NationStates Jolt Archive

That court decision uses more circular logic than anything I have yet to post. It's fucking hilarious. That and the judges need to take a friggin constitutional history course that includes the various Framer's political positions and the various laws that they endorsed/attempted to pass. It's sad really. Especially given their reasoning of what militia means when concerning the 2nd amendment as James Madison can be directly attributed to saying this:

Given their definition of militia in the decision their reasoning can be considered nothing but extremely specious. Especially when they basically admit at the end of the damned thing that the history surrounding the 2nd amendment proves them full of shit but they're too much of cowards to go against a trend that didn't even start in the courts until the 20th century.

You have the very curious ability to read things exactly backwards.

Regardless, care to explain how The Federalist Papers referred to the Constitution protecting the right to bear arms -- when there was no Bill of Rights until after the Constitution was ratified?

Perhaps your grasp of Constituional history is not as superior to that of federal judges as you think.

That quote still did not say anything about the nature of the weapon. Did it vague refer to weapons? Yes. Did it say anything about the nature of them? No.



If Miller's possession of the shotgun had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, the outcome would have been different.

If Miller's possession of X had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.

It is not the type of weapon that is relevant.

It does not matter whether a shotgun has military use.

Scenario 1:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. Weapon A is used by the military or the National Guard or by a state militia.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is not protected by the Second Amendment.

Scenario 2:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. TC is a member of a well-regulated militia maintained by the state and his on duty and required to possess weapon A at X time and Y place.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is protected by the Second Amendment


[QUOTE=Thomas Cranmer]It was moot.

Why?




I've argued the merits repeated in these Forums and in this thread. No one has bothered to reply to even 2 of my 3 main arguments. Not my fault you came in late.

Bad, bad example.

Second Amendment caselaw here is both longer in time and more consistent.

Both SCOTUS and the lower courts began chipping away at Plessy soon after it was adopted.

Brown v. Board was the final nail in the coffin. It was momentous, but it was not a wholesale change in direction.

And I don't care what you say current gun control laws are not even remotely comparable to segregation. The comparison is insulting.



Really? Name case from another circuit.
Since you seem to have fun playing with Miller I'm gonna blow your reasoning that they referred to a state right and not a right of the people completely apart.


The following is a quote from one Hugo Black, one of the justices on the Miller court. It can be found here http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/faculty/gertz/hugoblack.htm

Amendment Two provides that:

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.

Although the Supreme Court has held this Amendment to include only arms necessary to a well-regulated militia, as so construed, its prohibition is absolute.

Now, for a general lesson on various things.

He uses the words "prohibition is absolute"

Definitions from dictionary.com
Prohibition -
1. The act of prohibiting or the condition of being prohibited.
2. A law, order, or decree that forbids something.

Absolute -
5. Not to be doubted or questioned; positive
8. Law. Complete and unconditional; final.

There is a single prohibition in the second amendment.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

In every other part of the constitution "the people" refers to individual citizens. Thus a person's 5th amendment rights. Etc, etc...

We now know, without a doubt, that at least one of the judges on the Miller court was viewing it from the individual standpoint.

Since you seem to have fun playing with Miller I'm gonna blow your reasoning that they referred to a state right and not a right of the people completely apart.


The following is a quote from one Hugo Black, one of the justices on the Miller court. It can be found here http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/faculty/gertz/hugoblack.htm



Now, for a general lesson on various things.

He uses the words "prohibition is absolute"

Definitions from dictionary.com
Prohibition -
1. The act of prohibiting or the condition of being prohibited.
2. A law, order, or decree that forbids something.

Absolute -
5. Not to be doubted or questioned; positive
8. Law. Complete and unconditional; final.

There is a single prohibition in the second amendment.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

In every other part of the constitution "the people" refers to individual citizens. Thus a person's 5th amendment rights. Etc, etc...

We now know, without a doubt, that at least one of the judges on the Miller court was viewing it from the individual standpoint.

Wow. The desperation is almost sad.

You found two sentences from a speech one of nine Justices 21 years after Miller was decided -- and you manage to misread the quote.

Just as you'd like to ignore the first clause of the Second Amendment, you ignore the first part of Justice Black's second sentence:

Although the Supreme Court has held this Amendment to include only arms necessary to a well-regulated militia, as so construed, its prohibition is absolute.

1. Confirms Miller held the Second Amendment protected only the possession of arms necessary to a well-regulated militia. Thank you.

2. As so construed, Justice Black believes the Amendment is absolute.

BTW, as explained in the speech Justice Black believed all the Amendments were absolute.

1. Confirms Miller held the Second Amendment protected only the possession of arms necessary to a well-regulated militia. Thank you.

2. As so construed, Justice Black believes the Amendment is absolute.

BTW, as explained in the speech Justice Black believed all the Amendments were absolute.
No it doesn't. Your introducing words to his quote. If he meant possesion, he would have said possession. It's not there. It means that you can't own a weapon that has little to no use in militia duty like sayyy, really short sawed-off shotguns. Ye gods. He also didn't believe that the amendment was absolute, he believed it's prohibtion was absolute. Two completely different things. The amendment says something shall not be infringed. The only part of the 2nd that can apply to is the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The prefectory clause explains a reason for the right, but is in no way a prohibition.

No it doesn't. Your introducing words to his quote. If he meant possesion, he would have said possession. It's not there. It means that you can't own a weapon that has little to no use in militia duty like sayyy, really short sawed-off shotguns. Ye gods. He also didn't believe that the amendment was absolute, he believed it's prohibtion was absolute. Two completely different things. The amendment says something shall not be infringed. The only part of the 2nd that can apply to is the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The prefectory clause explains a reason for the right, but is in no way a prohibition.

Fine. He did not say "a weapon that has use in militia duty" either.

He said "arms necessary to a well-regulated militia."

Please consult that dictionary of yours. Isn't there a difference between "necessary" and "useful" or "usuable"?

And attempting to parse the words of his speech -- 21 years after Miller and not even directed to the topic of the Second Amendment -- is simply pathetic.

Fine. He did not say "a weapon that has use in militia duty" either.

He said "arms necessary to a well-regulated militia."

Please consult that dictionary of yours. Isn't there a difference between "necessary" and "useful" or "usuable"?

And attempting to parse the words of his speech -- 21 years after Miller and not even directed to the topic of the Second Amendment -- is simply pathetic.

I am curious, do you actually know how to brief a case?

And if so, what exactly is the holding of Miller

Definition of necessary

Absolutely essential.
Needed to achieve a certain result or effect; requisite: the necessary tools.
Absolutely needed : REQUIRED



Now, we can assume that logically any weapon covered by the 2nd amendment would have to be necessary in the militia. The duty of the militia is to defend the home area. This rules out both major area-effect weapons like nukes and weapons of extremely limited militia utility, like breechloading sawed-off shotguns. On the other hand, it covers most semi-auto handguns and revolvers(necessary as a last resort extremely manueverable weapon, would possibly exclude .22 caliber), semi-auto or pump-action shotguns that probably wouldn't go beyond 15 inches at their shortest(necessary in CQB i.e. buildings and quite a few other urban enviroments), so called assault rifles(weapons mainly in 5.56 poodleshooter and 7.62X39 wuss rounds) which are extremely useful and necessary for close to medium range combat(urban and suburban combat, possibly some forested combat as well) and pretty much any deer hunting rifle in .308 winchester caliber(a.k.a. 7.62X54 NATO (There are technically differences in the headspaces of the two rounds, but quite a few weapons can fire both)) or above(necessary for effective long range kills, especially in mountainous or field settings). Without the necessary weaponry, the militia becomes worse than useless and can in no way be considered 'well-regulated'.

Wow. The desperation is almost sad.


At least he understands that you cannot import facts to a specific case, unlike you.

Frankly, if a junior associate came to me with suggestion that Miller held scenario II - which you so unreasonably suggested to Mr. Cranmer before - I would fire him or her. (actually I wouldn't, but I would explain to them why you can't read things into cases even when you want to).

If I have to brief this for you, I am going to be very pissed off. Suffice to say, the holding of Miller is no more than a sawed of shotgun does not fall under the protection of the second amendment. And only then because of evidentiary reasons.

Now stop being petty. If you have an argument, make it, otherwise, desist from appeals to emotion.

I am curious, do you actually know how to brief a case?

And if so, what exactly is the holding of Miller

Yes.

I've answered throughout this thread, but off the top of my head:

Because the defendant's possession of a shotgun was not reasonably related to the preservation or efficiency or a well-regulated militia maintained by the state, such possession was not protected by the Second Amendment.

not to butt in here too much, but this thread was supposed to be more about whether guns were evil or not. While the 2nd amendment interpretations are fascinating(no sarcasm intentended at all..I learnt a bunch of stuff), the legality of civillian firearm ownership has little bearing on whether they are inherantly beneficial or not to society.

I believe they are for the reasons stated in this thread and others

1) self defense
a) regardless of which study you choose to believe, clearly guns are used by law abiding citizens to protect themselves from harm

b)Citizens with legal guns arent for the most part the ones committing crimes with their guns(unless you count suicide, but that isnt a crime and there is no reason to believe suicide rates change with/without guns)

c) there is obviously much more items in this section, such as deterant effects and that the govt has no obligation to protect an individual(so the govt should at least give an individual the means to protect him/herself ect ect)

summary, more good is done by those that have legal firearms than harm

2)since the criminals have their guns illegally, what is the point of making laws to curtail ownership? I understand increasing the penalties for illegal use as a risk/reward tradeoff for criminals, but what is the point in making them harder to obtain for law abiding people?

3) defense against tyranny. As a few thousand insurgents in Iraq have shown, it doesnt take many armed and motivated individuals to cause a great deal of difficulty to an occupying army. Head on of course they get beat down, but insurgents(the smarts ones) dont fight head on.

Point being, a govt couldnt trample on the rights of its citizens beyond a certain point if the citizens are well armed and have cause. I like this protection, though in reality I will most probably never need it. Though Janet Reno made such a scenario more likely. The media always tells me its fascist Republicans who do such things not kind and loving Democrats...go figure.

4) hunting and target shooting.. nice and relaxing another plus for gun ownership I suppose. It also weedss out some from the gene pool every year(those that think alcohol and guns are a good mix)


As far as gun control goes, why should there be anything other than a background(insta check) system in place? What other types makes the law abiding public safer while making things more difficult for those who choose to not abide by the laws?

Criminals/insane people are already willing to break any number of laws such as murder and rape and robbery, why would they be stopped by a law against guns?


And lastly, for the love of god(in whom I do not believe), PLEASE end the war on drugs. If people want to consume things that kill them/make them stupid, let them. a) it will reduce the competition in my life b) I wont have to fund these morons lifetime stay at some institution c) I wont have to be worried that somebody will accidently shoot me while trying to wipe out his drug dealing competator. That and things like otherwise productive citizens are jailed without harming another person, intrusive/overbearing govt ect ect.

The drug war causes much more harm than good. End it and watch the Us murder rate go down to the levels it was in the 50s

It is not the type of weapon that is relevant.

It does not matter whether a shotgun has military use.



Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.

It's sad really. When, and if, you go to law school, they will show you how to brief a case properly.

At least he understands that you cannot import facts to a specific case, unlike you.

Frankly, if a junior associate came to me with suggestion that Miller held scenario II - which you so unreasonably suggested to Mr. Cranmer before - I would fire him or her. (actually I wouldn't, but I would explain to them why you can't read things into cases even when you want to).

If I have to brief this for you, I am going to be very pissed off. Suffice to say, the holding of Miller is no more than a sawed of shotgun does not fall under the protection of the second amendment. And only then because of evidentiary reasons.

Now stop being petty. If you have an argument, make it, otherwise, desist from appeals to emotion.

You came to the argument a bit late, my friend.

If you think a reference to "junior associate[s]" would intimidate me, you are sadly mistaken. I highly doubt your credentials are more impressive than mine.

And would you care to explain why every US Court of Appeals has repeated interpreted Miller differently than you have (although the Fifth has more recently waffled)? As has the US Supreme Court in Lewis?

Yes.

I've answered throughout this thread, but off the top of my head:

Because the defendant's possession of a shotgun was not reasonably related to the preservation or efficiency or a well-regulated militia maintained by the state, such possession was not protected by the Second Amendment.

That's not the holding, not at all.

Look at the factual posture.

Honestly, I am sick and tired of third rate wannabe lawyers.

Oh, and to answer Mr. Cranmer's moot objection, I believe that Miller was dead/missing at that point. So, you know, you better have a pretty damn good reason why the Supreme Court ruled on a constitutional matter at that point.

(IIRC the constitutional matters should be the last issue reached as a matter of 'constitutional procedure'.)

It's sad really. When, and if, you go to law school, they will show you how to brief a case properly.

EDIT: [delete - my credentials are not relevant]

I'll repeat what I posted earlier:

United States v. Miller (http://laws.findlaw.com/us/307/174.html), 307 U.S. 174 (1939)[/B]:

Defendants were charged with the crime of transporting and possessing an unregistered sawed off shotgun, in violation of the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C.A. § 1132, et seq. They challenged the indictment and the trial court sustained the demurrer, dismissing the charges. Id. at 177. The government appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court reversed the trial court, holding the Second Amendment provided defendants no protection against the indictment. After reviewing the language and history of the Second Amendment, the Court concluded that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of the state militia. Id. at 178. Because defendants had offered no evidence that their possession or use of the shotgun had “some reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia,” their conduct was not protected by the Second Amendment. Id.

Because you ignore what Miller actually says, let’s look at:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

This clearly states that, unless "possession or use" of a weapon has "some reasonable relationship to to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia," then the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear such a weapon. It does not hinge on whether the firearm was of a type used by the military, but on whether the possession or use of such of a weapon is reasonably related to preservation of a well-regulated militia. In other words, if preservation of a well-regulated militia required that the defendant possess the shotgun, then the Second Amendment comes into play.

Similarly, Miller says:

The Constitution as originally adopted granted to the Congress power- 'To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.' U.S.C.A.Const. art. 1, 8. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.

This clearly states the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is "to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness" of state militias and that it "must be interpreted and applied with that end in view."

You came to the argument a bit late, my friend.

If you think a reference to "junior associate[s]" would intimidate me, you are sadly mistaken. I highly doubt your credentials are more impressive than mine.

And would you care to explain why every US Court of Appeals has repeated interpreted Miller differently than you have (although the Fifth has more recently waffled)? As has the US Supreme Court in Lewis?

Well, I can tell my credentials are more impressive that yours just by looking at your argument. I can brief a case, you can't. I don't give a fuck whatever you say about this court or that court, it's retarded. Now, if you provided cites in which those courts specifically looked with approval to miller in respect of scenario II, then I might be somewhat persuaded; perhaps.

I guess you just don't understand litigation. Don't feel bad, very few people do. It's not grey matter, it's diligence in the practice, that's all.

BTW, if you are so confident, tell me how scenario II fits into the Miller holding. Go ahead. You can't.

And stop with the res judicata shite, or I am going to really get historical on your ass.

That's not the holding, not at all.

Look at the factual posture.

Honestly, I am sick and tired of third rate wannabe lawyers.

Oh, and to answer Mr. Cranmer's moot objection, I believe that Miller was dead/missing at that point. So, you know, you better have a pretty damn good reason why the Supreme Court ruled on a constitutional matter at that point.

(IIRC the constitutional matters should be the last issue reached as a matter of 'constitutional procedure'.)

I too am sick of third-rate wannabe lawyers and plain third-rate lawyers.

I am also sick of people who jump in after I have been debating this issue for a dozen pages or so and think what they are reading are the only arguments I have made.

Regardless, you might chew on these before you make a bigger ass of yourself.


United States v. Lippman (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/8th/033275p.pdf), No. 03-3275, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 10432 (8th Cir. May 27, 2004):

Defendant argued that his conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm violated the Second Amendment. The court cited its earlier decisions holding that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms “when it is reasonably related to the maintenance of a well regulated militia.” Id. at *11 (citations omitted). The court found that the defendant had not shown that his firearm possession was reasonably related to a well regulated militia and rejected the Second Amendment claim. Id.

Here are relevant excerpts from the opinion:

Finally, Lippman argues that his conviction should be reversed because § 922(g)(8) is unconstitutional. … Lippman contends that the Second Amendment protects his individual right to bear arms and that the district court erred in its conclusion that § 922(g)(8) does not impermissibly infringe on that right.
…
In a line of cases starting with United States v. Synnes, 438 F.2d 764, 772 (8th Cir. 1971), we have held that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms when it is reasonably related to the maintenance of a well regulated militia. See, e.g., United States v. Wilson, 315 F.3d 972, 973-74 (8th Cir. 2003); United States v. Lewis, 236 F.3d 948, 950 (8th Cir. 2001); United States v. Smith, 171 F.3d 617, 624 (8th Cir. 1999); United States v. Farrell, 69 F.3d 891, 894 (8th Cir. 1995); United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016, 1020 (8th Cir. 1992); United States v. Nelson, 859 F.2d 1318, 1320 (8th Cir. 1988); Cody v. United States, 460 F.2d 34, 37 (8th Cir. 1972). Hutzell is no exception because it cited United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 178-79 (1939), in connection with the right to bear arms, and the Supreme Court held in Miller that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms in "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia." Id. … Since Lippman has not shown that his firearm possession was reasonably related to a well regulated militia, his Second Amendment argument cannot succeed.

United States v. Parker (http://laws.findlaw.com/10th/034119.html), 362 F.3d 1279 (10th Cir. 2004):

Defendant, convicted of carrying a loaded firearm on a military base, appealed on the ground that the conviction violated the Second Amendment. Relying on United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), the court rejected defendant’s claim, holding that in order to prove a Second Amendment violation, one must first show that the alleged possession of the firearm was related to participation in a well-regulated state militia. 362 F.3d at 1282.

