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School Shooting in... Finland. 7 killed (pg. 11)
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| Trancer-X |
I think this was well written.
Armed for Liberty
Alan Gura and Robert A. Levy
03-17-2008
Two hundred years ago, the rights secured by the first 10 amendments were so widely accepted that many of the Framers considered a Bill of Rights unnecessary. Yet the Anti-Federalists wisely insisted on a Bill of Rights, fearing that fundamental tenets of individual liberty might later be deemed inconvenient, impractical, or even dangerous.
The Constitution’s words have since weathered constant assaults from miscreants who would suppress speech, control our private lives, or deny due process — usually in the name of public safety and the greater good.
The prohibitionist attack on Second Amendment rights is thus familiar, even if the arguments against the right to keep and bear arms are demonstrably false. In District of Columbia v. Heller — a case in which we will present oral argument on Tuesday, March 18 — the Supreme Court should recognize some basic truths.
The Second Amendment is an integral part of the Bill of Rights. Read in the same familiar, straightforward manner as other constitutional provisions, it secures a meaningful individual right, a sphere of individual autonomy into which the state may not intrude without good reason and great care. Acknowledging this right does not spell anarchy, but it does mean that law-abiding adult citizens are entitled to keep ordinary functional firearms, in their own homes, for self-defense.
Gun prohibitionists bristle at the notion that private gun ownership is a social good, but their policy arguments are both unpersuasive and irrelevant.
Drug-warriors and terror-warriors advance similar arguments for truncating Fourth Amendment rights. Some moralists have little use for the establishment clause. Others would compromise the free exercise clause. But courts do not declare those constitutional provisions obsolete or undesirable.
Nor should the Supreme Court treat the Second Amendment as if it did not exist. First and foremost, the Supreme Court resolves questions of law — and as a matter of law, Heller is not a close call.
THE PEOPLE’S RIGHT
The Second Amendment guarantees a “right of the people.” The “people” protected by the Second Amendment, as well as by the First and Fourth Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, are all the same: individual members of the American community.
Recognizing that truism, the city and its fellow prohibitionists have abandoned the “pure” collective-rights Second Amendment theory — which secures only a right of states to arm an organized militia. Instead the city has adopted the “sophisticated” or “hybrid,” but equally wrong, collectivist view: that the Second Amendment guarantees rights to individuals, but only when they are serving in a state-controlled military organization.
Imagine a right — intended, in part, as a deterrent to oppressive government — that can be exercised only when, where, and in the manner that government directs.
The collectivist vision seeks support by claiming, first, that “bear arms” has an exclusively military meaning. Yet “bear arms” was often used in a nonmilitary context. Various 18th century state constitutions secured the people’s right “to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state,” including Pennsylvania in 1776 and Kentucky in 1792. And James Madison, author of the Second Amendment, introduced a hunting bill in the 1785 Virginia Legislature, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, which differentiated between “bearing a gun” privately and doing so “whilst performing military service.” Other examples of “bearing arms” appear throughout framing-era literature and legislative enactments — too many to support the prohibitionists’ narrow views.
Moreover, gun prohibitionists conveniently ignore the word “keep,” which plainly relates to nonmilitary activity. “Keep” and “bear” in the Second Amendment are different concepts, like the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of “speedy and public” trials. Keeping a handgun in a D.C. home is not the same as bearing a weapon on the District’s streets. Heller is about the former, not the latter.
A CITIZEN MILITIA
What, then, of the Second Amendment’s preamble, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”?
Again, the prohibitionist view depends on misconstruction of the words. Properly construed, “militia” is far broader than a state-organized military unit. That term, referenced throughout the Constitution, was understood to comprise ordinary citizens possessing their own arms and able to come together in time of need to restore order.
The “militia system,” declared the Supreme Court in United States v. Miller (1939), “implied the general obligation of all adult male inhabitants to possess arms, and, with certain exceptions, to cooperate in the work of defence.” Citizens were “expected to appear bearing arms of the kind in common use, supplied by themselves.”
The militia did not depend on state organization. Indeed, during the Revolution, the Royal Governors’ official provincial militia clashed with the “independent” militia organized by patriotic neighbors. The patriots’ militia — decidedly not under state control — were crucial to American victory.
Americans viewed their ability to act as militia as the final check upon tyrannical usurpation of lawful authority — a point reiterated by every notable legal scholar from the time of the Second Amendment’s adoption and a hundred years thereafter. Legal scholars St. George Tucker, William Rawle, Joseph Story, and Thomas Cooley all understood the Second Amendment to secure a private, individual right to arms and the militia to be society’s last resort against government oppression.
