Guns, 2nd Amendment, This Summer . . .

PopeGideon · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2008 Posts: 158

For all those who don't follow the docket of the Supreme Court, they will be taking a 2nd amendment case this Summer.

A brief lesson in the Constitution, and then where we're at.

The Constitution's Bill of Rights was originally intended as a protection against Federal Govt. action. 99.99% of Americans don't know that.

In other words, in 1801 if Georgia passed a law banning free speech in Georgia, a Georgian would have had no legal argument that the law was unconstitutional. At least not at the federal level. If the Georgian constitution said something about it, that would govern.

But, for a clear hypothetical, if South Carolina amended its constitution in 1801 to remove the free speech provision, and then it banned all public speaking in South Carolina, that would have been it - no right to speak in South Carolina was intended to be in the federal constitution.

Then some years passed and the Supreme Court, caught up in the ever expanding Federal Government movement, decided to "incorporate" various amendments. What this meant is that the court decided to extend the protection of the Federal Constitution to individuals. The net effect was that, for those amendments that were incorporated, citizens of a state were protected from actions of their state that violated the Federal Constitution's protection.

For example, after the 1st amendment was "incorporated" by the Supreme Court, a state no longer had the right to restrict free speech, religion, etcetera beyond what the Federal Constitution guaranteed.

The incorporation continued over the years until most of the key Bill of Rights provisions had been extended to protect individuals from any government action, whether state or federal, and not just federal, as had been originally intended.

Flash forward to Summer 2008.

The 2nd amendment has never been "incorporated". As it stands now, your right to "bear arms", whatever that means, is only a protection against Federal action.

Theoretically, if a state simply banned all guns, they would be well within their rights according to the original 2nd amendment intent, which was to prevent the federal government from restricting the right to bear arms.

This is the key part, so pay attention.

There are two big issues that are probably going to get answered this summer by the Supreme Court -

1. Will the Supreme Court "incorporate" the 2nd amendment and declare that it is an "individual" liberty that protects people from state action?

2. Will the Supreme Court, notwithstanding the answer to 1, decide that the strange language of the 2nd amendment allows only "militias", and does not apply to individuals.

There are innumerable possible outcomes.

I DO NOT find it coincidental that this case is being decided on the eve of what looks to be the worst civil disruptions the U.S. has seen since the 1800s.

Here is my prediction.

I predict that the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 or 6-3 decision, will hold that the 2nd Amendment only applies to militias, and, as such, the incorporation issue is moot because, unlike due process and freedom of speech, the 2nd amendment is not directed to individual rights in the first place, but rather is directed to the right of a State to maintain a militia.

Most people will miss the chilling implication of that decision.

The implication is that, while the Federal Government will not be able to restrict the right of States to form militias, it WILL absolutely be able to regulate individual gun ownership.

When the next FF OP hits or when the bread lines are getting out of control, the next Patriot act will have the Supreme Court's authorization to restrict private ownership of guns.

The legislation will read something like this . . .

Any explosive projectile weapon possessed by any individual in the U.S. is immediately made subject to forfeiture upon demand unless the individual is a member of a certified State Militia and said weapon is registered for use in said Militia.

It goes without saying that gun registration and ballistic forensic samples will be implemented first.

Always a bit at a time, never all at once.

Supreme Court votes . . .

All the idiot liberal vote the way I predict, because they think guns kill people. I wonder if they also think that boards waterboard people?

Breyer, Stevens, Ginsberg (Marx in Drag), Souter

So which of the right wingers do they pick up and why?

Either Roberts or Kennedy.

Shockingly, I think Roberts. Why? Because he was appointed by the great Fascist, and I think that, quite differently from the liberals, he will vote to yield the power to the Feds.

Maybe both, making it 6-3

Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, I'd guess, are voting gun rights.

In any case, view that result as the beginning of the end.

A few more school shootings, a FF attack on a mall, some gruesome pics of apple pie kids splattered all over the food court, and they'll come for the hand guns.

A high profile assassination, and they come for the rifles and shotguns.

Funny. I remember an interview with Governor Ventura a few years back. Some whiny NY liberal was asking him why, after Colombine or some such thing, Ventura would not vote to ban handguns.

He responded, "because guns protect us from a government that tries to seize power from us."

This snivelling little crap everything-I-hate-about-liberals prick of a dickwad sniggers and says, "oh come on! You can't be serious that you believe that is a possibility."

I wonder what the worm would say now?

dinopello

Is this the DC handgun ban case ? Should be interesting. DC is not a state for one. If your prediction comes true, what is a militia ? Could a state declare that all residents over the age of whatever are part of the militia reserve ? I hope it doesn't come to that but it seems like there are options that certainly would be excercised by many states.