Here are excerpts from the opinion:

On appeal, Parker contends his prosecution pursuant to the ACA violates his right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
…
Our analysis is guided by the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). … Miller has been interpreted by this court and other courts to hold that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and transport a firearm where there is no evidence that possession of that firearm was related to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 65 n.8 (1980) (citing Miller for proposition that "the Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia");see also Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052, 1061 (9th Cir. 2003) (referring to Miller's implicit rejection of traditional individual rights position); Love v. Pepersack, 47 F.3d 120, 124 (4th Cir. 1995) ("Since [Miller], the lower federal courts have uniformly held that the Second Amendment preserves a collective, rather than individual, right."); United States v. Toner, 728 F.2d 115, 128 (2d Cir. 1984) (interpreting Miller to stand for rule that, absent reasonable relationship to preservation of well-regulated militia, there is no fundamental right to possess firearm); United States v. Oakes, 564 F.2d 384, 387 (10th Cir. 1977) (analyzing Miller and concluding that "[t]o apply the amendment so as to guarantee appellant's right to keep an unregistered firearm which has not been shown to have any connection to the militia, merely because he is technically a member of the Kansas militia, would be unjustifiable in terms of either logic or policy").

Drawing on Miller, we repeatedly have held that to prevail on a Second Amendment challenge, a party must show that possession of a firearm is in connection with participation in a "well-regulated" "state" "militia." See United States v. Haney, 264 F.3d 1161, 1165 (10th Cir. 2001) (holding "that a federal criminal gun-control law does not violate the Second Amendment unless it impairs the state's ability to maintain a well-regulated militia"); Oakes, 564 F.2d at 387 (stating "purpose of the second amendment . . . was to preserve the effectiveness and assure the continuation of the state militia"). Applying this principle, in Haney we set out a four-part test a party must satisfy to establish a Second Amendment violation: "As a threshold matter, [a party] must show that (1) he is part of a state militia; (2) the militia, and his participation therein, is `well regulated' by the state; (3) [guns of the type at issue] are used by that militia; and (4) his possession of the [the gun at issue] was reasonably connected to his militia service." 264 F.3d at 1165. See also United States v. Bayles, 310 F.3d 1302, 1307 (10th Cir. 2002) (applying Haney to uphold federal law restricting a person subject to a domestic violence protective order from possessing a firearm); United States v. Graham, 305 F.3d 1094, 1106 (10th Cir. 2002) (applying Haney to find law banning sale of explosive devices does not infringe upon person's Second Amendment rights). Unless Parker can satisfy these four criteria, he cannot prevail on his Second Amendment claim. Notably, Parker has presented no evidence tending to show that he meets any of the Haney criteria.
…

[T]he Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits have adopted the most restrictive interpretation (also known as "the collective rights model") of the Second Amendment. Under "the collective rights model," the Second Amendment never applies to individuals but merely recognizes the state's right to arm its militia. See Gillespie v. City of Indianapolis, 185 F.3d 693 (7th Cir. 1999); Hickman v. Block, 81 F.3d 98 (9th Cir. 1996); Love, 47 F.3d 120; United States v. Warin, 530 F.2d 103 (6th Cir. 1976); see also United States v. Price, 328 F.3d 958, 961 (7th Cir. 2003). Similarly, in addition to this court, the First, Third, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits have all adopted a "sophisticated collective rights model." Under this interpretation of the Second Amendment, an individual has a right to bear arms, but only in direct affiliation with a well-organized state-supported militia. See United States v. Wright, 117 F.3d 1265 (11th Cir. 1997); United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996); United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016 (8th Cir. 1992); Cases v. United States, 131 F.2d 916 (1st Cir. 1942).

… We conclude Parker's prosecution by the United States pursuant to the ACA did not violate the Second Amendment.

United States v. Rybar (http://www.healylaw.com/cases/rybar.htm), 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 118 S.Ct. 446 (1997):

Rejected defendant’s Second Amendment and Commerce Clause challenge to his conviction for unlawful transfer or possession of machine guns in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o). Defendant, a federally licensed firearms dealer who obtained the machine guns at issue at a gun show, argued that because of the obvious military utility of a machine gun, the federal law regulating its possession is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). The Third Circuit first noted that while the Supreme Court in Miller clearly suggested that the firearm at issue lacked the necessary military character, the Court did not state that “such character alone would be sufficient to secure Second Amendment protection.” Id. at 286. Instead, Miller “assigned no special importance to the character of the weapon itself, but instead demanded a reasonable relationship between its ‘possession or use’ and militia-related activity.” Id. (citations omitted).

Noting that defendant’s possession and use of the machine guns was related to his business activity as a firearms dealer and not to any militia-related activity, the court affirmed the principle established in Miller that, regardless of the military character of a firearm, the Second Amendment is inapplicable when there is no connection between defendant’s possession of a firearm on the one hand and any protected militia-related activity on the other. Finally, the Third Circuit referred defendant to its decisions “on several occasions emphasiz[ing] that the Second Amendment furnishes no absolute right to firearms.” Id. at 286 (citations omitted).

Here are excerpts from the opinion:
As an independent basis for his argument that Section(s) 922(o) is unconstitutional, Rybar relies on the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which provides: "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." U.S. Const. amend. II.

In support, Rybar cites, paradoxically, the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), where the Court upheld the constitutionality of a firearms-registration requirement against a Second Amendment challenge. Rybar draws on that holding, relying on the Miller Court's observation that the sawed-off shotgun in question had not been shown to bear "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." Brief of Appellant at 24-25; Miller, 307 U.S. at 178. Drawing from that language the contra positive implication, Rybar suggests that because the military utility of the machine guns proscribed by Section(s) 922(o) is clear, a result contrary to that reached in Miller is required, and the statute is therefore invalid under the Second Amendment.

Rybar's reliance on Miller is misplaced. The language Rybar cites is taken from the following passage:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
307 U.S. at 178.

We note first that however clear the Court's suggestion that the firearm before it lacked the necessary military character, it did not state that such character alone would be sufficient to secure Second Amendment protection. In fact, the Miller Court assigned no special importance to the character of the weapon itself, but instead demanded a reasonable relationship between its "possession or use" and militia related activity. Id.; see Cases v. United States, 131 F.2d 916, 922 (1st Cir. 1942) (susceptibility of firearm to military application not determinative), cert. denied, 319 U.S. 770 (1943). Rybar has not demonstrated that his possession of the machine guns had any connection with militia-related activity. Indeed, as noted above, Rybar was a firearms dealer and the transactions in question appear to have been consistent with that business activity.

Nonetheless, Rybar attempts to place himself within the penumbra of membership in the "militia" specified by the Second Amendment by quoting from 10 U.S.C. Section(s) 311(a):
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are . . . citizens of the United States . . . .
Rybar's invocation of this statute does nothing to establish that his firearm possession bears a reasonable relationship to "the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia," as required in Miller, 307 U.S. at 178. Nor can claimed membership in a hypothetical or "sedentary" militia suffice. See United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016, 1020 (8th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 997 (1993); United States v. Oakes, 564 F.2d 384, 387 (10th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 926 (1978); United States v. Warin, 530 F.2d 103, 106 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 948 (1976).

Rybar boldly asserts that "the Miller Court was quite simply wrong in its superficial (and one-sided) analysis of the Second Amendment." Brief of Appellant at 27. As one of the inferior federal courts subject to the Supreme Court's precedents, we have neither the license nor the inclination to engage in such freewheeling presumptuousness. In any event, this court has on several occasions emphasized that the Second Amendment furnishes no absolute right to firearms. See United States v. Graves, 554 F.2d 65, 66 n.2 (3d Cir. 1977); Eckert v. City of Philadelphia, 477 F.2d 610 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 839, 843 (1973). Federal attempts at firearms regulation have also consistently withstood challenge under the Second Amendment. See, e.g., Hale, 978 F.2d at 1020; Warin, 530 F.2d at 108; United States v. Three Winchester 30-30 Caliber Lever Action Carbines, 504 F.2d 1288, 1290 n.5 (7th Cir. 1974); United States v. Johnson, 497 F.2d 548, 550 (4th Cir. 1974); Cases, 131 F.2d at 923. We see no reason why Section(s) 922(o) should be an exception.

Hickman v. Block, 81 F.3d 98 (9th Cir. 1996), cert. denied sub nom, Hickman v. County of Los Angeles, 519 U.S. 912 (1996):

Hickman filed a civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after his application for a concealed carry weapon permit was denied by Los Angeles County Sheriff and City of Los Angeles Chief of Police. Held, based on the “seminal” Supreme Court decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), that an individual has no standing to raise a Second Amendment claim because “the Second Amendment guarantees the right of the states to maintain armed militia, [and] the states alone stand in the position to show legal injury when this right is infringed.” Id. at 102. Based on a “plain reading” of the Amendment’s text, the Ninth Circuit also stated that “it is only in the furtherance of state security that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms’ is finally proclaimed.” Id. (citation omitted). Reiterating that even technical membership or eligibility for enrollment in state militia is insufficient, the Ninth Circuit also emphasized that even if there were individual standing to bring a Second Amendment claim, it would fail because the Second Amendment is not incorporated into the Bill of Rights against action by state and local governments. Id. at 103 n.10.

Here are excerpts from the opinion:

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "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." U.S. Const. amend. II. Hickman argues that the Second Amendment requires the states to regulate gun ownership and use in a "reasonable" manner. The question presented at the threshold of Hickman's appeal is whether the Second Amendment confers upon individual citizens standing to enforce the right to keep and bear arms. We follow our sister circuits in holding that the Second Amendment is a right held by the states, and does not protect the possession of a weapon by a private citizen.

….

This case turns on the first constitutional standing element: whether Hickman has shown injury to an interest protected by the Second Amendment. We note at the outset that no individual has ever succeeded in demonstrating such injury in federal court. The seminal authority in this area continues to be United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), in which the Supreme Court upheld a conviction under the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C. S 1132 (1934), for transporting a sawed-off shotgun in interstate commerce. The Court rejected the appellant's hypothesis that the Second Amendment protected his possession of that weapon. Consulting the text and history of the amendment, the Court found that the right to keep and bear arms is meant solely to protect the right of the states to keep and maintain armed militia. In a famous passage, the Court held that
in the absence of any evidence tending to show that the possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.
307 U.S. at 178 .5 The Court's understanding follows a plain reading of the Amendment's text. The Amendment's second clause declares that the goal is to preserve the security of "a free state;" its first clause establishes the premise that wellregulated militia are necessary to this end. Thus it is only in furtherance of state security that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is finally proclaimed.

Following Miller, "it is clear that the Second Amendment guarantees a collective rather than an individual right." United States v. Warin, 530 F.2d 103, 106 (6th Cir.), cert. denied 96 S.Ct. 3168 (1976); see also Thomas v. Members of City Council of Portland, 730 F.2d 41, 42 (1st Cir. 1984) (same, citing Warin); United States v. Johnson, 497 F.2d 548, 550 (4th Cir. 1974) (cited with approval in Lewis, 445 U.S. at 65 n.8) (same). Because the Second Amendment guarantees the right of the states to maintain armed militia, the states alone stand in the position to show legal injury when this right is infringed.

… Even in states which profess to maintain a citizen militia, an individual may not rely on this fact to manipulate the Constitution's legal injury requirement by arguing that a particular weapon of his admits some military use, or that he himself is a member of the armed citizenry from which the state draws its militia. United States v. Oakes, 564 F.2d 384, 387 (10th Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 926 (1978) (technical membership in state militia insufficient to show legal injury under Second Amendment); Warin, 530 F.2d at 106 (same with respect to individual "subject to enrollment" in state militia); United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016, 1019 (8th Cir. 1982) (same, citing Warin); United States v. Graves, 554 F.2d 65, 66 n.2 (3rd. Cir. 1977) (en banc) (narrowly construing the Second Amendment "to guarantee the right to bear arms as a member of a militia").

Gee, if you had graduated at the top of your class, clerked for a US Court of Appeals judge, and was now a principal at a national firm -- perhaps you would know how to read a case correctly.

I'll repeat what I posted earlier:

United States v. Miller (http://laws.findlaw.com/us/307/174.html), 307 U.S. 174 (1939)[/B]:

Defendants were charged with the crime of transporting and possessing an unregistered sawed off shotgun, in violation of the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C.A. § 1132, et seq. They challenged the indictment and the trial court sustained the demurrer, dismissing the charges. Id. at 177. The government appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court reversed the trial court, holding the Second Amendment provided defendants no protection against the indictment. After reviewing the language and history of the Second Amendment, the Court concluded that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of the state militia. Id. at 178. Because defendants had offered no evidence that their possession or use of the shotgun had “some reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia,” their conduct was not protected by the Second Amendment. Id.

Because you ignore what Miller actually says, let’s look at:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

This clearly states that, unless "possession or use" of a weapon has "some reasonable relationship to to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia," then the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear such a weapon. It does not hinge on whether the firearm was of a type used by the military, but on whether the possession or use of such of a weapon is reasonably related to preservation of a well-regulated militia. In other words, if preservation of a well-regulated militia required that the defendant possess the shotgun, then the Second Amendment comes into play.

Similarly, Miller says:

The Constitution as originally adopted granted to the Congress power- 'To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.' U.S.C.A.Const. art. 1, 8. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.

This clearly states the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is "to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness" of state militias and that it "must be interpreted and applied with that end in view."

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Pathetic. If that is your idea of briefing a case, then, well I don't know what.

Who the fuck did you clerk for, justice dumbass? But you know what, don't let procedural or factual posture get in the way of your little daydream.

And if you really are a prinicipal at a 'national' law firm, I pity your clients.

Edit: read the whole case, it is edifying. I am fairly sure I could twist it the way you have and conclude that all males between 18-60 are obligated to own ammunition.

Miller is silent insofar as the collective rights model is concerned. It only holds that a sawed of shotgun is not protected.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

Pathetic. If that is your idea of briefing a case, then, well I don't know what.

Who the fuck did you clerk for, justice dumbass? But you know what, don't let procedural or factual posture get in the way of your little daydream.

And if you really are a prinicipal at a 'national' law firm, I pity your clients.

Edit: read the whole case, it is edifying. I am fairly sure I could twist it the way you have and conclude that all males between 18-60 are obligated to own ammunition.

Miller is silent insofar as the collective rights model is concerned. It only holds that a sawed of shotgun is not protected.

I have read the whole case, thank you.

Apparently, the US Courts of Appeals disagree with your reading of Miller. I'll take my own judgment -- and theirs -- over yours.

I and my clients know my qualifications and abilities. I see no need to defend myself further or trade insults with you. If you have an actual point, prove it.

United States v. Miller (http://laws.findlaw.com/us/307/174.html), 307 U.S. 174 (1939)[/B]:

Defendants were charged with the crime of transporting and possessing an unregistered sawed off shotgun, in violation of the National Firearms Act, 26 U.S.C.A. § 1132, et seq. They challenged the indictment and the trial court sustained the demurrer, dismissing the charges. Id. at 177. The government appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court reversed the trial court, holding the Second Amendment provided defendants no protection against the indictment. After reviewing the language and history of the Second Amendment, the Court concluded that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of the state militia. Id. at 178. Because defendants had offered no evidence that their possession or use of the shotgun had “some reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia,” their conduct was not protected by the Second Amendment. Id.

Because you ignore what Miller actually says, let’s look at:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

This clearly states that, unless "possession or use" of a weapon has "some reasonable relationship to to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia," then the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear such a weapon. It does not hinge on whether the firearm was of a type used by the military, but on whether the possession or use of such of a weapon is reasonably related to preservation of a well-regulated militia. In other words, if preservation of a well-regulated militia required that the defendant possess the shotgun, then the Second Amendment comes into play.

Note the word efficiency. Owning a double barreled sawed-off shotgun that was a breechloader instead of a pump-action or semi-auto would severely degrade any use in the militia. Given the restrictions of such a weapon it is barely even useable for self-defense, let alone actual militia duty. Highly inefficient to use in any setting if the general militia was called up given it's horrible accuracy and extremely slow ROF. Ergo it has no relationship to either the preservation of or the efficiency of a 'well-regulated' militia, who would certainly have better weaponry than that. Also, most of the weaponry that the infantry uses most certainly would have a quite reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of the militia.


Similarly, Miller says:

The Constitution as originally adopted granted to the Congress power- 'To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.' U.S.C.A.Const. art. 1, 8. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.

This clearly states the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is "to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness" of state militias and that it "must be interpreted and applied with that end in view."
Again, where does it say state militia. All the states get to do is appoint officers and train the militia. It is the feds who are given the task "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia" Not the states. The states do not have the right to disarm the militia, as that has the exact opposite effect of contributing to the preservation and efficiency of the militia.

I have read the whole case, thank you.

Apparently, the US Courts of Appeals disagree with your reading of Miller. I'll take my own judgment -- and theirs -- over yours.

I and my clients know my qualifications and abilities. I see no need to defend myself further or trade insults with you. If you have an actual point, prove it.

What the fuck is this then sparky,


Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.

Fried fucking chicken, perhaps?

Let's, review:

You posit that scenario II is the only possible interpretation of Miller. IIRC, that entails, possesion of a weapon is only permited if and when someone - though Miller's dicta makes it clear that it pertains only to men - is on duty, carrying a weapon, proscribed by the state government that regulates said millitia. Is that correct?

But let us twist holding's (personally I think miller is silent).

The court's initial inquiry, and the entire basis of the holding in Miller, is an examination of whether or not the possesion of a sawed off shotgun can have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

You know what, I can't be bothered.

Believe what you want - i'll finish this when I sober up



Edit: because I thought about it. From the originalist perspective, you lose. And it is fairly clear that most people today want guns, so if you believe in a living constitution, then you lose.

