Posted on 01/14/2008 7:32:42 AM PST by jdm
The Bush Administration has filed an amicus brief in the D.C. gun case, which you can read here. The Administration agrees that gun ownership is an individual right, but says it is subject to reasonable restrictions. Here is a representative paragraph:
Although the court of appeals correctly held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, it did not apply the correct standard for evaluating respondent’s Second Amendment claim. Like other provisions of the Constitution that secure individual rights, the Second Amendment’s protection of individual rights does not render all laws limiting gun ownership automatically invalid. To the contrary, the Second Amendment, properly construed, allows for reasonable regulation of firearms, must be interpreted in light of context and history, and is subject to important exceptions, such as the rule that convicted felons may be denied firearms because those persons have never been understood to be within the Amendment’s protections. Nothing in the Second Amendment properly understood—and certainly no principle necessary to decide this case—calls for invalidation of the numerous federal laws regulating firearms.
Allah seems to treat this as though it’s weakness on the part of the Administration — although it’s hard to know whether he’s just having a little fun throwing red meat to his readers.
But I think the Administration is correct. I support the Second Amendment — but I don’t want felons carrying firearms, and I don’t think the Founding Fathers would have been upset at a law preventing that.
Where the rubber hits the road is in the application of the principle in other contexts. Can the government ban say, machine guns? Purists would say no — but would they say the same thing about nuclear weapons? If the idea behind the Second Amendment is to give the citizenry a credible threat of violence against an oppressive government, then citizens need nukes, right? Which means that when the TSA finds one in some guy’s briefcase, they should wave him though — right? Second Amendment, baby!
I don’t think any of us thinks the absolutism goes this far. So yes, there will have to be “balancing.” That’s okay — we do it for the First Amendment all the time, and that is also a cherished freedom and individual right. For example, you can’t libel people without consequence. All rights have some limits. What those limits are is the real question.
Now, I have changed my mind. Though weak, the US brief is treason.
The argument in the US brief is that the right of US citizens to keep and bear arms is no more than the common law right to use arms in defense of self and state.
This is equivalent to stating: "The protection of the right to keep and bear arms of the citizens of Boston in 1791 under the US Constitution was no different than the protection of the right of those same citizens of Boston on April 19th, 1775; the date when government troops killed their own citizens while attempting to disarm them."
The weakness of the argument lulled me into believing that the Supreme Court would view such an argument with the scorn that it deserves. Unfortunately, I am guilty of assuming the best when I should be preparing for the worst.
I will be writing letters explaining the above to both the President of the United States and to the Solicitor General of the United States. The issue is too important to permit this brief, however weak and wrong, from going unchallenged by those who know better.
“Think of how unsympathetic I am going to be as Kalifornia sinks into bankruptcy due to their profligate spending and surrender to the public employee unions. Yet these same people tax ME when exercising my right to keep and bear arms and spend tax dollars maintaining various anti-gun databases”
This is what I said to you before. It sounds like you have a problem with your state not the federal government. My original point that you contested was about not allowing convicted felons or documented crazies like the Virginia Tech mass murderer to obtain legal weapons was a reasonable restriction. This is done through the insta check system imposed in 94 and now amended with the crazy portion in 07.
It sounds like California has some high fees when it comes to buying and owning guns. I lived there many years ago when it was more sane so I don’t know what it’s like now.
As I said before, in Pa you have to pay a small fee (less than $10, might be closer to $5) for the insta check system. This is the only federal requirement. There is no fee to register a gun or anything like that here. The last time I bought a firearm was about six months ago and to be quite honest when you are throwing out $500 - $600 to purchase something, you kind of forget the exact price of the insta check.
To be railing about a $5 - $10 federal fee when you are purchasing something that costs hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars seems kind of silly to me. Thats less than the tax you have to pay on the firearm. We as 2A supporters look silly when complaining about such a small fee. How can we get any sympathy about issues that really matter to us such as the sale of auto weapons, more liberal conceal carry laws etc, when we foolishly complain about $5 - $10?
The only complaint I had in 94 about the insta check part of the law was when they originally wanted there to be a three day waiting period from the time you purchase until the time you pick it up. With today’s modern computer system, that was stupid and unneccesary. I don’t know what other states do, but in Pa the insta check is a phone call away.
Lastly, may I suggest to you to move to a more gun friendly state such as Pa. There’s a reason that the NRA holds a lot of it’s conventions in this state. I think they are scheduled to hold their next convention here in 2012 or somewhere like that.
Isn't the Pennsylvania State Police maintaining a database of gun purchases made possible by the mandate that you pay a fee and have your background checked? I pointed out before that there is absolutely NO BENEFIT to you or anybody else in maintaining this system. Now that more records have to be checked, you will be willing to pay a more substantial fee, will you not?
If it were solely my decision to make, I would have left already.
Is Pennsylvania the place to go? What does it mean that the right to keep and bear arms "shall not be questioned"? Is that more or less constraining than "shall not be infringed"?
“Isn’t the Pennsylvania State Police maintaining a database of gun purchases made possible by the mandate that you pay a fee and have your background checked? I pointed out before that there is absolutely NO BENEFIT to you or anybody else in maintaining this system. Now that more records have to be checked, you will be willing to pay a more substantial fee, will you not?”
You may have heard that from me because I said this to you in a previous post. Yes, they are currently maintaining an unlawful illegal database of registered gun owners. It is not costing us a cent more and has nothing to do with the insta check system, just tied into it I believe. They have been ordered to destroy this database. They have not yet so far and I believe it is still in the courts.
“Is Pennsylvania the place to go?”
It’s not perfect, but its a pretty gun friendly state. We still have our gun grabbing enemies on the eastern side of the state in the Philly area. However they are a minority. There are way too many hunters and gun owners in this state to let the gun grabbers have their way.
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