Posted on 11/27/2007 9:36:38 AM PST by pabianice
What fools. Any legislation or precedent case can and should be reversed if it contradicts the U.S. Constitution.
I suppose that the "logic" followed by Newsday would have been in favor of ruling against Brown in 1954...after all, Plessy v. Fergusen was "settled law" for 58 years at that point.
I can only surmise that the Newsday editors remembered to take their Dumb$hit pills on the day that they wrote this.
Yup. Happens all the time.
Here are two other cases that the government prudently decided to drop...
United States v. Dalton (Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
This is one of the most important, though little known appellate court decisions concerning the second amendment in recent years. This decision basically struck down the 1934, 1968 and 1986 gun control acts. It was not appealed by FedGov, I assume because a loss of this magnitude at the Supreme Court level would be devistating to all federal gun control laws.
United States v. Rock Island Armory
Similar to the Dalton case above, this case would be extremely important to gun owners if only people knew about it. It held that the National Firearms Act was "originally passed as a taxing statute". Since Fedgov is not allowing citizens to purchase weapons covered under the act (machine guns and the like) because they will not allow them to purchase new tax stamps for them, they have effectively removed the 'tax nexus' from the act, which is what made it constitutional in the first place. Therefore, the entire house of cards of gun control at the federal level is struck down. That would include the 1934, 1968, and 1986 gun control acts.
Here's the money quote from US v RIA...
"In sum, since enactment of 18 U.S.C. sec. 922(o), the Secretary has refused to accept any tax payments to make or transfer a machinegun made after May 19, 1986, to approve any such making or transfer, or to register any such machinegun. As applied to machineguns made and possessed after May 19, 1986, the registration and other requirements of the National Firearms Act, Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code, no longer serve any revenue purpose, and are impliedly repealed or are unconstitutional. Accordingly, Counts l(a) and (b), 2, and 3 of the superseding indictment are dismissed."
You might want to ask yourself why the NRA never publicized this case.
The Heller team set this up to go to the Supreme Court. DC is, quite deliberately, being manipulated to get there. Yes, DC filed this last appeal - only because they were stuck between a rock and a hard place.
(’course, if DC never passed the unconstitutional law in the first place 30 years ago...)
Nobody put a gun to the city’s collective head and forced them to appeal a shaky law that was already struck down, you know.
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