Posted on 03/18/2008 9:25:56 AM PDT by NinoFan
While the Court’s decision will not touch incorporation, I don’t see how an opinion declaring the RKBA as an individual right independent of any related militia rights could lead to any other future decision but incorporation. It’d be just like all of the other rights in the BoR.
Why wouldnt goat sacrifices be 'legal' ??? its a food animal, whereas 'child sacrifices' would be murder irregardless of religion...
I think the permit system is a reasonable way to make sure the nut jobs don't end up with guns.
define 'nutjob' and then explain please, exactly HOW reasonable restrictions keep anything from anybody in any place for the right price???...
liscensing cant keep me from driving or flying and really serve only as a revenue/control mechanism and are being tied to completely unrelated areas of 'law' in an effort to coerce free people to tow the line...
LFOD...
That may very well be. But for people to be foaming at the mouth and making bold predictions on a vast and expansive decision when there is only a very limited question at issue here... Well, that strikes me as dishonest and strange. Conservatives should always be grounded in reality. Hoping for something isn’t going to make it so.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Dellinger, let’s come back to your description of the opinion below as allowing armor-piercing bullets and machine guns. I didn’t read it that way. I thought the opinion below said it had to be the kind of weapon that was common for the people -
MR. DELLINGER: That is -
JUSTICE SCALIA: — that is common for the people to have. And I don’t know — I don’t know that a lot of people have machine guns or armor-piercing bullets. I think that’s quite unusual. But having a pistol is not unusual.
MR. DELLINGER: The number of machine guns, I believe, is in excess of a hundred thousand that are out there now, that are -
JUSTICE SCALIA: How many people in the country?
MR. DELLINGER: Well, there are 300 million, but whether that’s common or not, but the -
JUSTICE SCALIA: I don’t think it’s common.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, I’m not sure that it’s accurate to say the opinion below allowed those. The law that the opinion, the court below, was confronted with was a total ban, so that was the only law they considered.
If the District passes a ban on machine guns or whatever, then that law — that law would be considered by the court and perhaps would be upheld as reasonable. But the only law they had before them was a total ban.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Or a law on the carrying of concealed weapons, which would include pistols, of course.
Wasn’t Miller about sawed-off shotguns? Expand your thoughts for me please.
Blood in the streets of Vermont or Alaska ???
No one seems to have a problem with having to train for a driver’s license, and having to take a test, and renew the license every so often...
NOT 'no one' Dave...training is good, but Im safer in a car without a liscence than I would be behind a horse drawn wagon team, and the country survived for years while little kids rode horses to town...accidents happen and there have always been civil liability for negligence...
No, I more or less agree with you, especially when it comes to machine gun bans and such. I do think a pro-incorporation ruling in the future is pretty much guaranteed if the Court views it as an indendepnt right not tied to state militias, but I agree that we shouldn’t expect more out of this decision than the specific issues before the Court today.
No favors except putting Alito and Roberts on the SCOTUS. Would you have preferred Bush putting Roberts in the Solicitor General’s office? Because of those 2 appointments we have a fighting chance to get a landmark ruling. If Kerry had won, this would be 6-3 to obliterate the 2nd Amendment. No question about it.
JUSTICE SCALIA: But that opinion also, it didn’t use the militia prologue to say it’s only the kind of weapons that would be useful in militia, and that are commonly — commonly held today. Is there any Federal exclusion of weapons that applies to weapons that are commonly held today? I don’t know what you’re worried about. Machine guns, what else? Armored bullets, what else?
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well, Justice Scalia, I think our principal concern based on the parts of the court of appeals opinion that seemed to adopt a very categorical rule were with respect to machine guns, because I do think that it is difficult — I don’t want to foreclose the possibility of the Government, Federal Government making the argument some day — but I think it is more than a little difficult to say that the one arm that’s not protected by the Second Amendment is that which is the standard issue armament for the National Guard, and that’s what the machine gun is.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: But this law didn’t involve a restriction on machine guns. It involved an absolute ban. It involved an absolute carry prohibition. Why would you think that the opinion striking down an absolute ban would also apply to a narrow one — narrower one directed solely to machine guns?
