suggest**s*. Dammit.
This is getting ridiculous.
Good luck on the exam. Crim Pro, for me, proved the old law school myth that it’s the classes you think you know the best where you get screwed on the exam. 
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Why do people keep saying that sawed off shotguns, or carrying Uzis into banks, are illegal? They’re both 100% legal here in New Hampshire (and many other states), provided you have the necessary paperwork for the short-barrelled shotgun and for the Uzi if its a full auto.
I’ve carried a pistol into my bank. If they wanted to, they could ask me to leave, but they couldn’t have me charged with anything.
You should at least know something about the subjects you debate, people.
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Poor Kalashnikov. It must be disorienting, wandering into a debate on the Second Amendment and thinking everyone is discussing New Hampshire state law.
CLUE FOR MINTY GREEN
If something is legal in most states, it has to be legal according to federal law too. DUH!!!
Easy…
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the one in which it was passed.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, June 12, 1823. The Complete Jefferson, p322.
There ya go, minty boy… There are about a gazillion other quotes, I shall be happy to enlighten you by posting those as well, but it’s not necessary… What part of “shall not be infringed” don’t you understand?
Here are some more quotes (there are numerous quotes from constitutional framers available, if, for some bizarre, inexplicable and frankly laughable reason anyone thinks they believed the people should be disarmed, I’ll post more.
“The said Constitution be never construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
Samuel Adams, during Massachusetts’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution (1788)
There you go. Pretty fucking clear to me. What say you?
“The right of self-defense is the first law of nature. In most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Whenever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited; liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
Justice George Tucker, Virginia Supreme Court, 1803
“The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.”
Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session ( February 1982 )
“To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm . . . is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege.”
[Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, at 560, 34 Am. Rep. 52, at 54 (1878)]
“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia’, the ‘security’ of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms’, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”
John F. Kennedy, April 1960
Remember that the BOR doesn’t “grant” us anything , it merely outlines what government cannot do. “Congress Shall Make No Law…” “Shall not be Infringed.”…
Minty, what you said is that the right for individuals to bear arms is not Constitutionally guaranteed.
What the OP complained about is that the DOJ has reversed its opinion on this matter, presumably leading to crying-baby-skeet-shooting, or some other heinous (yet strangely attractive) act, if I may borrow some of that infinite hyperbole.
Somewhere between you and the OP is the premise that increased gun control is a good thing, while you, as a lawyer, should be fully aware of the enormous body of gun control laws already on the books.
Perhaps I have drawn the erroneous conclusion that because you don’t think gun ownership is guaranteed, it therefore leaves open the opportunity for its banning.
I’m trying to point out the fact that there are a shitload of guns in America, more than anyone could reasonably hope to sequester and destroy, and I offer the conclusion that if we do not allow gun ownership to persist, then we risk total mayhem at the hands of those who do have guns, including our law enforcement officials.
But please, don’t chew through the foundation while asking, “why is the building going to fall?” Save that one for the judge.
You are a moron, Kalashnikov. The question in this thread is whether the federal government has the power to prevent you from bearing arms, not whether it has done so.
Sofa King, the same reply (only the second sentence, of course) applies to your critique. Though I believe in expanded gun gontrol measures, I by no means support the wholesale disarming of the populace. That’s a policy choice, however, because the Second Amendment as it currently stands does not prevent the federal government from restricting or eliminating the right of individuals to bear arms. And the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to the states at all. (Case cites for that proposition also available on request.)
Tedster, you are also a moron. Only one of you quotes is from “the framers” you puported to rely on in your previous post, and all that quote says is that Sam Adams wanted the people to have the right to bear arms. That has nothing to do with your complete bullshit assertion that “the framers” wanted citizens to be able to bear arms for the purpose of defending themselves from thieves, murderers, and other riff-raff.
The quote from Justice Tucker is at least temporally close to the framers, though I do not believe Tucker played any role in drafting or enacting the Bill of Rights. The quote, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with crime. Rather, it stands for the wholly unremarkable proposistion that the people of the time wanted guns for the purpose of armed resistance to tyrranical government. Again, that has nothing to do with thieves, murderers, and riff-raff.
The remaining quotes aren’t even close to “the framers,” unless Ben Franklin secretly created a time machine and zipped forward a couple centuries to write speeches John Freakin’ Kennedy.
