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 ...
You wrote: "The 1770's definition of 'Regulated' meant in good working order. It nothing to do with legalities."
No.
Just no.
The word "regulation" meant the same thing in 1776 as it does today. It also had a particular military use meaning "training", but this, too, was training under established rules. A few samples of the use of the word "Regulation" in legal documents from the 1700s:
From the Articles of Confederation:
The United States assembled shall have the sole and exclusive Right and Power of determining on Peace and War ... Coining Money and regulating the Value thereof ... Regulating the Indian Trade, and managing all Indian Affairs with the Indians ... Establishing and regulating Post-Offices throughout all the United Colonies ... Appointing all the Officers of the Naval Forces in the Service of the United States-Making Rules for the Government and Regulation of the said Land and Naval Forces,
From a letter from the Colonial Commissioners submitted to the King of England on Sept. 8. 1721:
To the KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY.
May it please your Majesty.
In obedience to your Majesty's commands, we have prepared the following state of your Majesty's Plantations on the Continent of America; wherein we have distinguished their respective situations, Governments, strengths and Trade, and have observed of what importance their Commerce is to Great Britain,...
CONNECTICUT,
This government is upon the same foot as Rhode Island, under the same regulations of Government, and liable to the same inconveniences. ...
The official citation of the regulations established to regulate the distribution of lands captured in the French and Indian Wars:
"A proclamation for regulating the cessions made by the last treaty of peace. Guth. Geogr. Gram. 623. 1763, Oct. 7. G. 3."
And, of course, the "Rules and Regulations of the Colony of Georgia 1776", which provides, in part:
This Congress, therefore, as the representatives of the people, with whom all power originates, and for whose benefit all government is intended, deeply impressed with a sense of duty to their constituents, of love to their country, and inviolable attachment to the liberties of America, and seeing how much it will tend to the advantage of each to preserve rules, justice and order, do take upon them for the present, and until the further order of the Continental Congress, or of this, or any future Provincial Congress, to declare, and they accordingly do declare, order, and direct that the following rules and regulations be adopted in this Province...
Chuck Schumer's family were still overseas safe in the hands of a petty dictator who used them for his own purposes.
None of this changes the fact that the Constitution grants the Federal government the power to organize and equip the armed forces, and nuclear weapons are arms of the armed forces. Under the Constitution, the government can build and maintain nukes, just as it built and maintain ships. Comparing a privateer with WMD is curious, but even if we go with it, there was also an organized Navy; the Americans did not JUST operate with letters of marque.
The argument that the government can't build and keep nukes is indefensible. So we're down to the question as to whether individuals can have personal nuclear weapons. So far, you've argued yes.
And why should it be?
Here in Virginia, I can legally take a loaded pistol right into the General Assembly chambers or even the Governor's office. What makes the Congress so special. They have convinced even conservatives that they deserve special protections. Granted, with the shenanigans they pull all the time, they might have reason to be. But they have insulated themselves so much from the citizenry that they have little to fear.
Hate to say it, but I don't think the aide (or Webb) has anything to worry about. The media will bury this story deep, so today will probably be the last we hear of it. After that, I'm sure that Webb and Harry Reid and a few other democrats will have a "friendly chat" with the Capitol Police and the DC courts, and some sort of technicality or procedural error will be found that allows the charges against Thompson to be quietly dropped, and Viola!, case dismissed, nothing to see here, please move along.
These are democrat senators and their consiglierges we're talking about. The laws do not apply to them.
off topic, but an example of how the leftmedia covers news ---
From Wikipedia:
The École Polytechnique Massacre, also known as the Montreal Massacre, occurred on December 6, 1989, at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in Montreal, Quebec. A 25 year-old man, Marc Lépine, entered the campus and carried out a shooting rampage in which 14 women were killed and 4 men and 10 women were wounded, before turning the rifle on himself and committing suicide.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/École_Polytechnique_Massacre
*****
I wasn't in Canada when this happened, but I lived there for many annual remembrances of these violent deaths, and never did I learn that Marc Lepine was a muslim while I lived in Canada.
