Posted on 05/06/2003 6:47:44 PM PDT by Z-28
As a "Citizen", you tell the government every April 15th where you work, what your job title is, how much money you make, how much money you have in the bank, your marital status, how many kids you have and their ages, how much you spend on medical insurance, how much your mortgage is, is what you pay or do not pay in alimony, how much you gave to charity, etc....
Let us at least keep our AK-47's, they're no match for the Army (as demonstrated in Iraq), and will allow us to fend off terrorists, looters, and LEFTISTS!.
Oh, Roscoe....
Are these judeges in error on their dissenting opinions?
The Nazis easily overran the country, but then had roughly 21 divisions bogged down until the end of the war.
The Nazis easily overran the country, but then had roughly 21 divisions bogged down until the end of the war.
Which would be long enough for the troops do consider the orders that they've been given. One might also note that a great many fully trained soldiers would be among the civilan opposition. What the Second Amendment does is make things slow down enough and be prominent enough for opposition to be brought to bear.
From near the end of the article:
"Congress and the states may enact reasonable restrictions to manage the ways in which the populace exercises its right to keep and bear arms, just as reasonable restrictions are imposed on our rights to free speech, free assembly, freedom from search and seizure, and all our other constitutional rights."
Based on the rest of his dissent, the only "reasonable restriction" would be weapons that are NOT for individual use, such as crew-served platforms.
As I posted on another thread tonight:
The USSC has avoided a definitive ruling on the 2nd amendment like the plauge.
If they affirm the 2nd amendment as an individual Right, it will overturn an entire criminal cartel (seditious anti-gun groups, illegitmate gov't agencies, politicians, some law enforment officers, etc....) who profits from various infringements on that Right. It will take a tremendous amount of power (and money) out of the hands of govt's at all levels.
If they say that the 2nd amendment is not an individual Right, it will merely certify what many Americans have believed for decades. Namely, that our gov't no longer recognizes our Rights-- Rights that the gov't was created to protect. Such a blantant in-your-face statement to patriotic Americans would likely cause certain "irreconcilable differences" to come to a head.
Since the politicians prefer neither scenario, they will do everything in their power to avoid making a decision which brings about either possibility.
No doubt about it. As you said, it will be interesting to see what arguement they spew out to justify "reasonable regulations" on our Rights.
SF-based federal court says individuals have no right to bear arms
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A divided federal appeals court on today declined to reconsider an earlier 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 today'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.
``I'll have this filed by the end of the week, it's already drafted,'' said Gary Gorski, the attorney who challenged California's ban on 75 high-powered, rapid-fire weapons.
California lawmakers passed the nation's first law banning such weapons in 1989, after a gunman fired a semiautomatic weapon into a Stockton school yard, killing five children and injuring 30.
Following California's lead, several states and the federal government passed similar or more strict bans.
In originally dismissing the bulk of Gorski's challenge, a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based appeals court, ruled 2-1 that the Second Amendment was not adopted ``to afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership or possession.''
That December decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a President Carter appointee who also signed on with the court's decision in June declaring the Pledge of Allegiance an unconstitutional endorsement of religion when recited in public schools. The pledge case is pending before the high court.
A majority of the circuit's 25 active judges today declined to rehear the case, as Gorski had requested. Only six judges publicly said they wished to reconsider.
Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski urged his colleagues to rehear the case with a panel of 11 judges, arguing that without individual Second Amendment protections, the government could ban the public's only recourse against tyranny.
``The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed, where the government refuses to stand for re-election and silences those who protest, where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees,'' Kozinski wrote in papers released Tuesday.
Matt Nosanchuk, litigation director of the Violence Policy Center, said Kozinski has got it wrong. Weapons don't keep the government in check, free speech does, he said.
``The Second Amendment is not the bulwark against tyranny. It's the First Amendment,'' he said.
The court's decision -- which said weapons were properly allowed for the states to maintain militias -- conflicts with a 2001 decision from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said individuals had a constitutional right to guns.
Reinhardt, appointed in 1980, noted in the December ruling that the Supreme Court's guidance on whether the Second Amendment offers individuals the right to bear arms was ``not entirely illuminating.'' The high court, he said, has never directly said whether the personal right to possess weapons was a constitutional guarantee.
State and federal laws barring assault and other types of weapons are routinely upheld in the courts on grounds that the prohibitions are rational governmental approaches to combat violence. The Second Amendment has had little, if any, impact on those decisions, except in the California case.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has said he believes the Second Amendment grants individuals the right to bear arms, but that the right is not absolute.
In a 2001 memo to federal prosecutors, Ashcroft said the Justice Department ``will vigorously enforce and defend existing firearms laws.''
Larry Pratt, executive director of the 300,000-member Gun Owners of America, said he wants the Supreme Court to overturn Reinhardt's decision.
``If judge Reinhardt prevails, the American people could become subjects of the government,'' Pratt said.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, through a spokeswoman, said he was ``pleased that the court has upheld this important California law regulating assault weapons.''
The 9th Circuit covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
The case is Silveira v. Lockyer, 01-15098.
Well, thank you, first of all, I would like to thank the academy. My lawyer, my doctor, my mechanic....
LOL
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