Posted on 02/07/2007 2:40:44 PM PST by Jim Robinson
HANNITY: Let me move on. And the issue of guns has come up a lot. When people talk about Mayor Giuliani, New York City had some of the toughest gun laws in the entire country. Do you support the right of people to carry handguns?
GIULIANI: I understand the Second Amendment. I support it. People have the right to bear arms. When I was mayor of New York, I took over at a very, very difficult time. We were averaging about 2,000 murders a year, 10,000...
HANNITY: You inherited those laws, the gun laws in New York?
GIULIANI: Yes, and I used them. I used them to help bring down homicide. We reduced homicide, I think, by 65-70 percent. And some of it was by taking guns out of the streets of New York City.
So if you're talking about a city like New York, a densely populated area like New York, I think it's appropriate. You might have different laws other places, and maybe a lot of this gets resolved based on different states, different communities making decisions. After all, we do have a federal system of government in which you have the ability to accomplish that.
HANNITY: So you would support the state's rights to choose on specific gun laws?
GIULIANI: Yes, I mean, a place like New York that is densely populated, or maybe a place that is experiencing a serious crime problem, like a few cities are now, kind of coming back, thank goodness not New York, but some other cities, maybe you have one solution there and in another place, more rural, more suburban, other issues, you have a different set of rules.
HANNITY: But generally speaking, do you think it's acceptable if citizens have the right to carry a handgun?
GIULIANI: It's not only -- I mean, it's part of the Constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then the restrictions of it have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You've got to regulate, consistent with the Second Amendment.
HANNITY: How do you feel about the Brady bill and assault ban?
GIULIANI: I was in favor of that as part of the crime bill. I was in favor of it because I thought that it was necessary both to get the crime bill passed and also necessary with the 2,000 murders or so that we were looking at, 1,800, 1,900, to 2,000 murders, that I could use that in a tactical way to reduce crime. And I did.
Words to live by, fer sure.
So what. Doesn't change the fact that you're lying about it...running all over this board, and God only knows where else, misrepresenting what happened.
Yeah, as if NY gun control law is consistent with the second amendment. in some liberals fairy tale. The AW ban was just a charade, but he supports that as well.
He also supports amnesty, if you earn it, whatever that means. I suppose that means you got here, so you are in, you earned it. Like last time, this will just encourage illegals of all stripes to keep on coming.
I am praying with ALL MY HEART that this man does not get the Republican nomination.......
Outstanding find. You just showed Rudy to be the liar he is contra his claims on Hannity.
Even better point.
Lying about what? It's a quote. They are your words. Including the shabby, absurdly irrelevant "sarcasm tag."
Me too.
They may start to come in handy.
You are correct, but there's an additional deceptive way that he, and all the other anti-gun types, use the term "regulate", in reference to the 2nd Amendment term "well-regulated".
In late Eighteenth Century America, the term "well-regulated" had nothing at all to do with our modern concept of government "regulations". The bureaucracies which plague us today simply did not exist. The meaning of the term was more akin to "properly ordered or organized and smoothly functioning as intended".
Thus, a clockmaker who built a grandfather clock and adjusted it to keep proper time would then describe it as "well-regulated", i.e. it was functioning properly as it was intended. By the same logic, a well-regulated militia would be one in which the citizen-soldiers would be properly armed, equipped and trained (drilled) in the skills needed for the performance of their militia duties. It was understood that they would generally use their own "small arms" (in the use of which they were already effectively skilled, i.e. 'well-regulated'), while the States were to provide the heavy weapons (cannon, etc.) and the officers. None of this had anything to do with the federal government "regulating" (restricting, limiting, infringing) in the modern sense the terms under which they could own or possess their own weapons.
Dave kopel has an article on Presser V Illinois which is cited by anti-gun groups and also as grounds for the 2nd not being incoporated:
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/Presser-versus-Illinois.htm
Now Presser is a good case for gun control advocates. The case upholds one particular kind of gun control, and could, arguably at least, be used as a foundation for bans on other collective exercises of the right to keep and bear arms. In addition, the case removes the Second Amendment as a barrier to state or local gun control.
