Posted on 01/18/2005 11:25:23 AM PST by newsgatherer
Handgun Control Inc. says it wants to keep handguns out of the hands of the wrong people. Guess what. If you are a law abiding citizen who owns a handgun you have the "wrong hands."
Banning guns works. That is why New York and Chicago have such high murder rates.
Washington D.C. which has strict gun controls has a murder rate of 69 per 100,000. Indianapolis, without them has an awesome murder rate of 9 per 100,000. Gun control works.
You can incapacitate an intruder with tear gas or oven spray. If you shoot him with a .357 he will get angry and kill you.
A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman standing with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.
The "New England Journal of Medicine" has some excellent articles on gun control just as "The American Rifleman" carries equally great articles on open-heart surgery.
The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, refers to the National Guard which was created in 1903, 112 years later.
The "right of the people peaceably to assemble" and "the right of the people to be secure in their homes" refers to individuals while "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to the state.
One should consult an automobile technician for vehicle repairs, a computer programmer for problems with your hard drive and Sara Brady for firearms expertise.
Most citizens cannot be trusted so we need firearms laws because we can trust citizens to abide by them.
If you are not familiar with most of the above you have not been following the firearms debate. In fact you haven't tuned in to the liberals who still have their hands in your pockets and on your firearms even though the pounding defeats ...
(Excerpt) Read more at Christian-news-in-maine.com ...
"Fine, we both are contemptuous of what the Courts & Congress are doing to our Constitution..
-- Why then do you defend their contention that our 2nd Amendment rights can be infringed with inane 'regulations'?"
Because to effectively fight gun grabbing one has to recognize wher the law really is at any moment. I can make a very good legal case that arms suitable for a militia are protected but I have nothing but indignation and hubris with which to expand that to cover all arms.
I fight the battle that can be won. I also simply do not see any evidence in the record that such a broad view of a second amendment protection was ever intended.
There's a difference between understanding and agreeing, as so many left-wingers can't/won't admit. I fully understand your position, and it is faulty in its rigid dogma for a very good reason: If the founding fathers believed that the specific rights enumerated by the amendments were sufficient for all time, there certainly would be no provision for continued amendment.
So, the argument that the existing amendment should be strictly interpreted as written is a valid one. The argument that the amendment was written with the belief that it is infallible and would be sufficient for all time, even within each amendment's intended scope, is clearly incorrect. It is my argument that the 2nd amendment, especially given the belief held by some that the rights it describes extend to the possession of nuclear weapons, may need to be amended to address the level of destruction technically, though not necessarily practically, available to mankind.
Would a constitutional amendment be the appropriate vehicle to address the separation of citizen-level weapons from national-level weapons? Probably. Would this be a scary, messy and perhaps ill-fated course? Possibly. Can dogmatically pressing the principle of unbounded application of constitutionally protected rights lead to ludicrous ends? Certainly.
What part of our Constitution gives any level of government the power to so 'regulate' arms, in your opinion?
Jonestown, there is a difference between "individual intent" and an unrestrained right to own anything that might be classified as an "arm".
So say you, your friends here, and the governments intent on restraining our rights to keep/bear arms. -- Re-read Roland, who explains well our unrestrained rights to property, -- in his essay you claimed to agree with.
I can find no indication that the founders ever intended this broad definition of arms. I can find specific reference to small arms. The Militia Act and the debates surrounding that speak of military small arms. There is no record of court cases supporting any other right than a right to small arms and the legal record is further limited to a right to specific types of small arms.
You are ignoring all the references to cannon ownership cited on this thread. Why is that?
The government is only constrained, in reality, from doing things prohibited by the Constitution (yes I know that was the not the idea at the time but that is what has happened).
You admit you know better, yet you condone, "in reality" unconstitutional prohibitions. Are you an officer of the court? If so, for shame.
Now consider we have had a court tell us that Congress CAN regulate free political speech, flat against the clear word and intent of the founders. Do you really believe the courts could not or will not gut the 2nd if they thought it was in their interests?
I really believe that they could not pull it off. There will be a massive Constitutional crisis if it is ever attempted.
