9th Circuit Rules Individuals Have No Right to Bear Arms

SFGate.com (AP) ^ | May 6, 2003 | David Kravets

[Plainsman]

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday declined to reconsider its December ruling that the Second Amendment affords Americans no personal right to own firearms.

The December decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California's law banning certain assault weapons and revived the national gun ownership debate. With Tuesday's action, the nation's largest federal appeals court cleared the way for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never squarely ruled on the issue.

[El Gato]

They lost a lot of troops in the Waco debacle.

No, they lost a bunch of armed tax collectors. The law that the warrant, such as it was, addressed was a tax law, and they were accussed of avoiding the tax.

An unconstitutional tax of course. Can you imagine what would happen if they required a "tax stamp" in order to publish a newspaper? Well, you don't have to imagine, you can just look to pre-revolutionary America for the answer. Such a tax was a signifigent factor leading up to the revolution. One can also look to more modern cases where states or localities attempted to selectively tax newsprint. Those laws were tossed by the courts.

[lawdude]

"So how many communists in favor of the destruction of the US Government are members of the 9th?"

Certainly the majority of the circuit are friggin brain dead. Makes me ashamed to say I have a bar cert in a 9th ckt state.

They are putrid!

[El Gato]

like the Texans lost the Alamo. Thus "proving" that possesion of cannon, muskets and rifles was useless against an Army with pretty uniforms and lots of drums.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

What are the morons going to do to enforce their ruling? Send U.S. Marshals out to pick up milions of guns? Har! Har! Har! Then these idealogues will wake up some day wondering why no one respects their rulings. This circuit is known for its legal lunacy.

[Travis McGee]

You miss the point if you think such a conflict would involve "battles". It would not.

[monkeyshine]

Translated from the legalese

Yes, that is exactly what they meant. "We don't know whether a sawed-off shotgun has a military utility, and nodboy showed us any evidence that it did, so we can't answer whether the second amendment protects the right to keep and bear a sawed off shotgun."

But the pertinent point is that the operating assumption in the ruling was that the Second Amendment PRESERVES the right of the people to Keep and Bear arms of military utility. The only real questions the court felt the need to answer are "what are arms" and "what constitutes military utility". The court simply stated that they did not have any evidence to rule on whether the sawed-off shotgun serves a military purpose.

So when people say that Miller enables the restriction of the weapons, they are totally wrong. I am especially dismayed at laywers (of which I am not one) who know damn well how to read this ruling, yet intentionally and dishonestly spin it to mean something else.

[Atlas Sneezed]

"What are the morons going to do to enforce their ruling? Send U.S. Marshals out to pick up milions of guns? Har! Har! Har! Then these idealogues will wake up some day wondering why no one respects their rulings. This circuit is known for its legal lunacy."

Actually, the 9th simply upheld a California criminal law. California has plenty of cops, especially the adrenaline-seeking militarized forces (funded at least in part by your FEDERAL tax dollars) who will gladly kick down your door and shoot anyone who flinches.

Perhaps they'll get some help from the ATF and burn down your house with you in it (keeping the firehoses from stopping the fire) like they did on TV in Santa Clarita in late summer of 2001 (forgotten after 9-11.)

Our militarized police departments and federal agencies are the standing army our founders feared.

[tpaine]

Reinhardt and his cronies are realling frustrating; they keep reading rights into the Constitution that just aren't there, like the "right" to assisted suicide, but won't enforce the rights that are written into the Constitution, like the Second Amendment or the right to free exercise of religion.
65 -ct-

The right to die as we choose is just as important as the right to live as we choose.
Under the 14th, we cannot be deprived of our right to a private life, liberty under the rule of law, or of private property, -- without due process of law.
'Arms' are the ultimate private property, imo. Those who scorn of the 14th amendent are abandoning one of our most important constitutional safeguards for our RKBA's.. 119 tpaine

The point is not to debate the question of a "right to die." The point is the Constitution is silent on this issue as it is on the abortion issue and a million other issues left to the legislatures.

Not true. Our rights are not 'issues' left to the legislatures, as I noted above about the 14th.

The Constitution puts the decision of policy questions like this in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not unelected judges. Oregon's right to die law is constitutional, just as is Colorado's prohibition against assisted suicide.

Does a Coloradan break a constitutional law by commiting suicide with some help? Does a Californian break a constitutional law, owning an 'CA style' assault rifle? Get logical.

The distinction between the "right to die" issue and the right to keep and bear arms is that, like the other rights in the Bill of Rights, the Founders viewed the right as so fundamental to republican government that they chose to write it into the Constitution, to make sure no future legislature would attempt to take that right away.

Yep, and that is the ~only~ difference.. One is enumerated, one is not. Defend both, or don't bother. --- Essentially, you are making the activist judges argument, that they can pick & choose which rights to "incorporate".

What most people don't get is that activist judges don't just create rights, they also take them away, as the Ninth Circuit is attempting to do with the Second Amendment.

[StopGlobalWhining]

KEEP in mind how many of us are ex-military! That has a distinct advantage

Have you noticed how agressively the federal organs of state security have gone after contraband as our military forces have begun returning from Iraq?

Iraqi guns and knives have been confiscated, and in some cases charges have been filed against individuals who dared do what was an accepted practice, at least up to and including WWII. Why such fear about loyal Americans who we have entrusted with guns to liberate Iraq, from possessing guns here at home?

As an academic question for debate, if individuals in any capacity attempt to deny other Americans their basic rights as affirmed in the Constitution, have they forfeited their own opportunity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the Declaration of Independence?

As a theoretical background for debating this question, I suggest reading Unintended Consequences by John Ross for some ideas.

[gitmo]

But that's the entire point of the RTBA.

[El Gato]

The federal government "ban" does not come close to the restrictiveness of the California ban, which confiscates legally owned guns, and criminalizes people who were legal, and then did nothing in response to a new law

They would have done all that if they'd had the votes. Senator Fienstein, one of the sponsers on the Senate side said: "If it were up to me, I would tell Mr. and Mrs. America to turn them in -- turn them all in." (to Lesley Stahl during an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" on Feb. 24, 1995)"

As it was, they barely had enough votes to pass what they did, and had to put in a sunset provision to get some of those.

[Double Tap]

The point of the 2nd Amendment is to fight tyranny. It doesn't have to happen in "battles" or lines of soldiers going head to head.

[Happy2BMe]

What in hell is going on up there in the 9th Circuit?

Is it time to send in the 82nd?

[Joe Brower]

You have been added to the RKBA ping list.

[Noumenon]

Our Shaolin Temple master is an Viet Nam era SOG guy who humped commo and carried a shotgun and a .45 Used 'em all, too and has the scars to prove it. Our training went well beyond open hand and bamboo sticks. You'll have some interesting company when the time comes for that.

Funny how some folks don't seem to understand that achieving an objective doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with firearms.

[GunRunner]

Thanks. My blood pressure just went up 30 points. lol

[VOA]

thanks for the great Ramirez cartoon...Ramirez is the only sane mind at the LA Times.

[Joe Brower]

As you requested, you've been added to the RKBA list.

[ChemistCat]

I've heard of questionaires being given to US forces members asking if they would fight their own citizens, take orders from a UN authority, and so on. Believe me if they are being asked these questions, someone has some nasty plans.

And yet Al Gore wanted military ballots in the trash can. That is the ONLY thing that gives me much hope. The military is STILL solidly on the right side. Yes, they will sometimes fire on unarmed American civilians when ordered to, but such political abuses of the military have never yet benefited the politicians that ordered them.