Submit to what ? The laws of the land? The Judiciary that controls them? Common sense?
Guilty as charged.
Sorry, but I rather think that you confuse your personal interpretation with the actual meaning of the constitution. But it is telling that you care more for wifebeaters than their wives.
a)I assume what you wanted to say was that it has been shown to your satisfaction. That’s a very different thing from having been shown. That the incidence increases with exposure is simple statistics, and it would require very strong proof that such is not the case. Unfortunately, the gun lobby has a track record longer than the Mississipi of drawing conclusions not supported by the data.
b)What should be kept in mind is that one single gun nut hoarding dozens of arms doesn’t really increase the exposure as much as dozens of families having one firearm each.
Sorry, but no such thing has been proven from the data. A)No word on the gun supply in there b)No word on the gun supply IN THE REGIONS where crime increased and c), and please, remember that, so that you never bring this frivolous argument again, “Not to mention all the states that have enacted CCW laws” is a non-argument. It shows neither that that had an effect on the actual number of guns there, nor is there any evidence that it had any effect on the crime rate. No. Really. “More Guns, Less Crime” is not evidence. It’s a humongous mess of jumping to conclusions not supported by the data published as a book because it would be shredded in peer review, as the Lott/Mustard study was. Heck, even Kleck believes MGLC is intenable.
Please, stop just spooling the same old arguments. Simply because two things seem to correlate when tweaking the data the right way implies no causal relationship whatsoever.
No, you liberal idiot. Razorsharp’s personal interpretation IS the actual meaning of the Constitution. Forget law school, years of legal practice, appointment to the federal judiciary, and repeated research. I’m backing the redneck with the library card who can’t decide what his name is.
This is a little off-topic, but Razorsharp posted:
“Name one law within the Constitution, other than the qualifications for holding federal office, that was to be a restriction on ‘we the people’.”
Well, there is one: Article III, Section 3:
Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Clause 2: The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Now, I don’t know why the Founders included a constitutional definition of treason (and special procedural rules for conviction thereof) when they did not provide such a definition of any other crime. My guess is that, in their view, “treason” was a charge that had often been politically abused by whoever was in power in the United Kingdom, to put down domestic opponents and rivals, and they wanted to make sure nothing like that happened here. But I don’t have any cite for that.
Look, this whole thread is getting off-topic. I thought it was supposed to be a debate about what the Second Amendment MEANS. Whether a person has some kind of natural, extralegal, preconstitutional right to bear arms is a different question and should be discussed in a different thread. (Whether the Second Amendment is a good idea at all, or should be excised from the Constitution, also is a different question, and I’ve got a thread going on it in the GD forum right now: “Resolved: The Second Amendment should be repealed.”)
And what the Second Amendment means is, more than anything else, a legal question. I’m a lawyer, and when the Supreme Court rules on a question of constitutional law, I sometimes disagree with their reasoning. (For instance, I’m pro-choice, but I cannot see how the Constitution creates the zone of personal privacy that was the underpinning of the Roe v. Wade decision.) But I have to acknowledge that, if the Constitution means anything, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it is authoritative and will have to do until the court changes its mind, or until we the people change the Constitution.
That doesn’t mean we can’t debate what the Second Amendment was really meant to accomplish, and whether its authors intended anything like our present situation. That is interesting and important – and it just might produce some arguments and insights a lawyer/doper might one day use in a watershed Second Amendment case. But only history is relevant to it to that discussion. Philosophy, particularly the philosophy of “natural rights,” is not relevant.
If we do decide to change the Constitution, then the question of “natural rights” might be very relevant to that decision.
No, how about tyranny draped in the cloak of “authority” and decorated with a pretty ribbon of “case law”.
You know, from reading previous posts of yours, I considered you to be somewhat intelligent, even though, liberal.
Well, you fixed that.
Obviously, I didn’t read enough of them. You’re pretty much typical.
Sort of like the right to bear arms is dependent on having access to arms and ammo?
Look, just cut to the chase and detail exactly how a conclusion was reached that the Lautenberg Amendment did not violate the prohibition against ex post facto law.
I ain’t got time to read your case law examples. Enlighten us.
