Posted on 07/06/2018 12:43:22 PM PDT by Simon Green
n the wake of mass shootings that have divided the country on the issue of gun control, President Trump is considering nominating to the Supreme Court an appellate judge who has argued that Americans have a constitutional right not only to keep guns at home — as the high court has ruled — but also to carry them in public.
U.S. Appeals Court Judge Thomas M. Hardiman has also written that convicted criminals, including some felons, should be able to recover their right to own and carry guns, as long as their crimes were not violent.
Constitutional-law scholars and advocates on both sides of the gun debate say that Hardiman — who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit and maintains chambers in Pittsburgh — holds a more expansive view of the Second Amendment than the Supreme Court has articulated to date. His nomination and confirmation would push the court to the right, they say, making it more likely that justices would agree to hear cases challenging gun laws — and perhaps to strike them down.
Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who has written extensively about gun laws, said that if Hardiman’s views were law, gun restrictions in states such as California, New York and New Jersey would be struck down, potentially leading to a vast expansion in legal gun ownership.
“He believes the government has very little leeway in regulating guns. He thinks the only types of gun-control laws that are constitutionally permissible are ones that existed at the founding,” said Winkler, author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” He described Hardiman as a “Second Amendment extremist.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If the Second Amendment had only been more clear about keeping and bearing arms, then all this confusion could be avoided. Darn it.
What is a second amendment extremist? Either it means what it says or it doesn’t. “Shall not be infringed” is hard to misconstrue.
What exactly is a Constitutional “extremist?” One who advocates adhering to the Constitution “extremely?” Are there any First Amendment extremists? Fifth Amendment? Is the Second the only amendment that admits of extremism?
Or is this just more liberal cowflop?
In other words he DISAGREED with Posner’s recommendation.
Which flips your conclusion on its head.
“Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who has written extensively about gun laws, said that if Hardiman’s views were law, gun restrictions in states such as California, New York and New Jersey would be struck down, potentially leading to a vast expansion in legal gun ownership.”
Hardiman just became my favored candidate - not just for what he could do for our rights, but because he’d make the Lefties go even more berzerk than they are at present. Then, when Ruth Buzzie dies, Trump can appoint a very originalist woman to complete the destruction of the minds of the America-hating Leftists.
If someone is too dangerous to own a gun, why do you want them out where they can get one illegally? Or kill you with a knife? If they aren’t shouldn’t they have the right to self-defense? Makes no sense to me.
“The Framers could not have imagined in their wildest dreams a jam-packed airport,stadium,or mall.”
The Founders knew about technological progress, and some of them were in the Continental Congress when Joseph Belton presented his Belton Gun, which allowed for rapid fire (it was purchased, as it was too expensive). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belton_flintlock
Your argument for restricting modern firearms because the Founders never imagined them is easily disposed of garbage. You are, of course, entitled to your (statist) opinion in the matter, but if you go down that path then free speech itself is in danger.
“The leftist fantasy that the 2nd Amendment only applies to the military, because of the mention of a well-regulated militia, is absurd since after that brief preamble the amendment confers the right to keep and bear arms (which “shall not be infringed”) upon “the People.” While there have been recent hair-splitting legal exercises, such as in the Heller case, oriented toward determing who “the People” refers to throughout the Constitution, in no case does it refer to the government, or only the military. That would be absurd on its face. “
There IS no sensible argument against the meaning of the 2nd Amendment - only an emotional argument against what it represents (liberty and power for the ordinary citizen, at the expense of government).
“Your argument for restricting modern firearms because the Founders never imagined them is easily disposed of garbage. “
—
I HAD no argument for anything-—I was just commenting on what our forefathers probably had envisioned..
Lighten up!
.
.
“(it was purchased, as it was too expensive)”
should be
“(it wasn’t purchased, as it was too expensive)”
Trump should appoint him!
“I HAD no argument for anything-—I was just commenting on what our forefathers probably had envisioned.”
Lighten up!”
“The Framers could not have imagined in their wildest dreams a jam-packed airport,stadium,or mall.”
That, in turn, was YOUR response to thesharkboy’s statement in #21 that:
“If the Second Amendment had only been more clear about keeping and bearing arms, then all this confusion could be avoided. Darn it.”
___________________________
How else should one view your statement, but as an argument for gun restrictions? You responded to a statement that said that there should be NO restrictions (or “infringement”) upon our 2nd Amendment rights, with a statement that ONLY anti-gun people make, with is “the Founders could never have imagined X.” That is, by necessity, an argument for interpreting the Constitution as a “living” document (which the anti-gun Leftists like to do), rather than based upon the original meaning of its text (as generally pro-gun Originalists like to do).
I hope that you understand why I reacted as I did - because your statement was, in context, entirely consistent with the typical anti-gun argument that the Left has been presenting for decades, no matter what your initial intention may have been.
So this must mean that places like Vermont and Maine must be full of Second Amendment extremists and that there are no such extremists in places like Chicago, Washington DC, and California, according to the people at the Post and their logic.
“I hope that you understand why I reacted as I did -—”
—
I do.
.
I wonder what a First or Third or Fourth or Fifth Amendment extremist would be, in the eyes of the Washington Post?
“I do.”
Best wishes to you and your family, FReegards.
He sounds great on the 2nd Amendment!
Make book on it.
wouldn’t surprise me.
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