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To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free
"We lost that battle in 1934 and again in 1958."

Do you mean 1968 rather than 1958?

One of the more curious outcomes from the Heller decision is the fact that we did not lose the battle in 1934. We actually won.

The Miller Court in 1939 was asked by the government to decide two issues. The government proposed that only members of an organized Militia are protected by the Second Amendment. The second proposed issue was that the defendant Miller was not protected by the Second Amendment because his short-barreled shotgun was not useful to a Militia.

The Miller Court only addressed the second issue and thus by implication rejected the notion that only members of the organized Militia were protected. Otherwise, there would be no need to even consider the weapon itself.

Addressing the second issue, the Court remanded the case because there was no evidence presented which would allow them to decide whether the short-barreled shotgun was useful to a Militia (which again by implication would make Miller's possession of it a protected right). The decision in Miller's favor was reversed and remanded back to the lower court to decide about the weapon.

Lower courts have blatantly LIED about the Miller decision for 70 years, claiming that the Miller decision established the Second Amendment as protecting a "collective right". Until Heller, no Supreme Court had addressed those 70 years of lies.

The battle that you referred to from 1934 regarding the National Firearms Act was actually won in 2008 when the Heller decision once again refused to insist that the man Heller must be a member of a Militia to be protected.

Although not dwelling on the matter, the Heller decision did overturn the Miller Court's insistence that only Militia-useful weapons are protected. Self-defense is an additional purpose of the Second Amendment protection and thus handguns in the home, whether useful to a Militia or not, are protected.

The anti-gunners may actually be stepping into a trap by suggesting that semi-automatics are just as dangerous as machine-guns. The Court may come to realize that inventing a limit to rate of fire (given that cannons were protected at the nation's founding) may not be a legitimate function of the courts or legislature.

As an example of a similar trap, consider what just happened in Florida. They are outlawing long guns for 18 to 20 year olds, using their extreme lethality as justification.

Unfortunately for the anti-gunners, the courts just might discover that the same argument had already been used to set the minimum age for handguns to 21. It would seem that the actual argument is that 20 year olds just can't be trusted with a firearm.

A problem for the anti-gunners is that the Founders understood how to put age restrictions into the Constitution. Representatives must be at least 25. Senators must be at least 30 and the President must be at least 35.

What possible justification could the Supreme Court now find that would permit laws to deny any adult the right to keep and bear arms?

190 posted on 03/11/2018 11:34:51 PM PDT by William Tell
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To: William Tell

Yes, I accidentally typoed the wrong date for GCA 1968.


208 posted on 03/12/2018 9:47:19 AM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free (What profits a man if he gains the world yet loses his soul?)
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