Can someone (who knows what the hell they're talking about, and can give cites) please tell us what the actual Federal law is that controls this situation.

You're an idiot blowhard. If you ever were actually in the situation you describe, you would wet your pants followed by confessing to being bin Laden if that's what the cop suspected.

Same reading assignment I gave to another pallid /.'er occupant of his parents' basement: Terry v. Ohio . The police have the right to detain you for a reasonable period of time if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that you have been involved in the commission of a crime. And yes, Virginia, they have the right to use force to detain you.

"Am I under arrest?"

"No? Then shoot me, mother f*cker, or get out of the way."

Bzzt, wrong answer. The correct answer is, "officer, am I free to go?" What you're doing is known in the trade as "flunking the attitude test." It is also known as "contempt of cop" and is likely to earn you some "street justice."

And I'm headed for the door. And ANYONE who lays a hand on me is guilty of assault, and I plan to protect myself.

By the tone of your post, I'm assuming that you intend to protect yourself with a firearm. Guess what - you've just escalated the situation from nothing to you being clad in a diaper strapped to a gurney saying your last words right before receiving a megadose of animal traquilisers in full of the parents whose basement you live in at the age of 40. All because you're a typical American jackass who thinks he's Rambo and who thinks a gun is the solution to every problem. Hope you enjoyed your last meal.

What a crock! If you are detained from going about your business, you are ARRESTED!!

Wrong. Detained != arrested.

Reading assignment: Terry v. Ohio . If you've watched Law & Order, you've probably heard of a "Terry stop." That is what this is referring to. See my previous comment re: posting to /. from your parents' basement in between masturbation sessions to Ayn Rand.

This kind of crap really makes me embarrassed to be an American...

..If you voted for Comrade Obama, check back with me in a couple years.. I'm betting you won't like him then...

This ignorant dreck in your sig makes me glad I don't have to share a country you with anymore. Unfortunately, I have to share a very long "undefended" border. Now, if there was something I could do about that, I would. Those of us in touch with reality know that Obama is about as far as you can get from a "comrade." The truth is, the Obama administration is really Bush's third term.

I'll bet you think he's a Kenyan Muslim too.

Funny, I don't see an "except for the border" clause in the Bill of Rights.

The latest example of the legal illiteracy that pervades /. This is a classic example of the kind of uninformed blather that comes out of the mouth of someone posting to /. from his parents' basement in between rounds of masturbating to Ayn Rand or some other losertarian fantasy/fallacy. The rest of us who have real jobs know that the world, and especially the legal system, is ever-so-slightly more complicated.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the Fourth Amendment does not apply at the border. At all. Anyone can be searched, questioned or detained at any time for any reason at the border or the "functional equivalent of the border." And in a country of laws, the U.S. Supreme Court has the right to say what the Constitution says.

Federal statutes don't trump the constitution.

All enactments of Congress are presumed constitutional. That presumption holds unless and until the courts, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, say otherwise.

May I suggest an "Intro to Law" or "Law for Nonlawyers" course at your local community college?

Dartboard pics outperform the "financial wizards."

sv_libertarian (1317837) writes:

On top of that you . . . are forced to store the guns locked, broken down and apart from the ammo.

That's what they teach you to do in gun safety class, no?

Well, when your kid shoots himself with it, at least he won't grow up to be a losertarian moron with male potency issues. When the intruder you fear so much shoots you with it, or steals it and uses it in a crime, how will you feel?

Compared to an American, you are disarmed.

And this is a problem . . . why?

You effectively can only use your guns for sport, and using them to protect your home, your family or yourself is pretty much impossible.

Maybe they don't need to because their crime rate is a tiny fraction of America's? Maybe they're not paranoid that someone is going to break into their trailer and steal their Zenith black-and-white TV and tinfoil rabbit ears? I find it interesting that the gun nuts who complain the loudest actually have the least to protect.

To save $99 per year, I want to renew my iPhone App development license with a gun.

I have mod points, but I've already posted in this discussion. Damn.

Funny you mention that, though. I wonder if a gun is how a lot of these sexually frustrated males plan on getting girlfriends.

Not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

I was referring to the right to travel. In the same sense, I have the right to travel to Europe this summer, but if I don't have the money to make the trip, I can't exercise that right, can I?

