High court's Calif. pot ruling also outlaws homemade machine guns

modbee ^ | 7/1/6 | paul elias

[robertpaulsen]

"Go do some research on "80% receivers", starting here."

I did. The ATF says nothing about 80% receivers. All you've got are a bunch of bloggers making things up.

"Put another way: it took a professional metalworker with specific tools a non-trivial amount of time to turn something that could NOT shoot into something that allegedly could"

35 minutes grinding away with a little Dremel drill. He then assembled and fired the finished rifle, despite your denial based on conversations with those "intimately familiar with the case".

Get some tin foil, dude. The waves are interfering with your brain.

[tpaine]

Get some tin foil, dude. The waves are interfering with your brain.

Get some common sense paulsen. -- Your fervor to further gun prohibitions makes you act like a 'tinfoil dude'.

[ctdonath2]

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to stay, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."
- Elbert Hubbard

[robertpaulsen]

"No matter where you go, there you are."
-- Buckaroo Banzai

[tpaine]

Wherever you go paulsen, -- your inability to defend your socialistic theories becomes more & more evident..

[Dead Corpse]

One of my favorite quotes on this topic: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Couple that one with "shall not be infringed" and anything any court also subject to the "Supreme law of the Land" via the "and the Judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding" clause.

If a judge says otherwise, it is the judge in error. If a legislator passes a law in violation of this, that law is null and void. Anyone still trying to enforce an unConstitutional police power in the face of this is committing TREASON against the Republic by trying to destroy it from within.

[publiusF27]

We have many rights. Society chooses to protect only a relatively few. Some of those rights society chooses to protect are found in the BOR. Some are found in state constitutions.

But if they ain't there, they ain't protected.

Amendment 9: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

[publiusF27]

Section 1 of the 21st amendment repealed the 18th -- that set everything back to where it started. Section 2 then removed the power to regulate alcohol from the federal government and turned that power over to the states exclusively. The same would have to be done with drugs.

Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Yeah, I read that. That's where he complains that Congress is out of control, that Congress has no limits and that Congress is usurping state police powers.

That little diatribe was in a court decision that bitch-slapped Congress and said VAWA was unconstitutional, right on the heels of another court decision bitch-slapping Congress saying that their Gun-Free Schools Act was unconstitutional.

So much for "runaway Congressional power", huh?

He complained that the "anything which might reasonably be supposed to affect interstate commerce" standard is "rootless and malleable" and at odds with the intent expressed in documents like Federalist 45.

---

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security.

---

And you should tell the whole story about the Lopez case. What happened in 1996? You know. The Congress passed the same law which the Court had just overturned, only this time with some extra language about interstate commerce, and that law stands today in section 922 (q). I guess it might just be runaway power after all. Say the magic words, get the power. Lopez is a drafting guide, just as O'Connor said in her Raich dissent.

[robertpaulsen]

I never said you didn't have rights or that rights were taken away. I said some of those rights are protected from infringement and some are not.

[robertpaulsen]

"and that law stands today in section 922 (q)."

Until it's challenged. Like any other law. And there are those who say the law, even with the new language, will not survive if challenged.

[publiusF27]

Some are enumerated and some are not, but the lack of specific enumeration does not mean a right does not exist. If it does exist, and the purpose of government is to prevent violations of our rights, then it can and should be protected from infringement.

That seems to me the clear implication of the 9th. If rights which are not specifically mentioned are completely irrelevant, why have that amendment in the first place?

[publiusF27]

922 (q) has been law of the land for ten years now. There are those (Justices O'Connor, Rhenquist, and Thomas) who say that the law with the new language is perfectly Constitutional in light of Raich.

Besides, aren't you the one who denigrates fans of the judicial oligarchy who go around saying laws are unconstitutional and should be overturned?

Those who want and expect five activist justices on the U.S. Supreme Court to do their work for them are acting like helpless juveniles. Get out the vote and throw out the lawmakers that are writing this overreaching legislation. Now, that may be a little more work than sitting at a keyboard typing "But that's unconstitutional" every time a new law is passed, but that is the way to solve the problem.

[robertpaulsen]

"If it does exist, and the purpose of government is to prevent violations of our rights, then it can and should be protected from infringement."

Only if that's what the people decide. The people decide, when writing their constitution, which rights will be protected and to what extent.

You certainly have the right to carry a gun to protect yourself. Americans nationwide have been doing that for centuries. But, today, some states do not protect your right to carry a gun. You're saying they must do that?

"That seems to me the clear implication of the 9th."

The ninth amendment merely says you have rights. In other words, rights are not given to you.

"If rights which are not specifically mentioned are completely irrelevant, why have that amendment in the first place?"

Good question. How often has that amendment been (ab)used?

[robertpaulsen]

"There are those (Justices O'Connor, Rhenquist, and Thomas) who say that the law with the new language is perfectly Constitutional in light of Raich."

