Posted on 08/21/2009 1:08:28 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
STATES are supposed to have their own militias to defend against a tyrannical central government (the real reason behind the second amendment, since the Constitution gives total power over militias to congress, who had sole authority to arm them and train them, or not...). The states have been very lax in their duties for some time.
That language contains a mechanism of grammer that's known as an appostive (something beyond the comprehension of most anti 2nd-Ammendmentites). The allusion made by the parenthetical element, i.e., 32 USC 3 S313 has the proviso:
"or under 64 years of age and a former member of the Regular Army, Regular Navy, Regular Air Force, or Regular Marine Corps." [emphasis mine]
See: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode32/usc_sec_32_00000313----000-.html
Furthermore, when the unorganized militia is called up, they're expected to appear bearing weapons in common useage at the time. I don't have chapter & verse on that one, but showing up with a trebuchet or a halberd is neither the spirit, nor the intent, of the law.
I have a friend who is an FFL who decided it was just too stressful to keep being subjected to the ATF inspections. He literally spent weeks with his whole family actively engaged in inventory and reconciliation of paperwork in preparation for another inspection. That was the last straw. He passed the business to his son-in-law early this year.
It’s not “constitutional” if We the People SAY IT ISN’T CONSTITUTIONAL. That’s not the government’s call. It’s ours.
“From my cold, dead hands!”
Which is why I have a gun or two and might buy a few more very soon.
If a Court does this correctly, they will note the following:
1) There was a long tradition of having arms accessible to British Subjects to defend the realm. It goes back to the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd
2) The Founding Fathers came from a British background and shared this belief
3) The Founding Fathers were imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment and the concept of certain rights being provided by their Deity, not the State, and, consequently, those rights, granted by God, can not be revoked by the State without extreme justification.
4) The Right to self defense, and, by extension, the right to posses the means of self defense was interpreted by them as a God given right.
5) The starting spark, as it were, of the American Revolution, was the attempt by the British Crown to disarm its citizens
6) In the very founding document of our Republic, the Declaration of Independence, it clearly states that the people have a RIGHT to overthrow a tyrannical government.
7) The ability to overthrow such a tyranny is obviously dependent upon access to, and familiarity with, arms.
8) The Second Amendment is, in fact, a product of this milieu and was designed, not to allow hunting or collecting, but to provide the populace with the wherewithal to be familiar with the use of firearms and possess them, as a check against the power of a central government and to protect the state from attack from within or without.
9) As recent participants in a revolt against their Monarch, and aware of the importance of this right, and steeped in their own cultural and historical traditions, the Second Amendment clearly means what it states - the rights of the people - as individuals - to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
10) As a procession of recent tyrannies has lucidly demonstrated, and even older ones going back as far as Roman Emperors similarly confirm, there is a clear need for a tyrannical government to disarm their citizens in order to easily effectuate its designs.
11) As recent history has also demonstrated, allowing the government the dangerous precedent of having a list of individual citizens and their weapons, permits the said government to easily confiscate the same, thus frustrating the original intent of the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the Second Amendment.
In short, registration of firearms is to the Second Amendment as Obama’s attempt to gather the e-mail addresses of critics of his policies is to the First Amendment.
Those of us who are aware of the nuances of the Constitution and its cultural milieu as well as the intent of the Founding Fathers, have been remiss in permitting certain jurisdictions such as Cicero, the State of New Jersey, and others to so blantanly abase and abridge the Constitution, insult our intelligence, and in effect ignore our heritage by not opposing their “gun control” regulations far more vigorously and far earlier.
By and large, the people who most support gun control are those who are already victimized by living in environments where only criminals have firearms, religious crackpots who are doctrinaire pacifists, and the crypto-NAZIs of the far left currently in office. I neglected to also include elitist snobs and historical ignoramuses like the attorneys who sit on courts like the one which rendered this decision.
Given a good defense, good legal counsel, and a fair-minded Court, this decision should be overidden on the Federal Level fairly easily.
Its most unfortunate that the incompetent boob who held the White House prior to Obama’s victory and the equally incompetent boob who ran against him, permitted this Marxist to win an election and place a totally unqualified and already biased, racist, sexist, and unqualified jurist on the Supreme Court.
It all depends now on a man named Kennedy - the Kennedy of SCOTUS.
What I note about this 2A fight is what I note about so many other fights we are having. The right and amendment have been so undermined and public resolved so weakened that there are many who argue for a “reasonable” response in the event such registration comes about. Some even state that such an act, while distasteful, is quite legal under the constitution and they cite laws and court decisions that support this.
And that is the point. We have put up with the relentless drive of the leftist/statist/authoritarian scum for so long and accepted incremental infringement that egregious acts like universal registration will, I am quite certain, be met with harsh language, complaining, promises to “vote the bastards” out and a lawsuit or two (which, given that Obama and the left WILL pack the courts, is almost a certain loss for 2A defenders) and not much else. But ultimately most will go along and register their guns. And when confiscation begins - almost certainly in increments with certain classes of “evil” guns targeted one at a time - most will give them up. It happened in Britain, Australia, Canada - all over the west in some degree or other. Why would it be different here?
Even with so-called “conservative” majorities in power we get minimal rollback of gun laws - or any laws for that matter - and the leftist agenda is left largely untouched and the base of precedent from which they operate is intact and ready for expansion whenever they once again take power.
People talk about resistance even to the point of armed resistance. And some WILL resist. But will it be more than a tiny minority? Somehow I doubt it. Because incrementalism works. Sane people don’t want violence. They don’t want rebellion and war. So they go along and give up a little here and a little there. And before you know it many are saying that it is “constitutional” to effectively take away a right once seen as fundemental and God-given.