Again Wiki:
Marc Lépine was born Gamil Gharbi to a French-Canadian mother and an Algerian father. Marc's father did not consider women to be the equal of men and was physically and verbally abusive to his wife and son, discouraging tenderness between mother and child.[13] When Gamil was seven his parents separated and he lived with his mother for the rest of his childhood. He attempted to join the Canadian Army during the winter of 1980-1, but was rejected because he was "anti-social", according to his suicide letter. Gharbi changed his name legally to Marc Lépine in 1982.[14]
Note: even the Wikipedia article does not say that he was a muslim, only that his father was Algerian, and had contempt for women.
No rational candidate does that ~ it's Hitlerian.
Given the shooting up in Montreal I don't think anybody on Capitol Hill is safe as long as Webb and his people are around there.
Without arguing through each of your points (although that would be interesting), your bottom line is that the 2nd Amendment grants a federal right to keep nuclear weapons.
Curious that you don't think that, rather, the states retained full power to regulate weapons in the same sense that you think that states retained the power to regulate commercial speech.
Or, maybe you saw that and are a believer in the "living document" deal and don't think it needs "fixed".
I agree with everything you wrote....but I am sure his staff today realized that Webb will never stand by them.
You have a point.
I saw that, but I've also seen everything in between and I have become confused.
The Constitution can't be "fixed" on these points.
You can't tinker with it.
Bring up guns, and you're going to get a violent political fight that won't get the majority needed to pass Congress.
So, we're stuck with what we have, and we have to interpret it in real time.
It's obvious that people can't be allowed to have mass casualty weapons, because the bloodshed would be too great.
What's less obvious, then, is finding a principled line to draw between mass casualty weapons and personal sidearms which at least presents the appearances of respecting the Constitution.
Original conditions don't work: we'd be stuck with black powder muskets and that's silly.
"Original intent" CAN work, so long as we can agree on the basics that the firearms ownership right is about personal self-defense and a collective, but not individual, right of rebellion against tyranny.
"Well-regulated" has to be given the teeth to prevent "shall not be infringed" from meaning mass casualty weapons, but "shall not be infringed" has to be given the teeth to make it clear that the right inheres in the People at large, and that the states cannot pare it back. So, people can have, and carry, pistols, but they can't have their own fully-automatic machine guns. It's a sensible line, and one that is workable.
If ensuring everybody has that right, and stripping away the power of the states to prevent people from exercising it, results in a steep increase in the violent crime rate and murder rate, then the central self-defense argument has to be revisited, and "Well-regulated" given more teeth.
The Constitution isn't a suicide pact.
So you have no problem with someone carrying a loaded gun into the Congress? What about the White House? What about an AKA-47?
They are not getting special privileges. You can't carry a loaded gun into my office.
To the contrary, Webb's staff probably knows now that if they protect their boss in public and take the heat for him, he and the party will take care of them behind the scenes.
Agreed! Here in Michigan its against the law to even loan your hand gun to a friend to take it to the range......
On one hand I could support Webb and his aide if Webb took the high road on this and admitted his mistake but if he is going to try and pin this on the aide then Webb should be penalized to the fullest extent of the law.........
I haven't thought of it that way, you may be right.
It has provisions for amendment, so all disputes about what ought to go on in a future time can be resolved.
If those disputes cannot be resolved, then maybe we need a revolution ~ a thing the Founders found necessary in their day.
Jim Webb may well have something like that in mind but I doubt either you, nor Hillary Clinton would like his vision of the future. Quite frankly I wouldn't trust Lt. Webb to lead me across the street for free beer.
Yep. Fox showed a picture of him whipping the boots out of a plastic bag for Webb to hold up after his victory.
In less than a year, we've seen a democrat US Representative crash his car into a barricade while drunk, narrowly missing a police cruiser, and we've seen another democrat Representative assault a police officer because she thought she was too important to show proper ID at a security checkpoint. In both cases, nothing whatsoever happened to either of them legally - FGS, the cops gave Kennedy a ride home!
If democrat representatives can get away with that kind of stuff, I'm sure a democrat senator will have no problem making a gun charge go away.
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