Posted on 03/27/2007 10:31:38 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Webb Denies He Gave Aide Gun That Led to Arrest
Tuesday , March 27, 2007
WASHINGTON — Virginia Sen. Jim Webb said Tuesday he did not give aide Phillip Thompson the gun that led to his arrest in a Senate office building. Webb did not say whether it was his gun.
Thompson is awaiting arraignment in D.C. Superior Court after being arrested Monday for trying to enter the Russell Senate Office Building, where Webb's office is located, carrying a loaded pistol and two fully loaded magazines.
The judge will determine whether Thompson, 45, will have to pay bail to get out of jail, and will set a date for a preliminary hearing. Thompson spent the night in a D.C. jail after U.S. Capitol Police determined Monday that he did not have a permit to carry a gun in Washington, D.C., where only law enforcement officials are allowed to carry handguns.
He is charged with carrying a pistol without a license and possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition. According to the court docket, Monday was Thompson's birthday.
A senior Democratic aide said Monday evening that Thompson forgot that he had the weapon when he sent the senator's bag through the X-ray machine at the office building. The aide said Webb gave the bag that contained the gun to Thompson when the aide drove the senator to the airport.
Webb said he has been in New Orleans since Friday and returned Monday night. He denied that he gave the weapon to Thompson.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Others have tons of anhydrous fertilizer and fuel oil.
Cars on the road have gasoline tanks.
In Virginia Webb can simply tote his pistol and ammunition around in a holster, in the open, without any sort of registration.
If it was at an airport, Mr. Webb would be 'toast.' Period. Because it was a US Senate office building, I imagine he will continue to promote his pitiful, sorry-@ss career at the taxpayers' expense - and at the expense of his fellow Marines (sack of sh!t)...
Hence the Congress was granted the power to contract with them under the "letters of marque and reprisal" clause. The WMD (of their day) remained safely in private hands, although the government was tightly regulated in his contracting for their services.
No, I am not ignorant.
The language of the 2nd amendment says "The right to keep and bear ARMS". It is NOT limited, by its language, to handguns, rifles and shotguns.
Weapons of mass destruction are ARMS.
So are fully-automatic heavy machine guns.
If one is going to take a literalist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment - which some here HAVE (read up the thread, please, to the person who would not allow that the Secret Service can disarm people even around the President) - then the problem is right there, in plain English.
There is no LIMIT on the word "ARMS" in the 2nd Amendment.
So, either the words "right", "well-regulated", "security", "free state" and "infringed" all act to impose rational limits on the right to keep and bear arms, or it is absolutely unlimited.
There are those who read it as absolutely unlimited. They even appear here. Calling it a "straw man" in order to ignore the problem, and it IS a real problem (just LOOK, people really ARE arguing that the 2nd Amendment means NO LIMITS on armaments), does not address the issue.
So, why don't you tell me: is the 2nd Amendment limited by common sense or isn't it? You called it a straw man and said nobody is saying that, so it should be a real easy question to answer. Is there a constitutional right to have a nuclear weapon, YES OR NO?
Is there a constitutional right to have a fully-automatic machine gun, YES OR NO?
If you can answer "No" to both of those questions, then we're in the realm of sanity. But if you CAN'T, or WON'T, then you will have demonstrated that my bringing up the full natural meaning of the word "ARMS" was no straw man. Every right is of necessity limited by other rights and obligations, and responsibilities.
So make it easy: tell me that the 2nd Amendment DOES NOT mean that there is any personal right to have either nuclear weapons or fully-automatic weapons, mass-casualty weapons, and we can proceed.
That's the FIRST test, the litmus test of sanity.
Can you answer it without blinking, or are YOU going to shuck and jive and call me names again, but refuse to answer the direct question? They are yes or no questions.
Personal nukes? Yes or no. (NO is the right answer.)
Machine guns? Yes or no. (NO is the right answer.)
Once we get past those two "No's", we've admitted that the 2nd Amendment IS a limited right. "Arms" does not mean ALL arms. Some arms can be infringed, are infringed, have to be infringed, and it's perfectly constitutional to infringe them.
Can you admit that, or are you going to call me names again to avoid the question?
So let's be clear.
Do you think there is a personal right to possess nuclear weapons guaranteed by the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment, yes or no?
Among the unanswered questions is what he was doing in Louisiana and why he felt he needed to be armed there, and also, DID HE CARRY THIS HANDGUN ONTO A PLANE???
Care to post a few credible citations (regarding "people really ARE arguing that the 2nd Amendment means NO LIMITS on armaments")?
