Minnesota CCW: Editorial: New right to carry / A bad idea is now a bad law

Minneapolis Star-Tribune ^ | May 29, 2003 | Minneapolis Star-Tribune

[jdege]

The hullabaloo that the new Minnesota Personal Protection Act has caused is just the beginning. The law is riddled with contradictions and infringements on rights that may take years to sort out. Indeed, wags have begun to call the law the "Full Employment for Lawyers Act of 2003."

[WorkingClassFilth]

Thanks for the reply AND correcting my spelling (I'm a bit too quick on the trigger - so to speak).

I think that site offers the bumper stickers as gags though. The price tag of $10.00 a piece is mighty high unless requested at gun point. Some of the other stuff is even more outrageous (signs for $180.00).

I smell a market here for 'in-your-face' bumper stickers, T-shirts and related stuff...

[supercat]

The foregoing citation to the Miller case is a contemptible lie, nothing less. In Miller, the US Supreme Court upheld Congress' regulation [under the NFA of 1934] of sawed off shotguns on the narrowest possible grounds, stating that,

The Court didn't even do that. The bottom line on the decision was that the case was remanded to trial court for further precedings. Rather that pursue the case against Miller's co-defendant Layton (Miller himself was dead) the government decided to offer a plea-bargain for time served.

[rhema]

And yet another perspicacious Strib letter writer gets it right:

Focus on sentencing

There is no such thing as gun violence, only human violence. Banning guns won't stop violence any more than arresting a machete or hammer.

The most effective way to make our community safer is to put the violent people in cages. Yet our legislators choose to release dangerous criminals (Donald Blom) and Level 3 sex offenders in our neighborhoods every day.

Minnesota is at the extreme with about the lowest incarceration rate and highest parole rate in the nation. Until that attitude changes, expect the demand for guns to be high.

Criminal justice is the most important function of state government, yet accounts for less than 5 percent of the state budget. The Legislature's ideology is what has driven the demand for guns.

You cannot have it both ways -- releasing killers while demanding citizens be a pool of helpless victims. The new concealed-carry law is a first step in correcting that utopian ideology.

Martin R. Wellens, Shorewood.

[rhema]

And the SPP, the light years ahead of the Strib in editorial balance, printed the letter today:

There is no such thing as gun violence, only human violence. Banning guns won't stop violence any more than prohibiting machetes or hammers.

The most effective action to make our community safer is putting the violent people in cages. Yet our legislators choose to release dangerous criminals and Level 3 sex offenders into our neighborhoods every day.

Until that attitude changes, expect the demand for guns to be high. There would be little need for guns, gated communities and flight from the inner cities if our legislators chose to keep criminals behind bars and reversed the social policies that attract them. But they won't. [Did the writer omit this sentence from his Strib submission, or could the Strib not handle the inner-city flight comment?]

Criminal justice is the most important function of state government yet accounts for less than 5 percent of the state budget. The Legislature's ideology is what has driven the demand for guns. You cannot have it both ways – releasing killers while demanding citizens be a pool of helpless victims.

Concealed carry is a first step in reversing that utopian ideology.

MARTIN R. WELLENS

Shorewood

[Bedford Forrest]

"The Court didn't even do that. The bottom line on the decision was that the case was remanded to trial court for further precedings. Rather that pursue the case against Miller's co-defendant Layton (Miller himself was dead) the government decided to offer a plea-bargain for time served."

Just so, but ". . .for further proceedings" [not inconsistent with the Court's decision]. So Miller stands for what it stands for, which is that the Court erroneously took judicial notice of a rubuttable "fact", namely, that sawed off shotguns had no status or utility as militia arms, the militia being all able bodied men, etc. Generally speaking, [excepting the Nutty Ninth Circuit] it is considered bad form for a judge to take judicial notice of a rubuttable or historically incorrect proposition. And the main reason for reading Miller is that a number of wack job US Circuit Court judges and state court judges have tried to support their illegitimate and lawless interpretations of the 2nd Amendment with bad cites to Miller, which cites are pure lies on their face. I don't know why the NRA doesn't mount a public education program on the Miller case. It certainly isn't rocket science.

[Bedford Forrest]

"rubuttable" = "rebuttable". Jeeze! Gremlins in the keyboard.