Second Gunsights

Washington Times ^ | 25 October 2001 | Jacob Sullum

[white trash redneck]

In 1996, legal scholar Dan Polsby wrote an essay for Reason magazine in which he suggested what might happen if the Second Amendment ever achieved "the status of normal constitutional law." Instead of arguing about whether the amendment has any practical force at all, he said, we would have to start exploring the contours of the right to keep and bear arms.

[white trash redneck]

For BANG list.

[nicmarlo]

Neal Boortz had an interesting discussion on his show this a.m. He said one of the first things the Taliban did to the Afghan people to gain control over them was to disarm them.

[white trash redneck]

Check out JPFO's Lethal Laws. Disarming a population is necessary before enslavement and genocide, and this has been a depressing pattern in history. Remember that the Battle of Lexington was fought because the Redcoats were marching on the armory to disarm the colonists. Gun control was an important precursor to Hitler's and Stalin's depredations. While disarmament of the civilian population need not necessarily lead to mayhem and carnage (things seem to be pretty quiet in Scandinavia, at least now that the Vikings are gone), it is a necessary precursor.

[Billthedrill]

This is what happens when a major area of law is allowed to remain fallow for so very long. Had it been more closely delineated in the past today's edifice of patchwork gun-control laws would not be trembling in the wind, as it is at the moment. What has happened is the usual liberal pattern of passing oppressive legislation and enforcing it until some court tells them they cannot - until a court does so, the sky's the limit. This is true, of course, of many other areas than gun control, but it is most egregious there because its underpinnings, the sharp definition of the limitations of the Second Amendment, have been carefully left vague for much longer than those of, say, the Fourth or Fifth amendments (only the Tenth has experienced anything like this judicial blindfold).

The antigun nazis who have been loudly proclaiming that the Supreme Court has never recognized the Second amendment as applying to individuals are about to be disabused of that erroneous notion. They should have been more careful of what they prayed for...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Ditto ! Go ahead and take it to the High Court...we've got a 5 to 4 vote going in.

[Henry F. Bowman]

I took a crim law course from Dan Polsby my first year of law school at Northwestern. Nice guy. Smart guy. I was liberal at the time, but he still came off as brilliant (I must have been ready for my conversion). Gave me an A+, my best law school grade.

[Ancesthntr]

This is a resounding victory for gun rights - scholarly, exhaustive and unequivocal. Emerson sets the stage for challenges to all of the local ordinances that ban handgun possession outright, and that clearly do not qualify as reasonable, narrowly-tailored exceptions to this fundamental right.

This also sets the stage, especially in the 5th Circuit's area of jurisdiction, for repealing fees and taxes related to the exercise of a fundamental right. For example, Texas (where I live) charges $140 to obtain a carry permit and $70 every 4 years thereafter to renew it (not to mention the cost of the required classroom/range time on each of these occasions). At least the fee is, per a 1940's USSC case (the name of which escapes me), unconstitutional as being a fee to exercise a right. Since Emerson (finally) recognized the RKBA as a RIGHT, the fee should be a goner. Of course you, being in DC, have a somewhat bigger problem than this.

[Ancesthntr]

To all of you gunnies, esp. those of you in the 5th Circuit: let's get the state organizations to bring suit to repeal all fees and taxes related to firearms ownership or concealed carry permits.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

Sounds to me that abuses of the Interstate Commerce Clause should be next on our attack-list.

[wcbtinman]

You got that right.

What I want to know is how the govt can claim that a "right" can be regulated. How many laws infringing the first amendment are there? I doubt that there are some 20,000. as there are regulating guns.

Also, if I build a machine gun in my garage, and keep it for my own personal use, can the govt claim jusrisdictiion under the commerce clause? I bet they would lock me up until they decided.

Either we have the non-infringed right to keep and bear arms, or we don't. The second amendment is unambiguous.

[Jefferson Adams]

Sounds to me that abuses of the Interstate Commerce Clause should be next on our attack-list.

And immediately thereafter, the abuses of property confiscation.

[George Smiley]

Also, if I build a machine gun in my garage, and keep it for my own personal use, can the govt claim jusrisdictiion under the commerce clause? I bet they would lock me up until they decided.

Depends on where you live.

There was a circuit where they busted a guy who did exactly that.

As I recall his lawyer based his defense in the fact that since the firearm had never crossed a state line, the NFA couldn't be used to prosecute him.

I think I found a link to it here [Links for various gun court cases] but since the name isn't on the tip of my tongue you'll have to dig around for it.

Of course that wouldn't protect you if the state in which you reside has prohibitions against that sort of thing.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Hi bill. God bless Dr. Emerson's bad marriage. Who ever said nothing good comes from a divorce?

[Lurker]

Clarence Thomas already dealt with that one.

See U.S. v Prinz.

He pretty much demolished it, and begged for a straight 2nd Amendment case.

L