Laser Weapons And Constitution

[Rade]

With the advent of laser weapons becoming available by government and police in the very near future (a matter of years) would citizens of USA have a right under 2nd Admen. to Constitution to freely purchase hand held laser weapons to allow for a well regulated militia ?

 

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/-8216laser-rifle-is-latest-us-weapon-against-enemies/6176 Coming soon to protect your children at school ?

Edited April 11, 2013 by Rade

[Moontanman]

With the advent of laser weapons becoming available by government and police in the very near future (a matter of years) would citizens of USA have a right under 2nd Admen. to Constitution to freely purchase hand held laser weapons to allow for a well regulated militia ?

 

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/-8216laser-rifle-is-latest-us-weapon-against-enemies/6176 Coming soon to protect your children at school ?

 

 

I can't think of any reasons why not, if you can possess a semi auto pistol why not a laser pistol?

[CraigD]

With the advent of laser weapons becoming available by government and police in the very near future (a matter of years) would citizens of USA have a right under 2nd Admen. to Constitution to freely purchase hand held laser weapons to allow for a well regulated militia ?

 

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/-8216laser-rifle-is-latest-us-weapon-against-enemies/6176 ...

People can legally buy powerful lasers now. US state and federal regulations, including licensing regulations, apply to manufacturers of lasers, not purchasers.

 

This doesn’t mean that people can buy powerful lasers, because manufacturers are not required to sell them to anyone who wants them. Manufacturers are responsible for assuring that the people who buy their products can use them safely. If too many injuries occur, a manufacturer is libel for lots of money in civil damages, and can even lose their license. So it’s unlikely a company like BAE would be irresponsible with something like their 4 W TR3 portable laser gun by selling it to ordinary US militia members, but rather, they’ll see it only to shippers, militaries, police and private security companies and companies with well-vetted security departments.

 

Laser and other potentially dangerous equipment regulations are very complicated – my acquaintance with them is scant, mostly from a single experience in the 1980s convincing a laser company to sell my college art department four 0.1 W lasers for a piece with lots of mirror, prisms, and fog. This webpage gives a bit of an introduction to them – they seem about the same as 30+ years ago.

 

... Coming soon to protect your children at school ?

The idea of a light-based non-lethal “dazzler” weapon to protect a school is, I think, a promising one – something like a fire alarm, with such bright lights that an attacker would be unable to find and shoot anyone effectively. The downside is that such a system, by itself, would be fairly easy to defeat – an ordinary welder’s mask would do the trick. So, unless kept secret, well-prepared mass murderers (which, dishearteningly, many of them seem to be) would likely not be thwarted.

 

I loved this 1960s Star Trek episode where the Enterprise’s main “phasers”, “set on stun”, non-lethally stopped whole streets full of armed attackers. Alas, such devices are easier to imagine than to make real.

 

I can't think of any reasons why not, if you can possess a semi auto pistol why not a laser pistol?

It’s important, I think, to note that battery powered laser guns, even ones as powerful as the TR3, are much less dangerous than firearms. They’re defensive weapons, intended to be used in a manner similar to using bright spotlights to dazzle intruders and unruly crowds.

 

There are some lasers powerful enough to kill a person as effectively as a typical deer rifle, but they’re very large, most many 1000 kgs (though I notice one in-development system calls for a 750 kg max mass), requiring fixed installations or vehicle mounts at least as large as a Humvee, some as large as a 747. Most require power supplies consisting of either a big electric grid connection, a big oil fuel engine generator, or direct light-emitting chemicals. This wikipedia article has a pretty list of such laser-based weapon systems.

 

Predicting the future is a hit-or-miss endeavor, but my guess is that, for both killer and non-lethal weapons, explosive-propelled-projectile weapons are likely to be the most effective for some time to come. An ordinary, cheap 12 gauge shotgun can do both roles pretty effectively – loaded with slugs or buckshot, they’re deadly, loaded with beanbag or baton rounds, fairly non-lethal.

 

Oddly, anyone can but slugs and buckshot, but in my experience beanbag and baton rounds are hard to buy. Back in the 1980s, I actually got myself deputized by a sympathetic county sheriff so that I could buy non-lethal weapons and ammunition.

[Rade]

Craig, thank you for a comprehensive reply.

 

I was thinking along the lines of future laser guns, made lightweight to carry, that would be used as a weapon, thus perhaps meeting the Constitution definition for the words "right to bear arms". Does a laser that only stuns and cannot kill a human meet the legal definition of "arms" as stated in Constitution ?

[Rade]

It looks like I found the answer to my OP question here:

 

http://brainshavings.com/the-right-to-keep-and-bear-what/

[CraigD]

I was thinking along the lines of future laser guns, made lightweight to carry, that would be used as a weapon, thus perhaps meeting the Constitution definition for the words "right to bear arms". Does a laser that only stuns and cannot kill a human meet the legal definition of "arms" as stated in Constitution ?

By my reading, the term “arms” in the text of the Second Amendment refers to what Black’s law dictionary (1910 edition) defines as follows:

Anything that a man wears for his defense, or takes in his hands, or uses in his anger, to cast at or strike at another.

...