They did? I'm not aware that the USSC has ever commented on the constitutionality of an existing or proposed statute unless it's brought before them in court. Didn't they say the old law might be acceptable if the language was changed?

"Besides, aren't you the one who denigrates fans of the judicial oligarchy who go around saying laws are unconstitutional and should be overturned?"

You bet. And Lopez is a great example. People look to the court to address the issue and what happens? Congress rewrites the law. And they'll rewrite it again if if fails the second time. Obviously, this is not working.

As I said, get out the vote and throw out the lawmakers that are writing this overreaching legislation. If you don't have the votes, then shut up -- maybe that means the citizens actually want this legislation. Gasp! Self-rule, how messy and unfair, huh?

[tacticalogic]

The people decide, when writing their constitution, which rights will be protected and to what extent.

And what they decided when they wrote it doesn't change until that constitution gets amended. Anything else is fraudulent.

[tacticalogic]

As I said, get out the vote and throw out the lawmakers that are writing this overreaching legislation.

Of course, you'll have to convince others that it is overreaching in order to do that. That means you're going to have to take on big-governmnt liberals who think fedgov is the answer to everything. They keep trying to tell us that as all that's required is for Congress to pass legislation and the Courts to uphold it for it to be constitutional, regardless of what the Constitution actually says, and what that meant to those who wrote and ratified it.

[publiusF27]

Justice O'Connor, joined by Rhenquist and Thomas:

the Necessary and Proper Clause will always be a back door for unconstitutional federal regulation. Cf. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 923 (1997) (the Necessary and Proper Clause is “the last, best hope of those who defend ultra vires congressional action”). Indeed, if it were enough in “substantial effects” cases for the Court to supply conceivable justifications for intrastate regulation related to an interstate market, then we could have surmised in Lopez that guns in school zones are “never more than an instant from the interstate market” in guns already subject to extensive federal regulation, ante, at 8 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), recast Lopez as a Necessary and Proper Clause case, and thereby upheld the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. (According to the Court’s and the concurrence’s logic, for example, the Lopez court should have reasoned that the prohibition on gun possession in school zones could be an appropriate means of effectuating a related prohibition on “sell[ing]” or “deliver[ing]” firearms or ammunition to “any individual who the licensee knows or has reasonable cause to believe is less than eighteen years of age.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) (1988 ed., Supp. II).)

[tpaine]

You certainly have the right to carry a gun to protect yourself. Americans nationwide have been doing that for centuries.
But, today, some states do not protect your right to carry a gun. You're saying they must do that?

That is exactly what the 2nd says, paulsen, even though you deny it. "Keep & bear arms" means we can carry them, in ordinary english.

The people decide, when writing their constitution, which rights will be protected and to what extent.

That theory is a total fabrication..
Pray tell us paulsen; -- which rights are not protected in those enumerated by "life, liberty or property"?
And the 'extent' by which rights can regulated are also enumerated by the constitutions clear limits on the power of governments at all levels.

Please, "-- lets settle this once and for all --". Can you make a rational response instead of using your usual tactic of ignoring questions you don't want to answer?

[robertpaulsen]

The Raich case hinged on the Necessary and Proper Clause. Scalia won. O'Conner lost.

So in his Raich dissent, O'Conner is reminding us that in 1990 Lopez, Scalia made the Necessary and Proper argument and lost. O'Connor is saying that Scalia should lose again for a similar reason.

O'Connor says, as with Lopez, "There is simply no evidence that homegrown medicinal marijuana users constitute, in the aggregate, a sizable enough class to have a discernable, let alone substantial, impact on the national illicit drug market–or otherwise to threaten the CSA regime."

Followed by (this is the best part) "... in part because common sense suggests that medical marijuana users may be limited in number and that California’s Compassionate Use Act and similar state legislation may well isolate activities relating to medicinal marijuana from the illicit market, the effect of those activities on interstate drug traffic is not self-evidently substantial."

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah. California "may well" isolate my a$$. What was that other thread about? A "medical marijuana" store opening up at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco?

Scalia was right. Congress cannot rely on the states to do the enforcement of local regulations where interstate commerce is at stake.

(Oh, nowhere in Raich does it say that the Lopez law with the new language is perfectly Constitutional in light of Raich. O'Connor is simply whining that if we applied Scalia's logic to Lopez, Lopez would have been decided differently. O'connor is not making a case FOR Lopez and much as he is making a case AGAINST Raich.)

[robertpaulsen]

"That is exactly what the 2nd says, paulsen, even though you deny it. "Keep & bear arms" means we can carry them, in ordinary english."

Doesn't the 2nd apply to everyone? Why, then, don't all states protect concealed carry?

When the USSC overturned the sodomy laws in the few states that had them, boom, all the old laws were struck down immediately. Why are there still laws in a few states against concealed carry? Isn't that unconstitutional? Why weren't those laws, like the old sodomy laws, struck down?

Hmmmmmm?