And so we have the America we have today. And I am as guilty of this as anyone. May God forgive me and give me the strength to stand for what is right.
I assume this means that most pro-gun scholars and advocates don't agree.
No.
The Wise Latina is merely the repalcement for the wise troglodyte who went back to the backwoods of New England.
In fact, it depends upon Justice Kennedy - the swing judge.
YEP! That is ALWAYS the reason why utopian socialist slavemaster pigs have disarmed their populations.
The only phrase sadder than “Why, THAT could NEVER happen here!” is “HOW IN GOD’S NAME DID WE LET THAT HAPPEN HERE?”
IT MUST NEVER HAPPEN HERE!!!
Back in the early 80s, I attended a speech by the late Arkady Shevchenko, then the highest ranking Soviet official to defect to the West. He had been their top guy at the UN.
He spoke, interestingly, at KENNESAW COLLEGE — and we all know what Kennesaw is famous for! I’m proud to have played a a small role in helping Mayor Darvin Purdy get that legislation through the Kennesaw City Council.
His talk dealt with the clear intent of the leadership of the old Soviet Union to somehow take America. He mentioned their ICBMs and the nuclear blackmail threat they posed.
Then he broke from his prepared remarks and offered the audience this wisdom:
“The leaders of my country are as AFRAID OF YOUR 200 MILLION PRIVATE FIREARMS as they are of your ICBMs. NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUNS.”
Frankly — and, while he had to be careful as he was under FBI protection at the time, Shevchenko alluded to this in his remarks — I’m as concerned about some domestic tyrant (say, a Hillary, Nancy Pelosi, Barack HUSSEIN Obama or Chuck Schumer) as I am about some foreign enemy.
And it is THAT threat about which the Founding Fathers were concerned that prompted them to leave us the Second Amendment.
The BIG question is: WILL WE KEEP IT?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73SsNFgBO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg9q9sxJFnA
Americans have to realize that the government and the Consitution belongs not to a bunch of elected officials, or faceless bureaucrats, but to THEM.
The incrementalism of the far left thought NAZIs STARTED under the Warren Court. When the leftists realized that they could use a unconstitutional principle like Separation of Church and State as a lever to pry God out of public life, and when they found out that they could even bus little kids MILES away from their homes to achieve what some government thought was acceptable “racial balance” they KNEW their was no limits to their goals.
They are the ideological bullies who have been kicking sand in the face of Americans so long, we are reluctant to strike back. But strike back we must. Not just at the neo-NAZIs currently sitting in Washington and the Oval Office in eh Democrat Party, but also at the spineless, gutless frauds who control the Republican Party and, instead of courageously opposing the Democrats on these issues, conspire with them, like Senators Grassley and Hatch.
Be Ever Vigilant!
I agree with the sentiment. I just don’t see it happening given the state of the opposition party (which is the GOP) and the rules under which our government operates. It takes 60 votes to ensure passage of anything in the senate. To get our constitutional government back would require repeals of massive amounts of law and regulation and the closing of large government departments full of well-entrenched bureaucracies. The GOP couldn’t get this done under Reagan or after the 1994 election or under Bush II. And even if they could do it would the courts go along? And if the courts wouldn’t go along the only options left are what? Impeachment of judges? Ignore the decisions and forge ahead anyway? And the leftist media will whip up opposition and they will be relentless in their efforts to discredit and destroy any politician or party that attempted such a thing (just as they were with Reagan and the 1994 GOP takeover and Bush II).
Today we are reaping the fruits of a century of incremenalism. Much of the electorate is degraded, ignorant and/or indifferent. They actively support the loss of the core of American law and tradition or they simply don’t care. We see this happening all across Europe to one degree or another and it is very alarming. The heart is being torn out of what used to be called “Christendom” and what is left is a shallow, mean, petty, common thing that many - perhaps most - find unworthy of the effort to preserve at all let alone risk life and limb to defend.
I pray for the enemies of this nation to fail. I pray their efforts will come to nothing and they will reel back in confusion and defeat. And I wonder, if it comes to the gravest extreme, who will have the organization and heart to actually commit to the defense of the nation and what will come of it if they do.
I have thought along those lines as well and I sincerely hope you are right. I just don’t know. And when I see people on these threads agreeing that this is “constitutional” I become depressed.
Um, NO...Sorry, CBS, to intrude on your wet dreams of leftist tyranny, but just because a court says something doesn't "make" something Constitutional or unConstitutional. The Constitution still says the same thing it said last week. The court could say the moon is comprised solely of the brains of liberals, and that pronouncement would have exactly bupkis effect on the lunalogical? composition of the moon.
Geez, Uncle Joe’s nose and Hitler’s are almost identical. Interesting factoid.
In U.S. v Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939):
the Court sustained a statute requiring registration under the National Firearms Act of sawed-off shotguns. After reciting the original provisions of the Constitution dealing with the militia, the Court observed that ‘‘[w]ith obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted with that end in view.’’ The significance of the militia, the Court continued, was that it was composed of ‘‘civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.’’ It was upon this force that the States could rely for defense and securing of the laws, on a force that ‘‘comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense,’’ who, ‘‘when called for service . . . were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.’’Then they went on to argue:
Therefore, ‘‘[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.’’Source: Analysis and Interpretation of the Constitution
Amendments to the Constitution:
Second Amendment--Bearing Arms (64k PDF)
And so, that's what makes this a "Constitutional" weapon:
If, instead, the barrel was 12.8mm shorter, it'd be an UN-Constitutional weapon, i.e., such weapon (like Molotov cocktails) can contribute nothing usefull to the "common defense".
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