BTW, I hope to hell that you are against the lawrence v. texas ruling. Not very res judicata.

yes i certainly got that from your previous post to cat.. to which i can only say.. we do not agree on the extent to which gun regulation can be used reasonably and effectively.
this does not change my original assessment that your ability to critically think through the entire process is commendable.

Well, thank you.

Note the word efficiency. Owning a double barreled sawed-off shotgun that was a breechloader instead of a pump-action or semi-auto would severely degrade any use in the militia. Given the restrictions of such a weapon it is barely even useable for self-defense, let alone actual militia duty. Highly inefficient to use in any setting if the general militia was called up given it's horrible accuracy and extremely slow ROF. Ergo it has no relationship to either the preservation of or the efficiency of a 'well-regulated' militia, who would certainly have better weaponry than that. Also, most of the weaponry that the infantry uses most certainly would have a quite reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of the militia.


Again, where does it say state militia. All the states get to do is appoint officers and train the militia. It is the feds who are given the task "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia" Not the states. The states do not have the right to disarm the militia, as that has the exact opposite effect of contributing to the preservation and efficiency of the militia.

We have been debating this for over 16 pages over 5 days. You have raised these same arguments several times. You have never responded to 2 of my 3 original points. This is in addition to at least 2 other debates of similar or greater length on this same point I have had in the last few weeks -- at least one of which you joined.

I see no point in continuing. You clearly will not be persuaded by anything I say.

And I am tired of idiots jumping in to insult me simply because they do not like what the courts have said on this issue.

I have not made every argument that I could, but I have made a more than sufficient argument. I certainly have challenged your assertion that there is no basis for a collective rights view. I think you would admit that.

Although my rhetoric has sometimes been overblown in the face of ridicule, my primary point is that, contrary to commonly expressed opinion, the Second Amendment does not necessarily protect an individual right to possess and own firearms. To the contrary, the prevailing judicial consensus is it provides no such protection or protection only in the context of a well-regulated militia (not just all citizens of the right age, but an actual state militia).

I recognize a historical argument and a grammatical argument can be made for an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. In addition to the incorporation issue (which I think is surmountable -- it just hasn't been addressed), I do not think these arguments are persuasive. But they are neither ignorant nor irrational.

I recognize that the judicial consensus could be wrong. I do believe that at least 66 years of extremely uniform judicial opinions in scores of cases -- decided by judges of various political and ideological backgrounds -- is powerful objective evidence of the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment. Agreeing with Chief Justice Burger and Judge Bork makes me nervous, but I think they are right on this one.

You are free to disagree. The prevailing law of the land is a fact. But it has been wrong before and it is possible it could change -- that we may question it and cause change are parts of the beauty of our system.

I know at times I have been nasty -- sometimes with provocation and sometimes without. I am sure you can handle it (and you did), but I apologize for going overboard at times.

Despite what I have said or implied at times, you have been an honorable and able opponent with a sharp mind. It has been a pleasure debating you.

Peace. :) (no offense ;) )

I have read the whole case, thank you.

Apparently, the US Courts of Appeals disagree with your reading of Miller. I'll take my own judgment -- and theirs -- over yours.

I and my clients know my qualifications and abilities. I see no need to defend myself further or trade insults with you. If you have an actual point, prove it.

Yeah, why am I defending myself, you are the one that reads some type of "it is only protected if you are on duty" thing into it, not me.

And if you really are a lawyer, and have so represented, I believe that you have massively overstepped the bounds of professional responsibilty.

We have been debating this for over 16 pages over 5 days. You have raised these same arguments several times. You have never responded to 2 of my 3 original points. This is in addition to at least 2 other debates of similar or greater length on this same point I have had in the last few weeks -- at least one of which you joined.

I see no point in continuing. You clearly will not be persuaded by anything I say.

And I am tired of idiots jumping in to insult me simply because they do not like what the courts have said on this issue.

I have not made every argument that I could, but I have made a more than sufficient argument. I certainly have challenged your assertion that there is no basis for a collective rights view. I think you would admit that.

Although my rhetoric has sometimes been overblown in the face of ridicule, my primary point is that, contrary to commonly expressed opinion, the Second Amendment does not necessarily protect an individual right to possess and own firearms. To the contrary, the prevailing judicial consensus is it provides no such protection or protection only in the context of a well-regulated militia (not just all citizens of the right age, but an actual state militia).

I recognize a historical argument and a grammatical argument can be made for an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. In addition to the incorporation issue (which I think is surmountable -- it just hasn't been addressed), I do not think these arguments are persuasive. But they are neither ignorant nor irrational.

I recognize that the judicial consensus could be wrong. I do believe that at least 66 years of extremely uniform judicial opinions in scores of cases -- decided by judges of various political and ideological backgrounds -- is powerful objective evidence of the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment. Agreeing with Chief Justice Burger and Judge Bork makes me nervous, but I think they are right on this one.

You are free to disagree. The prevailing law of the land is a fact. But it has been wrong before and it is possible it could change -- that we may question it and cause change are parts of the beauty of our system.

I know at times I have been nasty -- sometimes with provocation and sometimes without. I am sure you can handle it (and you did), but I apologize for going overboard at times.

Despite what I have said or implied at times, you have been an honorable and able opponent with a sharp mind. It has been a pleasure debating you.

Peace. :) (no offense ;) )


No, I read part of this thread, and your clearly stated that Miller stood for the proposition that possesion of a gun was only protected under the second amendment during 'on duty' periods in the state militia, and then only when such possesion had been so ordered. Frankly, I have pointed out the millitary use language to you, and you have chosen to ignore it. Go back to handgun inc. or wherever.

What the fuck is this then sparky,



Fried fucking chicken, perhaps?

Let's, review:

You posit that scenario II is the only possible interpretation of Miller. IIRC, that entails, possesion of a weapon is only permited if and when someone - though Miller's dicta makes it clear that it pertains only to men - is on duty, carrying a weapon, proscribed by the state government that regulates said millitia. Is that correct?

But let us twist holding's (personally I think miller is silent).

The court's initial inquiry, and the entire basis of the holding in Miller, is an examination of whether or not the possesion of a sawed off shotgun can have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

You know what, I can't be bothered.

Believe what you want - i'll finish this when I sober up



Edit: because I thought about it. From the originalist perspective, you lose. And it is fairly clear that most people today want guns, so if you believe in a living constitution, then you lose.

BTW, I hope to hell that you are against the lawrence v. texas ruling. Not very res judicata.

Wow. There is one sentence taken out of context that can be read to support your reading of Miller. :rolleyes: Color me unimpressed.

And I notice you first demanded citations for US Court of Appeals opinions and then chose to ignore the cases I provided because they contradict you. That works oh so well in court. :rolleyes:

I've been trying to explain the prevailing law to laymen for 16 pages. That you disagree with the prevailing law is fine. If you do not think it is the prevailing law, you are ignorant.

If in explaining the same point many, many, many times, I have made only a few slight mistatements or overstatements I'd be surprised. But my basic interpretation of Miller is not only sound -- but matches the Supreme Courts own footnote in Lewis and the nigh unanimous consensus of the US Courts of Appeals. Your rants and insults only reflect poorly on you.

You either completely misunderstand my position on the Second Amendment, the caselaw, and res judicata or you are deliberately misconstruing it. Either way, I don't give a shit what you think.

I hope you are a better lawyer when you are sober.

No, I read part of this thread, and your clearly stated that Miller stood for the proposition that possesion of a gun was only protected under the second amendment during 'on duty' periods in the state militia, and then only when such possesion had been so ordered. Frankly, I have pointed out the millitary use language to you, and you have chosen to ignore it. Go back to handgun inc. or wherever.

See my above post.

That was the umpteenth time I had tried to explain a point.

I did not say that Second Amendment only applied during "on duty" periods in the state militia and only when such possession had been so ordered. I said it was clearly protected under such circumstances. I did not say such circumstances were necessary. Read what I said, not what you assumed.

The boundary of what is a possession or use reasonably related to the preservation or effectiveness of a well-regulated militia is not an issue that has been discussed.

What I was trying to illustrate is that it is the possession or use that must be related to the preservation or effectiveness of a well-regulated militia.

I think Miller is quite clear (and, again, at least 10 of the 11 US Courts of Appeal agree) that it is not the nature of the weapon, but the nature of the possession or use that is relevant.

In trying to illustrate this, I created two hypotheticals one not protected and one clearly protected. I did not say the second scenario was the only situation where the possession was protected. Read it. I didn't say that, did I?

Stop trying to misconstrue my statements in order to argue against a strawman.

Yeah, why am I defending myself, you are the one that reads some type of "it is only protected if you are on duty" thing into it, not me.

And if you really are a lawyer, and have so represented, I believe that you have massively overstepped the bounds of professional responsibilty.

Did not say that here or in court.

And to allege that I have violated the bounds of professional responsibility is a serious insult.

Please retract. That is uncalled for.

I think Miller is quite clear (and, again, at least 10 of the 11 US Courts of Appeal agree) that it is not the nature of the weapon, but the nature of the possession or use that is relevant.
If that were the case then they would have not felt the need to remand the case to a lower court. Neither Miller nor the other guy were any part of the active state militia. Therefore if your hypothesis is correct, there would have been no need to even consider what type of weapon it was. Instead, that was what was discussed and why it was remanded to the lower courts.

One last (hopefully) side note on the right to bear arms.

I just re-read Aymette v. State (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wbardwel/public/nfalist/aymette_v_state.txt), 2 Humphreys 154 (Tenn. 1840).

This is one of the cases cited in Miller -- the one following the sentence about not taking judicial notice about the weapon.

It is about the Tennessee constitutional provision similar to the Second Amendment. Reading it quickly, I don't see it as definitive re individual vs. collective -- although there is plenty to support an individual view in it. It has (again by a quick reading) a rather schizophrenic view. It talks about the right to bear arms as a defense against tyranny, very clearly talks about individual's bearing arms for that defence, then talks about that as a collective right, then focuses on the nature of a weapon in terms of whether or not it furthers the common defense. It kind of goes back and forth. Which is interesting (at least to me) as this predates the whole collective vs. individual right battle by more than 100 years.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting and have provided a link. I plan to read it again more carefully -- not for purpose of argument, but out of intellectual curiosity.

If that were the case then they would have not felt the need to remand the case to a lower court. Neither Miller nor the other guy were any part of the active state militia. Therefore if your hypothesis is correct, there would have been no need to even consider what type of weapon it was. Instead, that was what was discussed and why it was remanded to the lower courts.

Please read down to where I say I am done arguing about this.

Give it a rest.

The way I see it, a Gun is just a tool, nothing more.

It is a means to an end. It is the end itself (in this case, the snuffing out of one sentient or non-sentient being) that should be judged, not the means in which to carry it out.

One could argue that if the gun's only purpose is to kill, killing is evil, therefore guns are evil, then I would like to counter that this is too tidy of an argument, too logical, too black and white. Guns are more in a gray area.

Sure, guns can be used to kill. But is killing so wrong sometimes? We need to kill an animal to eat, right? We can kill an animal with another item, such as a bow, a club, a blade, a stone, etc... what makes those things less evil than the gun?

For those who believe killing an animal even for food is wrong, I counter by saying isn't it evil to till soil with a plow, tearing precious grass and roots, and planting vegetables and grain only to snuff out their existences for your sustenance. After all, no matter how eco friendly you are, you still have to change your environment by killing life, be it by tearing grass or denying animals and insects that patch of land you use as a garden for a food source. But I digress. I just threw that in to counter the vegetarian argument just in case. ;)

Back to guns. My point is, you can use guns to gain food. I argue that getting food is not an evil act, just a selfish one. Weather or not we till soil or shoot deer, we're feeding ourselves. Since when is feeding ourselves an evil act?

Now for the argument about using guns as a means of killing other humans. That act can be considered evil, that is true. But what about self defense? What if someone is trying to kill you, and the only thing between yourself and an inevitable death is a weapon? Would that make the weapon itself evil? No, weather or not you choose to defend yourself, no matter what means you use, is decided by you. You decide to pull the trigger. You decide to stab that knife. You decide to stand there and let them kill you. The decision comes down to you!

Whever tool you use to carry that decision through is just a means to an act, nothing more.

Therefore, I submit to you, that guns are not evil. It is the person's actions that are evil. The gun is just a tool, or a means, to an end, or an act. Nothing more.

But should we have them? I think there should be limits. After all, a gun can be used for many things. Hunting. Competative target shooting, historical reference to technology of certain eras (I.E. Collecting). A harmless collection with no intent to use isn't evil. Shooting paper or clay targets isn't evil, it's just competition. So what makes the gun evil if one uses it for those harmless purposes?

However, you don't need a full sized assault rifle to shoot down a deer, or an extra large capacity clip to hit a bullseye. That's where I argue guns should have limits. Only take the right tool for the job. A bolt action or semi auto rifle with a small capacity is just enough for hunting deer, or a small pistol with seven to ten rounds is enough for competative shooting. If one needed a powerful round and alot of them, then they get them (for example, soldiers and law enforcement officers), but only give them what they need.

That is my stance on guns. I think they are not evil. People use them for evil things, and when people associate guns with evil, they will believe guns are evil. But that to me is too irrational, too black and white of an stance to stand by.

ROFLASTC.

... <gasp> sorry <giggle> but you are asking to be ridiculed.

I return barb for barb.



So, if Congress passes a law tomorrow that defines speech as sign-language and only sign-language, then First Amendment suddenly only protects sign-language?

Sorry, boyo, but that is not how it works.

The statute does not define the Consitutional term. It cannot.



Wow. The Cornell university law department. I'm so impressed.

Even with a cite, I don't I'd care. I'll take the US Supreme Court and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th Circuits over whoever at Cornell, thank you.

Regardless, how does this help you. Gee, it doesn't.



:headbang:

I've explained this several times. Am I using too big of words?

It. Is. Not. The. Type. Of. Weapon. That. Matters.

The logic of Miller is that the possession or use of a weapon is not protected under the Second Amendment unless the possession or use in question bears a "reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

So, Gun X in the hands of joe blow on the street = not protected.

Same Gun X in the hands of Jim Milita for a purpose related to the preservation of a well-regulated militia maintained by the state = protected.

Clear enough, skippy?


Point 1: If speech is only sign language then the right of the american populace to say anything they want in sign language would be inviolable, that is indeed how it works. If there is only one kind of speech then the first ammendment would only protect that kind of speech, it is immaterial what the ammendment says, what matters is the legal definition of speech, not the dictionary definition of speech.


Point 2: Would you like the same general principle from a more prestigious university faculty, Emory perhaps, or maybe a professor from Harvard? I can get one from either of those universities, I just got the stuff from cornell before I found the Emory information, I had the Harvard opinion for a while but I misplaced it in my files, I found it this morning, I can quote it at any time if you like. As for your sarcasm, it helps in a major way, if you would have the brain to recognise it, the point you made was that it only protected STATE militias, my point was that the constitution does not ever anywhere in any way say state militias, it says that "a well regulated militia being necessary to the preservation of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", the state referenced is not any individual state in the union, but in fact the nation of america as a whole. The whole nation was commonly referred to as "the state" in the constitutional period, it did not mean Virginia or NY or any other state but the nation of america, therefore since your contention was that it protected only state militias you are in error since the state is america and not an individual state of the union.


Point 3: Ha, you just agreed with me without even realising it. My point used the sawed off shotgun because it was the one in the miller decision. The point was that posession of the weapon in question DID have a reasonable relation to the EFFICIENCY of the militia, in that the ease of use in the confined areas of an urban setting was a benefit to the militias ability to make itself effective, if the efficiency of the militia is increased its preservation is more likely against a hostile group. As for Joe Blow, his posession would be protected since he was, by default, in this example a citizen between the ages of 16 and 45 who was, as a citizen between 16 and 45, a member of the unorganized militia, his posession need not be for a reason related to the preservation of the militia, the weapon only has to fulfill one of the criteria, not both, since the weapon in question advances the efficiency of the militia his use is protected unless that use is in the comission of a crime not related to the posession of the weapon, posession of an illegal gun would not qualify as the comission of a crime since the weapon was protected.

You were saying?

I and my clients know my qualifications and abilities. I see no need to defend myself further or trade insults with you. If you have an actual point, prove it.

You made much talk of your "qualifications" and your "credentials" but I have yet to see any evidence supporting your claims, you say you clerked for a justice, but you won't give a name, you say you work for a national law firm, but again you won't give a name, you have repeatedly insulted others who are, I speak only for myself on this matter, willing to provide credentials, but you do not have any supporting evidence to show you have any idea of what you are doing, if there is such evidence posted previously in this thread I may have missed it. As things stand right now, I do not have any reason to believe you about any of your claims to legal greatness.

If you wish to attack my credentials let me just ask you one question, how old do you think I am? If you answer that then I will give you my credentials, if you do not defend your credentials with evidence, then my argument against your having them must be assumed to be valid. I await your response.

You made much talk of your "qualifications" and your "credentials" but I have yet to see any evidence supporting your claims, you say you clerked for a justice, but you won't give a name, you say you work for a national law firm, but again you won't give a name, you have repeatedly insulted others who are, I speak only for myself on this matter, willing to provide credentials, but you do not have any supporting evidence to show you have any idea of what you are doing, if there is such evidence posted previously in this thread I may have missed it. As things stand right now, I do not have any reason to believe you about any of your claims to legal greatness.

If you wish to attack my credentials let me just ask you one question, how old do you think I am? If you answer that then I will give you my credentials, if you do not defend your credentials with evidence, then my argument against your having them must be assumed to be valid. I await your response.

I do not believe I questioned your credentials.

I was responding to someone who appeared to think he was right and I was wrong merely because he is an attorney.

