Posted on 11/27/2017 9:16:15 AM PST by jazusamo
The Supreme Court declined to take up two Second Amendment cases on Monday, which challenged laws banning assault weapons and open-carry in Maryland and Florida.
Both cases were denied review without comment from the justices, which left the lower court rulings in place.
In the Florida challenge, the state Supreme Court upheld Florida’s ban on open carry finding the Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee a right to open carry.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
With the recent accusations of sexual harassment against a number of Dems, priority will be come those years is to try to stay alive political wise.
It looks that way. Plus also Justice Ruth looks like she is closer to retirement.
Waiting for Kennedy and Ginsberg to retire.
They carried them concealed under a large blanket, like Clint Eastwood wears in his westerns!! :-)
Initially the Second Amendment applied only to federal government infringement of the States’ ability to form militias, made up of the armed citizenry. Hence, the states remained able to infringe had there been any wish to do so.
Militias were critical to the National defense for almost the first century of our existence. To infringe on the Second would have been suicide.
Militias were composed of every able-bodied citizen which is where the individual right comes into the picture. Some states’ constitutions even define the militia as the able-bodied citizens.
I am not in agreement. If the First and Second amendments are to be applied equally as inalienable rights, then the states, per the 10th amendment, have domain over all other things not in the constitution granted the Federal government, but not in the matter of gun control. If the state wants to regulate cars, go for it. If they want to regulate pot, go for it. If they want to occupy your home with state soldiers, hold your horses (3rd amendment protection)...
Freedom of speech is protected. Period. Freedom to be armed in defense is, and should be protected. Period.
So I have to be aware of strange people with blankets with pointing things showing?
One can never go wrong in plumbing the depths of America’s greatest political thinker.
Hamilton came to Washington’s attention as he was reviewing a parade of bedraggled, pathetic militas. His he created with the remainder of his college funds from that raised by the Governor of St. Croix. He then trained it to perfection.
After seeing it Washington wanted Hamilton as a staff member. He accepted and served through almost the entire Revolutionary War.
He was like a son to Washington.
The entire Bill of Rights was directed at the federal government. States routinely violated it with state funded religion, elimination of the Right to Free Speech as well as infringements on guns.
Of course, the amendment does not define the word “infringement” and the states could interpret that for themselves. Does anyone believe states cannot restrict the mentally ill from owning guns or felons?
No, but felons are specifically addressed in the constitution as to loss of rights, and arguably 'able-bodied' militia, where in the time the militia came from the citizenry, would imply the common sense of the day that you don't give dangerous things to mental patients.
The Bill of rights was, as you say, to restrain federal government, but it also enshrined the inalienable rights described by the Declaration of Independence (Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness) into codified protections.
Wikipedia has this to say:
In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the right to arms preexisted the Constitution and in that case and in Presser v. Illinois (1886) recognized that the Second Amendment protected the right from being infringed by Congress. In United States v. Miller (1939), the Court again recognized that the right to arms is individually held and, citing the Tennessee case of Aymette v State, indicated that it protected the right to keep and bear arms that are "part of the ordinary military equipment" or the use of which could "contribute to the common defense." In its first opportunity to rule specifically on whose right the Second Amendment protects, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Court ruled that the amendment protects an individual right "to keep and carry arms in case of confrontation," not contingent on service in a militia, while indicating, in dicta, that restrictions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, on the carrying of arms in sensitive locations, and with respect to the conditions on the sale of firearms could pass constitutional muster. In the 2010 case of McDonald v. Chicago, the Court applied incorporation doctrine to extend the Second Amendment's protections nationwide.