GENERAL CLEMENT: I think, Mr. Chief Justice, why one might worry about that is one might read the language of page 53a of the opinion as reproduced in the petition appendix that says once it is an arm, then it is not open to the District to ban it. Now, it seems to me that the District is not strictly a complete ban because it exempts pre-1976 handguns. The Federal ban on machine guns is not, strictly speaking, a ban, because it exempts pre-law machine guns, and there is something like 160,000 of those.
JUSTICE SCALIA: But that passage doesn’t mean once it’s an arm in the dictionary definition of arms. Once it’s an arm in the specialized sense that the opinion referred to it, which is — which is the type of a weapon that was used in militia, and it is -it is nowadays commonly held.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well -
JUSTICE SCALIA: If you read it that way, I don’t see why you have a problem.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well, I — I hope that you read it that way. But I would also say that I think that whatever the definition that the lower court opinion employed, I do think it’s going to be difficult over time to sustain the notion — I mean, the Court of Appeals also talked about lineal descendants. And it does seem to me that, you know, just as this Court would apply the Fourth Amendment to something like heat imagery, I don’t see why this Court wouldn’t allow the Second Amendment to have the same kind of scope, and then I do think that reasonably machine guns come within the term “arms.” Now, if this Court wants to say that they don’t — I mean — I mean — we’d obviously welcome that
in our — in our obligation to defend the constitutionality of acts of Congress. The one other thing I would say is that this is an opinion that is susceptible of different readings. It’s interesting that Respondents’ amici have different characterizations of it. The Goldwater Institute calls it strict scrutiny; the State of Texas calls it reasonable — reasonableness review.
I agree with you as well. My comments are directed at solely mouth-breathing idiots who are imagining a far more expansive decision than is possible.
Look for them in groups of pink.
>MR. DELLINGER: The number of machine guns, I believe, is in excess of a hundred thousand that are out there now, that are -<
Where would MR. DELLINGER get those figures? BATFE, I presume?
An AR-15 is better for an apartment than .45 going by that.”
SAY WHAT!!!!?
I have used an AR-180 to chop holes in a cinderblock wall, and you're telling me the 5.56mm won't penetrate sheetrock? You got pictures? This I GOTTA see!
It was. The court ruled (incorrectly) that sawed-off shotguns were not useful military weapons, therefore they were subject to regulation.
My feed cut out on me while Gura was speaking, so I'm reading the transcript now. From what I've seen so far, it seems Gura and Scalia are minimizing the "military usefulness" aspects of Miller and Ginsburg, of all people, support it.
I may be reading this wrong, and may correct myself as I read further, but Scalia, et al, are taking the tact that "common use" applies to civilian common use. I would argue that totally undermines the primary purpose of the 2d - to give self-armed civilians mustered into militia service a fighting chance against a government force.
What rumors you been reading in the WaPost?
-PJ
“There are reasonable restrictions on speech and religion. The classic “fire in a crowded theater” example. As for religion, would you say not allowing live goat sacrifice constitutes “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion?
I think the permit system is a reasonable way to make sure the nut jobs don’t end up with guns.
Do you object to car or pilot licenses?”
Actually, yes. Let the slaughter begin! ;)
After all, they license people I’d not let out without a keeper for both autos and aircraft.
My understanding of Kennedy’s take on things is that an individual right exists and it exists in addition to whatever rights of the state militia exist.
“if he passes tests indicating he is worthy in character and behavior of owning a weapon and in using it to defend America’s constitution”
That would create a priviliged (sp?) citizen. Also, government could essentially make the testing virtually impossible to pass thus voiding the 2nd.
Lets extend that: soldier, sailor, airman, or marine.
Which would mean you could have an F-16, or F-15, but not an F-111, for example. (but not all of either of the first two, since some variations are two-seaters, and cannot be flown safely with out the second body.)
I don't see, however, why a group of citizens could not possess and use a crew-served weapon, though. Up to and including a B-52 or 688-class sub, for examples.
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