I do not think my credentials are particularly relevant. I should not have brought them up, but I was pissed off by someone who (a) first asserted I did not know what I was talking about because I was not a lawyer and (b) then asserted a junior associate would be fired for having my opinion. I should have ignored these ad hominem attacks.

I am not going to identify myself online. That would be stupid.

You are right you have no reason to believe anything I asserted about myself.
It is not relevant and I don't give a damn whether you believe it or not.

Some people arguing here get pissed and accuse me of being a "lawyer."

Some people here get pissed and claim I do not know what I am talking about because they doubt I am a lawyer.

Either way, my argument stands on its merits. I have quoted the friggin' cases.

If attacking me or my character helps you or anyone else dimiss my argument in their own mind, fine. Whatever gets you through the day.

Point 1: If speech is only sign language then the right of the american populace to say anything they want in sign language would be inviolable, that is indeed how it works. If there is only one kind of speech then the first ammendment would only protect that kind of speech, it is immaterial what the ammendment says, what matters is the legal definition of speech, not the dictionary definition of speech.


Point 2: Would you like the same general principle from a more prestigious university faculty, Emory perhaps, or maybe a professor from Harvard? I can get one from either of those universities, I just got the stuff from cornell before I found the Emory information, I had the Harvard opinion for a while but I misplaced it in my files, I found it this morning, I can quote it at any time if you like. As for your sarcasm, it helps in a major way, if you would have the brain to recognise it, the point you made was that it only protected STATE militias, my point was that the constitution does not ever anywhere in any way say state militias, it says that "a well regulated militia being necessary to the preservation of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", the state referenced is not any individual state in the union, but in fact the nation of america as a whole. The whole nation was commonly referred to as "the state" in the constitutional period, it did not mean Virginia or NY or any other state but the nation of america, therefore since your contention was that it protected only state militias you are in error since the state is america and not an individual state of the union.


Point 3: Ha, you just agreed with me without even realising it. My point used the sawed off shotgun because it was the one in the miller decision. The point was that posession of the weapon in question DID have a reasonable relation to the EFFICIENCY of the militia, in that the ease of use in the confined areas of an urban setting was a benefit to the militias ability to make itself effective, if the efficiency of the militia is increased its preservation is more likely against a hostile group. As for Joe Blow, his posession would be protected since he was, by default, in this example a citizen between the ages of 16 and 45 who was, as a citizen between 16 and 45, a member of the unorganized militia, his posession need not be for a reason related to the preservation of the militia, the weapon only has to fulfill one of the criteria, not both, since the weapon in question advances the efficiency of the militia his use is protected unless that use is in the comission of a crime not related to the posession of the weapon, posession of an illegal gun would not qualify as the comission of a crime since the weapon was protected.

You were saying?

If you wish to learn more about the Second Amendment, read further up this thread, read some of the cases I have cited, or read any of the several other threads in which I have debated this.

As I stated, I am through arguing this.

You are welcome to your opinion. I have stated mine and defended it for several days now in this thread and several times before.

I do not believe I questioned your credentials.

I was responding to someone who appeared to think he was right and I was wrong merely because he is an attorney.

I do not think my credentials are particularly relevant. I should not have brought them up, but I was pissed off by someone who (a) first asserted I did not know what I was talking about because I was not a lawyer and (b) then asserted a junior associate would be fired for having my opinion. I should have ignored these ad hominem attacks.

I am not going to identify myself online. That would be stupid.

You are right you have no reason to believe anything I asserted about myself.
It is not relevant and I don't give a damn whether you believe it or not.

Some people arguing here get pissed and accuse me of being a "lawyer."

Some people here get pissed and claim I do not know what I am talking about because they doubt I am a lawyer.

Either way, my argument stands on its merits. I have quoted the friggin' cases.

If attacking me or my character helps you or anyone else dimiss my argument in their own mind, fine. Whatever gets you through the day.


The point was that your credentials don't matter, I'm 17 years old and a junior in highschool, I can apparently argue constitutional law with the best of them, credentials are unimportant, but you seem to make a big deal over them, I freely admit I have absolutely zero credentials except for my high IQ and my passion for law, they are enough to argue my point, don't make a big deal over credentials, this goes for everybody, not just cat tribe

If you wish to learn more about the Second Amendment, read further up this thread, read some of the cases I have cited, or read any of the several other threads in which I have debated this.

As I stated, I am through arguing this.

You are welcome to your opinion. I have stated mine and defended it for several days now in this thread and several times before.


Many of the cases you so proudly cite directly or indirectly undermine your argument, they almost all have qualifiers that you consistently ignore in favor of your interpretation. Also if you do not answer an argument you give it validity, my opinion is now valid and I thank you for validating it.

Did not say that here or in court.

And to allege that I have violated the bounds of professional responsibility is a serious insult.

Please retract. That is uncalled for.

If Miller's possession of the shotgun had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, the outcome would have been different.

If Miller's possession of X had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.

It is not the type of weapon that is relevant.

It does not matter whether a shotgun has military use.

Scenario 1:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. Weapon A is used by the military or the National Guard or by a state militia.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is not protected by the Second Amendment.

Scenario 2:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. TC is a member of a well-regulated militia maintained by the state and his on duty and required to possess weapon A at X time and Y place.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is protected by the Second Amendment

Not only are you unable to brief a case, you are also incapable of choosing your own words.

The point was that your credentials don't matter, I'm 17 years old and a junior in highschool, I can apparently argue constitutional law with the best of them, credentials are unimportant, but you seem to make a big deal over them, I freely admit I have absolutely zero credentials except for my high IQ and my passion for law, they are enough to argue my point, don't make a big deal over credentials, this goes for everybody, not just cat tribe

I agree that credentials do not matter.

I believe I made a "big deal" of them once. When I was insulted by someone who was alleging I did not have credentials that I do, in fact, have.

I am glad that you added that last phrase. I was wondering if the reason you jumped on me and not my attacker was, in part, because you share his view. (I realize I am also an arrogant SOB. I think that is also true of others, but I've been an arrogant SOB for many pages now.)

I do think that there is something to be said for education and expertise.

There are things I do not know about many things that others do know. My actual knowledge of guns is far more limited than the vast majority in this thread. I would respect a doctor's opinion about medical matters -- to a certain degree.

There is a great deal I know from both experience and education about the law. It is what I do. That makes me more knowledgeable than some (and less knowledgeable than some) about certain legal matters. That does not make me right on an issue like the Second Amendment. I did not mean to claim it did.

Did not say that here or in court.

And to allege that I have violated the bounds of professional responsibility is a serious insult.

Please retract. That is uncalled for.

If Miller's possession of the shotgun had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, the outcome would have been different.

If Miller's possession of X had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.

It is not the type of weapon that is relevant.

It does not matter whether a shotgun has military use.

Scenario 1:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. Weapon A is used by the military or the National Guard or by a state militia.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is not protected by the Second Amendment.

Scenario 2:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. TC is a member of a well-regulated militia maintained by the state and his on duty and required to possess weapon A at X time and Y place.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is protected by the Second Amendment

Not only are you unable to brief a case, you are also incapable of choosing your own words.

Sa'right

Not only are you unable to brief a case, you are also incapable of choosing your own words.

I think you mean "recall [my] own words." :rolleyes:

Please point out where I said what you alleged: "it is only protected if you are on duty."

As you appear to be an authority on what I have said, I should not need to explain again that providing hypotheticals on two ends of spectrum is not saying that only things at the far end are protected.

Regardless, you know full well I have not made any breach of ethics -- whether or not I have said something stupid here.

Retract your insult.

Many of the cases you so proudly cite directly or indirectly undermine your argument, they almost all have qualifiers that you consistently ignore in favor of your interpretation.

If that is so, so be it.


Also if you do not answer an argument you give it validity, my opinion is now valid and I thank you for validating it.

I guess you are welcome.

BTW, did you switch nations mid-argument?

Sa'right

:cool: :D

BTW, no insult intended (the opposite), but I am quite impressed by your debating skills given your age. Do you participate in Debate or Speech in school?

I think you mean "recall [my] own words." :rolleyes:

Please point out where I said what you alleged: "it is only protected if you are on duty."

As you appear to be an authority on what I have said, I should not need to explain again that providing hypotheticals on two ends of spectrum is not saying that only things at the far end are protected.

Regardless, you know full well I have not made any breach of ethics -- regardless of whether or not I have said something stupid here.

Retract your insult.

Oh, no, you don't get off that easily. You have given a definitive answer to a specific legal question; after holding yourself out to be a lawyer.

Live with it. You bludgeon people down, even when you know they might have a point, simply because you are a 'lawyer'. Welcome to the real world of ethics pal.

Oh, no, you don't get off that easily. You have given a definitive answer to a specific legal question; after holding yourself out to be a lawyer.

Live with it. You bludgeon people down, even when you know they might have a point, simply because you are a 'lawyer'. Welcome to the real world of ethics pal.

Gee, the pot calls the kettle.

I'm quite familiar with the "real world" of ethics. Apparently, you are not.


EDIT: Please point out where I bragged I was a lawyer. I believe the only time it has come up in this thread is when I responded to someone (like you) that insulted me or attacked my opinion on the grounds I was not a lawyer.

I do not deny I have at times "buldgeon[ed]" people down -- because I think they are wrong. Not nice, I admit. But nicer than you by a long shot.

this thread is still going on :confused:

And again, you apparently read the entire case, yet chose not to declare this part.


Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.

If, as you claim, you have read the entire case, then your earlier claim that miller in no way specifies millitary use is clearly mendacious. On the other hand, if you were unaware of this, yet having claimed you read the whole case you were also guilty of falsehood.

In either case, as someone who holds themself out as an officer of the court you have commited a clear ethics violation.

Therefore no retraction.

BTW, did you switch nations mid-argument?


I don't think I switched nations in mid-argument, but its happened to me before so maybe I did. As for debate or speech, no I don't have good enough grades, I do the work and half the time I forget to turn it in. :headbang:

And again, you apparently read the entire case, yet chose not to declare this part.



If, as you claim, you have read the entire case, then your earlier claim that miller in no way specifies millitary use is clearly mendacious. On the other hand, if you were unaware of this, yet having claimed you read the whole case you were also guilty of falsehood.

In either case, as someone who holds themself out as an officer of the court you have commited a clear ethics violation.

Therefore no retraction.

You are unworthy of further response within the rules of this Forum.

You are unworthy of further response within the rules of this Forum.

Yah, facts hurt. you can email me if'n you want. Lacedaemon@gmail.com.

Grow up. You lost, personally I don't give a flying fuck what you think, but you couldn't control the argument. Think of it as a free life lesson. And stop patronizing others while you are at it.

Is this about guns?

Gun ownership should and must be legislated in the United States. I say this as a citizen, lawyer and former serviceman. It is time to face the facts that the present restrictions on ownership are ineffective, and have contributed to the overall sense of peril we feel in larger metropolitan areas.

Let's solve the problem, folx.

By the way, how many of you are participating in the Global Treasure Hunt? Check the region of Treasure Island for details.

Is this about guns?


No its about pie... what the hell else would it be about dumbass?

No its about pie... what the hell else would it be about dumbass?

In Frangland's defense, there has been little actual discussion of guns in the last several posts. :D

In Frangland's defense, there has been little actual discussion of guns in the last several posts. :D


Ok thats true, however, the thread does say in big bold letters Guns=Evil, it would be safe to assume that the thread is about guns. The most recent posts have been about the people arguing the court decisions and gun laws, but still about guns and the laws governing their use.

Gun ownership should and must be legislated in the United States. I say this as a citizen, lawyer and former serviceman. It is time to face the facts that the present restrictions on ownership are ineffective, and have contributed to the overall sense of peril we feel in larger metropolitan areas.

Let's solve the problem, folx.

Guess where it's illegal own a gun period and yet that same area has the highest murder rate in the nation. The areas coming in second and third both effectively outlaw any sort of carry. Can you name all three?

Guess where it's illegal own a gun period and yet that same area has the highest murder rate in the nation. The areas coming in second and third both effectively outlaw any sort of carry. Can you name all three?

ooh ooh I know, I think its NYC, LA and DC.

:sniper: Hey, me i'm in Brazil, about a year ago the police went on strike,
just the fact of driving down the public roads in the city, youd see 3-4 people out with machine guns pulling over cars, shootouts all day, huge amounts of deaths and assaults, around 7 days later the military invaded the city Salvador (3 million poulation) with tanks, snipers, and gunners, shooting down anyone who had a gun visible after that it took a few days of occupation from the countries own military before things stabalized. so ya, if ppl didn't have guns then none of that would happen.

http://www1.uol.com.br/inter/afp/ult34u20951.shl
Nas ruas, a presença ostensiva de tropas do exército trouxe de volta a tranqüilidade para a população e, por volta do meio-dia, o comércio no centro da cidade de Salvador voltou a operar em ritmo normal.
Transalation in short, The extensive presence of the military brought back tranquaility to the comerce in the center of Salvador.

You need eather military or police to control the people when they have guns, so if you need all that wouldn't it be better not to have guns???

EDIT: Please point out where I bragged I was a lawyer. I believe the only time it has come up in this thread is when I responded to someone (like you) that insulted me or attacked my opinion on the grounds I was not a lawyer.

I do not deny I have at times "buldgeon[ed]" people down -- because I think they are wrong. Not nice, I admit. But nicer than you by a long shot.

I never said I was a lawyer. Jesus, are you incapable of reading a sentence.

ooh ooh I know, I think its NYC, LA and DC.
Nope, NYC's actually getting near it's pre gun ban stage for crime rates. In order from 1-3 it's D.C., L.A., and Chicago.

:sniper: Hey, me i'm in Brazil, about a year ago the police went on strike,
just the fact of driving down the public roads in the city, youd see 3-4 people out with machine guns pulling over cars, shootouts all day, huge amounts of deaths and assaults, around 7 days later the military invaded the city Salvador (3 million poulation) with takes snipers and gunners, shooting down anyone who had a gun visible after that it took a few days of occupation from the countries own military before things stabalized. so ya, if ppl didn't have guns then none of that would happen.
Aren't guns illegal for the law-abiding citizen of Brazil to own?

Aren't guns illegal for the law-abiding citizen of Brazil to own?

Yes but everyone here owns at least small arms.

Yes but everyone here owns at least small arms.
Then why doesn't the general citizenry band together and tell the gangs to fuck off?

Nope, NYC's actually getting near it's pre gun ban stage for crime rates. In order from 1-3 it's D.C., L.A., and Chicago.


OH I didn't realize NYC was doing that much better, I thought it was still pretty high up there on the list.

:sniper: Hey, me i'm in Brazil, about a year ago the police went on strike,
just the fact of driving down the public roads in the city, youd see 3-4 people out with machine guns pulling over cars, shootouts all day, huge amounts of deaths and assaults, around 7 days later the military invaded the city Salvador (3 million poulation) with tanks, snipers, and gunners, shooting down anyone who had a gun visible after that it took a few days of occupation from the countries own military before things stabalized. so ya, if ppl didn't have guns then none of that would happen.

http://www1.uol.com.br/inter/afp/ult34u20951.shl

Transalation in short, The extensive presence of the military brought back tranquaility to the comerce in the center of Salvador.

You need eather military or police to control the people when they have guns, so if you need all that wouldn't it be better not to have guns???


Police would not be necesary if there were law abiding gun owners, the gangs are the issue and it sounds like they've still got guns, good work with the gun ban, I'll be sure to attend your funeral when you're shot because you can't protect yourself.

Then why doesn't the general citizenry band together and tell the gangs to fuck off?

Its not just the ganges, the PM's and the people are all involved, and the gangs on base have as good guns as the PM's if not better, police here are not like the usa where there they carry pistols, here they most have large machineguns.. For that reason only blitz police go against the gangs or areas...

Its not just the ganges, the PM's and the people are all involved, and the gangs on base have as good guns as the PM's if not better, police here are not like the usa where there they carry pistols, here they most have large machineguns.. For that reason only blitz police go against the gangs or areas...


Right I forgot about the psychotically well armed cops, of course I wouldn't be deterred just cause a cop has a machine gun, I've still got my pistol and if I'm close enough to use it he's too close to use his machinegun :mp5:

I'm not saying that everyone should just drop the guns, what i'm saying is that Guns = Evil because its impossible to just release them all..
I'm not trying to bring up a new discution, i'm just agreeing with the overall theme

Either way you are wrong. Would you agree that the American wild west was a very violent time in American history, specifically famous towns like Bodie and Dodge City?

Again, the UK is a prime example of how this is blatently not true.


Yes, keyword THE UK you are comparing to differant people, onm two differant contanants with differant views. If a guy comes into your house/appartment wityh a gun and your useing the bat. I think the odds would be in his favor! Now if you had a gun as well that kinda evens out the score doesn't it? :mp5:

Is this about guns?
Yes.

lacodaemon and cat o tribe are debating a point about the miller case.

COT is trying to argue that miller was about whether the individuals involved + their weapons contributed to the "militia"

Bookworms + lacodaemon and I guess me believe otherwise and think it only refers to whether the weapon was a militia weapon regardless of whether the owners were actually in a militia. Regardless of how you want to define militia(obviously COT and the rest of the peoples definitions vary)

Ah well, it is fun to watch this play out. COT makes some interesting arguments, though I dont agree with his stance on miller. His nterpretation of subsiquent cases is pretty good, except fot the fact that these same courts(the one he quotes) are the ones that let the fed govt run roughshod using the commerce clause. So, 1) yes he is correct in his cut and paste with court ruleings, 2) maybe the courts beaviour over the last 60 years needs to be scrutinized.


sorry about the spelling/grammer .... its sat night where I am and I am loaded.

Guess where it's illegal own a gun period and yet that same area has the highest murder rate in the nation. The areas coming in second and third both effectively outlaw any sort of carry. Can you name all three?


hmm, unsure.