Nevertheless, you claimed that “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.” In light of your complete failure to back up that assetion, I submit that the only damn fool around here is Tedster
Put the crack pipe down, minty.
What I said was that any damn fool knows the framers wanted citizens to be able to keep and bear arms. Whatever uses they may be put to is incidental, although it is entirely clear that then, as now, firearms restrictions only served to benefit criminals. Wonderful job at twisting things around to suit your agenda, though.
So, your position is that the framers of the constitution did not want to allow individuals to keep and bear arms? Pure sophistry, and everyone knows it.
If minty’s assertion is that ‘the framers’ meant that ‘the poeple’ referred to ‘the government sponsored and controlled military’ in the Second, then surely minty would be glad to prove that assertation with facts, non?
So minty, is that what you’re asserting, and if so, what specific evidence is it based upon?
Tedster, you are a lying sack of crap. You said much more than that. Quite specifically, you said that the framers were motivated by the desire to enable individuals to arm themselves against criminals. Specifically, in case you missed it when you wrote it and when I repeated it, you stated:
At least have the honesty to admit what you said, and that you were wrong.
catsix: Read the cases I cited on page one. That is the law, and the state of the law is all I am arguing here.
For clarification: The only part of that quote I take issue with is the highlighted portion:
[quote]
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.
Aw crap. No more coding for me today. 
You mentioned the framers’ intent, minty and made an assertation as to what that intent was.
None of the cases you cite prove a damned thing about what the framers intended. They only indicate the ruling judges’ interpretations at a later date.
So, if you want to prove intent of the framers, you’re going to have to try a little harder than citing interpretive opinion made years later.
Go ahead minty, prove your assertation that the framers’ didn’t intend an individual right to self defense. And if they did intend that, please answer why the only defense you believe the framers were protecting was that from tyranny.
Or you could admit that you don’t know whether or not the framers included defense from thieves, murderers and other assorted riff-raff among their considerations in bearing arms.
Of course, a quote from one of the actual framers stating that the arms mentioned in the Second were only ever to be used for state sponsored militia purposes would be interesting, but I’ll understand if you cannot provide one.
Prove a negative? I don’t think so, catsix.
There are plenty o’ quotes out there showing the intent of at least some of the framers, but every statement I have ever seen–including the one Teddy-boy posted above from Sam Adams–says that they wanted the people to be armed for purposes of the militia: defense against government tyrrany and defense against foreign invasion. I have never, ever seen any statement of any framer indicating that the Second Amendment was adopted to serve the ends of defense against crime. I daresay, neither have you. Tedster clearly hasn’t.
And you wanna know it is that they didn’t give a flip about the right to bear arms for personal defense? It’s because the firearms available at the time were utterly useless for defense against a criminal attacker. The whole crime-driven, self-defense rationale for the Second Amendment is a latter-day invention with no basis in any “original intent” of the framers. In a subject fraught with dishonesty on both sides, that “intent” is one more bit of nonsense that should not be tolerated in rational debate.
Unless you have evidence that show otherwise, I will contninue to conclude, quite reasonably, that the total lack of evidence they were concerned about thieves, murderers, and riff-raff means the founders were not motivated by same when they ratified the Second Amendment.
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…
Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to
prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
— Jefferson’s “Commonplace Book,” 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare
Again, any damn fool (the level of which you are apparently unable to attain) realizes the framers of our constitution recongnized that firearms represent freedom of the highest sort.
The framers intent is well known by anyone who wishes to understand this. Cecil himself understands this and made no bones about it. Good try, Minty, thanks for playing, though.
Dicitonary.com defines arm as "A weapon, especially a firearm "
Has there ever been a court decision or discussion of whether the 2nd Amendment applies to weapons other than firearms, such as knives?
Nice try, Teddy-boy, but Thomas Jefferson did not make that statement. According to what I found in a simple google search, all Jefferson did there was quote the statement of an Italian guy named Cesare Beccara. Nor, quite obviously, did he quote it in re: anything to do with the Second Amendment, which wasn’t even proposed for almost two more decades.
Naturally, the gun nut sites where it appears never place the quote in any sort of context that would indicate what Jefferson thought of the idea. I’ve quoted you several times in this thread. Yet you would be a damn fool to ascribe to me any sort of agreement with your ridiculous assertions.
Hence, I repeat the accusation of dumbfuckery. Run along now and play in traffic.