I write of two things...what the Constitution really says, in my view, and the very different world in which we live where the courts speak of different "rights". In the world we live, we have a right to small arms of a milita use and all other arms are simply allowed because no one has forbid them, as yet. If you doubt me, how do you explain various state bans on bogus assault weapons and California's recent 50cal gun grab?
The feds support unconstitutional State 'grabs' because they also support bans themselves. This is not a mystery, is it?
Forget indignation over court and legislative attacks on the Constitution. Indignation serves no purpose. Elect politicians who will select judges who have actually read the Constitution. Now there is an idea.
Yep, an idea that is not working, as we see by the actions of the Bush administration.
-- That there is no real reason to infringe on our 2nd Amendment rights in order to regulate possession of unstable, hard to store C/N/B agents?
ctdonath2 made the critical point. --- "It is extremely dangerous, [to allow arms regulations] as there are others who would place that line far lower".
It's hard to believe that so many conservatives here cannot understand that basic position.
Can you give us your reason, Chris?
There's a difference between understanding and agreeing, as so many left-wingers can't/won't admit.
How do 'left wingers' enter into this discussion Chris? Are you one?
I fully understand your position, and it is faulty in its rigid dogma for a very good reason:
You consider the 2nd is "rigid dogma"? -- Explains a lot.. Thanks.
If the founding fathers believed that the specific rights enumerated by the amendments were sufficient for all time, there certainly would be no provision for continued amendment. So, the argument that the existing amendment should be strictly interpreted as written is a valid one. The argument that the amendment was written with the belief that it is infallible and would be sufficient for all time, even within each amendment's intended scope, is clearly incorrect. It is my argument that the 2nd amendment, especially given the belief held by some that the rights it describes extend to the possession of nuclear weapons, may need to be amended to address the level of destruction technically, though not necessarily practically, available to mankind.
As I explained, and you ignore, -- certain chemical/nuclear/biological materials can be Constitutionally regulated by the use of common sense & common law.
-- There is no real reason to infringe on our 2nd Amendment rights in order to regulate possession of unstable, hard to store C/N/B agents.
Would a constitutional amendment be the appropriate vehicle to address the separation of citizen-level weapons from national-level weapons? Probably. Would this be a scary, messy and perhaps ill-fated course? Possibly. Can dogmatically pressing the principle of unbounded application of constitutionally protected rights lead to ludicrous ends? Certainly.
Feel free to rant about 'dogma', while you make ludicrous leaps about "unbounded rights"..
It's amusing.
Actually not. No weapon covered by the the Assault Weapons Ban is standard issue in our, or likely any other, military. They were all semi-automatic weapons. The military issues full-auto and/or burst fire weapons, which can also fire semi-automatically if desired.
Actually he had not, at least not at the time of the written brief and oral presentation (kinda one sided to call it an argument). The parties involved don't generally appear before the Supreme Court themselves anyway, only the lawyers. But no lawyer for Miller showed up either, because the lawyer he'd had at trial could not locate him when the Court notified him, the lawyer, of the appeal by the government. Thus only the government was represented at the Supreme Court, something the Court would not allow today. Miller was found dead on April 6, 1939 about the time the decision was released on May 15, 1939. He was found shot in a ditch. He had gotten a few shots off himself, and his .45 was found nearby.
I neglected to give credit.
I got it from here:
http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndsup.html
Almost, we reserve the right to own the means of armed insurrection. Almost by definition, insurrection itself is illegal. Putting down insurrections or rebellions is one of the reasons for which the militia may be pressed into federal service under the Constitution.
Those 120 mm tubes sticking out the front of an M1 Abrams are not cannon? I found several references referring to them as such. I also ran the notion by the military spouse and mother-in-law in our office (the cannon cockers all being TDY) . She agreed that the M-1's main gun is called a cannon. The device that evacuates the bore after each shot is called the cannon bore evacuator.See the links below
http://www.battletanks.com/m1a1_abrams.htm
http://www.ghostrecon.net/html/arms_m1abrams.htm
http://www.armymantech.com/MTbropgs/mtbroc04/pg11.pdf (A US ARMY site)
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/systems/dvic344.htm a USAF site
Or do you mean the replica black powder muzzle loaders than some folks like to play with? Your comment is unclear.