1) washington D.C. .. thats a giveaway

2) detroit michigan... I thinks thats number 2

3)Chicago??? blindly guessing here

I'll just say one thing to the moronic anti-gunners, most of whom exist as European plebes, slaves to their state.

From the way most of you speak "No one would need to defend themselves without guns", no women, elderly, disabled, or other innocent ever needed to defend themselves before the existence of the firearm.

Seriously, do you really believe that there was no crime before the 17th century? In actuality, there was far more, and the weak and physically weak individuals had a far more difficult time defending themselves against attacks, rapes, and murders.

Do you think it is easier for a 100 lbs. woman to wield a broad sword, or to carry a revolver? How about an elderly person? How about a cripple?

I'm sure events like the Crusades, Roman imperialism, Mongrels, Vikings, Spartans, etc weren't too criminal or gruesome in your book, but they are in mine.

Firearms have been called the great equalizer for a reason. A weak person with a gun is equal to a strong person with a gun. A women, elderly person, disabled (wheel chair bound) person who would have virtually no chance of defending herself against a strong man without a firearm, is more than his equal with one.

And all these comments about “Britain having less crime since gun control” is absolute garbage. Crime has actually skyrocketed in England since they took away all the slaves, er, “subjects” guns. Here is some proof.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/07/17/nhand17.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2640817.stm
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/805190.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-537568,00.html
http://hematite.com/dragon/ukcrimeup.html
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/gun_ban_utopia_creates_crime.htm

Most of you who disarm the public wouldn’t want to disarm the police/government, why

Let us not forget, the real reason for the public to have guns. To prevent tyranny in government. Government has killed over 180 million in the 20th century alone, that is more deaths than any other cause, even war!

And one last point I’ll make for now. Those of you don’t seem to understand that guns can never go away, the technology is already “out of the bag” sort to speak. Guns are old technology, and just about anyone with the right knowhow can manufacturer their own homemade guns in their garage. I know people myself who have done it. John Browning did it. Heck, there are blacksmiths that even make their own AK-47s in the middle east. So even if you destroy every single firearm on this planet, guns will not, and CAN NOT be erased from this earth. The technology is out there, and is not terribly complex to manufacture.

You are living in a slave state fantasy world where Big Brother loves and looks after your every need.

Yes.

lacodaemon and cat o tribe are debating a point about the miller case.

COT is trying to argue that miller was about whether the individuals involved + their weapons contributed to the "militia"

Bookworms + lacodaemon and I guess me believe otherwise and think it only refers to whether the weapon was a militia weapon regardless of whether the owners were actually in a militia. Regardless of how you want to define militia(obviously COT and the rest of the peoples definitions vary)

Ah well, it is fun to watch this play out. COT makes some interesting arguments, though I dont agree with his stance on miller. His nterpretation of subsiquent cases is pretty good, except fot the fact that these same courts(the one he quotes) are the ones that let the fed govt run roughshod using the commerce clause. So, 1) yes he is correct in his cut and paste with court ruleings, 2) maybe the courts beaviour over the last 60 years needs to be scrutinized.


sorry about the spelling/grammer .... its sat night where I am and I am loaded.

Thank you. I think that was a fairly balanced account.

I wanted to add that it has been pointed out that my tone tends to be pretty abrasive and my responses are full of invective. Alas, this is largely true.

I am an arrogant prick. I try (often unsucessfully) to be civil or merely jovially acidic. I hope I have not offended overmuch. I do apologize for being overly condescending and insulting at times. I am sorry. (Unfortunately, my rhetoric may well get away from me again. Just say so when it does. I respond well to beatings. ;) )

I'll just say one thing to the moronic anti-gunners, most of whom exist as European plebes, slaves to their state.

From the way most of you speak "No one would need to defend themselves without guns", no women, elderly, disabled, or other innocent ever needed to defend themselves before the existence of the firearm.

Seriously, do you really believe that there was no crime before the 17th century? In actuality, there was far more, and the weak and physically weak individuals had a far more difficult time defending themselves against attacks, rapes, and murders.

Do you think it is easier for a 100 lbs. woman to wield a broad sword, or to carry a revolver? How about an elderly person? How about a cripple?

I'm sure events like the Crusades, Roman imperialism, Mongrels, Vikings, Spartans, etc weren't too criminal or gruesome in your book, but they are in mine.

Firearms have been called the great equalizer for a reason. A weak person with a gun is equal to a strong person with a gun. A women, elderly person, disabled (wheel chair bound) person who would have virtually no chance of defending herself against a strong man without a firearm, is more than his equal with one.

And all these comments about “Britain having less crime since gun control” is absolute garbage. Crime has actually skyrocketed in England since they took away all the slaves, er, “subjects” guns. Here is some proof.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/07/17/nhand17.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2640817.stm
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/805190.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-537568,00.html
http://hematite.com/dragon/ukcrimeup.html
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/gun_ban_utopia_creates_crime.htm

Most of you who disarm the public wouldn’t want to disarm the police/government, why

Let us not forget, the real reason for the public to have guns. To prevent tyranny in government. Government has killed over 180 million in the 20th century alone, that is more deaths than any other cause, even war!

And one last point I’ll make for now. Those of you don’t seem to understand that guns can never go away, the technology is already “out of the bag” sort to speak. Guns are old technology, and just about anyone with the right knowhow can manufacturer their own homemade guns in their garage. I know people myself who have done it. John Browning did it. Heck, there are blacksmiths that even make their own AK-47s in the middle east. So even if you destroy every single firearm on this planet, guns will not, and CAN NOT be erased from this earth. The technology is out there, and is not terribly complex to manufacture.

You are living in a slave state fantasy world where Big Brother loves and looks after your every need.


This is not the position of the well reasoned pro-gun lobby, please ignore his ramblings, he only detracts from a well reasoned and civil debate. This position is held only by a select few, it is not endorsed by the majority of the pro-gun organizations on this planet, I personally denounce most of his reasoning, his findings are sound, but the reasoning that led to them is badly flawed.

Thank you. I think that was a fairly balanced account.

I wanted to add that it has been pointed out that my tone tends to be pretty abrasive and my responses are full of invective. Alas, this is largely true.

I am an arrogant prick. I try (often unsucessfully) to be civil or merely jovially acidic. I hope I have not offended overmuch. I do apologize for being overly condescending and insulting at times. I am sorry. (Unfortunately, my rhetoric may well get away from me again. Just say so when it does. I respond well to beatings. ;) )

Nothing wrong with abrasive and arrogance, except that it doesnt sell well. But this is an internet forum and we can do things here that we wouldnt do in real life for fiscal reasons.

I call decent people here "idiots" while I call scumbags in RL "Sir". If only to promote my liveliehood(wow I cant spell for crap)

As far as your arrogance..well, you have shown yourself to be worthy of it..even though I mostly disagree with your views on guns.

There is nothing wrong with being smart and able and arrogant. Of course, I think your reading of "miller" needs work, but I am not a lawyer.

Then again, I have dealt with many lawyers and most of them are stupid... (I am not implying anything about you), but the ones I have dealt with (real estate and nyc mri collections are basically just horse traders that know a law or two). One idiot tried to bill me hourly for ECB hearings when the going rate is $500 per... good luck with her collection staff, she wanted $2700(for 1 ECB hearing), not to mention I have to pay almost the full(realistic)fine. What a dumbass..desperate for work I guess. She actually told me that she doesnt give free consults anymore.. I was like.. hello, I dont need a consult(Ive been through this violation deal), I am here to see if you are competant to handle my case.

Like she will get paid beyond the retainer($250).. yeah right. I ought to deduct her pay out of the law firms(medical collections, no fault) that reffered me to her.

The smartest ones(one actually, real estate section 8) was a guy who knew how to get around the law in NYC. His family lives in Florida now(moved a few months back..he is great), but he works in NYC because florida law is pretty straight forward so he cant find work there(sees his kids on weekends)

Yes.

lacodaemon and cat o tribe are debating a point about the miller case.

COT is trying to argue that miller was about whether the individuals involved + their weapons contributed to the "militia"

Bookworms + lacodaemon and I guess me believe otherwise and think it only refers to whether the weapon was a militia weapon regardless of whether the owners were actually in a militia. Regardless of how you want to define militia(obviously COT and the rest of the peoples definitions vary)

Ah well, it is fun to watch this play out. COT makes some interesting arguments, though I dont agree with his stance on miller. His nterpretation of subsiquent cases is pretty good, except fot the fact that these same courts(the one he quotes) are the ones that let the fed govt run roughshod using the commerce clause. So, 1) yes he is correct in his cut and paste with court ruleings, 2) maybe the courts beaviour over the last 60 years needs to be scrutinized.


sorry about the spelling/grammer .... its sat night where I am and I am loaded.

lol thanks.

might be a good idea to sleep in the bathroom... so when you wake up with the spins tonight, you won't have to move so much to make it to the toilet.

hehe

This is not the position of the well reasoned pro-gun lobby, please ignore his ramblings, he only detracts from a well reasoned and civil debate. This position is held only by a select few, it is not endorsed by the majority of the pro-gun organizations on this planet, I personally denounce most of his reasoning, his findings are sound, but the reasoning that led to them is badly flawed.

I'm afraid I disagree (and I don’t fully understand your gripe). The pro gun lobby (the REAL pro gun lobby, GOA, not the NRA big gov sellouts) whole heartedly supports my views. I don't understand your gripes, perhaps you could articulate a response founded on reason as to where your gripes lie?

lol thanks.

might be a good idea to sleep in the bathroom... so when you wake up with the spins tonight, you won't have to move so much to make it to the toilet.

hehe

No probs.

Made a deal with the spins.. as long as I keep drinking, they promse to leave me along.

So they claim..the lying greedy bastards

I'm afraid I disagree (and I don’t fully understand your gripe). The pro gun lobby (the REAL pro gun lobby, GOA, not the NRA big gov sellouts) whole heartedly supports my views. I don't understand your gripes, perhaps you could articulate a response founded on reason as to where your gripes lie?


The "big gov sell outs" as you so quaintly put it are more well reasoned than your arguments, yours are more like conspiracy theories than real arguments and well reasoned proof. You rely more upon sensationalism and hysteria, in that you are much like the anti-gun lobby in tactics, the proper way is to be more reasonable than they are, not as unreasonable, if we are more reasonable we will get more support than you will with your unfounded accusations of Big Brother and use of hysteria tactics, he who is most calm shall win in the end, not he who shouts the loudest.

Instead of spouting out catch phrases and various labels, why don't you use logic and reason to support your position, and to refute mine?

The NRA has supported, and compromised on, a LOT of anti-gun legislation. The NRA is filled with a lot of good people in the lower levels, but the upper levels of the organization are not working in the best interest of gun owners. The GOA is one of the only "no compromize" gun rights lobby group in the US today. Here are just some examples as to the NRA's stance.

http://keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=3247
Read this first.

http://www.gunownersalliance.com/BoD-2.htm
http://www.gunownersalliance.com/no-compromise.htm
http://www.gunownersalliance.com/Infiltrate_NRA-01.htm
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1368402/posts
http://www.allsafedefense.com/news/2asisters.htm
http://www.infowars.com/print/2nd/nra_reg.htm

Tsnip.

Ive been meaning to ask you, did you name yourself after the comic books? I only read 1 graphic novel, but the slammers were kick ass. their attitde was amazing. At the end when they sorta linked up was great. But even before that, the attitude about winning or.. well winning was great. No acceptance of second place, no excuse for failure. Great concept, great attitude

And again, you apparently read the entire case, yet chose not to declare this part.

If, as you claim, you have read the entire case, then your earlier claim that miller in no way specifies millitary use is clearly mendacious. On the other hand, if you were unaware of this, yet having claimed you read the whole case you were also guilty of falsehood.

In either case, as someone who holds themself out as an officer of the court you have commited a clear ethics violation.

Therefore no retraction.

I hope it is perfectly clear that this is an unfounded and despicable smear of my character and should reflect poorly only on the one who made it.

Regardless of whether I have been unfair or abusive to any opponent, I do not deserve to be accused of violating my professional ethics.

I have read Miller, obviously.

We have argued over that one sentence before and I do not think it is important. I think the sentence before it and the paragraph after provide the more critical information and the proper holding of the case. I provided a citation, a link, and excerpts of Miller. I also did not actually say half the things I am accused of saying about Miller.

If we assume I am totally wrong in my reading of Miller being wrong is not a violation of my ethical obligations as an officer of the court.

My accuser clearly implied he/she was a lawyer, but then said he/she is not. My accuser apparently has no understanding of the rules of professional responsibility or fair play.

I know I play rough, but this was out of bounds and I was and am deeply offended. Any number of expletives would have been more appropriate and less offensive.

EDIT: It only just now occurred to me that, as my position echoes almost exactly that of the American Bar Association, it is pretty funny to accuse me of violating my professional ethics for advocating that position.

.

I hope it is perfectly clear that this is an unfounded and despicable smear of my character and should reflect poorly only on the one who made it.

Regardless of whether I have been unfair or abusive to any opponent, I do not deserve to be accused of violating my professional ethics.

I have read Miller, obviously.

We have argued over that one sentence before and I do not think it is important. I think the sentence before it and the paragraph after provide the more critical information and the proper holding of the case. I provided a citation, a link, and excerpts of Miller. I also did not actually say half the things I am accused of saying about Miller.

If we assume I am totally wrong in my reading of Miller being wrong is not a violation of my ethical obligations as an officer of the court.

My accuser clearly implied he/she was a lawyer, but then said he/she is not. My accuser apparently has no understanding of the rules of professional responsibility or fair play.

I know I play rough, but this was out of bounds and I was and am deeply offended. Any number of expletives would have been more appropriate and less offensive.

EDIT: It only just now occurred to me that, as my position echoes almost exactly that of the American Bar Association, it is pretty funny to accuse me of violating my professional ethics for advocating that position.

.

[ducks flames from both Lawyers, examines devastated zone...]

You know, CT, some people would question the Ethics of the ABA in the first place. Others would remind you that there is a difference between a Lawyer, and a rabid polar bear- one is a vicious, predatory, and inhuman monster, the other is a sick animal.
;)

It shouldn't be a surprise, though, that there might be a Lawyer who thinks the position of the American Bar Association is, perhaps, unethical or even potentially wrong. There must be gun-friendly lawyers out there somewhere-it's a statistical certainty given the speed at which the legal profession devours everyone else-and I don't think the Partnership Collective has yet managed to assimilate Every member of the Legal Profession.

After all, it's like the old tale of the man who asked a Lawyer what time it was-the answer was, "For these fees, what time do you want it to be?"
:D

Ive been meaning to ask you, did you name yourself after the comic books? I only read 1 graphic novel, but the slammers were kick ass. their attitde was amazing. At the end when they sorta linked up was great. But even before that, the attitude about winning or.. well winning was great. No acceptance of second place, no excuse for failure. Great concept, great attitude

Ohmigod, get thee to a Library STAT!!! (or we'll have to see if Major Steuben feels like paying you a visit...)
Hammer's Slammers was created by David Drake (late of the 11th ACR), around 1974-76, There are two full novels (that I'm aware of) plus several collections of short-stories and Novellas. The stuff's addicting as hell, Mr. Drake is also (incidentally) a trained Lawyer who practiced until it made him so ill that driving city buses looked better than associating with his 'colleagues' did.
The writing in the books is superb, and he's one of the "Big Names" that have been on the rise post-vietnam-he practically reinvented Military Science-fiction.

hmm, unsure.

1) washington D.C. .. thats a giveaway

2) detroit michigan... I thinks thats number 2

3)Chicago??? blindly guessing here
Okay, all you people in the know, fill in the cities that are CCW or gun control and I think a pretty good picture can be drawn? That is of course assuming that the controls/no controls have been in place for awhile.

Murder Rate in 2001
National Rate = 5.6 Murders per 100,000 Population

1 Gary, IN 79.4 CCW "shall-issue"
2 Compton, CA 48.3
3 New Orleans, LA 44.0 CCW "shall-issue"
4 St. Louis, MO 42.2
5 Youngstown, OH 41.4 CCW "shall-issue"
6 Detroit, MI 41.3 63 CCW "shall-issue"
7 Washington, DC 40.6 (gun control) (murder rate 1991/2000 482/239) -49%
8 Baltimore, MD 38.7
9 Richmond, VA 35.8 CCW "shall-issue"
10 Atlanta, GA 33.8 CCW "shall-issue"
11 Inglewood, CA 33.1
12 Flint, MI 32.6 CCW "shall-issue"
12 Newark, NJ 32.
14 Camden, NJ 31.0
15 Birmingham, AL 29.9 CCW "shall-issue"
16 Jackson, MS 27.0 74 CCW "shall-issue"
17 Reading, PA 24.6 CCW "shall-issue"
18 Memphis, TN 24.1 CCW "shall-issue"
19 Kansas City, MO 23.2
20 Chicago, IL 22.9 (gun control)
21 Buffalo, NY 21.8
22 West Palm Beach, FL 21.4 CCW "shall-issue"
23 Milwaukee, WI 21.1
24 Oakland, CA 20.6
25 Hartford, CT 20.4 CCW "shall-issue"

113 New York, NY 8.1 (gun control)

Why is Gary, Indiana the highest (higher than Washington DC)???

7 Washington, DC 40.6 (gun control) (murder rate 1981/2000 482/239) -49%
No, murder rate in 1981 - 35.1, 2000 - 41.8, the amount of people in DC has gone down quite a bit. Get your stats straight.

No, murder rate in 1981 - 35.1, 2000 - 41.8, the amount of people in DC has gone down quite a bit. Get your stats straight.
Ooops, I meant in 1991 it was 80.6 and in 2000 it was 41.8, a drop of 49%.

