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.
Horiwitz is also a complete ignoramus when it come to the Constitution (or perhaps he needs to brush up on his math and most defiantly his history.)
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.
Lincoln, nor any President, had no power whatsoever to end slavery. All agreed then and now, that to end slavery required a constitutional amendment.
Amendments have been very few over the last 230 years for a simple reason. They have to be approved by 3/4 of the states only after a 2/3 majority vote in each house of congress.
Even today, if slavery still existed, with 50 states instead of the 35 that existed in 1860, an amendment to ban slavery could not pass if if it were rejected by only 13 states. In 1860, it would have only taken six states to block an amendment yet their were 15 slave states who obviously oppose such and amendment.
The issue in 1860 was expansion of slavery, not the abolition of slavery. Lincoln only promised to stop expansion of slavery --- which had been a bone of contention between the north and south for the previous 40 years. No sane person, North or South, thought he could abolish slavery with some stroke of the pen. And no one even considered gun control back then --- except in the Confederacy where blacks could not own firearms.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Probably because Wickard v. Filburn had yet to have been decided.
I'm not sure what that has to do with Article V of the Constitution, but I suppose you're going to explain it to us.
Sure. Per Wickard v. Filburn, the federal government is free to impose any sort or restriction it sees fit on anything vaguely resembling interstate commerce. If no amendment was required to authorize things like the minimum wage, or OSHA, or any of its other meddling, I see no reason why one would be required to make slavery uneconomical.
Dixie Ping [><]
Amen! :)
Maa'm, you are SO right! :)
What part of East Texas are you from.
(I'm a native of Rusk & Palestine originally...:)
Jeff Davis will be pleased. Oh, wait, he'd dead and the Civil War has been over for 142 years. Nevermind.
But I love lunatic Confederates. WTF?
The libs are having a hissy fit.
Remedy: more range time.
The cotton gin made American slavery really profitable for the first time.
Given the rate of gun crime by blacks in DC, it doesn't seem to be working.
How did the economics of slavery compare with those of immigrant workers? I'd think that immigrant workers would make more economic sense.
Slavery in the South earned an average return on investment of 10% per year, comparable to other types of investments. In a non-inflationary (and during much of the period actually deflationary) and essentially no-tax economy, this wasn't too shabby.
Most years between 1830 and 1860 the resale value of a slave increased. Thus the investment was similar to buying farmland rather than renting it. You make 10% a year on your original investment, and each year your investment is worth more.
Or think of it as a mutual fund. You invest $50,000. Each year you receive a tax-free dividend of $5,000. Meanwhile, over 10 years your $50,000 investment increases in value to $75,000. Your total return for the 10 years is $75,000 over your original investment. (And of course you still have your original $50k.)
Renting labor by hiring free workers wasn't nearly as good an investment.
No, it did not. It affirmed what was written in the Constitution.
On the other hand, slaves would have required considerable upkeep, would they not? If a free worker is malnourished and consequently becomes ineffective, he can be fired and replaced at no cost. If a slave is malnourished and becomes ineffective, that represents a major loss of investment.
10% average return on investment includes all slaves. Obviously some slaves were really bad investments. They got sick and died, for instance, and there goes your money. Or they ran away.
One factor that allowed slavery to thrive in the cotton south was the relatively even distribution of work over the course of a year. There was no incentive to hire workers just for the harvest, as you needed labor all year.
Slaveowners weren't stupid. They were well aware of the risk and rewards of the institution, and they chose to continue it. Slave prices generally increased from 1800 to 1860, although fluctuating with economic factors such as depression and cotton prices. Slave prices reached their peak in 1860, about $1500 for a prime field hand, at a time when the per capita GDP (according to one source, although it sounds low to me) was $137.
That buyers were willing to pay these prices is an excellent indication that they saw the purchase of a slave as a good investment.
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