is precisely the problem that people have with the term "assault weapon".
If you are using the words "assault weapon" you are basically saying that you want to ban guns that look scary, because this is what the original assault weapons ban did.
But after a bit of googling I guess I found the missing context: "Assault weapons" being full-auto amounts to a US gun scene shibboleth to make it easy to dismiss anyone making the mistake of using the term without having to engage the substance, even if many people, including law makers, define the term differently.
"People call all kinds of things assault weapons based on stupid criteria, what specifically do you mean" would have been a far stronger point than this "haha, semi-automatics are normal guns and not assault weapons" game.
Specifically, the assault weapons ban has nothing to do with banning semi-auto weapons. It has to do with banning things like bayonets on weapons.
Thats the point. The only definition of assault weapon, that has ever existed in the law, has been regarding banning mostly cosmetic features of a gun.
> without having to engage the substance
The substance of the assault weapons ban, is regarding mostly cosmetic features. It is instead other people, who are trying to ignore talking about the actual substance and specifics.
Same is free speech: when actually exercising this right was about printing books of pamphlets that meant a certain level of financial and intellectual barrier to it, free speech was clearly all benefits and no risks. Now that literally anyone can invent his own conspiracy theory and post it on facebook - and with well, intellectual majority driving the views and rankings of them so smart content ends up unnoticed coz it's so nerdy - people are right to be concerned.