Wrong. The early Bill of Rights was a special case, negotiated in tandem with the Constitution. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were ratified only because after the Civil War, when southern states were still defiantly opposed to anti-slavery measures, federal authorities stepped in, removing some legislators, waiving the 2/3 requirement on a Constitution, etc. (Mississippi finally ratified the 13th Amendment in … 2013.) Is that how Democrats are going to repeal the Second Amendment? By sending in federal troops to disband legislatures across the South? :eek:
Even the Twenty-fourth Amendment, part of Reconstruction really since it outlawed the racist poll tax, was ratified by only one (1) Southern state: Tennessee. That was in 1964, 101 years after the Emancipation and the year after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. Only Arizona and Wyoming showed solidarity with the southern racists by refusing to ratify. That Amendment needed 38 states and got exactly 38 states. It couldn’t be ratified today: Indiana, Utah, the Dakotas etc. would be eager to show solidarity with haters and improve GOP electoral outcomes.
So exactly which controversial Amendments have been ratified easily, XT ? Any that you think might have a chance in today’s divided America?
In the last 46 years, we’ve had one (1) Amendment ratified:
Were there a lot of marchers in Washington pleading for Congressmen’s right to give themselves pay hikes?
You made the statement that 70 years of precedent was overturned with Heller and to the extent that you are adopting the rationale in Stevens’ dissent, I am disagreeing with you. Coincidentally, the entire authoritative law of the United States also disagrees with you.
I do not know why but you are really hard to understand. I see the words, they are English in proper sentences and I still have trouble parsing what you are on about.
Are you saying Stevens did not suggest precedent was overturned with Heller when Stevens’ said:
"In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act, the first major federal firearms law.1 Upholding a conviction under that Act, this Court held that, “(i)n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Miller, 307 U. S., at 178. The view of the Amendment we took in Miller—that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it does not curtail the Legislature’s power to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons—is both the most natural reading of the Amendment’s text and the interpretation most faithful to the history of its adoption.
Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;2 we ourselves affirmed it in 1980. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 , n. 8 (1980).3 No new evidence has surfaced since 1980 supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to curtail the power of Congress to regulate civilian use or misuse of weapons. Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses."
<snip>
In this dissent I shall first explain why our decision in Miller was faithful to the text of the Second Amendment and the purposes revealed in its drafting history. I shall then comment on the postratification history of the Amendment, which makes abundantly clear that the Amendment should not be interpreted as limiting the authority of Congress to regulate the use or possession of firearms for purely civilian purposes.
And since Miller was roughly 70 years prior to Heller that’s where you get the 70 years.
I want to repeat this, because these sort of simplistic arguments keep popping up:
Yes: due to the politicized nature of a Supreme Court with a majority of members appointed by presidents with campaigns supported/funded by the gun manufacturing lobby, we have a bare majority on the court who claims that Miller wasn’t overturned. That doesn’t mean that Miller wasn’t overturned, though, and an appeal to authority here is fallacious if we’re discussing the theory of the case.
If we’re discussing what actually happened, well, yes: the folks with the power tell use we’ve never been at war with EastAsia, so I suppose that’s the official position.
OK, I disagree. Unless there is actually a federal law saying states can’t secede, it is not “quite clear” on that issue. The federal government only has those powers explicitly given to it by the states. That power was not explicitly given in 1860. The feds aren’t supreme; they don’t have plenary power. Federal law, once codified, is supreme. There is a difference.
Got a cite that Reagan and the Bushes campaigns were "funded’ by the gun lobby? The gun lobby is rather tiny, the amount they could provide was just a drop in the bucket.
When discussing SCOTUS cases, you have to know what the Court decided. By no means is this a “appeal to authority”. In any case, you are using “appeal to authority " here as a fallacy incorrectly, as citing a credible authority is by no means a fallacy*. Saying that Justice Scalia hates lima beans, thus lima beans are nasty, is a 'appeal to authority” as learned as the Justice is, he is not a credible expert on legumes.
if citing a credible authority was incorrect, Great Debates would be 100% opinions. :rolleyes:
Yes, his [dissenting] opinion was that precedent was overturned. That opinion was not shared by the majority, and it’s the majority’s opinion that matters. Look at the majority opinion:
Citing a dissenting opinion as precedent is a non-starter. Two justices dissented in Roe. Can we say that it’s established precedent that states may make abortion illegal?
So, tell me then. What does it mean for laws to be supreme, if the states are allowed to completely ignore them? Because of course a legally-seceded state (if such a thing were to exist) would no longer be bound by any of the laws of the United States.
Sure Stevens suggested that precedent was overturned, but he was wrong. He was wrong because the question of whether or not precedent was overturned is a legal one, and since his opinion did not carry the day, it’s not reflective of the legal landscape that exists today, or at the time the opinion was issued. It’s pretty much a slam dunk, from a legal point of view. You’re arguing the losing side, in a case that’s already been adjudicated. The prevailing opinion rejects your and Stevens’ interpretation which means as a factual matter your statement that *Heller *overturned 70 years of precedent is false. If you’re arguing that the dissent should have prevailed, and then in some hypothetical scenario things would have played out differently, then have at it. But if you assert that precedent was overturned that’s a question of fact and you are mistaken.
Summarized, this was about the particular weapon, not the status of the men accused of violating the NFA. If it were about connection to militia service, it would be dispositive to indicate that the men accused were not members of the militia. Instead, an incomplete analysis was done to show that the short barreled shotgun in question was not regularly used in the militia or part of ordinary military equipment. But if you want the authoritative rebuttal of Stevens’ position, it was in the part of theprevailing opinion (my bold)
It keeps popping up because as a factual matter, the positions advanced by Whack-a-Mole have been false. Post #59 where he asserted that SCOTUS said we can ban all weapons except the guns you could buy in 1791, and in post#198 where he asserted that 70 years of precedent was overturned*. As a matter of fact, those assertions are false. Do you also believe that Miller was not overturned in reality, or just in the woulda/shoulda/coulda sense? Like I said, if the arguments are hypothetical then sure, we can go down the rabbit hole. But if the conclusions and arguments in any hypothetical are predicated on a foundation that is false, then that renders everything that follows suspect.
*also post 206 with the stolen SCOTUS nomination, but that seems less like an assertion of fact than an expression of opinion so I’ll leave that out.
While the gun lobby itself is not tiny - and I mean the entire gun lobby, not just the gun manufacturer’s lobby but all the gun owners and advocates as well - I have to agree that the notion that particularly the Bush family needed money from the gun lobby for their campaign. That would be pissing into the ocean. The Bushes are old Yankee Bluebloods. Don’t know about Reagan.
Here’s the thing. You are making an inference based on your interpretation of what it means for laws to be supreme, and then claiming that it’s “quite clear”. It was debatable, and it was debated, at the time. If you want to invoke the Supremacy Clause, one can simply argue that the laws are supreme as long as the states are part of the union. As I noted, there was no law explicitly stating that secession was illegal. And there is nothing explicitly stating this in the constitution, either.
Had the South won the war, or had the North simply given up, then most of us would agree, today, that secession was legal in the same sense that the Founders argued that separation from Britain was legal in 1776.
I didn’t claim anything. I asked you who was saying what you said people were saying. Your response is a simple hand-waving that “it’s obvious” and then you move the goalpost from “make any laws about guns” to “ban” guns. When you decide where the goalpost’s permanent position is, please provide a cite that backs up that position. That’s all.
Ture, if you count the gun owners, the gun side is pretty strong. But I dunno if you can count individuals as a “lobby” we normally call them “voters”.
However, he specified gun manufacturers lobby, which is rather tiny in the big picture.