Posted on 07/16/2007 8:03:08 AM PDT by ctdonath2
Local government officials in Washington, D.C., decided on Monday to appeal to the Supreme Court in a major test case on the meaning of the Second Amendment. The key issue in the coming petition will be whether the Amendment protects an individual right to have guns in one's home.
I have a real problem with this. The District of Columbia IS NOT a state of the Union.
It is not a party to the Constitution. It is under the
sole legislative authority” of Congress.
The court could issue a verdict with this in mind and all the sudden the media slimes will make it out like it is binding on the rest of the states.
I just learned something new - the fine for showing up at church unarmed was...get this...
100 PUNDS OF TOBACCO!
http://www.guncite.com/images/hening-3-338.gif
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Thanks...
I guess as the situation dictates, #2 & #3 could switch places every now and then???
#1 always being available and appropriate at all stages of the game, and #4 being there as long as it is properly stocked??? ;-)
Saying 2A is about Militias is a card-sharp's way of saying it isn't about you, but the language of the Amendment itself militates, as I was saying, against that interpretation. It doesn't say, "the right of the Militia to keep and bear," it says "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Some shylocks have inserted extra commas into the quotation, to try to alter its meaning in the direction you point out, which gun-hostile jurisdictions have gone while trying to support unconstitutional state and local laws.
The scholarship on the Framers' original intent is clear. They wanted the people, as people, as individuals, to own, keep and carry firearms without check or hindrance, as a safeguard against both invasion and tyranny.
Elsewhere, they showed their concern that tyranny was just as likely, or even more likely, to arise within a State as at the federal level. People familiar with the Long family of Louisiana, the Big Four of 19th-century California, and Illinois's long and malodorous history of bossism and political bullying know exactly what they meant.
BTTT; well-said.
I would interpret that precisely as they explained: that the danger in a Bill of Rights was that it would come to be perceived not as a minimal subset listing of enumerated pre-existing natural rights, but instead as a maximal enumeration of granted rights.....
Hamilton was the great enemy of the Bill of Rights. He fulminated against it in Federalist 84. The Antifederalists demanded the BoR, and especially the 10th Amendment, as a guarantee of their rights against just such logic as our friend deploys against 2A. Imagine the field day the Federalists would have had expanding government powers and weaselling away individual rights, had the Framers believed Hamilton and taken his expostulations in Federalist 84 at face value.
Hamilton suckered the Framers over the New Jersey Plan; but his mojo didn't work, when it came to trash-talking the Bill of Rights. Thank God for the Antifederalists.
No, they don't. John Marshall claimed that they do, and he hasn't been corrected yet. The People own the Constitution; the final say is theirs. Meanwhile, Congress can cure juridical overreaching by restricting the jurisdiction of the Court. They could remove the entire subject of 2A rights from the Court's purview, if they wanted to.
All well and good. What does that have to do with the second amendment?
It is from this:
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms
REPORT
of the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION
of the
UNITED STATES SENATE
NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS
Second Session
February 1982
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 1982
88-618 0
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents,
U. S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 20402
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
STROM THURMOND, South Carolina, Chairman
Not their fault, really.
Who's been telling us all along that the second amendment protects our individual, inalienable right to bear arms from infringement by any government? Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Now, if the truth would have been told (that the second amendment prevents only the federal government from infringing this right and that our individual RKBA is protected by each state) then no matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules, people would know that it only affects the federal law covering Washington, DC residents. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling would have no effect on state laws written under state constitutions that constitute the true protection of our gun rights.
If there's a negative ruling, expect to see some serious backtracking on what the second amendment really protects.
The reason we're dealing with this in DC is precisely to avoid obfuscatory state laws, and address it purely as a federal issue (which, at this point, it is).
The expected SCOTUS verdict on Parker WILL be binding on the states per the 14th Amendment ... but that will be a matter for SCOTUS to decide in a subsequent case.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Excellent find!
I think you'll agree that another safeguard against tyranny (in a representartive republic) is the ballot box. Yet who was allowed to vote? Only white, male, citizen landowners -- "the people" -- as decribed in the very first Article in the U.S. Comnstitution.
Perhaps state constitutions protected the rights of all individuals to keep and bear arms in their state. I don't know. But the second amendment did not.
"It doesn't say, "the right of the Militia to keep and bear," it says "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
It say neither. It says, "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 people" were not "all individuals". They weren't even "all citizens". Who were they?
That's the reason for the first clause -- "the people" were members of the state Militia. The second amendment, which was (and still is) a limitation only on the federal government, prevented the federal government from infringing on the ability of the states to arm themselves.
Keep in mind that the U.S. Constitution provided for Congress to arm the Militia --"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them ...". And if Congress chose not to arm the state Militias? The states also wanted that ability, and did not want the federal government to interfere.
Huh. Go figure. They ignore their own report, yet you expect me to treat it as Gospel. Why should I?
Yeah. They've been kinda busy these last 200 years. Haven't yet gotten around to it. Let me know when they do.
Until then, five U.S. Supreme Court justices define the constitution. And five liberal justices will claim that the second amendment doesn't protect handguns. Couldn't happen?
"Under the controlling authority of Miller we conclude that the right to keep and bear handguns is not guaranteed by the second amendment."
-- Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F.2d 261 (7th Cir. 1982)
15. In re Brickey, 8 Ida. 597, at 598-99, 70 p. 609 (1902).
“The second amendment to the federal constitution is in the following language: ‘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 language of section 11, article I of the constitution of Idaho, is as follows: ‘The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense, but the legislature shall regulate the exercise of this right by law.’ Under these constitutional provisions, the legislature has no power to prohibit a citizen from bearing arms in any portion of the state of Idaho, whether within or without the corporate limits of cities, towns, and villages.”
By the way, your quote continues with the following interesting tidbit:
"The legislature may, as expressly provided in our state constitution, regulate the exercise of this right, but may not prohibit it. A statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed deadly weapons would be a proper exercise of the police power of the state. But the statute in question does not prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed, which is of itself a pernicious practice, but prohibits the carrying of them in any manner in cities, towns, and villages."
Whatever. Your cite was the opinion of the Supreme Court of Idaho, commenting on the RKBA provision in the Idaho State Constitution which specifically says the purpose is for "their security and defense", not for the defense of the state. I don't disagree that open carry is an individually protected right in the State of Idaho.
Again, I don't see the connection to the second amendment.
When I read such a report, I consider it closely, and seek to understand the conclusdions reached, and how they were reached.
Moreover, I follow the links to the original sources cited in the report, which are often even more interesting.
I certainly would never take a senate report as gospel.
If you wish to, well...to each his own.
Those various units are National now, and the seeds for those ruling were planted in the Civil war when the Federal government, for the first time, reached out and tapped the citizen on the shoulder with conscription.
This argument is mooted, and any reasonable person may agree that the remainder of the amendment has to be preserved by SCOTUS unless it is in agreement that it itself can change the effect and meaning of a Constitutional amendment by fiat and without another amendment.
Nobody knows where that would lead and they simply are not going to go down that road.
As far as the ballot box, that is a Faustian illusion.
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