| ▲ | Retric a day ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Girardoni repeating air rifle Not a firearm. I didn’t say we could ban compressed air powered guns, I specifically said percussion caps. The Girardoni was way less dangerous than a modern handgun. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ndriscoll a day ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sure, but compressed air guns are deadly (you can find videos of people using them on deer on youtube, or if you want something less graphic, you can find ballistic gel test videos), and a repeating rifle did exist at the time and was used a couple years later by an official American expedition commissioned by Jefferson. So fast-firing weapons were not some alien technology. The wider context also makes it clear that 2A was supposed to give individuals the right to own whatever weapons the military uses because at the time, there was no standing military. Individuals were summoned and expected to bring their own weapons, hence the law requiring them to own them. In the 230 intervening years, we've vastly increased the scope of the federal government and developed a formal military, so one might argue we ought to amend the constitution to change exactly what's allowed under 2A (e.g. it should be straightforward to have a nuclear weapons ban added with unanimous agreement), but as it stands, 2A (+14A) clearly gives individuals the right to own the arms necessary to run a functioning ("well-regulated") militia, which in 2026 means at least semi-automatic firearms. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | AngryData 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Girardoni is certainly and unusual example but is deadly. However more importantly it is far from the first repeating firearm. There is the Kalthoff and Cookson repeating rifles as the most prominent examples. And both Jefferson and Washington personally got offered to purchase repeating firearms per their own journals, im im sure they weren't the only founders to receive such offers for both personal and military usage. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||