George Mason, who organized an independent “well regulated” (meaning, well-supplied and well-trained) militia company, cautioned that a private right to keep and bear arms was essential to the people’s service as militia. “The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless — by disarming them.”
Of course, the Second Amendment’s militia purpose is hardly exclusive. That the Framers secured an individual right to arms, distinct from any militia function, is not surprising. By 1776, English law had “settled and determined” that “a man may keep a gun for the defence of his house and family,” as stated in Mallock v. Eastly (1744).
The King’s attempt to check his restless American subjects by disarming them backfired, inflaming the revolutionary spirit of Americans, who fervently believed they had a right to keep and bear arms for self defense. Indeed, the Second Continental Congress declared the disarmament of Boston a cause for taking up arms against the British. Fear of individual disarmament was a common revolutionary theme.
To be sure, some Anti-Federalists agitated for constitutional amendments that would have secured the states’ ability to maintain military forces as a counterweight to the federal army. But those proposals were debated and expressly rejected by the First Congress. To the Framers, the Second Amendment was good enough: It guaranteed people power, not state power.
A SIMPLE CASE
Heller is controversial not because there are good arguments endorsing a collectivist view of the Second Amendment, but because anti-gun advocates are unreconciled to the Framers’ insistence on securing an individual right to keep and bear arms.
On its facts, Heller is remarkably simple. Because Dick Heller challenges a categorical ban on handguns, as well as a near-total prohibition on exercise of Second Amendment rights relating to long guns, the outcome of the case does not depend on applying a specific constitutional standard of review.
If, however, the Court were to declare the operative standard, the only standard grounded in logic and precedent is strict scrutiny: Government must have a compelling state interest to regulate firearms, and its regulations must be narrowly tailored to achieve the stated aims and in the manner least restrictive of the fundamental right at stake.
After all, an individual right to arms can have life-or-death consequences. And self-defense — exercised on behalf of individuals or as “necessary to the security of a free State” — is clearly “so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental [and] implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed,” to quote Washington v. Glucksberg (1997).
Strict scrutiny would not endanger the nation’s basic, common sense gun laws. The government undoubtedly has a compelling interest in regulating guns — an interest that easily sustains the ban on felons possessing firearms, instant background checks for gun buyers, and sentence enhancements for using a gun in commission of a crime.
But D.C.-style prohibition, or regulations that effectively bar possession in the home of functional firearms commonly used for self-defense, cannot be squared with any plausible reading of the Second Amendment.
For its part, the city concedes rational basis is an improper standard, but instead offers “reasonableness” — as determined by the legislature and rubber-stamped by the courts. This is merely rational basis review by another name, and no more legitimate or protective of the fundamental right at stake — a standard pulled from thin air into which the Second Amendment would thereby evaporate.
The U.S. solicitor general purports to invoke so-called “intermediate” scrutiny, but in the same breath requests a remand of the case to determine whether the nation’s most oppressive laws might yet be legitimized after additional years of litigation. That the solicitor general does not believe Washington’s gun laws self-evidently burden Second Amendment rights tells us all we need to know about his proposed standard of review.
The facts are clear, the issues are clear, and the Supreme Court, for the first time in nearly 70 years, will have an opportunity to declare unambiguously that the Second Amendment means what it says.
Alan Gura is a partner at Gura & Possessky in Alexandria, Va. Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Gura, Levy, and Clark Neily are co-counsel to Heller.
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticl...d=1205232254151
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticl...d=1205232254151 |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
Trancer X went on wikipedia and cherry-picked quotes that suited his need. If i had time i could find the highly relevant quotes that speak the other way. If you want to hear the opinions of people much smarter than you or I, perhaps you should read the supreme court merit briefs from the link i posted on the previous page, or the one from the link below (try page 31 forward).
Supreme Court Brief |
Actually, I have in fact read quite a bit of the Federalist Papers so I do have an excellent idea about how our Founding Fathers felt at the time. It was some time ago that I read through them and although my memory might rock, it's not photographic so I wasn't able to cognitively manifest them in their entirety for you. Anyway, both Yahoo and Wiki are usually just quick sources to search through so that's what I went with.
In summary, our Founding Fathers were elated but still pissed off because they thought that they had fleed those expert financial oppressors for good. They knew that those tricksters would do anything to take America back so they made it a specific point to elaborate upon the need for individual gun owners who could easily form a militia to defend their local property and their land.
