Posted on 12/04/2006 2:04:25 PM PST by neverdem
I have some concerns about her. But so far I don't see anyone better on the Repub side, at least no one who wants it.
And, in fact, she says she doesn't want it either. But for now there isn't anyone else.
Ehh, that depends on what you mean.
I don't think it's a good idea for a random citizen to be able to walk into a Wal-Mart and buy an anti-tank rocket capable of blowing up a store or something. If you want to define THAT as a gun, I'd say, no, there are some sensible gun laws.
As far as regular stuff goes? I tend to agree.
I started to post the same thing and fortunately read down and saw that you did a better job of it than I could.
Thanks for the post and thanks to thackman for the ping.
TW, thought you might be interested.
Stem Cells Figure Prominently in 2006 Election
ABOUT THOSE IMAMS(RICHARD MINITER EXPOSE')
Beyond Hegemony More interesting as a series of thought experiments, it doesn't do justice to our current engagement with a resurgent Islam.
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
There is not a word in the Miller opinion to support the "collective" right notion. What there is, which is arguably reading limitations into the Second Amendment that aren't there, is a holding that guns only qualify as a Second Amendment-protected right if they are a type which can have a military use. As you probably know, the court in Miller did NOT hold that the defendants didn't have a right to own the sawed-off shotguns in question -- the court remanded the case to the lower court for a determination of fact on whether sawed-off shotguns had any legitimate military use. The historical facts show clearly that they do, but the lower court never addressed the remanded case, as one defendant had died and the other had agreed to pay a fine and be done with the whole thing.
Any legitimate reading of the Miller decision concludes that while it did not confirm our individual right to own "Saturday Night Specials", it most certainly DID confirm our individual right to own any and all guns that have potential military applications, which obviously includes full-auto machine guns, 50 calibers, guns with large capacity magazines, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors, pistol grips, folding stocks, and grenade launchers.
So 'people means the states? That means that the 1st, 4th and 10th Amendments are for the states?
If that is true then the 10th Amendment is written very strangely. "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." would mean '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 States.'
Doesn't make much sense does it?
My take is that the states reserved for themselves the right to regulate concealed carry.
Open carry cannot be infringed. IMHO. ???
The prosecution also asked that the Supreme Court find that only members of a militia and certain others were protected by the Second Amendment. The Court did not agree and pointed out that people called for militia duty were expected to appear bearing weapons supplied by themselves.
Hear hear. Ya know, having grown up with things like that - I have even more respect for her. Condi's got my vote.
How did you shift the burden of proof to the defendant?
Neither the Supreme Court nor any appeals court has the authority to decide controverted matters of fact. With a few exceptions, neither does Congress. The job of fact-finder is reserved for juries (or, when jury trial is waived, bench-court judges).
If a store owner were indicted for having sold a bottle of O'Douls on December 2, 2006, in violation of a law against selling alcohol on Sundays, and he were to appeal the indictment on the grounds that December 2 was a Saturday, the appeals court would likely quash the indictment on the basis that December 2 was a Saturday and there could be no argument about that. On the other hand, if he were to argue that O'Douls wasn't alcohol, the prosecutor might argue that it qualified. Such a claim by the prosecutor might be sufficient to prevent the indictment from being quashed (though unless the prosecutor could come up with some pretty compelling evidence at trial, the case would go nowhere).
That's the norm with affirmative defenses. If someone is charged with possession of stolen property and they present a bill of sale showing they purchased it from an apparently-legitmate dealer, they're off the hook. It's they, however, who bear the burden of showing how they got the item.
Showing that a shotgun is a military weapon would be pretty trivial; the burden should not be terribly high. The Miller test would be aimed more if, e.g., someone was found with many bottles of distilled (and tastefully blended) alcohol on which no taxes had been paid, and tried to argue that they weren't booze, they were really Molotov cocktails that he'd prepared in case his land was invaded and, as weapons, they were immune from taxation. Do you think a jury would buy that excuse?
Up until around the 1950s people were able to buy dynamite at most rural hardware stores. That's a century and a half after the founding of our Nation. Somehow we were able to survive without restricting the freedoms of the law-abiding.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 was the knee-jerk response to the gangsterism created by the Eighteenth Amendment outlawing alcohol. This wrong-headed attempt to legislate morality resulted in unprecedented gangsterism aimed at protecting the lucrative trade in illicit alcohol.
If you want to see the future of trying to eliminate crime by disarming the law-abiding, you only need to look at Great Britain. People there have been jailed for defending themselves from violent criminals and the government has encouraged people to turn in knives as a crime-fighting step. When sharp pointy sticks are outlawed only outlaws will have sharp pointy sticks.
The crime problem, such as it is, is the result of failing to teach and enforce discipline in our youngsters. A judge years ago, in sentencing a horse-thief, stated that he had seen many men who needed killing but had never seen a horse that needed stealing. Horse thieves were hanged.
But the honest road is not going to appeal to people who can see that trading in illicit drugs is easy money with apparently little risk. The War on Some Drugs has created an industry for criminals that will never go away. Wishfully thinking that laws requiring me to prove I am not a criminal, or which force me to wait 10 days, or which force me to purchase a safe, or which limit me to underpowered arms, will NEVER decrease crime. Because the criminals don't obey these laws.
I don't claim expertise on affirmative defenses, but wouldn't the existence of an affirmative defense have to be spelled out in the law? I don't understand how the protections of the Second Amendment can become a "defense" to an unConstitutional law.
In the Miller case, why would the prosecution be burdened with proving that Miller never bought a stamp? Why is Miller not saddled with proving that he did?
If the crime that Miller is accused of violating requires that the weapon lack usefulness to a Militia, how is that not a burden for the prosecution?
Interesting.
I ran across the following the other day while reading Jefferson's First Inaugural Address...
"...a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them..."
Seems to me that Jefferson believed that citizens should certainly be prepared to be that first line of defense. A citizen can't be prepared without owning and knowing how to use a weapon. My question would be did he take it a step further and consider it an obligation for them to train together in order to be a reliable force until the "regulars" could take over?
Jefferson wrote a letter to his nephew, I believe it was, admonishing him to take healthy walks and always take his gun along. In the letter he opined that games of the ball were too strenuous on the body but that the walk was much healthier as long as one took the gun along. He thought walking and shooting was a very healthy thing indeed.
Now compare that letter with the one he sent to the Danbury Baptist Congregation regarding church and state. In that letter he mentioned the First Amendment as "effectively creating a wall between church and state". IOW, a metaphor.
Why is it that courts have embraced his letter to the Danbury congregation as law and ignored his letter to his nephew?
Could it be AGENDA?
Of course it was agenda. Hugo Black deliberately misinterpreted Jefferson's wall and thus rewrote the First Amendment. I am appalled and frightened at the number of Americans who believe the rewrite as fact.
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