Any damn fool knows that the framers of the constitution wanted the people, citizens, individuals, etc… to be able to keep and bear arms for protection against thieves, murderers and other assorted riff-raff, not to mention tyrannical gov’ts and invading armies. As someone once wisely noted “The 2nd Amendment ain’t about hunting.”
To argue that “The People” as written in the 2nd refers only to the National Guard but somehow “The People” in all the other amendments refers to individual citizens as in free speech… pure sophistry.
The Attorney General is a good man and I’m glad that they are being intellectually honest with respect to this issue.
Look here, everyone, there’s a damn fool named Tedster. Whaddaya wanna bet he can’t come up with any statements of “the framers” stating that they wanted individiuals to be able to keep arms to protect themselves from thieves and murderers?
C’mon, Teddy-boy. If any damn fool knows it, surely you can demonstrate it.
And if anyone is interested, I would be happy to post the cases tomorrow that say self-defense has not a goddamned thing to do with the Second Amendment.
Fuck the legal sparring. Think of the practicalities behind outlawing guns.
How are you going to get these tens of millions of people off of their cherished firearms? It’s going to involve rewriting search and seizure laws, it’s going to require surveillance of suspects, it’s going to require a large, armed force whose primary mission is to ensure that the people they deal with are disarmed.
As you do that, the ratio of the people who have guns to the people who are willing to use those guns approaches 1:1, and they would all be, by definition, criminals.
Those NRA slogans are right. We have guns, they’re not going to go away, and if you take them away from the people we know that have them, the only gun-owners left will be the ones willing to use guns against us.
First, and most trivially: If that is law, then it is the law of the several circuits. I’m not sure why, but I’m hesitant to call something “the law of the United States” when it has not been either uniformly adopted by all the circuits for all the same reasons, nor adopted by the Supreme Court. But, like I said, this may be a trivial distinction, and I don’t think much is to be gained by arguing it.
My second objection is a much more difficult one to come to terms with, and has to do with a normative view of the law. Taking your argument to its logical extremes, if the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protected the right of one dude named Wayne to stockpile carrots at his ranch outside Wichita, then that would, in every sense of the word, be the law. But what of it? That’s clearly not the right that the Second Amendment protects, and the courts don’t have the power–the legitimate power, anyway–to change the Constitution that way. IMO, the opinions of the Supreme Court draw their legitimacy from their fidelity to the document’s text and the drafters’ intent.
I won’t hesitate to grant you the fact that, if I carry a sawed-off shotgun into Cincinnati, I will be arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, and my appeal to the Sixth Circuit will be denied. In that sense, their holding is definitely the law, as my presence in the federal penitentiary will attest. But if the Bill of Rights really means something–really protects fundamental interests–then it is immutable, and its true meaning not subject to variation by the courts. Yes, my ass will still be in the pokey pursuant to law. But the Second Amendment was the law and had a definite meaning and force before the Supreme Court ruled on it, and will continue to have that meaning and force (which is capital-L “Law” in the truest sense of the word) no matter how the courts deviate. Everything else is just a hiccup.
But I think we’re arguing with two different definitions of the word “law.” I’ll concede your point if you’ll–in principle, anyway–concede mine.
On preview: Yeah, Sofa King. Fuck the legal sparring. What does the Constitution have to do with law anyway? Let’s just yell slogans back and forth until the thread gets closed.
No, I do not concede that the law is anything other than what the courts say it is. I will happily concede that the courts are sometimes wrong about what it ought to be, but the law is what they say it is, not what you or I say it is.
Surely you would concede that the Second Amendment was adopted, at least in part, to provide a defense against a tyrranical government. Not to go all Michigan Militia here, but what is a tyrranical government (backed by an enormous military) other than a bunch of potential murderers and thieves?
I don’t suspect that’s what the Tedster had in mind, but he may have be more right than he knew.
Let’s make some assumptions. Let’s assume, first that the Attorney General (who some people keep calling General Ashcroft, as if he is racing along with his poor old pumpkin head sticking out of a tank turret, al la Georgie Patton) is not just preaching to the choir and sooner or later a majority of the US Sup Ct buys the idea that the militia language is just a surplus subordinate clause that is unnecessary to the implementation of the Amendment. What is the consequence of that? Is the right subject to limitation? First Amendment rights to free speech, press and religion are subject to restrictions (just try toking a little pot at your weekly worship meeting). Once that happens, what happens to State and local restrictions? What happens to the Texas rule that says no concealed weapons in liquor serving establishments? What happens to the waiting period before taking possession of a handgun? What happens to the restrictions on assault rifles, big magazines and imports? May I carry Uzzi into my bank to do a little business? What about the prohibition on firearms possession by a convicted felon? If there is an individualized right to bear arms, vouchsafed by the Constitution, doesn’t all that stuff go down the drain?
