Posted on 01/07/2005 9:56:54 AM PST by neverdem
Readying for a constitutional showdown over gun control, the Bush administration has issued a 109-page memorandum aiming to prove that the Second Amendment grants individuals nearly unrestricted access to firearms.
The memorandum, requested by Attorney General John Ashcroft, was completed in August but made public only last month, when the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel posted on its Web site several opinions1 setting forth positions on various legal issues. Reaching deep into English legal history and the practice of the British colonies prior to the American Revolution, the memorandum represents the administration's latest legal salvo to overturn judicial interpretations that have prevailed since the Supreme Court last spoke on the Second Amendment, in 1939. Although scholars long have noted the ambiguity of the 27-word amendment, courts generally have interpreted the right to "keep and bear arms" as applying not to individuals but rather to the "well-regulated militia" maintained by each state.
Reversing previous Justice Department policy, Mr. Ashcroft has declared that the Second Amendment confers a broad right of gun ownership, comparable with the First Amendment's grant of freedom of speech and religion. In November 2001, he sent federal prosecutors a memorandum endorsing a rare federal-court opinion, issued the previous month by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, that found an individual has the right to gun ownership. President Bush adopted that view as well, saying that "the Constitution gives people a personal right to bear arms," and doesn't merely protect "the rights of state militias," in an interview published days before last year's election in National Rifle Association magazines.
The new Justice Department memorandum acknowledges that "the question of who possess the right secured by the Second Amendment remains open and unsettled in the courts and among scholars," but goes on to declare that...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
SCOTUS did not dismiss the case for lack of standing - a requirement for the appellants to even be able to appeal - and then proceeded to issue an opinion stating the type of weapon was not used by the military. An erroneous statement of fact (as sawed-off shotguns were commonaly used by the military and police (riot guns)) taht most likely would have come out if the appellants had been their to brief/argue their side of the case.
The antis and the media miss the most important fact...SCOTUS 1) heard the case and 2) issued an opinion that implictly says if the firearms were of military utility that at the very least there would have to be further analysis of the interaction between the law in question and the second amendment...two procedural issues that would not arise if the appellants did not have standing to bring the appeal in the first place; i.e., that they did not have a second amendment right that was being impacted adversly by the law in question.
Yet the antis continue to mis-state Miller...something that their lawyers should be disciplined for - they are intentionally mis-stating the law of that case.
It matters big time. If you murder the defendants so they cannot defend themselves, nor their position, then the ruling in the case after this has no legitimacy whatsoever.
Their is no evidence the government murdered the defendants. We are talking about gangland individuals here...
their=there...never post before coffee.
Never said the government did it. Probably some political socialists, if anyone at all. The socialists during the 30's were nearly as extreme, if not more extremist, than the 60's and 70's socialists.
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