113 New York, NY 8.1 (gun control)

Why is Youngstown, Ohio so high (higher than Washington DC)???
For one, about 70,000 people live in youngstown v.s. 600,000 for DC. And it isn't exactly that much higher. New York's murder rate is still well above what it was before they instituted their gun laws in the first place. As for why Gary, Indiana's is so high, that place pretty much defines shithole. I mean, the only thing that city had was it's steelworks, many of which are currently inactive. Heyy, wikipedia comes in handy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary,_Indiana

The city was founded in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as the home for its new plant. The city was named after the chairman of U.S. Steel, Elbert H. Gary.
A home on Gary's west side (18-May-2004, John Delano)
Enlarge
A home on Gary's west side (18-May-2004, John Delano)

Among cities of 100,000 or more, Gary has the highest percentage of Black residents of any U.S. city (as of the census 2000). Gary had one of the nation's first Black mayors, Richard G. Hatcher.

Gary's fortunes have risen and fallen with those of the steel industry. In the 1960s, Gary entered a downward spiral of decline brought on by layoffs at the steel plants. Contrary to popular belief, the losses of jobs in steel are more due to improved technology than to imports. Steel production peaked at US Steel's Gary works in the early 1990s, it just took fewer people to produce that steel. As unemployment increased, so did crime, taxes, and property abandonment.

Gary's downtown is virtually empty. Vacant stores have murals painted on their windows depicting what they once sold. "Painted on the shuttered Palace Theater is a scene from some elegant memory: a ticket seller in a bow tie and a crowd of customers, some in slinky gowns, milling in a lobby." (New York Times, November 30, 2003)

Ooops, I meant in 1991 it was 80.6 and in 2000 it was 41.8, a drop of 49%.
*shrugs* It's had the gun ban in place since the 1970's so it's unlikely the drop has anything to do with gun control. Especially since it didn't spike that high until the late '80's. The reason for the spike has nothing to do with gun control itself, instead one must find out what changed in D.C. starting in 1988.

For one, about 70,000 people live in youngstown v.s. 600,000 for DC. And it isn't exactly that much higher. New York's murder rate is still well above what it was before they instituted their gun laws in the first place. As for why Gary, Indiana's is so high, that place pretty much defines shithole. I mean, the only thing that city had was it's steelworks, many of which are currently inactive. Heyy, wikipedia comes in handy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary,_Indiana
So CCW hasn't helped Gary Indiana?

Gary, Indiana, had the highest homicide rate of any United States city in 1993, with 89.1 murders per 100,000 residents.

In 8 years it has only dropped 10 murders per 100,000 and was still the number one per capita murder capital in the US in 2001.

*shrugs* It's had the gun ban in place since the 1970's so it's unlikely the drop has anything to do with gun control. Especially since it didn't spike that high until the late '80's. The reason for the spike has nothing to do with gun control itself, instead one must find out what changed in D.C. starting in 1988.
It would probably help if Virginia and Maryland both had strict gun control?

Ohmigod, get thee to a Library STAT!!! (or we'll have to see if Major Steuben feels like paying you a visit...)
Hammer's Slammers was created by David Drake (late of the 11th ACR), around 1974-76, There are two full novels (that I'm aware of) plus several collections of short-stories and Novellas. The stuff's addicting as hell, Mr. Drake is also (incidentally) a trained Lawyer who practiced until it made him so ill that driving city buses looked better than associating with his 'colleagues' did.
The writing in the books is superb, and he's one of the "Big Names" that have been on the rise post-vietnam-he practically reinvented Military Science-fiction.

No luck for me, Im in India. Perhaps Amazon can help me out.

So CCW hasn't helped Gary Indiana?

Gary, Indiana, had the highest homicide rate of any United States city in 1993, with 89.1 murders per 100,000 residents.

In 8 years it has only dropped 10 murders per 100,000 and was still the number one per capita murder capital in the US in 2001.
Did you read the wiki article? The murder rate is directly connected to unemployment. Also, cities can nullify state carry laws, so I don't know if concealed carry is even legal there. Until 1987 the situation was as follows Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, ordered his police department never to give anyone license application forms. source (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa109.html)

As to whether that situation has continued after Hatcher left office, I'm unsure.

It would probably help if Virginia and Maryland both had strict gun control?
Maryland does, at least concerning CCW, which is why Baltimore is a nasty shithole( I lived near the city for 9 years, I get to say this) except for the pier. Virginia doesn't, and oddly enough, it doesn't have that much crime. Maryland, in which getting a CCW is pretty much impossible, has a rather higher crime rate then VA. Technically it's a May issue state, but unless you're buddies with the cops or a judge, or you're extremely rich, you ain't getting one.

So CCW hasn't helped Gary Indiana?

Gary, Indiana, had the highest homicide rate of any United States city in 1993, with 89.1 murders per 100,000 residents.

In 8 years it has only dropped 10 murders per 100,000 and was still the number one per capita murder capital in the US in 2001.
Oh, and post sources please.

[Quote]
that entire article sums down to an argument that we have heard time and time again:

if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns


well, i have a novel approach:

why not stop making the damn things?

seriously, if we stopped making them completely, and publicly bought and destroyed the oned already in existance, nobody would have guns, criminal or innocent alike.

then you can block imports, and all you have to worry about is smuggling, and we already have a system in place to deter drug smuggling, so why don't we beef that up and modify it slightly to include dangerous firearms?

i can hear you already: "but the second amendment! the second amendment!"

1) i doubt any of you NRA idiots even know the whole thing. no, it is not "the right to bear arms" google "constitutional amendments" and read the entire thing.

2) while you're at it, go read the twenty first amendment. i'm serious, go read it before you move on to the next bit.


see? the amendments are not set in stone. why do you think they're called 'amendments'? they're there to be changed, modified, and updated as the times move onwards.
[Quote]

We are talking about the same america, right? The one that is the biggest seller of arms in the world (ironically the next four in line are also veto-casting members of the un security council). The problem is not protection, guns or crime. The problem is the american cultural values of violence and the role of the individual in self-preservation. The idea that banning guns in the us would solve anything is as crazy as suggesting that the average latin american economy benefited under the attempt by the us to enforce the principle of comparative advantage upon them in the 1980s. The cultural values of a country have a large effect on the political effectiveness of any policy. Hence, canadians are able to carry guns around and manage not to have massive crime waves, australians - like myself -, new zealanders and greater british are able to ban guns and not have massive crime waves, but in america first the government will have to deal with issues like mass poverty, lack of true welfare, low education standards and poor social outcomes for those of ethnic 'minorities' before it will be able to handle the comparatively simple issue of violent crime that the rest of the anglo-saxon centric countries manage to control. As one northern european leader once famously said after being invited to the us as part of a converence on economic reform, 'They keep telling us how much better their system is, then they warn us not to leave the hotel alone at night.'

I personally think it would also help if the usa stopped trying to export its social problems onto other countries - e.g. selling guns in the very middle eastern and central african countries that it claims to wish to see living in peace - but again this will require a change in the cultural values held by the minitory of educationed and voting population in america. This is, of course, much harder to do than to ban or allow fire-arms in a country, and historically no one has ever accused the american government of particularly deep or subtle policy aims.

Okay, all you people in the know, fill in the cities that are CCW or gun control and I think a pretty good picture can be drawn? That is of course assuming that the controls/no controls have been in place for awhile.

Murder Rate in 2001
National Rate = 5.6 Murders per 100,000 Population

1 Gary, IN 79.4 CCW "shall-issue"
2 Compton, CA 48.3
3 New Orleans, LA 44.0 CCW "shall-issue"
4 St. Louis, MO 42.2
5 Youngstown, OH 41.4 CCW "shall-issue"
6 Detroit, MI 41.3 63 CCW "shall-issue"
7 Washington, DC 40.6 (gun control) (murder rate 1991/2000 482/239) -49%
8 Baltimore, MD 38.7
9 Richmond, VA 35.8 CCW "shall-issue"
10 Atlanta, GA 33.8 CCW "shall-issue"
11 Inglewood, CA 33.1
12 Flint, MI 32.6 CCW "shall-issue"
12 Newark, NJ 32.
14 Camden, NJ 31.0
15 Birmingham, AL 29.9 CCW "shall-issue"
16 Jackson, MS 27.0 74 CCW "shall-issue"
17 Reading, PA 24.6 CCW "shall-issue"
18 Memphis, TN 24.1 CCW "shall-issue"
19 Kansas City, MO 23.2
20 Chicago, IL 22.9 (gun control)
21 Buffalo, NY 21.8
22 West Palm Beach, FL 21.4 CCW "shall-issue"
23 Milwaukee, WI 21.1
24 Oakland, CA 20.6
25 Hartford, CT 20.4 CCW "shall-issue"

113 New York, NY 8.1 (gun control)

Why is Gary, Indiana the highest (higher than Washington DC)???

The information you provided is insufficient to make any judgements either for or against with regards to gun ownership and murders.

Here is why
1) Some of the information regarding which states are "shall issue" states is in conflict with what I am finding(granted, I am looking at 2005 laws and you are looking at 2001 so a state that didnt allows handguns might have switched and vice versa)

2) just because a state is a "may issue"(vs a shall issue) doesnt mean that CCW permits are difficult to obtain. All "shall issue" means is that the govt MUST give a permit if the applicant is not otherwise disqualified. Using NY as an example(may issue state), it is almost impossible to get a CCW permit in NYC,NY but it is not difficult to get one in Buffalo,NY. Yet you have erroneously grouped them both as strict gun control places.

3)Even in "shall issue" states, often the municipality is able to override the state govt. As is the case with Gary, IN. Just because the State is "shall issue", it does not mean that permits are given/handguns allowed in every city. Philadelphia is another example of a city that doesnt easily give CCW permits even though it is in a "shall issue" state. Florida is an example of where municipalities cannot override the state govt with regards to guns.

4)The shall/may issue permitting process is only in regards to CCW permits. This has no bearing on A)long guns B)handguns kept at home. The laws regarding them(if any) are often differant. Just because a person doesnt have a concealed carry permit, does not mean he is unarmed when confronted by a criminal.

here is a link where you can look up various law regarding permits in the US http://www.packing.org/state/index.jsp/michigan

The only way to make any conclusions about the relationship between gun laws and murder is to go through county by county and actually look at the laws affecting gun ownership and crime rates.

You have already however completely refused to look at the study that does this simply because the researcher wrote a book about and makes money from that book. With this type of one sided thinking, I wonder how you believe any of the information given to you through school textbooks or even the daily news. Everybody is making money from doing what they are doing.

Quickest way to drop violence levels would first be to stop the friggin war on drugs. Then you need to fix(fix in no way means just throw more money at it.) the welfare situation and the multitudes of broken families in the cities.

Quickest way to drop violence levels would first be to stop the friggin war on drugs. Then you need to fix(fix in no way means just throw more money at it.) the welfare situation and the multitudes of broken families in the cities.

Very true.

The war on drugs has caused much more harm than it has prevented.

Even if the govt wont legalize drugs, at the very least they should drop jail time. Fine the hell out of people if you must(and drop all govt welfare programs for them), but dont use up jail space with criminals whose only crime involved no harm(physical or otherwise) to another person(who didnt consent).

Keep the jail for the murders, rapist and career thieves. Basically those prone to violence and harming others.

Guns are not evil, allowing idiots to have guns is evil.

Guns are not evil, allowing idiots to have guns is evil.


I agree, can I be the one to decide who the idiots are? Please?

Okay, looking deeper into demographics, the Southern States are arguably the most pro gun in the US, and all have "shall issue" CCW mandates, yet when it comes down to livability, they rank at the bottom. Why is that?

2005 MOST LIVABLE STATE AWARD (http://www.morganquitno.com/sr05mlrnk.htm)

37 Florida
38 Georgia
39 Alabama
40 North Carolina
41 Kentucky
42 New Mexico
43 Oklahoma
44 South Carolina
45 Texas
46 West Virginia
47 Tennessee
48 Arkansas
49 Louisiana
50 Mississippi

The war on drugs has caused much more harm than it has prevented.
So which drugs would YOU "legalize"?
Even if the govt wont legalize drugs, at the very least they should drop jail time.
Won't this be counter productive by arresting the same individuals except more often?
Fine the hell out of people if you must(and drop all govt welfare programs for them),
I would be interested to know what you would expect to accomplish with this type of program?

Okay, looking deeper into demographics, the Southern States are arguably the most pro gun in the US, and all have "shall issue" CCW mandates, yet when it comes down to livability, they rank at the bottom. Why is that?



Maybe because they didn't score well on the 40 other catagories that had nothing to do w/ crime? including " Percent of Days That Are Sunny (Table 233)"

Notice the top 5 are all pro gun? Probably not.

You say you looked deeper into demographics and come up w/ this as your arguement? This is really sad.

Okay, looking deeper into demographics, the Southern States are arguably the most pro gun in the US, and all have "shall issue" CCW mandates, yet when it comes down to livability, they rank at the bottom. Why is that?

2005 MOST LIVABLE STATE AWARD (http://www.morganquitno.com/sr05mlrnk.htm)

37 Florida
38 Georgia
39 Alabama
40 North Carolina
41 Kentucky
42 New Mexico
43 Oklahoma
44 South Carolina
45 Texas
46 West Virginia
47 Tennessee
48 Arkansas
49 Louisiana
50 Mississippi

I dont know, how did they rank before they allowed ccw as opposed to after? Are you trying to claim that South Dakota would magically be a better place to live than Ny if SD allowed guns? I am not making such a claim. Why would you want to compare butfuck Wyoming to LA solely based on who allows guns and in what capacity?

You werent seriously trying to make this living standard argument were you? It was a joke right?

So which drugs would YOU "legalize"?

Won't this be counter productive by arresting the same individuals except more often?

I would be interested to know what you would expect to accomplish with this type of program?

I would legalize ALL drugs. I would keep the govt out of the lives of private consentual transactions.

What is productive is arresting those people that are willing to harm others. some 40% of the US prison space is filled with non violent drug offenders. Instead of them being in jail, perhaps the murders, rapist, and career criminals could spend more time in prison vs being paroled early to make room for drug offenders that are subject to federal sentancing guidleines.

giving a serial rapist parole to make room for someone who sold someone else weed/coke/someother damn thing is extremely stupid in my eyes.

Okay, looking deeper into demographics, the Southern States are arguably the most pro gun in the US, and all have "shall issue" CCW mandates, yet when it comes down to livability, they rank at the bottom. Why is that?
Of the top ten states there are three that limit gun usage at all, in the other seven it's shall issue or none other than federal. Iowa allows CCW with may issue permit. Mass. technically allows may issue CCW but they rarely issue them. Nebraska has open carry and also concealed carry with may issue

I'd say guns aren't evil. That's like saying cars are evil, or swords, or wooden sticks. I can kill someone with a wooden stick if I wanted to, or with a car. It's what people make out of it. Gotta blame the people who're idiots, not the device.

Also, after looking at page 1. Uhmm... if I was a police officer I'd still be able to kick nearly anyone's ass. I may not be 6'8" and surely don't have 250 pounds on my ribs, but eh... if you know how to do it the larger and heavier your opponent is, the easier it is to level him. And I've leveled 6-footers.

If I wanted to kill someone I wouldn't need a gun.

I would legalize ALL drugs. I would keep the govt out of the lives of private consentual transactions.

What is productive is arresting those people that are willing to harm others. some 40% of the US prison space is filled with non violent drug offenders. Instead of them being in jail, perhaps the murders, rapist, and career criminals could spend more time in prison vs being paroled early to make room for drug offenders that are subject to federal sentancing guidleines.

giving a serial rapist parole to make room for someone who sold someone else weed/coke/someother damn thing is extremely stupid in my eyes.
And you don't think selling drugs to very young people to get them addicted isn't a crime? I guess you don't have any kids or are not planning on having any?

Hard core additions to hard drugs = more crime, and more severe crime.....look it up.

Drug addictions and alcoholism are responsibile for all kinds of social ailments, lost productivity, and crime.

giving a serial rapist parole to make room for someone who sold someone else weed/coke/someother damn thing is extremely stupid in my eyes.
You are not serious with this comment are you? The US is paroling "serial rapists" to make room for drug dealers? That would certainly be a sad state of affairs to say the least.

Point is, live free or die.


And if somebody got a problem with that.......HERE I AM!!!!!

Maybe because they didn't score well on the 40 other catagories that had nothing to do w/ crime? including " Percent of Days That Are Sunny (Table 233)"

Notice the top 5 are all pro gun? Probably not.

You say you looked deeper into demographics and come up w/ this as your arguement? This is really sad.
What I did notice, was that the bottom 14 States included ALL the traditional "deep south" States, with the exception of Virginia. ALL of those States have "shall issue" CCW legislation. NONE are gun control States.

In regards to the Top 14 Most Livable States, 7 of the States do not have "shall issue" CCW legislation.

This kind of stands out to me. Also in regards, to your comment about States with a higher "Percent of Days That Are Sunny" (listed as a positive factor) would probably go hand in hand with "Normal Daily Mean Temperature" (also a positive factor), and these would be found in the Southern States making them more "livable", and yet they are at the bottom of the scale.

They're also the deep south states with similar climate etc.. etc.. etc.. Unless you know the exact way they judged their categories, which you don't, you're doing naught but grasping at straws.

Well the amendment is:
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.

The point is that we are allowed guns in case anything happens. The first ammendments should not be repealed.

As a note, anybody opposed to the "vigilant group right wing nutjobs" should know that what they are doing is perfectly constitutional and is even supported by the constitution.

:fluffle: :sniper: :mp5: :gundge: :confused: :gundge: :sniper: :mp5: :upyours:

They're also the deep south states with similar climate etc.. etc.. etc.. Unless you know the exact way they judged their categories, which you don't, you're doing naught but grasping at straws.