If I thought for one second that explaining it to you would make any difference at all in your opinion, I’d be more than happy to. And your complete unwillingness to take time out of your busy, busy day to do a modicum of research before making a legal assertion, combined with your unwillingness to actually look up the cases when they are provided for you, only further advances my misgivings about wasting my time. However, because there are people, other than you, who seem to read your threads, I’ll give you some quotes from the cases.
As the United States Supreme Court stated in 1997
The illegal action covered by the Lautenberg Amendment is not the domestic violence conviction, but the continued possession of a firearm. The illegal act that is regulated is the possession of the firearm. Had the Lautenberg Amendment made it illegal to possess a firearm PRIOR TO IT’S ENACTMENT (i/e if the law increased the penalty for a prior illegal possession charge) , then it would have violated the Ex Post Facto Law. As it is, it only makes the current possession of a firearm illegal.
As the federal court in U.S. v. Boyd stated:
Hmmm…I’m going to have to agree with Razorsharp on this one, pending more info. Sounds to me like additional punishment has been tacked onto a prior domestic violence conviction - the punishment being the removal of the right to bear arms.
This - Consequently, this statute does not impose a heavier or additional penalty for the earlier domestic violence conviction, but rather imposes authorized punishment for criminal conduct that has occurred after the passage of the law - seems like doublespeak to me. Unless an arms ban was enacted across the board, there certainly does seem to be an additional penalty added to the conviction.
Look, Razorsharp is trying to make a case that the Lautenberg Amendment violates the constitutional ban on ex post facto legislation – which is arguable, I suppose, even if the federal courts don’t agree – but what’s it got to do with this thread? To stay on topic, you should be arguing that the Lautenberg Amendment violates the Second Amendment.
I figured if it was worth rebutting it was worth defending, but I agree that the Lautenberg argument does not support the OP.
BrainGlutton: Stay on topic in this thread? You make me laugh.
Ok. Here are some numbers.
In this report from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics at: http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/ there were 12,740,000 pre-purchase handgun checks between 1994 and 1998 of which 312,000 were rejected for all causes. This would mean that the number of handguns in circulation in the U.S. increased by 12,428,000 over that five year period. In the United States there are approx. one million firearms of all types confiscated every year of which ~65% are handguns or 3,250,000 in the five year period. That would mean that the approx. overall increase in the number of handguns in the United States would be 9,178,000 for the five year period.
It is estimated that there are ~65 million handguns in the U.S. so the net increase of handguns was 9.07%. In the same period, homicide rates dropped 2.7%. Source: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
1994 9.0
1995 8.2
1996 7.4
1997 6.8
1998 6.3
AN INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF FIREARMS DOES NOT CAUSE AN INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF HOMICIDES. (or accidents or suicides)
Accidents:
1994 1,356
1995 1,225
1996 1,134
1997 981
1998 866
Suicides:
1994 18,765
1995 18,503
1996 18.166
1997 17,566
1998 17,424
(Of course, the numbers above don’t include the increase in rifles and shotguns, but you get the point)
My comment on CCW was in regards to your statement about how more guns means that more arguments will result in more shootings:
This is the argument that is used against CCW laws, but oddly enough it never comes to pass after the law comes into effect. If more people are carrying guns, won’t there be more shootings that have escalated from mere arguments?
In Florida it hasn’t happened:
CCW law was passed in 1987. By 1999 Florida had issued 551,000 permits.
Firearm homicide rates from 94 thru 99 (Couldn’t find numbers quickly for earlier than 94, but these should work) Florida Crime Statistics
Firearm homicide rate changes from previous year (All are negative):
1994 -20.8%
1995 -8.7%
1996 -2.7%
1997 -5.0%
1998 -7.0%
1999 -21.9% (I did find that there were 26,807 new permits between 1998 and 1999)
I suppose I could gather data from all 32 shall issue states but overall the homicide rate in the US is still falling.
I never said that the CCW laws lowered crime. I never claimed that correlation proves causation. You made the claim that the availability of guns directly influenced homicides. All I’m saying is that the gun supply and increased CCW does not increase homicides, accidents or suicides.
PS> I don’t see guns as some kind of magical cure-all. The causes of crime are very complex and there is no simple remedy.
