Which Congress has since turned into the National Guard, whether you like it or not.
It’s not disputed by anybody whose opinion has any meaning, if it contradicts the Supreme Court’s established *Miller * ruling.
You don’t have to like it one little bit. But your dispute isn’t with me, ya know.
We have. You should have paid attention.
As I pointed out, and as you can see for yourself, they ruled that the Second exists for the purpose of having a well-regulated militia. The rest follows.
You don’t have to like it any more than **ExTank[b/] does, of course.
Elvis, the facts and the law are against you. I have pointed to Miller, I have pointed to reality, and the definition of the Militia has been pointed out to you.
You are banging on the table. You, sir, are wrong. You are unable to say why you are not wrong. You are in error.
I am not saying you are lying. I firmly accept you think what you are saying is true.
It is not. Also, you can not say why you think it is so, you simply repeat and expound on the topic as if the validity were already assumed.
No, no they haven’t. If you read the cite the National Guard is only the organized militia.
The unorganized militia is not the national guard, but the unorganized militia is still the militia. The unorganized militia is you & me, whether you like it or not.
Well, not me as I’m over 45. :smack:
You, me, and just about every gun-owning (and more than a few non-gun-owning!) board member who’s stepped up to defend individual’s rights has told him the exact same thing; but it’s like arguing with a 3-year-old.
He essentially just sticks his fingers in his ears and goes, “Nanny-nanny-boo-boo-I-can’t-hear-you!” The way he repeats the same asinine claim over-and-over, for a while I had wondered if he had taught a parrot to type.
ExTank is right. You’re not debating, you’re just repeating the same claim over and over again. Again, you’re simply wrong. “The rest” does not follow. Only you have made this claim, and you have thus far refused to support it with either reasoning or proof.
Let me summarize the facts:
The second amendment states: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” (Add extra commas to taste.)
The SCOTUS ruled in Miller that the intent of the second amendment (i.e., the purpose that is addressed by the prefatory clause), is to “render possible the effectiveness of” a militia.
The SCOTUS did not rule that “the People” in the declaration of the 2A refers to the militia, or to any other governmental organization.
If you would like to challenge any of these facts, or explain to me the chain of your reasoning that draws from these facts or others a “government rights only” decision by the SCOTUS in Miller, please do so. Otherwise I am done arguing with you.
Having read the replies up to here, I would state that my OP was a question about federalism (thanks to Hamlet ). That is, how does the federal government claim to have any say in the issue? The replies I’ve read seem to indicate a combination of Miller and the magical Commerce Clause. Is this correct?
Well, pretty much just the magical Commerce Clause. If Miller is used as the guide, any federal laws regulating weapons suitable for military use should be invalid.
Exactly. Would it be a bad law? Yes. Would it be a violation of the First Amendment? No. There’s no implicit right to privacy in the Constitution.
The Constitution doesn’t use the word “violate”. It says the rights in the first two amendments can’t be prohibited, abridged or infringed. Which is pretty much my point. Monitoring an activity does not inherently prohibit, abridge, or infringe the activity.
I disagree. If ownership of a firearm is contingent to some government requirement, e.g., registration or licensing, I would argue that the right to bear arms is being infringed. If I have a right to do something, I do not need government approval in order to do it.
So not only would federal firearm registration be a stupid law, I believe it would be unconstitutional, both because registering private firearms does not reasonably fall under any enumerated power, and because it would violate the second amendment.
Mmm. Reminds me a bit of my favorite maxim. “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” The power to enforce registration is the power to censor. What happens if you do not accept a registration? The guns are now illegal. A shame. Sounds a bit like a poll tax.
Actually I think that the logic is more of: they sell baseball cards in other states, and what that shop does affects all of the others therefore ICC
Oh wait! That particular industry doesn’t go outside of the state? But it could affect ANY memorabilia shop therefore ICC.
I concur that the abuse of the ICC must stop. If your lamp is from Vermont and your couch is from Kentucky then the Feds can control what you do in your living room.
You’re misunderstanding the power of registration. The government registers births and issues birth certificates; that doesn’t mean you need government approval to have a baby.
Arguably true. But that train left the station over a hundred years ago and it’s not coming back. Both liberals and conservatives use the power of the ICC to support and advance their own agendas; the only time they denounce it is when the other side uses it.
Actually it is a result of Roosevelt’s court packing scheme in 1933 - only 75 years old
I went round-and-round with both Elvis and mintygreen for 2-3 pages in The Pit about two years ago over Miller; over the course of the thread, I’d be willing to wager I c&p’d 80%+ of the text of Miller straight off of FindLaw, and challenged them both to point out the relevant passage saying that the Militia is the National Guard, and only the National Guard.
I don’t dipute USC 311; the National Guard is the organized militia of the United States (though Perpich v. Dept. of Defense kinda puts that on shaky ground, but only vis-a-vis “The Militia/The People” aspect of the 2ad. argument).
But USC 311, and Miller, and The Federalists, and other documents and writings of the FF, don’t make the organized militia the sole militia of the United States.
Miller seems to be hugely misunderstood. That the second amendment protects an individual right is assumed. The issue in question was whether or not the particular weapon involved was protected by the second amendment by its usefulness as a military tool. Something to understand about Miller - the defense was not represented at all. The defendants were long gone and there was no lawyer to argue their case.
So the prosecution, in a very lawyerly move, essentially says “this exact gun, model number XXXXX, has never been used in military service and therefore is not protected under the second amendment” and since there was no defense to oppose that and show that short barreled shotguns had indeed seen military use, the court seems to have ruled for the prosecution by default.
Gun control advocates seem to hail Miller as a big victory, but I can’t understand why. If there was a defense to make the case that the weapon was indeed militarily useful, then the court would’ve ruled that it was indeed an infringement of second amendment rights.
It also makes the case that the most militarily useful weapons - generally, among the ones that gun control advocates want to ban on the basis of them claiming they have no hunting/sporting usefulness, are the most protected weapons. By the logic of Miller, the fact that I practically can’t own an M16 is clearly in violation of my second amendment rights.
But no reasonable person has any fear that the government with outlaw reproduction at any time in the future. People have a real fear of criminalization of guns in our lifetimes.
Without registration, then it would be impossible to take guns away from people. Nobody knows if I own zero guns or a hundred, but enact a registration law, and now the government knows. It would be the first logical step to confiscation, and that is why pro-gun people fight registration so hard.
If that was the end all of gun laws, then I don’t think anyone would complain about it…
So it’s not just me that sees it that way, then. (I admit, I just want a P90. (I’m gonna get me a PS90 one day. Yep.))
But by whom?
No, if it were then that would have been the end of the case right there.
It inevitably follows that if it weren’t, then it wasn’t protected, hmm?
Somehow it never gets explained how that actually made any difference. Is that brought up only to show that the decision doesn’t actually constitute the law, or can be ignored or dismissed? You’ve done it here, perhaps you can explain why.
Only if you’re a National Guard member, and your ownership of it is “well-regulated” by it. Are you and is it?
stealth potato, horse, water, same as always for you.