Posted on 07/01/2006 7:19:16 AM PDT by LouAvul
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A recent Supreme Court ruling that Congress can ban homegrown marijuana for medical use in California led Friday to the reinstatement of an Arizona man's overturned conviction for having homemade machine guns.
Prosecutors in both cases invoked the Constitution's interstate commerce clause, despite the fact that the cases centered on items that were homemade, or homegrown, and didn't involve commerce or crossing state lines. The courts ruled, however, that the items still can affect interstate commerce and therefore can be regulated by federal law.
In the machine gun case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday reinstated the convictions of Robert Wilson Stewart, 67, of Mesa, Ariz. The three-judge panel reversed its own previous decision to overturn the convictions because he never tried to sell his weapons or transport them over state lines.
Federal agents raided Stewart's house in June 2000 and found five machine guns, which Stewart argued did not violate the congressionally mandated ban on certain assault weapons because they were homemade and not for sale. The appellate court initially agreed with Stewart and overturned his convictions in 2003, ruling the interstate commerce clause did not apply.
The three-judge panel, however, was ordered by the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision after the justices ruled in 2005 that the federal government could prosecute medical marijuana users and their suppliers even if their activity was confined to California.
In the marijuana case, brought by Oakland resident Angel Raich, the majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that the interstate commerce clause makes California's medical marijuana law illegal. The court said homegrown marijuana confined to the state still can affect the entire national market for the drug, allowing for federal regulation.
The same rationale was applied by the appeals court in the homemade machine gun case.
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
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.
Get some common sense paulsen. -- Your fervor to further gun prohibitions makes you act like a 'tinfoil dude'.
"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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
And what they decided when they wrote it doesn't change until that constitution gets amended. Anything else is fraudulent.
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.
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?
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 marketor 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 Californias 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.)
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?
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