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High Court Won't Review Ban on Assault Weapons [declared no individual constitutional right]
Findlaw ^ | Reuters

Posted on 12/02/2003 12:59:42 PM PST by tpaine

High Court Won't Review Ban on Assault Weapons

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to review a ruling that upheld California's ban on assault weapons and declared there was no constitutional right for individuals to own a gun.

Without comment, the justices let stand the ruling by a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco that the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms.

The ruling differed from the position taken by the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft, who changed the government's long-standing policy, and by a federal appeals court in New Orleans that ruled that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms.

California enacted the nation's most sweeping assault weapons ban in 1999, amending legislation adopted 10 years earlier. The state legislature amended the law to ban assault weapons based on a host of features, instead of specific makes and models.

A group of individuals who own assault weapons or want to buy them challenged the law, saying it violated the Second Amendment and other constitutional rights.

A federal judge dismissed the constitutional claims, and the appeals court agreed in upholding the law.

The appeals court said the Second Amendment protected the gun rights of militias, not individuals. The Second Amendment states: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Gary Gorski, an attorney for those challenging the law, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms without the threat of state confiscation or compulsory registration.

The National Rifle Association supported the appeal.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism
KEYWORDS: bang; banglist; cwii; forfreedom
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To: jwalsh07
I will never see a 2nd amendment case before SCOTUS, -- because odds are, -- I'll be dead in 20 years.
101 posted on 12/02/2003 5:22:25 PM PST by tpaine (I'm trying to be 'Mr Nice Guy', but FRs flying monkey squad brings out the Rickenbacker in me.)
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To: Travis McGee
Us guys over 50 are keeping our powder dry, casting bullets, cutting patches, and sharpening our flints.
102 posted on 12/02/2003 5:26:33 PM PST by Inyo-Mono
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To: Dan from Michigan
I don't trust SCOTUS. Not one bit.

Nor do I, not a bit, a byte or a word.

103 posted on 12/02/2003 5:36:26 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: unixfox
I guess they REALLY do want a 2nd civil war.

There will be no 2nd civil war. What is more likely to happen is envisioned by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and written about in Neil Postmans book, 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'.

This is the foreward from the book...

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Recommended Reading.

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/post_2.html

104 posted on 12/02/2003 5:39:22 PM PST by KDD (irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane.)
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To: jwalsh07
SCOTUS will have no choice but to take the DC case. You watch.

I disagree. That case is predicated on the DC police stance of not allowing others to register their guns, yet registration is mandatory there, hence, there is a de facto ban except for grandfathered guns, registered before a cutoff many years in the past.

But the NRA and Republican congressmen, for example Orrin Hatch, are pushing a law that would force DC to accept new registrations, which would end the de facto ban. It would be very easy for SCOTUS to simply say, "We see that the legislature is working on the problem and so there is no need for us to hear Parker, et al.. But, thanks for playing."

105 posted on 12/02/2003 5:43:08 PM PST by coloradan (Hence, etc.)
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To: coloradan
Perhaps, we'll see.
106 posted on 12/02/2003 5:44:28 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: jwalsh07
jwalsh07wrote:
"We'll see"




Yah, -- maybe next year, -- no "big deal", is it?

After all, the high court just declared agreement that there is no individual constitutional right to bear arms..


107 posted on 12/02/2003 6:00:59 PM PST by tpaine (I'm trying to be 'Mr Nice Guy', but FRs flying monkey squad brings out the Rickenbacker in me.)
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To: jwalsh07; All
FYI

Parker et al v DC and Mayor Anthony Williams

108 posted on 12/02/2003 6:05:33 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: tpaine
After all, the high court just declared agreement that there is no individual constitutional right to bear arms..

Not really but I get your point. When do we march?

109 posted on 12/02/2003 6:06:33 PM PST by jwalsh07
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To: tpaine
This is more than a big deal. Thinking people understand where non-rulings like this will lead- to an open assault on the very principles this country was founded on. Naturally, those who are 'citizens of the world' would agree with the stance the SCOTUS took. It is those people that we all need to look out for, because they will not stop until this country is nothing short of defunct.

I believe in the United States of America. And anyone who tries to undermine the words and intentions of our founding fathers should be hung from the nearest tree.

It is time for our renegade courts to be taken back- starting with the biggest one of them all.
110 posted on 12/02/2003 6:45:12 PM PST by rintense
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To: jwalsh07
jwalsh07 asks: "When do we march?"

April 19, of course.

111 posted on 12/02/2003 6:48:39 PM PST by William Tell
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To: tpaine
It's time.
112 posted on 12/02/2003 7:25:43 PM PST by Maelstrom (To prevent misinterpretation or abuse of the Constitution:The Bill of Rights limits government power)
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To: Orangedog
Your post is the equivalent of hiding under a blanket so the monsters won't kill you.

The monsters are real.

They don't give a crap if you're under the blanket or not and they know you're there.
113 posted on 12/02/2003 7:31:09 PM PST by Maelstrom (To prevent misinterpretation or abuse of the Constitution:The Bill of Rights limits government power)
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To: All
To All:


90 Million


Best regards to all,

Robert Teesdale
American Party of Colorado
114 posted on 12/02/2003 7:32:19 PM PST by Robert Teesdale
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To: Maelstrom
Right now there is a 5/4 split on the court in favor of (mostly) the conservatives. It only takes four of the Nine to agree to hear a case. Even if you take O'connor out of the mix, the four remaining conservative justices could have forced the court to hear the case, but they didn't. Why? Maybe because they knew that the majority would not rule the right way. The four liberals on the bench had no interest in hearing it because they stood nothing to lose by not agreeing to hear it.

