Web page of a feminist author on legal issues regarding law enforcement. It shows a peek or two at the kind of advocacy behind the law.
http://www.dwetendorf.com/Legal_GunLaw.htm
Headline next week from the Brady bunch...
"Boxers, MMA pros, and all martial arts enthusiasts now banned from owning guns..."
A husband who owns firearms becomes an instant federal felon if he is placed under a restraining order by a divorce court (which is almost a routine action). Ownership ipso facto is a felony.
This was the root of the federal Emerson case .... which Slick and Beast seized on to establish case law for VAWA (at the expense of an innocent man who'd been acquitted of state assault and firearms charges in the incident in question).
I love it! =^)
The first thing that I looked at on Scarborough v. United States was the year that the case was decided. All bets are off since it was decided in 1977, in the post-FDR era of unchecked judicial activism.
More specifically, regardless what liberal and conservative activist justices want everybody to think about the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers, consider that Thomas Jefferson, using terms like "does not extend" and "exclusively," had officially clarified that Congress has no business sticking its big nose into intrastate commerce.
“For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively (emphases added) with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.” –Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791.
But who cares what Jefferson said about the Commerce Clause? After all, only Supreme Court justices can properly interpret the Constitution, right? So consider what the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall had indicated about the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. (emphases added)” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Oops! The idea that only Supreme Court justices can properly interpret the Constitution evidently doesn't hold water. Note that before FDR had “nuked” the Court with activist justices, the Supreme Court had officially clarified that ordinary folks like you and me can properly interpret it too.
"3. The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition." --United States v. Sprague, 1931.
The Supreme Court owes citizens an explanation concerning its constitutionally indefensible interpretation of the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers imo, particularly with respect to its misguided decision in Wickard v. Filburn, not that it actually has a reasonable explanation for its interpretation.
Are we having fun yet?