I fully agree that there is, at most, a weak correlation shown so far between the cited livability ratings and CCW laws. No causation whatsoever has been shown.

Well the amendment is:
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.

The point is that we are allowed guns in case anything happens. The first ammendments should not be repealed.

As a note, anybody opposed to the "vigilant group right wing nutjobs" should know that what they are doing is perfectly constitutional and is even supported by the constitution. <snip>


:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

Guns dont kill americans, americans kill each other.

The reason you have all this gun play is not because of gun control laws or concealed weapon laws but because america is a violent society.

You can have all the guns you want but you will still have lots of gun play and violent crime. You can have all the gun control laws you want, americans are still going to blast each otehr away....
guns dont kill people, postal workers kill people.

I fully agree that there is, at most, a weak correlation shown so far between the cited livability ratings and CCW laws. No causation whatsoever has been shown.

It's not easy to do a study even of what might be obvious - heavily urban areas that have extremely strict gun control but high murder rates.

You probably have factors there that can't be controlled:

drug use
ethnicity
economic class
population density

IIRC, drug use and economic class have far, far more to do with your odds of victimization or rate of violent crime.

I would, however, state that in two adjacent counties with nearly identical ethnicity, rates of drug use, economic class, and population density, whose primary difference is the free carry of weapons in one location and the restriction of firearms in the other location, violent crime is 60 percent lower in the county that allows weapons.

Your mileage may vary.

The sole use/purpose of guns are to kill.

So only people who we trust to kill people should have guns.

ie. Police/army

The sole use/purpose of guns are to kill.

So only people who we trust to kill people should have guns.

ie. Police/army

Guns are used for more things than just killing.
And why should we trust the police and army more than each other?
I live in a place where the government trusts us to walk around armed, and we have lower crime (60 percent less violent crime) than the areas immediately around us that are economically and ethnically identical.

Just because people are armed doesn't mean they will shoot each other. It just doesn't work that way.

And you don't think selling drugs to very young people to get them addicted isn't a crime? I guess you don't have any kids or are not planning on having any?

Hard core additions to hard drugs = more crime, and more severe crime.....look it up.

Drug addictions and alcoholism are responsibile for all kinds of social ailments, lost productivity, and crime.

Wow, I can't believe this thread is still going. Anyway, to respond:

Where are the parents throughout all this? How are the kids getting addicted without the parents knowing about it? Are they that irresponsible as parents? If so, why are they still allowed to be negligent?

Drug addictions are NOT responsible for all kinds of social ailments, lost productivity, and crime. IRRESPONSIBLE HUMANS are responsible for trying drugs, getting hooked on them, and then fucking up.

This is the problem today--no one wants to take any kind of responsibility anymore. They want to blame things on anything but themselves, when THEY had the CHOICE to monkey with drugs or alcohol.

The sole use/purpose of guns are to kill.

So only people who we trust to kill people should have guns.

ie. Police/army

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would agree with you, Comrade.
http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/stockup2_s.jpg


http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/s_order.jpg
http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/s_what.JPG

http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/s_monopoly.jpg
http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/panther_s.jpg

[hmmmm, why arn't my images showing up?]

Wow, I can't believe this thread is still going. Anyway, to respond:

Where are the parents throughout all this? How are the kids getting addicted without the parents knowing about it? Are they that irresponsible as parents? If so, why are they still allowed to be negligent?
I don't know how old you are but perhaps a little more life experience will give you the answers to your questions?

Drug addictions are NOT responsible for all kinds of social ailments, lost productivity, and crime. IRRESPONSIBLE HUMANS are responsible for trying drugs, getting hooked on them, and then fucking up.
You can't make the connection between drug/alcohol abuse and social ailments, lost productivity, and crime?

This is the problem today--no one wants to take any kind of responsibility anymore. They want to blame things on anything but themselves, when THEY had the CHOICE to monkey with drugs or alcohol.
In the end, if they get honest they will blame themselves, but until that time, yes they will blame everyone else, or society in general.

I know how to use one fairly well but I'd never carry one.

I know how to use one fairly well but I'd never carry one.

If it were legal to do so, may I ask why you would not?

Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would agree with you, Comrade.

[hmmmm, why arn't my images showing up?]
Hmmmm

Fear of government oppression.
Fear of being a victim.

Fear of Presidents?:

Assassinated presidents

Abraham Lincoln - assassinated by John Wilkes Booth
James Garfield - assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau
William McKinley - assassinated by Leon F. Czolgosz
John Kennedy - assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald

Presidents who suffered attempted assassinations

Andrew Jackson - would-be assassin: Richard Lawrence (both derringers misfired)
Harry Truman - Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attempted to storm Blair House, residence of Truman
Gerald Ford - would be assassins: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, in two separate incidences
Ronald Reagan - shot and wounded by John W. Hinkley, Jr

I doubt that Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald.

His rifle was examined by several distiguished marksmen from the Army Marksmanship Team. They found that the scope was mounted incorrectly, and could not be made to be zeroed properly without mechanical alteration.

AFTER making this alteration - the installation of shims, they were able to get the rifle on target.

They performed test shots at stationary targets at 85 yards (the maximum distance Oswald could have shot at Dealey Plaza).

Of the three marksmen, two could not match the cycle time (the time required to fire and work the bolt for three shots) shown in the Zapruder film. One could match the time, but not with any hits on target.

It was their conclusion that Oswald could not have made all three shots, and with the rifle in its original condition, it could not have hit anything at all, except by accident.

Gerald Ford explicitly removed this testimony from the Warren Commission Report.

You are not serious with this comment are you? The US is paroling "serial rapists" to make room for drug dealers? That would certainly be a sad state of affairs to say the least.

Washington State does it-which is why my wife carries-we've got four within ten blocks that we know about thanks to a Notification law that was forced down the Legislature's throat by Initiative.

Washington State does it-which is why my wife carries-we've got four within ten blocks that we know about thanks to a Notification law that was forced down the Legislature's throat by Initiative.
The same people who don't want you to carry a weapon are the same people who believe in rehabilitation, early release, early parole, work release programs, and anything else that raises the risk that a "poor misunderstood offender" will be walking the streets.

The same people who believe that a victim of domestic violence is actually protected by a piece of paper called a "protective order".

The same people who don't want you to carry a weapon are the same people who believe in rehabilitation, early release, early parole, work release programs, and anything else that raises the risk that a "poor misunderstood offender" will be walking the streets.

The same people who believe that a victim of domestic violence is actually protected by a piece of paper called a "protective order".

Exactly.

I don't know how old you are but perhaps a little more life experience will give you the answers to your questions?


Mid thirties. Point is, everyone is allowing irresponsible parents to get away with not watching their kids. I understand they can't be everywhere all the time, but they sure can do better than they are. Why don't they know their kids' friends? Why don't they know where their kids go? Yes, I know there are single parent families out there. This is where the awesome responsibility of raising a child is the most evident. It almost can't be done. Note I said almost. There are incredible parents out there that can do it. But those are VERY few and very far between. Having a kid is a huge, life-changing event that changes your life forever--many parents can't understand and change their lives to allow for it. If you don't have enough income, how are you going to raise a child? If you are working all the time for that income, how are you going to raise a child? Too many parents having kids when they don't have the means to support AND raise the child.


You can't make the connection between drug/alcohol abuse and social ailments, lost productivity, and crime?


I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects. I believe in blaming the human that is allowing the issues to happen/continue. And blaming alcohol/drugs for rape, murder, crime, etc., is doing just that--not holding the person responsible. They had the choice to take the drink/do the drugs.


In the end, if they get honest they will blame themselves, but until that time, yes they will blame everyone else, or society in general.

You're not helping by allowing them to blame everything else, though. You're enabling them.

Canuck, you need to read "Inside The Criminal Mind" by Stanton Samenow.

You won't find a better book on the nature of offenders.

Not only are you unable to brief a case, you are also incapable of choosing your own words.

Have you provided any findings of fact at all in this thread.. All of your offhand comments to Cat-Tribe have been solely attacks on thier credibility. I have read through this thread and cnat figure out whether you are just a troll or are just not mentally capable of providing a finding or agument in your favor without resorting to personal attacks and harassment designed to derail the ability to maintain a civil conversation.

I have not commented on this thread very much as I admit, my knowledge of miller and other case findings is very minimal and my job does not permit me to spend hours reading case law.

I would ask that you case and desist from making personal judgments and harsh personal attacks and reserve your commentary specifically for points which express or further your own political agenda on the subject.
Since you are not able to view anything but both sides obviously, at least you could stick to your side and make a point thats relevant.

thank you very much

Mid thirties. Point is, everyone is allowing irresponsible parents to get away with not watching their kids. I understand they can't be everywhere all the time, but they sure can do better than they are. Why don't they know their kids' friends? Why don't they know where their kids go? Yes, I know there are single parent families out there. This is where the awesome responsibility of raising a child is the most evident. It almost can't be done. Note I said almost. There are incredible parents out there that can do it. But those are VERY few and very far between. Having a kid is a huge, life-changing event that changes your life forever--many parents can't understand and change their lives to allow for it. If you don't have enough income, how are you going to raise a child? If you are working all the time for that income, how are you going to raise a child? Too many parents having kids when they don't have the means to support AND raise the child.

I agree completely. (does this mean we will implode? ;) )



I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects. I believe in blaming the human that is allowing the issues to happen/continue. And blaming alcohol/drugs for rape, murder, crime, etc., is doing just that--not holding the person responsible. They had the choice to take the drink/do the drugs.

You're not helping by allowing them to blame everything else, though. You're enabling them.

I agree that individuals should be held responsible for their own choices.

My concern is that holding individuals responsible is not sufficient to control the harm. When large numbers of individuals are making choices that routinely harm the rest of society, it makes sense to look at what might be done to minimize that harm. Simply punishing individual wrondoers is just, but it neither prevents nor remedies the harm. Obviously, solutions than have maximized effect on wrongdoing but minimized disadvantages -- including any loss of freedom -- are best.

With alcohol, for example, penalties for conduct such as drunk driving make sense. Although some freedom is technically lost, it is overwhelmed by the inherent danger of that activity and harm such activity routinely causes to society. In addition to such penalties, education programs and offerings of rehabilitation for those with alcohol problems help minimize harms with little harm to the innocent. (Granted, taxes are a harm. To the extent those needing rehabilitation can be required to pay for it, they should. Similarly, fines from drunk driving can help fund police efforts, rehabilitation, etc. But the bottom line becomes whether the harm that might be prevented by education and/or rehabilitation programs outweighs the harm to innocent pocketbooks. If not, the programs are unwarranted).

Now, when it comes to guns, the issue gets very complicated. Guns have both advantages and disadvantages to society. Among the advantages is the liberty of owning a gun itself and the potential protection of liberties afforded by a gun. It may be the case that there is no way to minimize the dangers of guns and the misuse of guns that is not outweighed by the disadvantages of such regulation.

Our society has been imposing ever greater sentences on criminals -- and imposing additional mandatory minimums on crimes involving guns. (In other words, if you commit a rape you get a minimum sentence of X. If you used a gun while commiting a rape you get a minimum of X + 5 years. And the extra is always on top. If the range for rape is 5 to 15, a rape with a gun gets whatever the sentence independently is for rape (whether it is 7, 10, etc.) plus an additional 5 years.)

Increasing the chances of someone getting caught for commiting any crime is one of the best things we can do to prevent crime -- but we run into privacy and liberty issues there as well. (Same with increasing the chances of someone getting caught for misusing a gun.)

Anyway, I have now rambled for awhile. My main question is, as you all know more about guns than I and have a stronger sense of gun liberties, is what can we do to reduce crime, gun crime, and gun deaths in this country? We clearly have a problem with all three. (Although I think they are going down.)

I thought this thread died a week or two ago.

Regardless of what the anti gun folk believe, I stand by what I said.

I agree completely. (does this mean we will implode? ;) )


<poke, poke> Still here.... :D I think the matter and anti-matter have to actually touch to destroy the universe. :cool:


I agree that individuals should be held responsible for their own choices.

My concern is that holding individuals responsible is not sufficient to control the harm. When large numbers of individuals are making choices that routinely harm the rest of society, it makes sense to look at what might be done to minimize that harm. Simply punishing individual wrondoers is just, but it neither prevents nor remedies the harm. Obviously, solutions than have maximized effect on wrongdoing but minimized disadvantages -- including any loss of freedom -- are best.

With alcohol, for example, penalties for conduct such as drunk driving make sense. Although some freedom is technically lost, it is overwhelmed by the inherent danger of that activity and harm such activity routinely causes to society. In addition to such penalties, education programs and offerings of rehabilitation for those with alcohol problems help minimize harms with little harm to the innocent. (Granted, taxes are a harm. To the extent those needing rehabilitation can be required to pay for it, they should. Similarly, fines from drunk driving can help fund police efforts, rehabilitation, etc. But the bottom line becomes whether the harm that might be prevented by education and/or rehabilitation programs outweighs the harm to innocent pocketbooks. If not, the programs are unwarranted).

Now, when it comes to guns, the issue gets very complicated. Guns have both advantages and disadvantages to society. Among the advantages is the liberty of owning a gun itself and the potential protection of liberties afforded by a gun. It may be the case that there is no way to minimize the dangers of guns and the misuse of guns that is not outweighed by the disadvantages of such regulation.

Our society has been imposing ever greater sentences on criminals -- and imposing additional mandatory minimums on crimes involving guns. (In other words, if you commit a rape you get a minimum sentence of X. If you used a gun while commiting a rape you get a minimum of X + 5 years. And the extra is always on top. If the range for rape is 5 to 15, a rape with a gun gets whatever the sentence independently is for rape (whether it is 7, 10, etc.) plus an additional 5 years.)

Increasing the chances of someone getting caught for commiting any crime is one of the best things we can do to prevent crime -- but we run into privacy and liberty issues there as well. (Same with increasing the chances of someone getting caught for misusing a gun.)

Anyway, I have now rambled for awhile. My main question is, as you all know more about guns than I and have a stronger sense of gun liberties, is what can we do to reduce crime, gun crime, and gun deaths in this country? We clearly have a problem with all three. (Although I think they are going down.)

Someone stated it before--a great deal of crime (both firearm related and non-firearm related) is directly related to the prohibited trade of drugs. I see getting rid of that prohibition and actually holding people responsible for the actual crime (hitting someone in a car, rather than making a difference of hitting someone in a car when high) the solution. And make it more difficult to get away with it. A large chunk of crimes committed with firearms involves the drug trade. How much is it dealing with problems with the trade itself, and how much is it dealing with someone who "needs" a fix? I don't know offhand.

I'm all for just tacking that +5 years onto a rape sentence and getting rid of the gun clause. :) Then again, you already knew that.

Here's a legal question for ya: Does classifying alcoholism a disease make it easier for someone who commits manslaughter with a car any less likely to have a reduced sentence with counseling/treatment?

As to the argument of "if we aren't allowed to have guns, criminals will still have them and we won't be protected" I say this:

Murder is illegal. But people still commit murder. Therefore, we should legalize murder.








(And because this is this internet, for all you fucking dumbasses out there, that was sarcasm)

(And because this is this internet, for all you fucking dumbasses out there, that was sarcasm)

I think they got it, SR.

And you don't think selling drugs to very young people to get them addicted isn't a crime? I guess you don't have any kids or are not planning on having any?

Hard core additions to hard drugs = more crime, and more severe crime.....look it up.

As far as kids go, thats why you have a)some sort of minimum age regulation and b)good parents. Drug dealers arent too worried about breaking a few laws, but store owners,pharmacists and doctors would be.

Moreover, I completely fail to understand your reasoning. On the one hand you argue that the govt can effectively prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on guns, and on the other you argue that the govt is completely unable to prevent the wrong people from getting their hands on drugs if they were legal and regulated like guns.


And you are presuming that this would still be true if the drug addict had options beyond(my dealer is going to kill me if I dont get his money)? How about spending a fraction



Drug addictions and alcoholism are responsibile for all kinds of social ailments, lost productivity, and crime.

Yes they are. But for the most part they ruin the lives of people abusing them and not complete strangers. I am sure you will bring up drunk drivers, but do you think there wouldnt be drunk drivers if there was prohibition?

edit:
How about spending a fraction of the money spent on the drug war(including incarceration costs) on education and rehabilition clinics.? The govt could probable tack on a sin tax and use the funds to pay for the education programs and rehab clinics.

You are not serious with this comment are you? The US is paroling "serial rapists" to make room for drug dealers? That would certainly be a sad state of affairs to say the least.

Its not exactly so bad. But violent criminals(including murders, armed robbers, rapist ) are routinely paroled. While I guess some have truly reformed, I would bet that most of these paroles have to do with making space in the prisons.

Keep in mind, that federal sentancing guidlines are pretty brutal and small time drug dealers can get life while muders often get far far less.

Anyway, I have now rambled for awhile. My main question is, as you all know more about guns than I and have a stronger sense of gun liberties, is what can we do to reduce crime, gun crime, and gun deaths in this country? We clearly have a problem with all three. (Although I think they are going down.)

Ah...Solutions!
(checks pockets..no not there...[desk drawers]nop...ah!!! here it is.]

(unfolding ratty paper...)

I knew I kept a copy of that... here we go:

1. De-Mystification. A large portion of the power of a Criminal with a gun, comes from the general ignorance people have about them, and how to deal with them. If Usage, care, and safe-handling were introduced into the general education system (similar to the use of Condoms in Health Class), a lot of the 'mystical' and 'mysterious' would be removed from the whole gun Debate.
making firearms handling and such common knowledge would decrease significantly the Accidental, or Negligent, deaths.