While they were written with the immediate problems of the former slaves in mind, they were not limited to the immediate problems. The 13th made slavery, regardless of the race, ethnicity or religion of the slaves, forever unconstitutional. The 14th have easily been written to only extend it's protections to the freed slaves, but it wasn't and they aren't. The 15th is really an expansion of another part of the 14th, flatly prohibiting discrimination in voting on the basic of race, color or previous slave status, rather than just punishing such discrimination (and then only in certain elections) by a reduction in the number of Representatives a state could have.
That's because only the governments lawyers were present. No brief or oral presentation for Miller was made.
Acts could be punished of course, but acts are different than ownership. As you state, ownership was not only allowed, it was encouraged. Thus merchant shipowners, be they individuals or groups (even corporations), could and did keep and bear (on their ships) cannon. In this case for self defense, but able to be used as privateers at need and with the proper authorization.
This would be analogous to the townsfolk, farmers and ranchers owning guns, but not able to act to enforce the law (except in defense or certain other situations), but ready to be sworn in to a posse by the local sheriff at need.
Or we push the reset button that is protected by the Second amendment and exercise the right and duty indicated by Jefferson in the extract below.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—
The question indicates an incorrect understanding of equal protection. Equal protection just says that a state must treat the citizens of other states the same as it treats their own. Thus, if Vermont citizens have concealed carry, then all US citizens have it... in Vermont. Similarly, a state need not provide any more rights for citizens of other states than it does for it's own, and thus if they prohibit concealed carry in their state, they need not allow it for citizens of Vermont. All this is temporarily laying aside question of whether the second, or any other, amendment applies to the states. The principal is just as true of homosexual marriage or drinking age as it is to concealed carry. Of course there is the little problem of recognition of the acts of other states, but again that really only applies in situations were the act of the other state is the same, or nearly the same, as the act (say a driver's license or license to carry a concealed weapon) of the state in question. Thus a state need not recognize another states concealed carry license, if they do not issue them to their own citizens, or if the conditions for issue are very different. This is a field where Congress needs to exercise it's power to provide for the manner in which acts of other states are recognized and for states to work together to define common requirements, just as they have done with driver's licenses.
Exactly. The only *legitimate* way to limit the right is to amend the Constitution.
I wish I could agree, but I've read the CFR decision, it's really bad both consituttionally and logically, but there has been no Constitutional crisis, no uprising, not even a serious "throw the bums out" movement. The bums would include pretty much the Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court in this particular case. The first passed it, the second signed it when he could have vetoed it, the third said it was peachy keen and did not violate the Constitution. (They seemingly ingnored the first amendment almost entirely).
OK, I'll spell it out for you: You are equating "understand" with "agree", just like so many left-wingers do.
You consider the 2nd is "rigid dogma"? -- Explains a lot.. Thanks.
No, I contend that the insane proposition that the 2nd amendment guarantees US citizens the right to posess nuclear weapons, as some stridently demand, is a "rigid dogma".
...certain chemical/nuclear/biological materials can be Constitutionally regulated by the use of common sense & common law.
To say that regulation of the components required to make a working nuclear weapon is not regulation of those weapons is absurd. My argument is against those who claim that the 2nd amendment guarantees US citizens the right to the same, if not greater, level of weapons available to the federal government. If the critical components of those weapons are regulated, then the weapon is effectively regulated. The effect is no different than permitting firearm sales but regulating all aspects of gun powder manufacture, distribution and purchase.
...rant about 'dogma', while you make ludicrous leaps about "unbounded rights".. It's amusing.
What is far more tragic than amusing, though, is the plainly creepy philosophy promoted by some that our founding fathers intended that every citizen of the USA have free access, limited only by the economics involved, to WMDs, and guaranteed that right with the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. That's precisely the kind of craziness that makes gun grabbers giggle with delight.
If that isn't your stand, then we have no argument. I'm a staunch supporter and defender of 2nd amendment rights. If denying nukes to average Joes makes me a left-wing nutcase gun grabbing lunatic, then I suppose I'll have to plead guilty.
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