Razorsharp when you speak about the “Framer’s intent” in regards to the First Ten Amendments, specifically in this instance the Second Amendment, which Framer are you talking about? What if the “original intent” of the Framers was very diverse? For example, no two Framers could agree upon whether or not Congress had a general power to tax and spend for the general welfare of the country. There was a very narrow interpretation advanced by James Madison and cited in U.S. v. Butler and relied upon primarily by right wingers today, stating Congress could not tax and spend for the general welfare, and a more liberal construction proposed by Alexander Hamilton and relied upon by FDR and liberal Supreme Court Justices to justify some of the New Deal programs.
Your entire argument assumes there is only one “Framer’s intent” in regards to the Second Amendment but what if there is more than one? What if there were at least two mutually exclusive interpretations to the Second Amendment and one could be used by the liberals to support their proposition for gun control? Your argument begins to go right down the drain if this is true.
What if there isn’t any clear “intent” of the Framer’s? You assume there exists an original intent in regards to the Second Amendment. However, not all amendments have much history for the Court to rely upon and if you have read enough Court opinions you will see the Court observes there is very little history in regards to what the Framer(singular because only 1 man wrote the Second Amendment) actually intended the Second Amendment to mean.
Only one man composed the First Ten Amendments and it was James Madison. He had very little to say about his intent in regards to the second amendment. The courts have in part struggled in defining the Second Amendment because Madison had very little to say in regards to what it means and so did the committee on style. So this “intent” portion of your argument is not as strong as you think, especially since the Framer(s) had very few comments in regards to what it means.
Sorry, but no, it wouldn’t mean that. For it to mean that, it would have to be shown that those confiscated are ALL guns that were gone, and that others were not privately abandoned/destroyed, deliberately or accidentally, i.e. through a fire. It would also have to be shown that all pre-purchase handgun checks that were not rejected in fact led to a purchase, and one that was not in replacement of, but in addition to existing guns.
Sorry, but your numbers don’t show that. The increase in firearm numbers can have happened in areas in which the homicide/accidental death rate did go up, but was overcompensated by the drop in other areas where the number of firearms actually decreased. Until you control for such factors, the data is meaningless. Compelling only if you want to confirm a pre-conceived opinion.
The issue of CCW permits is no indication whatsoever of an increase in the number of guns. It is quite frequently used to legalize already existing conduct.
As I said, it is simply statistics
Yes, that’s all you are saying. Unfortunately, you haven’t produced any evidence whatsoever that the gun supply has actually increased. Which, ironically, is not the least due to the nonexistence of strict gun registration -if it existed, there would be solid data on the actual number of guns out there.
This is an argument that I consider very strange, since Madison did, in fact, elaborate especially on the ‘well regulated militia’ part of the amendment. Madison was in fact, like many of the early presidents and main authors of the constitution, an advocate of a classified so-called ‘select militia’. And earlier, he wrote with Hamilton and Jay in THE FEDERALIST:
Which was prophetic, since it is precisely what happened in the end after opponents of a select militia pushed a universal militia through. People tried every excuse not to have to appear to regular drills, and many states had serious problems with unruly behavior on the way home from the drills, with people drinking in pubs and later firing their guns just for the heck of it, raising false alarms.
Madison, for his part, considered it impossible for such a universal militia to be truly trained enough to be more than a minor nuisance for potential invaders and comply with the standards of training that would make them worthy of the title ‘well-regulated militia’ without seriously hampering the nation’s economic potential. He clearly did not consider that title universally applicable, but dependent on standards that should be defined by law.
It is quite obvious, from your writing, that you are a law student.
As when one speaks of “the Court” when discussing a Court case such as Roe v Wade, one is really referring to the consensus as a whole. As I have spoken of the “Framer’s intent”, I speak of the consensus as a whole. Certainly there was disagreement among the membership of “Framers”, much as there is dissent on the bench of the judiciary. So, in other words, cut the legalistic lingo. You wasted three paragraphs and failed to make any point.
The Amendments don’t really need a history for the Court to rely on. The Amendments are paramount and supercede all post and prior “law”.
The Supreme Court, in going into contortions to “interpret” the Constitution is the technique that the Court uses to legislate from the bench.
See, the Constitution is fairly straight-forward and needs little in the way of interpretation. A more proper role for the Court would be to interpret proposed legislation to make sure that the legislation passes constitutional muster, rather that twisting and perverting the Constitution to facilitate the legislative agenda.