Even assuming arguendo the Second Amendment is an individual right applicable to the states (courts are still murky on this one - don't challenge me on this, you will lose as I will post the case law), the exercise of all Constitutional rights is subject to reasonable limits. Your right to free speech is subject to time and place restrictions, for example. The Fourth Amendment simply does not apply at the U.S. border or the functional equivalent thereof, even to your laptop, for another example.

So it is with the Second Amendment. Insane people do not have the right to keep and bear arms at all, nor do children, nor do felons. The reductio ad absurdum of your argument that the Second Amendment is untrammelled would be to claim that it gives you the right to bear a nuclear device, a howitzer, a tank, a machine gun or a grenade launcher. After all, the government has all of these and if you accept the argument that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to give the people the right of rebellion, then why shouldn't you?

You know, the ones whose motto is normally "sentence first - verdict afterward," "shoot first, ask questions later" or "hang 'em from the nearest tree"? These people who normally regard the Constitutional rights of individuals as mere "technicalities" that only benefit criminals have all turned into hairy-assed civil libertarians when it comes to a huge multinational corporation.

Applying the same arguments the right wing usually applies to criminals, particularly those with the misfortune to have dark skin or a funny accent, all of BP's assets should have been seized and should be on the auction block by now. That $75 million limitation of liability? Pah, a mere technicality. We know they're guilty, so let's put Tony on a horseback and git-a-rope!

Therefore people who cannot afford a safe do not have the right to keep and bear arms.

Exactly. Just like people who can't afford insurance don't have the right to drive a car. It's the same principle.

You're citing a pro-gun website with an agenda, guncite.com. Hardly an unbiased, reputable source. Strike one.

Some of the counter-research cited on your propaganda pages was done by John R. Lott, Jr. I'm sure the fact that his position is endowed by the corporate parent of Winchester doesn't affect his objectivity in any way. Strike two.

The first point is irrelevant if the same was true before gun control was instituted.

Earlier, you were shown to be an idiot when you feebly tried to claim that the "UK's violent crime rate is nearly 5x that of the US and has only been increasing since the gun bans in the 1970s . . . " Now you're admitting that the UK's violent crime rate is a tiny fraction of America's?

Strike three. You fail.

Sit down.

This is the one strange thing I find reading slashdot being British.

Keep in mind that America is irredeemably addicted to violence. In fact, violence is a traditional American value, right along with hatred, bigotry, racism and cultural imperialism. At the same time, American society glorifies stupidity and views smart people with suspicion. Most of us ask, "what are you reading?" but in America, they ask, "why are you reading?"

[Y]et within the UK and Europe, the USA is seen as the antithesis off how to deal with guns.

Yet another very good reason for America to be the laughingstock of the world.

You do realise that over here the police do not normally carry guns and yet they are much safer than your cops?

To be fair, that's not entirely accurate. As I understand it, the front-line cops are armed only with a truncheon, but heavily armed police are only a radio call away.

I'm not even going to dignify that with my own response.

I'm not even going to dignify your response from disreputable, right-wing, pro-gun sources with any kind of a response.

Those of us in touch with reality, however, know the facts:

-- Nations with strict gun control laws have homicide rates that are a tiny fraction of America's.

-- Guns make homes less safe, not more safe. Granted, one can take issue with the oft-quoted 43x number, but the fact remains that while guns are supposed to make Americans more safe, the exact opposite turns out to be true. The only question is, how many times less safe?

Spamhaus are not located in the US. Why should they bother?

Two reasons: One, as I repeatedly pointed out, countries often do allow foreign judgments to be registered and enforced. Of course, it depends on the countries involved, but it's often easier than you think. Two, as it turns out, Spamhaus did have assets in the U.S., such as its domain name, that could be seized.

Suppose someone filed a lawsuit against you in, say, Lithuania, because they didn't like your blog or something similar. Would you care to hire a lawyer there, just to get the case dismissed? Really?

If I had assets in Lithuania, absolutely I would. If not, I'd want to know the state of the law on domesticating a Lithuanian judgment here in Canada. Domesticating a British judgment here, for example, is a trivial matter, as is domesticating a U.S. judgment. For these reasons, it is malpractice to advise someone to ignore papers they're served with.

I'll bet the geeks who run Spamhaus and made the decision to abandon their defense of the suit are some of the shithouse lawyers who post here on a regular basis.