I'm willing to be convinced - please help me out...
The 1770's definition of "Regulated" meant in good working order. It nothing to do with legalities.
To imply that they were stored at Concord in a central location and out of the hands of the private citizen as a result an order by a non-existant government is far-fetched.
If true, why were not ALL of the arms, to include those in the hands of private citizens, stored there? Instead it was the arms being manufactured to use against the British.
Now that's a standup guy!
Why does he even tell us he was in New Orleans? I smell something fishy.
The weird thing is that IIRC, members of congress, or at least the senate CAN be "deputized" by one of the federal law enforcement agencies (US Marshall Service, I think), and they're ALLOWED to legally carry concealed weapons!
Where the heck did I read that?
Mark
"Piggy eyes!" GREAT description!
That is, as it was understood when Napoleon gave the privilege to Jews, the "right to keep and bear arms" meant that you were a real man, with rights, who was entitled to fight back and with whatever weapons were required.
There are doctrines of proportionality in our laws that are based on the idea that the right to self-defense should be limited to that which really is necessary for self-defense.
I think what you are working with is a confounding of the two ideas ~ the "right to keep" and the "right to bear" ~ the first applying to the "arms" themselves, and the second to the "use of arms".
The Constitution is also not terribly open ended when it comes to the federal government, but is quite effusive regarding the rights of the people ~ both as a group and as individuals.
I suppose the "people assembled" might well give rise to the idea that the federales can have nukes, but the limitation on Congressional access to the big guns held in private hands by mariners (in the time of the Founders) suggests that Congress can, at best, rent nukes as needed.
In a holster, in the open - on one's person - is much preferable than in an anomymous bag or briefcase.
The schoolteacher who lost her job for bringing a gun to school, had it in an obviously unsupervised handbag. What could have been a result of a child finding her gun?
My bad! I couldn't get the copy and paste function to work at the moment--so was going back and forth. I see I added the "not" that wasn't there.
No, I don't care to post citations to the opinions of the NRA. We can talk about Supreme Court and other Federal Court decisions (allowing for the regulation of machine guns) if you'd like, because that's actually law.
The question is whether or not the limitations in the actual law are actually constitutional under the Second Amendment, and that is a question of reading one rather muddy English sentence: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
That's the supreme law of the land, and the court cases and state laws and regulations that have interpreted it (or ignored it) are the law of the land.
The NRA, the National Rifle Association, is interested in gun rights. I agree with them: there IS a right to keep and bear arms under the Constitution. I will even go farther: it's a FEDERAL right, which overrides state's rights to a great degree, insofar as the Federal government chooses to regulate the militia from Washington, and insofar as "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is a personal right on a par with the 1st Amendment (and therefore pre-empts state law by federalizing the right at the constitutional level).
All that is so, but I say it means GUNS. Regular old guns. Weapons for personal protection.
It doesn't mean mass casualty weapons. It doesn't mean nuclear weapons. And it doesn't mean machine guns. Just guns. My wife has the constitutional right, I believe, to carry a pistol in her purse to protect herself. But nobody has the right to build bombs in his basement or to have a .50 caliber machine gun nest on the roof of his house.
There are common sense limits on this right, I say.
But I notice that they are not directly there in the language of the 2nd Amendment. It was written before WMD, before machine guns and nerve gas and nuclear weapons. So, it SAYS "Arms", but it doesn't MEAN it, not in the present sense. Mass casualty arms are too dangerous for individuals to possess, and they far exceed any rational self-defense needs.
But I've already said that.
All I have asked you is whether or not YOU think that the 2nd Amendment means you have the right to possess nuclear weapons or fully-automatic machine guns. Those are a pair of simple yes or no questions.
You've responded to my questions with questions.
I've answered your question. No, I do not care to post NRA sources. I'll post law.
Now answer mine, oft repeated:
Is there a personal right to nuclear weapons: YES OR NO?
Is there a personal right to fully-automatic weapons: YES OR NO?
What do YOU think?
Dropped on the floor ~ frequently little kids are not strong enough to hold the firearm up very long. That, BTW, is an argument for establishing a lower weight limit for weapons ~ so that if kids get hold of them they can't use them.
GMTA....The year we lived in London, I read 75+ Miss Marple books, and now EVERYBODY reminds me of SOMEBODY, and I am suspicious when people give MORE info than what is asked for or needed!! WHY did he feel the need to say he was in New Orleans or what that his pre-planned ALIBI!!
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