Don't get me wrong. If they start confiscating guns, they will have one hell of a fight at my house, just like they would at yours.

The renewal of the assault weapons ban is going to die in committee. Every year more states pass concealed carry laws. Most of the voters are no longer supporting calls for more gun control laws. A federal appeals court in another circuit has ruled just the opposite of what the 9th circuit ruled. In case you haven't noticed, we're winning! The Nine declining to hear this case is one correctable setback after years of progress.
115 posted on 12/02/2003 8:04:47 PM PST by Orangedog
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To: tpaine
When the court declines to hear a case, it has no affect on the law, it creates no legal precedence, and does not express the Court's opinion on the merits of the case.

Just below you say that the "ruling is the law in those states within it's jurisdiction". --- Which is it? You can't have it both ways, can you?

I should have said "Supreme Court" in the first statement. The second referred to the Circuit Court, provided the opinion was issued "en banc", that is by the entire court, rather than a 3 judge panel. As I understand it, the ruling of a 3 judge ciruit court panel, like those in both Silveria and Emerson, does not bind another such panel, which means that it really only applies to the case at hand. However an "en banc" opinion binds that circuit court and is "good law" in the area of it's jurisdiction. The power of precedence is understandable, you have to know what the law is, and if ever time a court ruled, especially the Supreme Court, or a Circuit Court, the law changed, you'd have a harder time keeping up than you do now. However there doesn't seem to be any provision for the Supreme Court to just say that an earlier Supreme Court ruled wrongly, and overturn it. They have to put some new twist on the case. Thus the Supreme Court really didn't overule itself on the sodomy ruling, even though in effect it did. Somehow they are stragely reluctant to overrule the earliest cases that addressed the 14th amendment making the BoR applicable to the states. Instead they came up the (IMHO) doctrine of "incorporation", usually via the Due Process clause of the 14th, because that first case said that "priveleges and immunities of citizens of the United States" meant only those unique to national citizenship, such as the right to travel between states, and not those rights not created by the Constitution, but only protected by it. Now the SC incorporates rights they like, and pretty judge ignores those they don't, like they did in the Silveria case.

116 posted on 12/02/2003 8:19:24 PM PST by El Gato (Federal Judges can twist the Constitution into anything.. Or so they think.)
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To: Orangedog
What do you think will be the final straw that causes that civil war?!

Hard to say, but if they, that is the Federal Government, starts going to door to door (trying to) forcibly collect guns, that will start it. The citizens of some states may put up with that shiite, but not most Texans, nor folks in a bunch of other states either.

I realy wonder if the Court understands that it is walking on bottles of nitroglycerine?

Remember it was the colonial government's marching British Redcoats out to Concord to seize the arms of the American militia that was the spark that touched off the Revolution, in spite of all the rhetoric about "Taxation Without Representation" and "Intolerable Acts" and such as that.

117 posted on 12/02/2003 8:25:18 PM PST by El Gato (Federal Judges can twist the Constitution into anything.. Or so they think.)
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To: robertpaulsen
With the passage of the 14th, most, but not all, of the BOR have been "incorporated" through the courts, and now apply to the states.

Bovine Scat. The whole purpose of the 14th amendment was to "incorporate" the first 8 amendments of the Bill of Rights against the states, along with certain other protections of individual rights containe within the main body of the constitution, the "Privelge of the Writ of Habeas Corpus" and the prohibition on Bills of Attainder and ex post facto laws. The first case the Supreme Court heard on the matter, the Slaughter House Case, they ruled that "priveleges and immunities" in the 14th amendment, meant only those that are unique attributes of National Citizenship, despite the use of the word "privelege" in the Constitution when referring to the "great writ". They furthermore relied on pre-14th amendment precedent in forming that argument (Barron vs. Baltimore for example).

Such was not the intent of the authors of the 14th, nor the understanding of both supporters and opponents in Congress, as recorded during the Congressional proceedings on the matter. The records of the Congress at that time are much more complete than those from the time the BoR was written and passed and this is not a disputable matter, although some courts have ruled that it doesn't matter what the authors intended, nor what those who voted to approve the Amendment understood, it matters what the court says the words meant. (And read the Slaughter House decision, if you want to seem some Clintonian like torturing of words. (Warning PDF file)

118 posted on 12/02/2003 8:56:26 PM PST by El Gato (Federal Judges can twist the Constitution into anything.. Or so they think.)
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To: King Prout
failure to overturn is tacit approval

Politically, and except for differing opinions in other cirucuits, practically, yes. But legally not. Lower courts cannot cite the failure to overturn as precedence to support similar rulings. However since, AFAIK, only a single 3 judge panel of the fifth circuit has ruled that the right is individual (and the whole cirucuit hasn't ruled on the matter) for the rest of the country, (outside TX, LA, and MS) there is no individual right to keep and bear arms as far as the federal courts are concerned.

119 posted on 12/02/2003 9:05:04 PM PST by El Gato (Federal Judges can twist the Constitution into anything.. Or so they think.)
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To: Orangedog
The renewal of the assault weapons ban is going to die in committee.

And then be offerred as a floor amendment to some "must pass" bill, probably in the Senate and likely adopted by "unanamous consent" at 1 AM with a handfull of Senators present. Some representative democracy we've got left, isn't it?

120 posted on 12/02/2003 9:14:07 PM PST by El Gato (Federal Judges can twist the Constitution into anything.. Or so they think.)
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