George Washington didn't even believe that we should have standing armies, just armed militia members. lol
We don't have militia's today but we definitely do have A LOT of individual gun owners who could basically perform in a similar manner if our streets were somehow invaded by enemy troops.
Anyway, I don't know of too many people who are much smarter than myself so I don't usually dwell on other's opinions for too long. I do know many people who are better educated in a formal or institutional manner but not actually smarter in terms of cognitive ability or even overall breadth of knowledge. I'm a freaking nerd and I'm proud of it. |
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| jerZ07002 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
THE PEOPLE’S RIGHT
The Second Amendment guarantees a “right of the people.” The “people” protected by the Second Amendment, as well as by the First and Fourth Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, are all the same: individual members of the American community.
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That bold statement is a stretch. The first amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
How can an individual assemble? The individual can only assemble as part of a group. To say that the right to assemble is a right of an individual member of the community is hardly accurate. The right to assemble is the right of americans as a whole because without other people you can't assemble.
Furthermore, the tenth amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
That clearly is not a delegation of power to individuals. Again, the author is inaccurate when he suggests that "people" in this amendment refers to individuals. This amendment refers to a reservation of powers to the states or the people. The people was proper in this case because the United States had lands that were not organized into states. |
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| jerZ07002 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Anyway, I don't know of too many people who are much smarter than myself so I don't usually dwell on other's opinions for too long. I do know many people who are better educated in a formal or institutional manner but not actually smarter in terms of cognitive ability or even overall breadth of knowledge. I'm a freaking nerd and I'm proud of it. |
:rolleyes:
so what? What does that have to do with anything? I know people far smarter than you and me, and they have differing opinions and are wrong on occasion. btw...it's very telling when someone has to convince people they are smart by telling them that "fact."
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
We don't have militia's today but we definitely do have A LOT of individual gun owners who could basically perform in a similar manner if our streets were somehow invaded by enemy troops.
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while we are all waiting for a foreign army to invade so we can use our guns to defends ourselves as intended by the framers, our cities are being terrorized by handgun violence. And I don't want to hear, "guns don't kill people, people kill people," because that's bull, guns make killing people far easier. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
That bold statement is a stretch. The first amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
How can an individual assemble? The individual can only assemble as part of a group. To say that the right to assemble is a right of an individual member of the community is hardly accurate. The right to assemble is the right of americans as a whole because without other people you can't assemble.
Furthermore, the tenth amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
That clearly is not a delegation of power to individuals. Again, the author is inaccurate when he suggests that "people" in this amendment refers to individuals. This amendment refers to a reservation of powers to the states or the people. The people was proper in this case because the United States had lands that were not organized into states. |
Please don't respond to me with a non sequitur. That was just horrible. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
:rolleyes:
so what? What does that have to do with anything? I know people far smarter than you and me, and they have differing opinions and are wrong on occasion. |
I was simply responding to your post where you said,
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
If you want to hear the opinions of people much smarter than you or I, perhaps you should read... |
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| jerZ07002 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Please don't respond to me with a non sequitur. That was just horrible. |
please speak english. An intelligent person would know that it is improper (as well as unclear and pretentious) to insert random Latin phrases into a sentence.
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
I was simply responding to your post where you said, |
and i stand by my statement. Without question, partners at Akin Gump and O'Melveny & Meyers are far more intelligent than anyone on this forum. |
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| Trancer-X |
Holy cannoli!! I actually agree with Cheney on something!!! Niiice!
Respondents’ Amici
February 12th, 2008 by Clark Neily
Washington, D.C.—Last night’s deadline saw the filing of 46 amicus briefs—including one with more than half the members of Congress as signatories, and another on behalf of 31 states—in the Supreme Court in support of citizens challenging Washington D.C.’s gun ban. Oral argument in the case, which will decide for the first time whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right of law-abiding citizens to keep guns in their homes for self-defense, is scheduled for March 18.
The Supreme Court has not taken a Second Amendment case in nearly 70 years, and the meaning of the Amendment, which states that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” remains unsettled. Given the sparse legal precedent and the magnitude of the issue, amicus briefs are likely to play an especially important role in the Court’s deliberations.
“Washington, D.C.’s 30-year-old gun ban has accomplished nothing except to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said Alan Gura, lead attorney for the citizens challenging the gun ban. “We are gratified by the number and the quality of the amicus briefs supporting the Second Amendment, and we are confident that this case will lead to the demise of the Nation’s most draconian—and counterproductive—gun laws.”
