Posted on 03/30/2007 5:09:20 PM PDT by neverdem
Earlier this month, in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia, a three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia broke with all other federal circuits by holding that a gun-control statute violated the Second Amendment.
In a split decision, the court found that the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and a companion law that requires that legally owned firearms be stored disassembled could not be reconciled with the text of the amendment.
The amendment reads, "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." The only modern Supreme Court case to look at the issue, United States v. Miller, found that the Second Amendment was designed to preserve the effectiveness of the organized militia.
The Parker case breaks from this precedent by finding that the militia purpose is but one among a laundry list of other individual uses of arms protected by the Second Amendment, including hunting, self-defense, and protection from the "depredations of a tyrannical government."
This last claim, that individuals have a right to take up arms against representative government, was last tried out by the Confederate States of America.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, many Southerners, fearing that Lincoln would abolish slavery, felt they had no obligation to accept the results of the election. Southern attempts to withdraw from the union quickly led to individuals taking up arms to fight what they perceived as federal tyranny.
As president, Lincoln acted on his belief that violence against the government was illegal and unconstitutional. In his first inaugural address he stated, "It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination."
As he asked the nation to go to war to protect its sovereignty, Lincoln added, "And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States ... It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration ... can always ... break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the Earth."
Lincoln made it clear that individuals or even states did not have the authority to determine what was "just cause" to wage a war against the union. As much as it pained him to send young men off to die, he did so to vindicate the idea that the Constitution and its amendments did not create some kind of national suicide pact.
Following the Civil War, the Supreme Court, in the case of Texas v. White, adopted this view and held that the Constitution did not countenance armed rebellion against the federal government.
The Parker court, by implicitly reviving Confederate constitutional theory and wrapping it in the authority of the federal courts, takes the ideals of conservative judicial activism in a lunatic direction.
The case is likely to be appealed. Let's hope that the rest of the D.C. Circuit knows enough history to recog´ nize that Lincoln, not Jefferson Davis, is the guiding spirit behind our system of constitutional government.
Horwitz is the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
it's called being a "know all".
free dixie,sw
"Miller" is NOT a major SECOND AMENDMENT case, but rather is MOSTLY a "criminal conversion" case.
free dixie,sw
ROTFLMAO
at least that's what i learned in college.
otoh, YOU say that you KNOW EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING, thus your knowledge must be SUPERIOR to everyone else's, regardless of their academic credentials.
laughing AT you.
free dixie,sw
you don't have any??? then WHY do you lol???? (perhaps you should remain silent about things of which you KNOW nothing???)
fyi, i've taken exactly TWO 3-hour courses on Constitutional Law (one undergrad & one in grad school, so i'm FAR from an expert.)
otoh, you SAY that you KNOW everything about EVERY subject, so perhaps we should all bow down to N-S, the Minister of DAMNyankee Propaganda. (SARCASM button: ON)
free dixie,sw
If the SC ruling against secession after the fact bothers you, then in your view the rebel states should have asked the SC to rule on the constitutionality of seccesion before the fact, before they seceded. Else, any SC decision on secession would have been after the fact.
Francis H. Pierpont, the Unionist Governor of Virginia, remained Governor of Virginai for three years after the end of the Civil War.
No state ever left the Union.
I LOL and ROTFLMAO at the idiocy that you post.
Just out of curiosity, what are YOUR academic credentials as a Constitutional scholar and as an EXPERT on Constitutional Law?
Virginia never left the Union, but the state government did change.
As affirmed by the Supreme Court, the creation of West Virginia was constitutional. Per the constitution of Virginia at the time, the 1861 constitutional convention superceded the state government. Those delegates who voted for secession thereby lost their legitimacy as delegates, leaving the loyal delegates as the legitimate government of the state of Virginia. It was the loyal state administration of Gov. Francis Pierpont, who remained in office until 1868, which consented to the formation of West Virginia.
Read the Constitution some time. It says the permission of the state government is required, which the Pierpont administration provided.
laughing AT your feeble attempt to change the subject away from your LACK of both academic credentials above the "master's level" AND your lack of actual knowledge of the subjects that you post DRIVEL about.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
You can't form it without consent of Congress as well as the legislature. That part of the Virginia legislature not participating in the rebellion was recognized as the legitimate government of Virginia by Congress. It was they who petitioned Congress to allow the partition.
free dixie,sw
How does that work? You've now basically said that the secession of the southern states DID overthrow the entire United States government. It's hard to claim it wasn't a rebellion if the departure of the southern delegations instantly made the rest of the congress fraudulent.
How would you know?
fyi, i said what i did to get a "rise out of" the DYs here, as you cannot have it BOTH ways.
either the US Congress was FRAUDLENT in continuing to "sit" (without a quorum) OR the secession of the southern states was BOTH lawful & legitimate.
free dixie,sw
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