It's questionable today whether Presser is good law, in light of various 20th-century cases, but Presser has never formally been over-ruled.
Yet the anti-gun lobbies, which could use Presser as a basis for gun-control, instead represent Presser as supposedly supporting the idea that there is no right to arms at all.
Of course, nothing in Presser says that the Second Amendment is not an individual right. In fact, one part of the Presser opinion erects a new limitation on gun prohibition.
While Presser said that the Second Amendment does not protect gun owners against state laws, the Presser Court explained that a different section of the Constitution does limit state gun laws.
Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution grants Congress limited powers over the militia. (To call forth the militia in certain circumstances, and regulate militia training.) In dicta (a non-binding expression of opinion, not necessary to decide the case at bar), the Court noted that even if there were no Second Amendment, the states could not disarm their citizens, because such disarmaments would deprive Congress of its Article I power to regulate militia training and to call forth the militia:
"It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserve military force or reserve militia of the United States; and, in view of this prerogative of the General Government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question [the Second Amendment] out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government. But, as already stated, we think it clear that the sections under consideration do not have this effect."
Thus, the Court states that the states may not "prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms." Further, the militia is not a select, uniformed force, instead, the militia consists of "all citizens capable of bearing arms."
Thus, when the anti-gun lobbies claim that Presser not only supports gun control (which it does) but also says that there is no Constitutional barrier to gun prohibition, the lobbyists are wildly off-base.
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It's also interesting to note the original case wasn't about ownership of guns, but, well, I'll let dave kopel say it:
"The issue in Presser had nothing to do with whether the Second Amendment protected an individual right, but rather with the constitutionality of a particular gun control; a ban on parading a privately-formed, armed group down public streets."
So the origin is more of a "states can say don't shoot at the street signs" kind of law than " states can say you can't have evil assault weapons" kind of law. In fact, the opinion he quoted was the indicates just the opposite. To paraphrase mr mackey: "banning guns is bad, mmkay".
I think the problem we're having is you're arguing incorporated amendments == protected rights - meaning those rights only extend if the supreme court has ruled they extend. I'm arguing for an originalist version - that this are inaliable rights - not granted by men or governments but by what they referred to as The Creator. They exist whether someone else permits you to exercise them or not. They exist whether any government exists at all.
I think you're going to find that's the belief of a lot of 2nd amendment voters. And that's why someone like Giuliani is going to have big problems winning them over.
Thank you for saying NO to Rudy.
Could you please use your forum to push conservatives to unite behind a single candidate instead--before the primaries start? Hell, I'd even accept Gingrich as a last resort! The way things are going, it seems obvious the MSM and the RNC want me to have only Rudy, McCain, or Romney as choices! They're positioning Brownback as the conservative of the lot--BROWNBACK!
How about the last sentence, which also makes it clear that it was a tongue in cheek response to an obnoxious liberal poster who was trying to paint all conservatives as bigots and "homophobes?"
I have one of those posts directed to me too, so if you need more evidence I will be glad to provide it to you.
That would be my observation of your hysterical posts earlier in this thread.
I won't respond to the rest, because I'm tiring of your baiting tactics.
Those Assault Weapons Bans happened right about the same time the government was demonstrating the need for the 2nd Amendment at Waco. The lesson was not lost on me when I voted Republican for the first time in my life.
Actually, my post was in response to that very crowd. I guess I hit the mark. They're still whining.
I think Rudy would be incredible with the WoT. Even though that is the most important thing to me, the foundation of our country can not be ignored. If Rudy were staunchly pro life, I might (I said might) accept his position on the 2nd Amendment. And if he were staunchly pro 2A with no silly talk of regulating it, I might be able to overlook his scrambled views on abortion. But that isn't the case. He has taken the populist view on both issues, something I can't do. And when the negatives outnumber the positives, I can not in good conscience feel good about placing that vote.
The next 4 months will be very interesting for Rudy, and I hope someone will grill him on specifics on both 2A and abortion.
Dime to donuts Bill O'Reilly falls in love with Rudy.
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