Posted on 05/27/2008 7:51:39 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
Elaine Scarry wrote a longish University of Pennsylvania Law Review article on the Second Amendment, distribution of power in the Constitution, and original intent. She also addressed the subject of destructive weapons, and nuclear weapons were a special focus of her article, which argues that recent arrangements for their use, predicated on a need for quick and massive response, are anticonstitutional and politically unhealthy.
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Scarry1.html
It's worth noting that the first government to pursue WMD specifically was the Third Reich, for precisely the reasons Scarry thinks are bad, among which was their power to absolve (i.e., make absolute) the ruler of the Third Reich of any sort of social check on his actions. The chain of command to his V-weapon operational teams was very short and fast.
They're doing that already.
Additional comments:
The story was published in American Rifleman in, I think, March or April 1993. It was a fairly complete account.
According to this version, Weaver shortened the shotguns to 18-1/4" on his first pass. The ATF informant, desiring to entrap Weaver, demanded that Weaver shorten them further to exactly 18". Weaver initially resisted, but dogged by the informant, shortened them again, and that was when the complaint issued.
In the aftermath, other competent authority remeasured the shotguns in question and found that the barrels were, in fact, legal, and that ATF had mismeasured them.
The detail about the incorrect court date was in the American Rifleman story as well. Weaver bailed out and retired to his mountain because he was convinced (correctly) he was being singled out for persecution and prosecution and despaired of a fair proceeding.
He should have relied on an attorney, as you say, but for a low-educated autodidact (and that mostly out of the Bible; he and wife Vickie were really big Bible readers) he actually sized up the situation fairly accurately. He really needed a friend to steer him right, and he didn't have one. Instead he had the BATF well and truly riding his back.
I never heard the "pancake" remark before.
That includes bills passed by an earlier Congress and signed into law by previous administrations.
Sounds like a rotten job, actually. I could never be a lawyer forced to take a position that I was fundamentally opposed to.
Compares favorably to having a kid.
/me ducks and covers
I had wondered whether that was the case. You're right, it would seem to be peculiar in a lot of circumstances. Can you see Abraham Lincoln's Solicitor General standing up and arguing the cogency of the Fugitive Slave Act to the Supreme Court, with Roger Taney sitting up there on the bench? It would be very odd.
She got creamed simply because she had put paper in their hands saying she was a gun owner.
I hadn't heard that one.
Your mentioning it is beginning to make me look smarter and smarter for never having applied for a CHL. CHL = "please beat hell out of me to open the conversation."
Someday it will mean "shoot me now, don't wait."
And with all that relational-database linking going on, even a traffic stop will mean having two or three guns shoved in your face by way of "good evening".
Guess if you've got one already, a Kevlar undershirt and one of those silky stopper-tops would seem to be part of your stepping-out attire. Go to the mall, suit up. Go clubbing or late-nite grocery shopping, better be ready to stop a hot .357.
That would not work in DC. The Congress has Plenary power over DC. IF anyplace is considered part of FedGov territory it where the US Constitution must prevail it IS DC!
This was from the testimony of BATF AIC Herbert Byerly before the Senate committee investigating what happened at Ruby Ridge. What was even worse, was that Byerly freely testified that the assault was pre-planned, and even rehearsed. For that, he got a coo of approval by that reknowned lover of the Constitution, Senator Diane Feinstein (D, PRC)...
the infowarrior
I believe that the Solicitor General was originally created to ward off any resistance to Presidential appropriated powers of the kind put forward by the Lincoln Administration during the war -- suspension of Habeus Corpus, spending money without Congressional approval, etc., and prevent legal challenges to Reconstruction before the US Supreme Court. Maybe I am being too cynical about that.
The only reason I even bring up former Solicitor General Paul Clement here is that I'd read some rumors elsewhere about his reasoning for leaving the post and it was solely in regards to 'DC v. Heller'. He'd been carrying the government's water for years in several cases across various US Circuit Courts under multiple US Attorney Generals and it appears that all that work looks like it might get boned in the ear by the forthcoming ruling out of SCOTUS. As the unofficial 'Tenth Justice', he and his staff certainly have their ear closer to the rail than anyone else outside of the Supreme Court on which way the wind blows for Heller.
Clement actually served as US Attorney General for a 24-hour period during the transition between the outgoing Gonzales and in the incoming Mukasey, and that's the best he'll ever get considering that even if McCain wins there would be a significant outcry from RKBA advocates if Clement were to be nominated to the Supreme Court or tapped for US Attorney General. Liberals hate him to pieces for arguing against supposed rights of Guantanamo detainees and for defending Donald Rumsfeld in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla.
It simply could be that all his labor got him was to be reviled as an un-Constititional creep and that his career in government was at an end. The US Supreme Court hasn't seen the last of him, though. He'll have a rewarding career arguing before them at various times, I'm sure.
He's now a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
What needs to happen is that SCOTUS' ruling destroys the 'Sporting Purpose' language in the 1968 GCA. If the ruling goes our way, that one will be the first to fall. There is no way 'Sporting Purposes' can be defended by the Federal government if SCOTUS rules we have an individual right to keep and bear arms both separate and in concert with the militia.
Congress would have to amend the US Constitution to remove the Militia Clause to head us off at the pass.
We've always maintained that the Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. The BATFE arbitrarily invents policy with no oversight other than some administrative opinion (unelected and unaccountable) in regards to 'sporting purposes'. Right now, they can just decide whether you go to prison or not on a whim. They write one opinion, send out a useless letter, and then raid a location anyway for reasons that contradict their non-binding little opinions. They need to have this power taken from them in no uncertain terms.
It will change everything.
The “sporting purpose” issue is encompassed by the “strict scrutiny” principle. The standards defining “sporting purpose” do not meet “strict scrutiny”, thus they will (on subsequent suit) fall. The upside is that import restrictions and other stupid limitations will be eliminated; the downside is the BATFE could throw a fit and declare all shotguns NFA “destructive devices” (bore >0.50”) as they could not use the “sporting purpose” clause for exemption thereto.
Hey it's FRIDAY if this thread is still alive we should get some gun porn going here.... or start a new thread.
Nice catch!
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