While I hear your interpretation, as I said, I do not agree that states have the right to restrict my use of arms in self defense any more than they have a right to squash my political opinions.
contemporary definitions of “militia” by both British and American sources:
British general Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne defines “militia” explicitly in 1777, leaving zero doubts to its meaning in ‘1777 after the Battle of
Bennington Aug 16, 1777:’
“The great bulk of the country is undoubtedly with
the Congress, in principle and zeal; and their measures are
executed with a Secrecy and dispatch that are not to be
equaled. Wherever the king`s forces point, militia, to the
amount of three or four thousand assemble in twenty-four hours; they bring with them their substance etc., the alarm over, they return to their farms. The Hampshire Grants [Vermont], in particular, a country unpeopled and almost unknown in the last war, now abounds in the most active and most rebellious race on the continent, and hangs like a gathering storm upon my left.”
-General John Burgoyne, “A State of the Expedition from Canada, as laid before the House of Commons, by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, and Verified by Evidence; with a Collection of Authentic Documents, and an Addition of Many Circumstances Which were Prevented from Appearing before the House by the Prorogation of Parliament. (London: J. Almon, 1780) xxv.
General John Stark defines “militia” in 1809 ‘On August 16, [1777] a motley collection of militia led by John Stark... [Battle of Bennington] In 1809, Stark, aged 81, declined an invitation to return to Bennington, but sent a letter that was widely republished in newspapers. Referring to his “men that had not learned the art of submission, nor been trained in the art of war,” Stark closed his letter with the famous postscript, “Live free or die; Death is not the greatest of evils.”’ Wallomsack Review
The British define American militia: 1775: “Events which served to shew [sic] that if the Americans were yet unacquainted with military discipline they were not destitute of either courage or conduct but knew well and dared to avail themselves of such advantages as they possessed. The people of the colonies are accustomed to the use of fire arms from their earliest youth and are in general good marksmen. Such men placed in a house behind a wall or amongst trees are capable of doing as much execution as regular soldiers. And to these advantages which they possessed during the greatest part of the nineteenth of April we may attribute the inconsiderable loss sustained by them compared with that of our detachments.” Stedman,p.120 {British author]
[This is confirmed by the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 1837-8
Viz:: “The terms of the Constitution he need not refer to; and the amendment now under discussion was simply an AFFIRMANCE OF A POWER,-THAT THE RIGHT OF A PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. Who fought the Battles, of Lexington,Bunker Hill and Saratoga?
...Who saved Baltimore? ... Who obtained the victory at New Orleans?
These militia, trained and disciplined in their own houses; not practised in the field, but BRINGING THEIR GUNS
WHICH THEY WERE TAUGHT TO USE WHEN CHILDREN..” p.111, p.168 are sourced from “Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Vol. 4, by the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, 1837-8”
I am hoping that is what their thinking was.
Constitutional correct only that these are state laws to which the federal 2nd amendment does not apply.
Congress has no right to make any such laws.
That said this would not be legal in New Mexico where the state constitution protects the right to keep and bare arms except conceled carry ironically.
I doubt it is legal in Florida either but that is a Florida matter.
The second amendment also says "...being necessary to the security of a free State..."
Why would a state have the power to infringe that which the Constitution stipulates is necessary for the state to be free?
-PJ
What? Seriously? If you have a right to bear arms, ANY restriction on how you carry is an infringement.
So how are you going to conceal a rifle or shotgun?
They would not, fear of the federal government having the sole military force was the reason the amendment was demanded. Free states had the most to lose when the right to bear arms was threatened.
I own and shoot similar “rifles”. If you do any sport shooting or hunting, you know they are as accurate as most weapons we have today. The rifled barrels makes the difference. Alt the colonists had to see, at a hundred yards, was a person’s head, a body at 200 to hit them. The average musket, a British solder used, could not hit a body over 50 yards. We a had much superior weapon.
Another problem, ‘our side’ will not make it plain an AR 15 is the ‘civilian version’, one shot per trigger pull, of the military full auto capable M16.
Refused to hear the case, eh? Different rules I understand for needing votes to hear a case than for deciding a case - though this non-decision does set precedent for future cases. Never good.
So the 5-4 vote count (if that) is not clear/not released about who the liberal-communist were that voted witch (er, which) way?
Weak.
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