Second, the idea that the yeoman farmers of Eastern Mass. went out with their squirrel guns and fowling pieces to shoot up the Red Coats in April 1774, is basically poetry and pipe dreams. The Sturdy Farmers at the Rude Bridge were the Colonial Organized Militia and had been equipped with British military arms at the expense of the British government. The cannons and gunpowder the Red Coats were looking for were their own stuff provided to the Colonial Militia for the defense of the realm. It is as if the Ohio National Guard decided it didn’t want to be disarmed and shot up the First Infantry Division. Every thing I read says to me that the Founders concern was not with my ability to put 30 rounds in a burglar, but the possibility that the National Government would some day create a standing army and try to disarm the State Militias. The Founders remembered not only their own revolution, but the French Wars and the English Revolution, and generally hated and feared the prospect of a standing national army strong enough to try to take over the country.
Dammit, minty! Quit posting! I have a Crim Pro exam in 36 hours and will never study for it if there’s a ready stream of interesting arguments to respond to!
I will accept your point about the Courts sometimes being wrong, and let this argument (as well as the impending one about natural law) drop, as being far beyond the scope of a mere Pit scuffle. I think you’re wrong, you think I’m wrong, but it’s not necessary to resolve these points for us to continue the discussion at hand.
Notice I didn’t quote the part where he said “not to mention tyrannical gov’ts and invading armies”? I have no beef with that part of his assertion, just the damn fool statement that “the framers of the constitution wanted the people, citizens, individuals, etc… to be able to keep and bear arms for protection against thieves, murderers and other assorted riff-raff . . . .” It is intellectually dishonest, in the extreme, to try to prove that ridiculous assertion by redefining the enumerated categories so that they are merely subsets of another specifically enumerated category.
Read the Fifth Circuit Emerson case I cited above. Even though the majority opinion attemped (and boy howdy, did they ever go to lengths in their attempt) to hold that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right, they still clearly held that it was subject to reasonable limitations such as the domestic violence/restraining order at issue in the case.
Look here, everyone, there’s a damn fool named Tedster. Whaddaya wanna bet he can’t come up with any statements of “the framers” stating that they wanted individiuals to be able to keep arms to protect themselves from thieves and murderers?
C’mon, Teddy-boy. If any damn fool knows it, surely you can demonstrate it.
And if anyone is interested, I would be happy to post the cases tomorrow that say self-defense has not a goddamned thing to do with the Second Amendment.
Actually, Minty, a couple of weeks ago, I asked a question in GQ whether any of the Founders ever said that the RKBA was anything but an individual Right. Not one of the answers could give a quote otherwise.
Criminal Procedure? You got a criminal procedure final, Tennessee? Well, good luck. Just remember the basic rule: when the government loses a case the rules will be changed so that it doesn’t happen again.
Uncle Beer, since this is the Pit, I am starting to suspect that the fumes from the skunk works that is Toledo are starting to affect your thinking. You of all people should understand what a disaster the Founder’s reliance on the citizen’s militia was, living as you do astride Hull’s Trace and hard by the River Raisin and the Fallen Timbers battlefield.
Read the Fifth Circuit Emerson case I cited above. Even though the majority opinion attemped (and boy howdy, did they ever go to lengths in their attempt) to hold that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right, they still clearly held that it was subject to reasonable limitations such as the domestic violence/restraining order at issue in the case.
Wasn’t the gist of the Emerson decision the fact that the FedGov said that firearms could be seized without a conviction? And the fifth circuit said" Like Hell"!
That’s very nice, Barking Spider. Would you care to take up the particular challenge I issued, or would you prefer to just talk about something something that is completely different?
I tried to say this earlier in the thread, but I can see that it probably wasn’t too clear to anybody outside the legal field. If the Supreme Court holds that the Second Amendment creates an individual right (and assuming that right is incorporated against the States, which is a big assumption) a state will clearly have the power to regulate the right to keep and bear arms. First, they will clearly have the power, as discussed earlier in this thread, to regulate anything that’s too big to be an “arm,” since it does not fall within the Second Amendment’s protection.
Second, even with respect to “arms” as protected by the Second Amendment, the state will be able to regulate in any area in which it may show “a compelling interest” in regulation. My WAG is that a state would have a compelling interest to prohibit UZIs in banks, disarm felons (which, by the way, even a good portion of the wildest-eyed gun lovers already support) along with lots of the other strawmen that you’ll probably throw out soon. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.
My short answer to this: When the milita got called out, the militiamen brought their own guns. The milita consisted of the people. Therefore, the people had to own guns.
An interesting aside about the militia: As far as I can tell, the idea of centrally owned and stored weapons for milita use was anathema to the Founders. The very idea of the milita was that, if the Governor (or whoever) called them out for a Very Stupid Purpose, they just wouldn’t show, and the state would thereby be without sufficient arms to do its Very Stupid Thing. FWIW.
On preview: minty, you pain, I meant the larger arguments about the inherence of law and the existence of natural law. (If one of those case definitively proves there’s no natural law, I’ll be mightily impressed and concede the point :D)
gelding, thanks. At this rate, it looks like luck will be important.
Tennessee Ben, if you can come up with a theorem demonstrating the existence of god, I will happily concede the existence of natural law. Barring that, I am afraid you are correct that we will have to disagree.