Posted on 12/09/2002 6:07:58 PM PST by FreedomCalls
Fine, I won't. But I will label the author(s) morons with an extremely vulgar understanding of Constitutional Law, History and just about everything else relevant to the issue they are making light of.
Duh, that is what it was all about!
This is only for fixed magazines. Rifles using detachable magazines have other restrictions, and the magazines themselves are restricted if they have over a 10-round capacity (they cannot be bought/sold/manufactured/transferred/etc. to anyone in California).
What is the writer trying to convey with his writing style? Is he a homosexual opposed to the Bill of Rights?
That's ok. He's unarmed. He's no threat to those of us that are.
/john
Fine I won't. But I will label the author(s) morons....
Good start. And instead of calling him names, I think I'll add Mr. Ken Mondschein to the Cheka database* list..
That is why I just laugh at these idiots.
Or as us members of the militia would say: "The enemy has made a major tactical error!"
That's not at all what TJ said. Those dead white males said gun rights protected our liberties FROM the government. The Bill of Rights was intended as a check on government power.
"Get your hands off my MAC-10, you damn dirty apes!" mumbled Charlton Heston, wandering, disoriented, along Ventura Boulevard.
The NRA supported the federal assault weapons ban, and taking a shot at Heston's Alzheimers is extremely crude.
The third part, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," gets kind of complicated once you understand the history behind the thing. "Right," "people," and even "keep" and "bear" aren't that difficult words, and "arms" means "weapons," like "swords" and "knives" and "whack-a-mole mallets" and, of course, "guns." Of course, it's the "guns" part that makes this difficult.
So "arms" doesn't mean firearms? That's bull----, just go to the first part of the sentence, which clearly refers to the militia. What kinds of arms does Mr. Mofo think militiamen used? What an idiot.
Heck, if we relied on citizen militias today, Canada could take us over.
The Canadian military might be able to move in with impunity, and take over America, but it would never be able to hold the territory. It would be driven back. Canadians don't have the resolve to be an occupying power, not of a nation ten times its size with active guerilla resistance forces.
In any case, there is no reason people shouldn't be able to own lever-action, small-magazine rifles, shotguns, and even (well-regulated, registered, and controlled) handguns.
Do the handguns have to be lever-action too?
Stay Safe !!
Notice that he left off any explaination of the "free" state part.
Of course he's also wrong about the subordinate clause. In the first place the "clause" is the entire first part of the sentence, i.e. "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state". It is not a subordinate clause, nor a restrictive one. It's an explanitory clause, in modern terms it would read "Because a well-regulated militia is neccessary to the security of a free state,", and that is how the Supreme Court interpreted it in "Miller". The hyphenate term "well-regulated" does not mean "controlled by government, especially not the federal government. "well-regulated" means properly functioning, or fit for it's inteneded purpose. Of course one would have to either read history, or at least consult a contemporary dictionary to know that. Still the declarative clause, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is pretty darn clear. For further discussion see: Schullman interview with Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus.
I read your latest piece. It was pretty funny even if inaccurate. I take issue with your definition of the term “well-regulated.”
It is incorrect. I would suggest that you look in your Oxford dictionary. I’m sure you must have access to one. Well-regulated means trained or synchronized. It does not mean “regulated by government” as you suggest.
Furthermore, what you think is a good idea regarding the second amendment is of no concern. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land. There is no “good idea” clause in the constitution that exempts us from adhering to it if we can invent something that the founders might not have considered.
The right to bear arms is an extension of your own right to defend yourself. Your right to life. The rights in the constitution are not granted by the document but merely enumerated. While they do tell government to keep its hands off our liberties, they did not create these liberties. Jefferson wrote in the declaration of independence “governments are created among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The government cannot, without fraud and force, execute powers which the people they serve do not first possess. It’s quite simple really. You can’t sell your neighbor’s car without committing fraud and you cannot give the government powers you do not have.
Thus, the government itself may not possess firearms without committing fraud unless you can. And it cannot prevent you from owning firearms because again, this is not a power that you possess. You cannot tell your neighbor that he can’t possess a firearm and you cannot give the government such power to exercise on your behalf.
I would suggest that you read over the last Supreme Court case involving the second amendment, US v Miller, decided in 1939. The court performed a thorough bit of research concluding that the militia was the entire collection of people amenable to serve in the military. And at the time they were expected to bring their own guns. The militia act of 1792 defines the militia as all men between the ages of 17 and 45 who did not object for reasons of conscience. You are the militia as am I.
There is another case in the 5th district I believe which directly opposes the 9th’ circuit’s reading of the constitution. This is good news for those of us who want the constitution literally interpreted because it is likely that we will finally see the Supreme Court decide a second amendment case in our lifetime. As you probably know the Supreme Court doesn’t generally accept a case unless there is disagreement in the district courts.
Here’s what Justice Thomas said about the second amendment in his concurring opinion in Printz Sheriff Mack v US which overturned the “unfunded mandate” portions of the Brady Bill:
If, however, the Second Amendment is read to confer a personal right to "keep and bear arms," a colorable argument exists that the Federal Government's regulatory scheme, at least as it pertains to the purely intrastate sale or possession of firearms, runs afoul of that Amendment's protections. As the parties did not raise this argument, however, we need not consider it here. Perhaps, at some future date, this Court will have the opportunity to determine whether Justice Story was correct when he wrote that the right to bear arms "has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic." 3 J. Story, Commentaries §1890, p. 746 (1833).
It is quite likely that we will finally get a court ruling which states what we all have known for quite some time: The second amendment guarantees the right for citizens to own firearms on a personal basis and not just those deemed acceptable by the state. As US v Miller interpreted the amendment, firearms which served a military purpose were exactly the type of arms being protected. That would of course mean fully automatic weapons today.
I hope that you don’t dismiss this email out of hand simply because my view disagrees with yours. I would urge you to take a second look and consider what you’ve already written on the subject. You make an excellent point:
“Once the judge handed down his decision, patriotic defenders of our right to own high-powered machines of destruction like assault rifles and SUVs and McDonald's coffee and Barbara Streisand albums began comparing him to the Nazis—and rightfully so, since the Nazis were noted for their enthusiasm in taking guns away from people and giving them to other people who used them to shoot Jews.”
You may have been completely facetious here but it is absolutely true that this is what occurred in Hitler’s Germany though perhaps not in the way you might think. Exemptions to the gun laws were for citizens only. Non-citizens were not allowed to own firearms. And so rather than passing new gun-laws to further restrict ownership, Jews, Jehova’s witnesses, Gays, and other undesirables were claimed to be non-citizens. And then marked for death. This was easy to do since they had been stripped of their guns.
Before you say that it can’t happen here, the exact same thing did happen here when the Dred Scott decision was handed down. Justice Teney, who didn’t have even a little bit of constitutional support for this position, ruled that free blacks were non-citizens and instantly took them from the category of protected citizens with rights, into the abyss of non-human status since the constitution does not provide protection only to citizens but to people. The doctrine of “citizen” status as a guide for government behavior arose from racist anti-gun laws and court rulings which attempted to place rights out of reach from the freed slave. For an excellent article citing the laws and cases, read Clayton Cramer’s “The Racist Roots of Gun Control.” You can find it in many places on the internet.
Good luck,
Rick Fisk
rfisk@lycos.com
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