"Oren" wrote in message
What does the LAW say?
The law certainly doesn't say, as many seem to believe, that gun possession
can have no regulation attached to it. It allows for reasonable
restrictions on the use and possession of firearms. Several important cases
have yet to reach the Supreme Court and with CJ Roberts' recent swing vote
approving the Affordable Care Act, it's not certain how those cases will be
decided. Roberts seems sensitive to what legal scholars write about him and
they were quite unkind in the wake of Citizen's United.
What disturbs me when reading the actual Heller decision, and not some left
or right wing site's review of it, are the glissandos around some serious
points of law. The "well-regulated militia" clause of the 2nd Amendment all
but disappeared in Heller. I predict it will reappear if and when the
makeup of the court changes. There's nothing resembling a "well-regulated
militia" when Aunt Shirley picks up a 9mm pistol at the local gun shop and
gets a permit to carry it. There are many other parts of the plurality
decision that give me pause.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
The Second Amendment's drafting history, while of dubious interpretive
worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally
referred to an individual right to bear arms.
It worries me when a SCOTUS decision says that the creation history of the
amendment is not of much worth and then they seem to go ahead and rely on
it. Originalists commit the error of extracting information without
maintaining its relevance to the time it was written. While the internment
of the Japanese during WWII strikes some people as horrible now, back then
it was perfectly logical and acceptable behavior. The more recent SCOTUS
gun case was:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonal...ity_of_Chicago
In a discussion on the day of the ruling Wayne LaPierre of the NRA and
Paul Helmke of the Brady Center both agreed that the Court's ruling
protected specifically against bans on handguns for self-protection in the
home. But as to the general question of gun laws not covered in McDonald; a
large number of lawsuits are needed in order to determine whether any other
existing gun regulations might also be unconstitutional. Wayne LaPierre
expressed caution that the NRA has "a lot of work ahead" attempting to
overturn other gun control regulations not covered by McDonald, and Paul
Helmke said that he expected that the NRA is "going to lose most of those
lawsuits".
The Miller case, below, which many believe Heller incorrectly relied on, is
fascinating for a number of reasons. It concerns the National Firearms Act,
passed largely in response to the infamous "St. Valentine's Day Massacre"
(I've always said that Federal laws are usually a response to bad actions by
some person or corporate entity - whether they actually accomplish their
goal is another story.)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/fed.../174/case.html
Miller's holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those "in common
use at the time" finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting
the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.
The writings in the Miller case raise an important question: What did the
Framers mean when they wrote "a well-regulated militia"? The US had no
standing army at the time of the Constitutional Convention. The only
military force it could muster (times have certainly changed!) were
able-bodied citizens armed with their OWN weapons. Scalia and his
conservative brethren brushed aside the clause "a well-regulated militia"
that the "right to keep and bear arms" is considered subordinate to, almost
completely dismissing the state of affairs that existed when the Bill of
Rights was drafted. A strict reading interpretation of "militia" (all
able-bodied men) means women can't own guns. (-:
Personally, I think Scalia never recovered from being passed over for Chief
Justice.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171694,00.html
No, he didn't really *want* the honor of a lasting judicial legacy of being
the highest judge in the land. Sure, Nino.
Now he seems determined to pull the country as far right as he thought the
Warren court pulled the country far left. I just see it as part of the
great pendulum of social change. This last mass shooting seems to be
different from the rest. Will it stay in the headlines long enough to
change things? That remains to be seen.
The NRA certainly didn't do well with its "no questions" press conference
which showed a remarkable lack of media smarts. There's nothing journos
hate more than being called to a press conference which was really a press
release which they could have stayed home to watch on the net. He made a
lot of media enemies that day and reminded me of another pair of guys that
did the same. Richard Nixon and Spiro "nattering nabobs of negativism"
Agnew. To return the favor many news orgs published pictures of LaPierre
looking more than slightly insane. Conservative papers, BTW.
All it will take, I think, is for the rate of mass murders to stay the same
or increase for people to start clamoring for legislation to reverse the
changes that the NRA has championed in the various statehouses across the
country. If a bunch of dead gangsters inspired the 1934 NFA, 20 dead first
graders has to have some effect.
--
Bobby G.