This term, as it is used in the constitution, relative to the right of citizens to bear arms, refers to the arms of a militiaman or soldier, and the word is used in its military sense. The arms of the infantry soldier are the musket and bayonet; of cavalry and dragoons, the sabre, holster pistols, and carbine; of the artillery, the field-piece, siegegun, and mortar, with side arms. The term, in this connection, cannot be made to cover such weapons as dirks, daggers, slung-shots, sword- canes, brass knuckles, and bowieknives. These are not military arms.

So an “arm” is something that a person would use defensively or offensively in combat if called by his state to serve in its military – a “military arm”.

 

By this interpretation, a small handheld defensive laser like the 4 W TR3 isn’t a protected arm, because it’s not weapon currently or likely to in the future be used by the military, but a large vehicle mounted one like 10000 W ZEUS-HLONS, is. Never minding lasers, a cruise missile, for instance, conventional or nuclear, or a radar-guided anti-aircraft missile, is a weapon “of the artillery”, so the right of the people to have these should not be infringed.

 

:Exclamati Warning: the rest of this post has nothing to do with lasers – it’s entirely political commentary.

 

What I believe the absurd-seeming conclusion I reach above points to is that the Second Amendment is entirely obsolete. It was intended to assure that an army quickly called up from the militia (people eligible to serve in it) would be able to mostly arm itself. No US army in the past 100 years has required, or even allowed, its recruits to bring their own rifles, missiles, or mine-clearing lasers Humvees. No civilian, eligible to serve in the arm or not, has or IMHO should be allowed to keep and bear an antiaircraft missile.

 

IMHO, using the Second Amendment to assure that the US government doesn’t infringe of private ownership of legal firearms – pistols, rifles, shotguns, etc. – is inappropriate. I’ve a rather complicated, not well-substantiated belief that assertion is primarily the result of a strategy by the manufacturers and sellers of these weapons to protect themselves from civil liability, which, were they not afforded this special protection, would make the cost of their products so great that few people would be able to afford them, and the revenues and profits of these companies would be a small fraction of their present values. I don't believe these companies deserve this special legal protection. I believe the public safety would be far better served if they didn't have it. I believe liability and market pressure would give rise to weapons that are more effective in protecting their owners and their families from attack, while also protecting them from accidental death, suicide from their own weapons, or those of other weapon owners, including criminals and police.

 

Disclaimer: I’m a technologist (a computer programmer who’s been doing it so long I’m being increasingly called on to make strategy, not code :)), not a Constitutional law scholar, but I’ve read some on the subject, and have plenty of opinions on the document and its interpretation, a disproportionate fraction on its controversial Second Amendment.

[Eclogite]

A couple of years ago I viewed, in Lincoln castle, one of the handful surviving copies of the Magna Carta, the document in which King John relinquished certain rights to the barons of his Kingdom. The Magna Carta influenced many subsequent legal and political documents with global impact, including the US constitution. Yet the bulk of its content has been rescinded.

 

It remains important as a concept, but the original intent is no longer valid. CraigD makes the same point in relation to the second amendment: it is obsolete as intended, and can only have relevance as a concept. It is interpretation of that concept that creates the divisiveness we see today.

 

As an aside, I found viewing that document, almost 800 years old, to be surprisingly moving. Such liberty as we enjoy was arguably established through that document. My view is that it has continued to be a force for good since its inception. I do not feel the same about the Second Amendment.

[Rade]

US Supreme Court has ruled Monday (4/15/2013) that no citizen has a Second Amendment right to carry a firearm for personal protection in a PUBLIC place, if the State they are in requires that each person in that State gets a special permit to carry a firearm, such as for reason to hunt. See below:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/politics/supreme-court-declines-gun-law-case.html?_r=0

 

Puts to rest the argument that the Second Amendment was about granting all citizens a Constitutional right to carry a firearm for personal protection outside their home and property and onto public property....no such right ever existed. This ruling only effects citizens where State law requires permits to carry firearms. This ruling also would apply to future laser weapons when they arrive for sale.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Rade

[Turtle]

US Supreme Court has ruled Monday (4/15/2013) that no citizen has a Second Amendment right to carry a firearm for personal protection in a PUBLIC place, if the State they are in requires that each person in that State gets a special permit to carry a firearm, such as for reason to hunt. See below:

 

http://www.nytimes.c...-case.html?_r=0

 

Puts to rest the argument that the Second Amendment was about granting all citizens a Constitutional right to carry a firearm for personal protection outside their home and property and onto public property....no such right ever existed. This ruling only effects citizens where State law requires permits to carry firearms. This ruling also would apply to future laser weapons when they arrive for sale.

 

:doh: no rade. did you not read your own article? or did you read but not understand it? the court refused to hear the case, i.e. they did not rule on it.

 

Justices Refuse Case on Gun Law in New York

 

Published: April 15, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday that it would not weigh in on a major Second Amendment question that has divided the lower courts: May states bar or strictly limit the carrying of guns in public for self-defense?

The justices turned down a case concerning a New York State law that requires people seeking permits for carrying guns in public to demonstrate that they have a special need for self-protection. In urging the justices to hear the case, the National Rifle Association called the law “a de facto ban on carrying a handgun outside the home.”

 

In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, upheld the law. California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey have similar laws.

 

As is their custom, the justices gave no reasons for declining to hear the case from New York. Additional cases presenting essentially the same question are likely to reach the court in the coming months. ...

 

egregious errors aside, to me the whole of the thread is so much pablum; ridiculuous speculation for it's own sake.:hammer: political science my eye.