Amicus briefs supporting the right of law-abiding individuals to keep guns in their home for self-defense include the following:
55 Senators, 250 Representatives, and Dick Cheney as President of the U.S. Senate—A bi-partisan group of legislators, representing more than half of the U.S. Congress, along with Vice President Dick Cheney as President of the U.S. Senate, offered a ringing endorsement of the Second Amendment, explaining that Congress has always understood the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms to be an individual right belonging to “the people,” and arguing that Congress has always been guided by that understanding when considering firearms regulations.
31 States—Led by Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, 31 states filed a brief explaining that “the individual right to keep and bear arms is protected by the United States Constitution and the constitutions of forty-four states.” The 31 amici states also note that “the District of Columbia’s categorical gun ban is markedly out of step with the judgment of the legislatures of the fifty states, all of which protect the right of private citizens to own handguns.”
Military Officers—Washington, D.C.’s Wiley Rein law firm submitted brief on behalf of high-ranking retired military officers representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and National Guard filed a brief explaining that the “collectivist view” of the Second Amendment advanced by the District and its amici in this case “would undermine both military preparedness and national defense.”
Criminologists, Scholars, and Physicians—Several briefs challenge key empirical claims made by D.C. and its amici in support of the gun ban. For example, despite soaring murder rates and its recurring status as “murder capital” of the country, the city claims its handgun ban has actually reduced the number of homicides that would otherwise have occurred. But amicus briefs submitted by various criminologists, scholars, and physicians—including Harvard medical school professors and the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons—utterly demolish that claim, showing that the studies upon which it is based are deeply flawed. Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that those studies provided “no conclusive evidence with respect to the impact of [handgun] bans on crime and violence” and were “not tenable.”
Goldwater Institute challenging the Solicitor General’s “remand” argument—The Goldwater Institute filed a brief taking to task the Solicitor General and the Justice Department for suggesting that the Supreme Court should duck the question of whether D.C.’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment and instead remand the case to the lower courts to reconsider that question based on a different, lower standard of constitutional scrutiny than the one traditionally applied in evaluating government regulations of “fundamental” rights. Contrary to the Solicitor General’s position, a remand in this case would not be consistent with the Court’s customary practice and would not serve any useful purpose.
“Errors” brief correcting common myths and misrepresentations about the Second Amendment—A brief filed by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and others offers the Justices a “one-stop shopping” guide to the many myths, misrepresentations, and outright falsehoods offered by D.C. and its supporters in seeking to render the Second Amendment a dead letter. Among the 18 different errors documented by the brief is the District’s claim that it merely bans handguns while permitting home possession of functional firearms for self-defense. Documenting the District’s own conduct over the years—which includes prosecuting people for engaging in lawful self-defense using forbidden weapons—the brief shows how utterly baseless and disingenuous that claim is.
http://dcguncase.com/blog/2008/02/12/respondents-amici |
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| jerZ07002 |
| you're surprised Dick Cheney is against the DC gun ban? really? |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
please speak english. An intelligent person would know that it is improper (as well as unclear and pretentious) to insert random Latin phrases into a sentence.
and i stand by my statement. Without question, partners at Akin Gump and O'Melveny & Meyers are far more intelligent than anyone on this forum. |
I'm sorry. I learned that in the tenth grade. You might be better off if you had a dictionary handy when you enter this part of TrancEaddict, just as it says in the description on the main forum page.
Basically, your argument doesn't even fit into the topic.
Here, I'll do some quick leg work for you.
Main Entry: non se·qui·tur
Pronunciation: \ˈnän-ˈse-kwə-tər also -ˌtu̇r\
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, it does not follow
Date: 1540
1: an inference that does not follow from the premises; specifically : a fallacy resulting from a simple conversion of a universal affirmative proposition or from the transposition of a condition and its consequent
2: a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said
I stand by my statement. I sincerely doubt that there are too many lawyers who could compete with some of us in here on a truly intellectual level. I have several friends and a couple of close relatives who are lawyers and I can tell you right now that studying and practicing law doesn't exactly require any kind of amazing mental acuity or capacity, mostly just a lot of time and effort. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
you're surprised Dick Cheney is against the DC gun ban? really? |
Yep. He's pretty much like a close associate of David Rockefeller's. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by jerZ07002
:rolleyes:
so what? What does that have to do with anything? I know people far smarter than you and me, and they have differing opinions and are wrong on occasion. btw...it's very telling when someone has to convince people they are smart by telling them that "fact." |
I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, personally. I was simply making a statement to your otherwise underhanded, goading insinuation that we should be listening to people who are smarter than ourselves. Like I really want to sit here and listen to that tripe.
I like how you edited your post after the fact, too.
How disingenuous can you be? |
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