Supreme Court Strikes Down D.C. Gun Ban

OrbitalPower

It does have to do with the thread. I was replying to people who made the statement that runs were a prerequisite to freedom.

It was in completely in context with the line of discussion in the thread.

It clearly had to do with what I was replying to.

It isn't "nonsense" -- I'm very wary of people who advocate guns as a prerequisite for freedom and then advocate absolute tyranny -- and it had everything to do with the comment I was replying to.


I don't believe the constitution gives people the right to own guns. The founders themselves prohibited people from owning guns, and declared they had the "right" to take people's guns away from them in given scenarios (such as being "disaffected with the revolution"). So, you wouldn't have the change the constitution at all to have strict regulation.

I can give you the names of plenty of historians and legal scholars who've written on the context of the issue, noting the second amendment is not an individual right, and they know a lot more about the issue than Penn & Teller.

drankin

Hmmm. Apparently that belief wasn't backed by enough evidence to convince the highest court in the country. I think it's fair to say with credibility that you are technically wrong. And that is going to be the standing fact for many generations to come. But, if one doesn't like that fact there is always Canada right next door...

OrbitalPower

Actually, the court has ruled numerous times on this issue all under the clear interpretation that the Second Amendment does not give an individual the right to own guns, such as US v. Miller.

In recent years the court has underwent conservative "judicial packing" with people like "justice" Roberts and so on, so I regard what they say as irrelevant. The kind of people that would have upheld restrictions on anti-war speech during the two great wars.

Quite obviously, I don't base my beliefs on what Justice Roberts and sexual offenders like Clarence Thomas believe.

I'd take a real scholar any day of the weak.

Cyrus

Really, local hunters from your state who cant take over city council does not really have anything to do with this topic. Its just anecdotal evidence on your part.


Note, I was using the word nonsense not to get a warning for using a stronger word, which I wanted to use. The statement in bold has nothing to do with what were talking about.


What you believe is not what is true. Sorry, but people have had guns since the revolutionary war. Your trying to suddenly change the way things have been for hundres of years doesnt jive.

I'd honestly like to see these opinions, because the US courts have said otherwise the entire time.

D H

Nobody has said that. I, for one, gave up running several years ago. I blew out me knees one time too many.

Oh, you meant guns? It was the original framers of the Constitution who said that.

Believe what you want. You are, however, wrong. If you want to make that so, change the flippin' Constitution. The Constitution says how that can be done. And it isn't by having the courts decide that parts of the Constitution are outmoded. That is our job, not the courts'.

The founders did not prohibit people from owning guns. They prohibited slaves, who were not people in the eyes of the founders, from having any rights. Guess what? We changed the Constitution to declare that all people are people.

Scalia said that some regulation is OK. It is the outright ban that is not.

I can name five right off the top of my head who say it is an individual right, and those five trump any of the legal scholars you can come up with.

drankin

So, if you don't like what the court decides it's irrelevant? It's very relevant, and will be relevant for a very long time. Can you site another case other than US v. Miller, regarding a sawed off shotgun being transported across state lines. A judgement that was imputed to a man and counsel that didn't even show up in court to contest their case? Talk about irrelevant.

OrbitalPower

First of all, the courts have ruled up until now, in nearly every single decision, that the Second Amendment is NOT an individual right. Even here they say it is not an absolute right as I see it.

You don't know what you're talking about, although I guess they didn't cover that in the "Penn and Teller" program.

The absolutist view of the second amendment, that it protects an individual's right, has not been sustained a SINGLE TIME in US history, until now (and even here it is somewhat vague).

The court also decided in the 1939 case, U.S. v. Miller, that possession of a firearm is not protected by the Second Amendment unless there is "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."


Second, if the constitution did give people the right to own guns without restrictions, that is, if it says what you claim it says, the NRA could legally challenge every single gun law in the country, and people could own any gun they wanted to. They don't, because the precedent has generally been that it is not an absolute right and that is a right entirely tied up within the context of a militia.

Third, there are tons of scholars who note the context of the Second Amendment.

Some of them are Robert Spitzer, Joseph Story, Like Wills, Don Higginbotham, etc. etc.

Here is an expert from one of Spirzer's arguments:

OrbitalPower

The militia was generally defined as any able-bodied male over a certain age.

Second of all, this is clearly incorrect. The founders even wrote bills like "the tory act" which declared all tories be disarmed. So, quite clearly they obviously believed some people should be disarmed. They also wrote that anybody "disaffected with the revolution," i.e., remained neutral during a time of revolution, could be disarmed.

So why, if they believed it was an absolute right, why would they disarm political dissidents? And by the many Indians as well as blacks would have been forbidden from owning guns.

The names of the scholars have been provided.

Show me the names of these "five scholars" that "automatically outweigh" anything else ever written by any other scholar.

drankin

Uh, no, you are wrong. It was regarding a SAWED OFF SHOTGUN not being a useable, normal weapon for a militia. That was the case that didn't really have a fair decision because there was no DEFENSE to give an argument. A handgun WOULD be a useable weapon for a militia. The Miller case is a poor argument as Scalia pionted out.

D H

Non sequiter. The Tory Act was passed by the Continental Congress in January 1776. The Bill of Rights was written in 1791.

Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, and Thomas.

OrbitalPower

LOL. That's an even worse argument than I thought. I thought at least i'd get a gun cite article. The Supreme Court is the last place I'd go for an accurate interpretation on of the constitution, especially one that has been "judicially packed" by the likes of Reagan/Bush (a couple more know nothings on the constitution). These are the same peope who've upheld anti-free speech laws time and time again.

http://www.guninformation.org/secondamendment.html

But I'll explain the true origins of the second amendment tomorrow, as most people clearly don't know, and statements from one Hammilton that prove he knew it was NOT an individual right.

drankin

okay, good luck

D H

Talking about LOL!

TheStatutoryApe

I hope you don't mind but I did not feel like quoting all of the various posts I am intending to respond to.

So far as I have seen no one in this thread has stated that the right to own guns is absolute and no one in the thread has claimed that the right to own guns is a 'prerequisite to freedom' (correct me if I'm wrong). This pretty much turns a large chunk of your arguements in this thread so far into strawmen. I think we could have a much better discussion and it may move forward if we could drop these misrepresentations.


Concerning the idea that the right to gun ownership was solely for the purpose of a 'well regulated militia' and not an individual right do you really believe that the men of those times had no thought for the ability of it's citizens to hunt to put food on thier tables? Or that perhaps the limitations of law enforcement may require a citizen to protect themselves? You can certainly argue whether or not these necessities apply today but can you honestly say that the right to individual ownership for these purposes was of no consideration in determining whether or not citizens had a right to own guns?

Now of course the actual wording is 'bear arms' so perhaps the drafters of the amendment were specifically refering to military grade weapons and took it for granted that citizens would own more basic guns for hunting and protection if need be. In this case the amendment really has nothing to do with gun ownership in general but only ownership of military grade weapons and the formation of armed militias, which could theoretically be a threat to the establishment and so a worrisome point that needed to be debated and clarified. But can it not be reinterpreted?

I don't think that the establishment clause was in the minds of the men who lived during a time when 'God' was invoked in government documents, in legally binding oathes, and the bible was common material in schools. Times change and so do our interpretations of the constitution.

So when weapons design improved, more deadly guns were more widely available, and fronteersmen were pushing the borders wasn't it necessary for citizens to have better guns to defend themselves with? Something not made for hunting? Eventually the US had a standing army and there was little to no need for the militias. No militias would mean no right to bear arms, no constitutional protection of the citizens' ability to bear arms. Unless we reinterpret the second amendment. Unless we interpret it to mean that the citizens themselves have the right to the ability to protect themselves with measures that would include the bearing of arms.

Do you not think that is a ligitimate way of interpreting it? Again we can debate whether or not this is an actual necessity today in which case, if it isn't, the constitution should be amended. But I'm focusing here on the legitimacy of this sort of interpretation as handed down by the current supreme court.

D H

The framers of the Constitution successfully ended arm uprising against an overly strong and overly centralized government 6 years before writing the Constitution. An interim overly weak and overly decentralized government had failed miserably. The framers very reluctantly gave the new stronger and centralized government the ability to raise a standing army. The framers fully realized that the might well have just created the very beast they had overcome 6 years earlier. It would have been hypocritical on the part of the framers to say that, while they had just held an armed uprising against a strong centralized government, we don't want anyone holding an armed uprising against this new strong centralized government. The framers were not hypocrites. They wanted to give the people the ability to hold an armed uprising against their newly created beast, and hence the Second Amendment.

The well-regulated militia the framers had in mind was not the Maryland National Guard. A militia tightly regulated by the government can hardly hold an armed uprising against the government, afterall. The well-regulated militia the framers had in mind is a group of citizens who have armed themselves, trained themselves, regulated themselves, and plotted against the wicked government all by themselves. In short, all of those gun nuts in Michigan and Idaho and elsewhere.

drankin

Basically, the court clarified that we had the right before the amendments and still have the right today. And, we also shall have the capacity to form a militia if so required to overthrow a tyrannical government.

And the argument that we couldn't hold up against tanks & jets (posted by WarPh) from our own government is actually bogus IMO. There aren't enough military resources to hold down the current gun owning populous, especially if emergency militias were formed. Not to mention all the state guard military resources that would most likely defect from an illegal federal tyranny. It can't happen. And the fact that we the general public are armed helps to insure that. I grew up with the military and know the folks and families that make up our forces. If our government were to attempt an obvious tyranny, the military would not necessarily go along. Every enlisted person has to speak this oath: http://www.history.army.mil/faq/oaths.htm and a good percentage of those take it very seriously. The first sentence being to defend the Constitution.

It has always been an individual right and will continue to be well into our future. And that is a good thing.

TheStatutoryApe

Yes and no, I think.
Since the militias were more or less the US military the amendment essentially decentralizes the country's military power by (theoretically) guaranteeing all citizens the right to bear arms and form militias. This way there is not a certain group of people with a monopoly on that power (again theoretically) and that power can not be leveraged against the people. So it is supposed to prevent the "beast" from being born in the first place. With a standing army in place this safeguard is effectively removed. So now one can make the arguement that it gives the people the ability to protect themselves from their government but, by my interpretation, it might be more accurate to consider a standing army to be a violation of this constitutional safeguard.