On Sept. 11 we learned that the government cannot defend us against all acts of terror. It is imperative, therefore, that we be able to defend ourselves. A disarmed society tends to adopt police state tactics and extinguish civil liberties. Hence, an individual right to bear arms is prophylactic - it reduces the demand for a police state while securing freedom.

Freedom is a state of mind. A nation of people who do not believe they have the right to self-defense will not be free for long.

Nice to see this in a "statist" newspaper like the Post-Dispatch.

Bump & Bang!

bump and bang for later reading

... the Supreme Court stated that the weapons at issue were not for war or common defense, but rather for use by criminals.

That is not at all what the USSC said in Miller. The court merely refused to take judicial notice of a fact not in evidence, that is, that sawed-off shotguns were a type of weapon used by the military.

Had a trial ever been held after the court remanded the case this very easily could have been shown. Mr. Miller, however, never made it to his second day in court on this one so the USSC decision stood.

The court merely refused to take judicial notice of a fact not in evidence, that is, that sawed-off shotguns were a type of weapon used by the military.

Right. I often wonder if this subject (RKBA) is really one of the hardest to write accurately about, or if it only seems that way.

It's not hard to write correctly, directly or convincincely; it's just hard to get Der Sturmer, Der Angriff or Der Voelkischer Beobachter to publish it.

prambo

Time to buy another banger!

Such a joke. The idea that any of the founders would have contended that a citizen would have to join a militia miles away to have rifle to protect his family from Indians or to go feed his family is just absurd.

Machine guns are excellent home defense. One short burst in the air will easily ward off most any trouble of any sort. Sawed off shotguns are eminently the most practical weapon in the dark in tight places. Silencers would be good to because then you wouldn't have to rudely wake the neighbors. Unlike most judges and lawyers, many hard working folk depend on a good nights rest.

Add to that the fact that most journalists are not up to the task of legal research. Statutory research is bad enough but reading caselaw is boring, redundant, dry, repetitive, frustrating and highly technical.

Decisions are written in a language all their own. Much like how law-review articles hide the best part of their material in the footnotes, the meat of many cases is buried in the case citations, not the text. The text of the decision itself is merely a framework holding all that stare decisis together.

This is one of the reasons Emerson is so important. For the first time ever a Federal Court of Appeals bothered to look (and write) beyond a mere empty citation of Miller in order to suppport a point that Miller could not possibly support. For years and years court have said that Miller showed that the USSC did not believe that the 2A helped protect an individual right. The anti-self-defense crowd used to cite it to mean this.

For some reason pretty much nobody ever bothered to read the case. That has changed, finally. Now comes the interesting times.

(Do a web search on Professor Eugene Volokh of UCLA law. He has written some very good material about Miller that he used to teach Constitutional Law.)

To be sure, constitutional rights are not absolute.

Close. If you're not in jail; it's a right.

Why don't we get an initiative in California started and get some signatures to sign into law the destruction of gun control like handgun licensing SB35 and the Assault Weapons Ban of 1999? Put it on the voters ballot and let them decide. It's atleast worth a try. Get a proposition that the voters can decide and not the liberal gun control proponents. Or are there too many people in California that are anti-freedom and hate firearms for this?