What the hell... WHY?

I used to live in Portland for about three years and regularly drank the tap water The idea that I was drinking water straight from an open-air reservoir post-treatment nauseates me. Why would anyone want this?

In your opinion. I clearly disagree, finding more agreement with Breyer's dissent in McDonald v. Chicago (2010) that incorporation under the 14th was inappropriate because it is not a fundamental, individual right.

The Second is the only Amendment in the Bill of Rights that explicitly explains the intent behind the right enumerated there -- that the ownership of firearms is intended for the establishment of well functioning militias. That means the right is limited and not fundamental, and the government should have a free hand to regulate so long as that purpose is not thwarted. To hold otherwise is to regulate the militia clause meaningless. I do not think any phrase in the Constitution should be treated so.

Well, if you're going to completely disregard the Second, then you must at least look to the Tenth, which held that powers not reserved by the federal government belong to the States or to the people. Note that "the States" is capitalized as a formal term in the same way that "State" is in the Second and in the rest of the Constitution. Once again, this points to the explicit, focused intent of the Amendment to address state and local concerns.

Furthermore, its very clear from the rest of the Constitution that the founders intended the States to still have a large role in the life of their citizens. The structure of the Senate is the clearest expression of that intent, giving an entire house of the legislature over to (originally) state-appointed representatives, balanced between the states.

Yes, it is. Any misinterpretation of the constitution is an undermining of its intent and effect, regardless of whether that results in a situation you like or not, and the pure individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment undermines states' rights.

Yes, it was made up of the people, but the whole phrase "well-regulated" is not mere puffery. It means a militia in proper and working order, and it explicitly referenced as "being necessary to the security of a free State." The governments of the states have long been held to have the right to regulate arms within that context, and the federal government has the right to regulate firearms that do not have a purpose in a militia. (See US v. Miller (1939) on regulation of sawed-off shotguns.)

Unless a state passed a law saying that you didn't, by your own statement.

Actually, I view the Second Amendment as a state's right and support the right of the states to regulate arms, seeing at the concept of a militia is directly tied to the state power and not individual power. If a state wants to ban handguns and keep only a professional militia (e.g. the National Guard), that should be their right.

Title II weapons are heavily regulated in ways that handguns cannot be, under current standards. The federal government as the power to regulate them -- even the power to outright ban them. The fact that they have not exercised that power is no proof that they don't. Even DC v. Heller (2008), the case that nailed down the notion that firearm ownership was an individual right, upheld the notion that it only applies to certain types of weapons (referring to US v. Miller (1939).

And that's my point. A strict reading of the Second Amendment in no way forbids the government from preventing private citizens from having ordnance. It only guarantees the right to bear arms, not ordnance.

Then what do you say to all the justices that effectively voted to nullify any meaning of the term "well-regulated militia" in the 2nd Amendment?

Not much, if the militia clause is given effect as a state's right instead of an individual one. Then again, there's not much for the citizens to say if a state wanted to define its militia as a purely professional force and outright ban private ownership either under that scenario.

No, in the 18th century there was already a clear separation between man-portable "arms" and larger "ordnance," and all the examples you mention would definitely qualify as ordnance. You *might* be able to make an argument for chemical & biological weapons, but any sane court would by long precedence consider those to be outside of the realm of what a citizen's militia should possess.

You forgot massive and unnecessarily burdensome documentation of your identity to help make sure college students, the elderly, and the working poor don't vote.

Neither. It seems a cogently argued point to me. Sony is a hardware company with its own fab resources and established relationships with manufacturer, and it controls a popular gaming platform.

What advantages does Oculus VR have that can match or overcome that?

Yes, and you failed to specify per capita spending when you said, "If they spent the same on education as they did on locking people up per year then maybe you wouldn't have to lock so many people up." If that was truly your intent, then you should have actually said it.

One big difference is that jobs lost during that time period were largely fungible with new opportunities, because none of those jobs required much in the way of training -- just work ethic and physical ability. Close one factory, open a new one, get people training on a new repetitive assembly line task.

One big difference with the automation revolution is that automation is going to completely eliminate all jobs that don't require training and education, because those are the jobs most easy to automate. We've already been suffering a lot since the 80s in America's transition towards a service economy, as cheap foreign labor and robots took away all the industrial jobs.

When even service jobs become automated, there will be nothing for the non-professional class to do except try to retrain before the next job gets automated. And that ignores the elephant in the room -- that many people who work unskilled or low-skilled jobs simply aren't willing or able to train for more skilled jobs, and those people will still have themselves and families to feed.

I agree with you that we shouldn't recoil in terror from automation and enter some kind strawman dystopia where all innovation must get vetted for release, but we need to be prepared for the implications of automation, and we need to consider whether or not our economy as it stands today is simply incompatible the coming technological shift -- and which is more important?

Funny, because you're the one who made the comparison without understanding the order of magnitude difference in the first place.