My prediction is that the SC will uphold the decision of the lower courts against the outright ban and maybe make some statement that reasonable regulation is OK. Like, in DC you can have a firearm now just can't have it loaded and it may have to be trigger locked. Yes, I don;t think that's reasonable either but the SC might use something like that as an example of allowable extreme regulation.

aflurry · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 806

bobaloo · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 468

Couple of points.

First, the term "militia" in the Constitution is clearly defined, and it does not mean what people commonly think of as a militia today. At the time, it meant every able bodied male 18 and older, in other words, everyone thought of as a citizen at the time. The decision will not hinge on the militia issue. Many people are under the impression that the word refers to the National Guard, which of course wasn't created until 140 years later.

Second, you've forgotten about state constitutions, many of which actually provide more protection than the federal constitution. For example, here in Oregon, off the top of my head, it says something along the lines of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms for the defense of themselves and others shall not be infringed," with none of the confusing "militia" language inserted.

PopeGideon · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2008 Posts: 158

Aflurry, great line man! Freaking awesome. I'm going to do my best to remember that. Well done.

As for Dino . . .

Ferretlover

PopeGideon · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2008 Posts: 158

Bobaloo wrote:

PopeGideon · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2008 Posts: 158

NiKfUrY69 · Last edited by NiKfUrY69 on Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

"In DC, you cannot carry a handgun on your person. That is, no concealed carry."

Hmmmm.... No members of Congress or the house or whatever legally carry a piece? In Washington DC?

If we only knew......

<Edit> What we do know about what they (TPTB) will actually do has been demonstrated in NOLA. Hell on earth is occurring and the local police state goes house to house to disarm the home owners. Meanwhile the bangers are trashing the city.

Hmmmm.... take on law abiding citizens, who will probably obey orders to disarm and not shoot back,

-OR-

confront gun toting criminals that would most probably cap their donut packed lard ass.

Mr. Aflurry - all I can say is be patient.

NiK

PopeGideon · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2008 Posts: 158

aflurry · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 28, 2005 Posts: 806

NiKfUrY69

SILENTTODD

Let's read the wording of the Amendment:

"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."

Yes, it talks about a militia. But I see a comma between that and the statement “, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,". Clearly the "right" is endowed to the people, not the Militia.

Any nationwide attempt to eliminate the private possession of fire arms would, I believe, be widely and actively disobeyed. And I believe would bring down any administration attempting it.
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Skeptical scrutiny in both Science and Religion is the means by which deep thoughts are winnowed from deep nonsense-Carl Sagan

Cloud9 · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 955

This is a liberal scholar’s examination of what the second amendment means. It is his opinion that the amendment protects an individual right and is designed specifically to safe keep the citizenry’s ability to resist by armed revolt the tyranny of our own government should it ever go mad.

http://www.guncite.com/journals/embar.html

Why this opinion matters. This is not some op-ed piece written by a political hack in some hometown newspaper. This is the Yale Law Review. The oracle of the high temple of the liberal left.

The power of the Supreme Court to write law was established during the Jefferson Administration in Marbury v. Madison.

The ability of individual states to resist federal authority was ended at Appomattox.

The application of the Bill of Rights as a measure of state and local law was established by the 14th Amendment.

The notion that the National Guard was the militia as envisioned by the Framers evaporated at Little Rock.

If the Supreme Court gets this wrong, the attack dogs of gun confiscation will be released on the most heavily armed population in history. The social contract between the people of the United States and the Government of the United States will have been breached. The question is: Will that population go quietly into the night or will they stand up like men?

In the words of Martin Niemoller, who was a noted German Lutheran priest during
the Holocaust,

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak
out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I
did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak
out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Let us hope that the Court gets this right.

green_achers

No one here's a bigger supporter of 2A rights than me, but Pope, your arguments are circular and very confused as to the history and just a little bit hysterical as to the rest. The BOR may well have originally primarily acted as a check on Federal power up until the 14th A was amended to the Constitution, but the repeated use of the term "the people" in the BOR and the language you cited above in Article IV clearly indicate that the FFs intended it as an individual right to apply within the states.

It's true, as you state, that the term "militia" is not defined in the Constitution, but there are many quotes which I don't have at my fingertips from the Federalist Papers and other writings of the authors of the Constitution, what they thought the term meant. The definition that bobaloo gave was the generally held definition at the time. There's no reason to think it would have meant anything else when used in the Constitution.

So I'm a bit confused as to how you would like this to turn out. If the SCOTUS rules that the 2A applies to individuals in the states, doesn't that consolidate that nasty power grab by the EEEEvil Federal government over the states?

You seem to mostly want to vent your emotions about this issue, and that's fine, but it comes off as pretty abusive to me, and it doesn't do a heck of a lot to mobilize anyone here to do whatever we might be able to do to affect the outcome. Got any suggestions?
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WWJD? What would Joel Salatin do?