Obama Supporters Move to use Massachusetts as test case for gun confiscation

The Nav Log ^ | 4/25/09

[ConservaTexan]

Understood and already considered.

[Gilbo_3]

we must know the enemy and fight at the time and place of our own choosing...simple stretegery...

[Windcatcher]

Wouldn't it just SUCK if this rep found himself subscribed to every free print publication from California to Berlin to Tokyo? Yeah, that would REALLY suck...

"A pittance to protect you from evil."

"I am evil!"

-- Conan the Barbarian

[Waco]

Last one out off Mass.,kick the door shut.

[msrngtp2002]

So I see it being pretty difficult for a single individual to take this stand. He or She would be branded a nut case, and would be presented in the news as such.

Such a stance will require a banding together of people of like minds.

So how does such banding together begin? How do those of us who refuse to relinquish our rights form collective groups for common defense of our rights without being branded “militia” or “domestic terrorists”?

Where do we start?

[CurlyDave]

The Heller decision left plenty of room to restrict firearms in multiple ways. Incorporation doesn’t prohibit that. It merely states the municipalities and states cannot restrict your right to keep and bear arms. However, Heller leaves plenty of running room to say how those firearms and ammunition can be regulated.

The actual results of Heller in DC, the only place where it has had more than a few days of experience, is that DC defined semi-auto handguns as machineguns, just like this article says Mass wants to do. That was struck down by the Supremes. Score one point against regulation.

The $250k insurance policy will immediately be struck down as adding a financial burden to the exercise of a fundamental right.

The training requirements will probably be found to be overly burdensome on a fundamental right, maybe OK though.

One per month will probably be overly burdensome on some, like military who are out of the state for extended periods of time.

Just about the only thing that might be OK is microstamping the primer as long as it does not raise the price of the weapon too much. That is the least of my worries, unless I am a criminal. If I use the weapon in self-defense, I am going to report it anyway. If I use it fighting against tyranny, the stamping is easily defeated.

But, all of this rests on incorporation. In many ways I wish the 9th circuit had not incorporated the 2A. The Supremes hinted that they would have and if all we have to work with is a large number of circuit-court decisions in our favor, an Obama SC can overrule these in the future. If we get a real SC incorporation, then we are good for at least 50 years. The SC takes a long time to reverse decisions it has made.

[NTHockey]

>>I think FReepers should remember this is a public board, and the owners would be required to reveal user information to the authorities in an investigation. This also happens to be a very popular board with a well known reputation for being very conservative. In other words, this is one of the first places Janet Napolitano’s minions would look.<<

So what? I was responding to another post. The day I have to fear the government, ANY government, is the day I have no freedom.

[saganite]

I read a gun forum that has a legal forum and it’s very informative. Reviewing the threads there on Heller it seems like a mixed bag. Here’s a few of the better threads. I pasted a portion of the last thread which is about the lawsuits since Heller and the lack of any change in the way courts rule when it comes to local ordinances. The thread was posted before the 9th Circuit’s Incorporation decision though.

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=347928&highlight=heller

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=345651&highlight=heller

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=333198&highlight=heller

The basis for most of these lower court rulings upholding gun control is a paragraph near the end of the Supreme Court’s decision that, at the time, seemed like a throwaway. The Supreme Court wrote that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of arms.”
What gun rights advocates are discovering is that the vast majority of gun control laws fit within these categories.

[xmission]

Anyone here ever read the story of “aliens” taking over, and a “nutjob” making a shotgun from plate, and wearing it inside his shirt?

I read it many years back, but can’t find it anywhere.

[Travis McGee]

I don't see this passing even in MA.

[CurlyDave]

What gun rights advocates are discovering is that the vast majority of gun control laws fit within these categories.

Actually, as one of the threads you link to, pointed out our current state is similar to the civil rights movement right after the Rosa Parks "back of the bus" issue. It is going to take many years and a lot of case law to get us to where we should be.

This is going to be an incremental process, although now that we have established an individual right, it will happen.

For many long, lonely years, I maintained that the 2A both guaranteed an individual right, and also guaranteed the right of citizens to form up into militias in order to practice and drill so as to be able to effectively both defend the republic and to defend against tyranny. If you look at the 9th circuit opinion in Nordyke v. King, the 9th circuit is coming awfully close to this idea. A lot closer than Heller.

The other thing we have coming is that the CA idea of "may issue" concealed carry rests on a 9th circuit case called Hickman. Part of the Nordyke decision was the admission that Heller squarely overturns Hickman, leaving the door wide open to another challenge to "may issue" laws.

Heller was silent on the bear part of keep and bear arms, but I can easily envision bearing becoming an issue in the next year or so.

Keep the civil rights example in mind.

[Still Thinking]

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” said Holder, nation’s first black attorney general

Hmm, blind squirrel find a nut. Not the one he thinks he found, but a nut nonetheless.

[saganite]

I certainly hope you’re right. The Heller decision hasn’t slowed the Obama administration down and the last part of the sentence from the Heller decision I posted (or laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of arms.”) leaves a door wide open for regulators. Only future court cases will sort it out and, as you said, that will take years.

Don’t take me for a pessimist though. Heller was a huge win and the 9th circuit decision was unexpected and a welcome window into how even the most liberal courst will have to rule in light of Heller. That’s certainly good news.