2. You can not force someone who is determined to be a scumbag from being a scumbag-but, you can force someone who has not made his mind up to decide otherwise than being a scumbag. "Sentencing Guidelines" do no good, if your prisons are releasing them before their time, or when conditions in the lockup contain luxuries unavailable to lower-income people on the Street.
Punishment must be consistently applied-not "I say one thing, we do another"-and Prison should be unpleasant. Cable Teevee, Internet Access? Free Education? Weight Training? no. "Make Small rocks out of large rocks for the duration".
Prison should not provide for free things that working people can't afford, and sentences should Never be a "Maybe, if it doesn't become inconvenient..."

3. Acceptance of Risk. You can't negate all risks and remain free. Some risks you can restrain-like not letting Felons own or possess firearms, not selling working irons to someone looney enough to be adjudicated as such, and not selling to non-citizens or children.
Basically what we've had in place since 1938 or so, but you can not have liberty without accepting the risks of being free.
Freedom includes the freedom to fail.

Murder is illegal. But people still commit murder. Therefore, we should legalize murder.

Even if you look at gun control in a very empirical way, the question still comes down to this. Do you have more murders with gun control or without gun control? The evidence is clear that you have far, far, more murders when you do have gun control. They make it easier for people who obtain guns illegally to cause far more crimes.

Not to mention, the 200 million deaths caused by the governments in the 20th century in conjunction with gun control. Governments are responsible for more deaths than any other (unnatural) cause. They are the enemies of mankind, as our forfathers tried to tell us.

Even if you look at gun control in a very empirical way, the question still comes down to this. Do you have more murders with gun control or without gun control? The evidence is clear that you have far, far, more murders when you do have gun control. They make it easier for people who obtain guns illegally to cause far more crimes.

Not to mention, the 200 million deaths caused by the governments in the 20th century in conjunction with gun control. Governments are responsible for more deaths than any other (unnatural) cause. They are the enemies of mankind, as our forfathers tried to tell us.

Show me unbiased statistics that indicate that areas with gun control have unarguably higher gun crime rates.
There are plenty of statistics that show the number of crimes in a certain area in a certain year. show me the percentge of crimes based on the population of an area. Show me that but compare gun crimes against crimes where a gun was not used. Show me something definitive.. Nobody else has been able to provide that unbiased data. which is why we are all still here after days and pages of back and forth arguments.
To make blanket statements without any sort of proof doesnt contribute to your argument at all.

Show me unbiased statistics that indicate that areas with gun control have unarguably higher gun crime rates.
There are plenty of statistics that show the number of crimes in a certain area in a certain year. show me the percentge of crimes based on the population of an area. Show me that but compare gun crimes against crimes where a gun was not used. Show me something definitive.. Nobody else has been able to provide that unbiased data. which is why we are all still here after days and pages of back and forth arguments.
To make blanket statements without any sort of proof doesnt contribute to your argument at all.


Whats your definition of "unbiased". Some people have already dismissed studies(peer reviewed) that look at exactly what you are asking for. One study was dismissed because the Author based a book on the study and is actually *gasp* making money off the sale of said book.

Whats your definition of "unbiased". Some people have already dismissed studies(peer reviewed) that look at exactly what you are asking for. One study was dismissed because the Author based a book on the study and is actually *gasp* making money off the sale of said book.

Not is not a particularly accurate description of why some of the studies that have been cited herein have been questioned.

For example, it was said the NIJ showed millions of DGUs when it actually concluded otherwise.

John Lott has been shown to be unreliable.

Several reports about UK and Australia have been shown to not match the alleged original sources.

I, the Grand High Epop, Hearby wave my magic techno-wand and make ALL GUNS EVERYWHERE DISSAPPEAR! :eek:

Woo Hoo! Guess what? In less than 72 hours, even somewhere in Euro-Land or Japan, with hand tools (no machine shop), I will produce FOUR FULLY FUNCTIONAL, FULLY AUTOMATIC, BLOW-BACK SUBMACHINEGUNS! Each of my Minions will make four more! In less than a week I will have the ONLY ARMED FORCE IN THE WORLD! BWAHAHAHAH! :D

Ahem. Sorry.

Outlawing a "thing" that is so unreasonably easy to make (as compared to, say, the relatively more complex revolver) is unreasonable. Funny thing is, even after Volstead, that level of unreasonableness is pervasive: Philip Luty, an Englishman, was appalled at the British government'sresponse to a lone criminal's killing spree in Dunblane. Because the criminal used a firearm to kill several people, the government took that opportunity tooutlaw all handguns and privately owned long guns.

Philip Luty was opposed to gun prohibition. He was also fairly handy with the tools in his workshop. To prove that outlawing firearms cannot stop people (especially dedicated criminals) from getting firearms, Philip set out to build a home-made machine gun. He built the gun using common tools and readily available materials. He tested it safely and never harmed, or intended to harm anyone. (It is basically a "Sten" type smg using Structural Metal Tubing rather than stamped parts...)

Philip then wrote a book about how to build a home-made machinegun (http://www.paladin-press.com/detail.aspx?ID=272). Of course, manufacturing and possessing a machine gun is highly illegal in England (and elsewhere), but Philip felt he was proving the futility of "gun control. "He hired a man to take photos of the component parts and the machine gun itself, to be included in his book. Unfortunately, the photographer did not sympathize with Philip's cause, and informed the police of the whole operation.

The police swooped down with a SWAT team, but found Philip missing. Nevertheless, they searched his home and found the evidence of themachine gun and its components and ammunition. Philip disappeared into hiding. The police eventually captured Philip, and he was tried and convicted for making and having a machinegun and ammunition. (BTW, his book is also Banned in the UK, but pirate image-sets can be found on the 'net.)

Philip had no prior criminal record. The judge acknowledged that Philip had no evil or criminal intent, that he had made the gun as an act of protest. Even the arresting detective was willing to speak on Philip's behalf. To set an example to all would-be smart-arsed protesters, the judge sentenced Philip Luty to 4 years in prison.

Note this was NOT an American "gun nut" with an axe to grind. This was an average Euro Joe with hand tools and a working brain (except for not vetting his photographer...)

Now, I don't know about you, but I would much rather have my local Predatory Thugs - who will always have a Gun if they want one - armed with cheap (or expensive & stolen) handguns over home-made or imported ChiCom)submachine guns.

-----------

A Brief Aside: When in the Military (Motto: We can have Guns - YAY!) we were taught that there is only ONE personal weapon whose sole function is to be used to KILL... and that was the BAYONET, a KNIFE. The function of all other weapons is "to HURT PEOPLE and BREAK THINGS". Deaders don't ask for help from their peers, and can't provide Intel to their capturers. Why else would most of the world's militaries use woefully inadequate "wounding" calibers in their main battle rifles?

In a fight with me (you would have had to start it) if you have a weapon, you better hope I have a Gun. I can wound you sufficiently with a gun to stop the fight. If I have to use a Knife, you are quite, quite dead. (You aren't in much better shape if I have to use Krav Maga...)

"A thousand throats may be cut in one night by a Running Man" - Klingon Proverb

Not is not a particularly accurate description of why some of the studies that have been cited herein have been questioned.

For example, it was said the NIJ showed millions of DGUs when it actually concluded otherwise.

John Lott has been shown to be unreliable.

Several reports about UK and Australia have been shown to not match the alleged original sources.

Well, those are Canuckheavens reasons for dismissing the Lott research. And how exactly has John Lott been shown to be unreliable?

Even if the NIJ survey greatly exagerates, the one performed by Kleck does not(keep in mind that in 64% of the incidence reported by Kleck, the victim reported the incident to the police).

And the survey you reffered to many pages ago(100,000 DGUs) per year has some pretty flaws, such as never actually asking if a gun was used to prevent a crime.

I am not particularly concerned about the UK and Australia, and I am not going to go back and find the refferance in 40+pages of posts(especially given the lag)

I agree that individuals should be held responsible for their own choices.

My concern is that holding individuals responsible is not sufficient to control the harm. When large numbers of individuals are making choices that routinely harm the rest of society, it makes sense to look at what might be done to minimize that harm. Simply punishing individual wrondoers is just, but it neither prevents nor remedies the harm. Obviously, solutions than have maximized effect on wrongdoing but minimized disadvantages -- including any loss of freedom -- are best.

Are you then advocating a form of societal control that is Unjust?
It is impossible to prevent harm. You can prevent an individual from doing FURTHER harm, either through incarceration or, more appropriately, effectively applied Self Defense, but you cannot be Unjust to the majority simply because you cannot be Just to the minority.

With alcohol, for example, penalties for conduct such as drunk driving make sense. Although some freedom is technically lost, it is overwhelmed by the inherent danger of that activity and harm such activity routinely causes to society.

What freedom is lost? Driving is a regulated privelege. Period. It is not a Right guaranteed anywhere, to anyone, not even Militias. The Inalienable Rights are Life (which must include the Right and Means to preserve it), Liberty (the political tools to support Life) and the Pursuit (not guarantee) of Happiness. Driving ain't there.

<snip>
Now, when it comes to guns, the issue gets very complicated. Guns have both advantages and disadvantages to society. Among the advantages is the liberty of owning a gun itself and the potential protection of liberties afforded by a gun. It may be the case that there is no way to minimize the dangers of guns and the misuse of guns that is not outweighed by the disadvantages of such regulation.

It most certainly the case.

<snip>
Increasing the chances of someone getting caught for commiting any crime is one of the best things we can do to prevent crime -- but we run into privacy and liberty issues there as well. (Same with increasing the chances of someone getting caught for misusing a gun.)

There are no Privacy issues if the Victim exercises her Basic Human RIGHT (http://www.a-human-right.com/views2.html) (poll) to not be a victim - at the point of violent contact. (Retribution is the perview of God and Government).

Anyway, I have now rambled for awhile. My main question is, as you all know more about guns than I and have a stronger sense of gun liberties, is what can we do to reduce crime, gun crime, and gun deaths in this country? We clearly have a problem with all three. (Although I think they are going down.)

The FIRST thing we have to do is stand up straight and lose the "Victim Mentality". If you look like Prey and act like Prey then you will be treated as Prey, by predators all along the food chain - be they the Jackals of Street Crime to the Dogs of War/Tyranny.

Pandora's box can't be closed. Projectile weapons Exist. They cannot be removed from the world. If you (whoever) don't like "guns", fine. But as long as Society keeps telling people to submit to predation, the more predators there will be.

If you don't like guns, and you are physically capable, take Martial Arts, buy a Taser, get a 24mm bean-bag projector, BUT DON'T SUBMIT TO PREDATION. You are probably going to get hurt - even if you win, but at least you will be getting hurt by YOUR rules, and not laying down your humanity at the feet of the soulless bastard who was, by definition, injuring you.

I prefer to not be hurt defending myself. I can do that by stopping Injury through the use of a firearm. A criminal with an inflated Ego may attempt to harm an unarmed - but very dangerous - intended victem, but will (usually) back off, run away or surrender to the viable, visible threat of gunshot.

Until such time as truly effective non-lethal multiple-target projected weapons (think "stun-only/civillian" Phasers) I will uphold the firearm as being the single most effective tool for defense against acts of violence a human can possess.

Show me unbiased statistics that indicate that areas with gun control have unarguably higher gun crime rates.
There are plenty of statistics that show the number of crimes in a certain area in a certain year. show me the percentge of crimes based on the population of an area. Show me that but compare gun crimes against crimes where a gun was not used. Show me something definitive.. Nobody else has been able to provide that unbiased data. which is why we are all still here after days and pages of back and forth arguments.
To make blanket statements without any sort of proof doesnt contribute to your argument at all.

If you compare Montgomery County, Maryland to Fairfax County, Virginia, for any year from 1996 to the present, you may find what you're looking for.

I've posted the stats from their police departments before. But, in general, since the adoption of the liberalized concealed carry in Fairfax County, Virginia, they have experienced a more dramatic drop in violent crime and murder than any drop in Montgomery County. In addition, the violent crime from 1996 to the present is averaging 60 percent lower in Fairfax County - that's Part 1 Felonies, including rape and murder. Montgomery County has, over the same time period, radically increased its restrictions on firearm ownership - including a complete ban on certain types of firearms, and a ban on any carry.

Economically the counties are identical. They are ethnically as close as you can get. Same affluent suburbs of Washington, D.C.

But one has much, much lower crime - even though it spends less on its police. And it is the county with the legal gun owners running around with guns in their pockets.

'Anyways, I believe guns are dangerous but in the right hands, it's a life-saver. A lot of my friends carry guns and it definitely makes me feel safer to be around them.'

I have NEVER understood this US perspective. You have this insane notion that you need a lethal weapon to defend yourself aganist others with the same weapon. Here in the UK virtually no-one has a gun, thus no-one else needs one to defend themselves.

US gun crime murders: 10,000 (roughly)
UK gun crime murders: not sure, but its under 100.

and where does your home invasions count now as opposed to when private citizens could own firearms? it's become a major problem in another gun free nation (australia). here in the us, the cities with the most restrictive gun carry laws have the most violence. why? simple. a thug in one of those cities knows his victim will be an easy mark, as opposed to a city with concealed carry, he doesn't know if he'll get blown away if he tries something. besides, a gun doesn't kill anyone. it takes a person to load a bullet into that gun (otherwise, it's a club, and a rather inefficent one at that). :mp5: :sniper:

oh, forgot something. the 2nd ammendment is the "reset" button for the constitution, when the gov gets too big and repressive.

No, I don't need my gun to defend myself against people armed with the same weapon.

That's your first MAJOR misconception.

Here in the US, you are allowed in most jurisdictions to use lethal force to defend yourself against serious bodily harm or risk of death.

Most criminals are not armed - only 24 percent of violent crimes are committed with a weapon of any kind (knives, clubs, and firearms).

But, just because someone is beating you with a stick does not mean that you are perfectly safe and can merrily sit there and take it.

The law in most jurisdictions says that you don't have to take it.

Most violent crimes stopped with guns are stopped without a shot being fired. It makes sense - if you have a stick and I have a gun, and you know it, you're probably going to leave in a hurry before you find out if I'm willing to use it.

The problem according to Zaxon regarding drug/alcohol addictions:

Having a kid is a huge, life-changing event that changes your life forever--many parents can't understand and change their lives to allow for it. If you don't have enough income, how are you going to raise a child? If you are working all the time for that income, how are you going to raise a child? Too many parents having kids when they don't have the means to support AND raise the child.
So you have stated your opinion what the problem is, now what is YOUR solution?

I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects. I believe in blaming the human that is allowing the issues to happen/continue. And blaming alcohol/drugs for rape, murder, crime, etc., is doing just that--not holding the person responsible. They had the choice to take the drink/do the drugs.
There is a poliferation of drugs and alcohol in our society, and quite often alcohol is glamourized. While you don't want to blame "inanimate objects", they do exist, and yes many individuals will succumb to the allure, and many will become addicted. What is your solution?

You're not helping by allowing them to blame everything else, though. You're enabling them.
I am against the poliferation of these "inanimate objects", yet you suggest that I am enabling them? How so?

The problem according to Zaxon regarding drug/alcohol addictions:


So you have stated your opinion what the problem is, now what is YOUR solution?


There is a poliferation of drugs and alcohol in our society, and quite often alcohol is glamourized. While you don't want to blame "inanimate objects", they do exist, and yes many individuals will succumb to the allure, and many will become addicted. What is your solution?


I am against the poliferation of these "inanimate objects", yet you suggest that I am enabling them? How so?


I think he meant you're 'enabling' irresponsible behaviours, not inanimate objects, Canuckheaven.

its not the guns that are evil, it is the people who pull the trigger. :)

Someone stated it before--a great deal of crime (both firearm related and non-firearm related) is directly related to the prohibited trade of drugs. I see getting rid of that prohibition and actually holding people responsible for the actual crime (hitting someone in a car, rather than making a difference of hitting someone in a car when high) the solution.
Hold the presses!! You are trying to blame parents for their children's choices, and yet you want to complicate any possible problem by allowing the poliferation of drugs?

What responsible parent is going to push for the poliferation of drugs? You are contradicting your earlier statement?

Legalizing drugs will lead to more kids trying drugs, which will enevitably lead to more addictions amongst those kids, and lead to more crime not less?

First kid: Hey lets get some heroin at the drug store.
Second kid: No my dad says that drugs can be addictive.
First kid: Well I heard your dad saying that selling drugs was okay, so it can't be that bad, besides, I heard that it will give you an awesome feeling.
Second kid: No, I trust my dad, I don't want to get addicted.
First kid: Come on....we will just do it once and never again.
Second kid: It gives you an awesome feeling?
First kid: Yeah, another friend of mine tried it yesterday and he loved it.
Second kid: Okay, maybe just this one time!!

I think he meant you're 'enabling' irresponsible behaviours, not inanimate objects, Canuckheaven.
I quite understood his intention. By "them", I meant the people.

That doesn't necessarily mean that there will be more crime though. Look at the prohibition of alcohol: addictive drug that greatly impairs judgement and sensory perception. Prohibiting its sale and consumption had an adverse effect upon crime rates in America.

I beleieve guns are wrong and only should be used for Police Forces and ext. Also police should be fully and heavaly tested before use of guns. There are exeptions to hunting, Though hunters will be tested for 4 years. :mp5:

I quite understood his intention. By "them", I meant the people.
By that, I suspect he meant that by accepting the excuses offered by these irresponsible people, you're enabling them to continue to operate as if their bad behaviour is the fault of inanimate objects/circumstances/other people's fault.

I could be wrong, of course-but that'd be why I would say something similar.

That doesn't necessarily mean that there will be more crime though. Look at the prohibition of alcohol: addictive drug that greatly impairs judgement and sensory perception. Prohibiting its sale and consumption had an adverse effect upon crime rates in America.
Perhaps you need to do a bit more research on the effects of hard core drugs?

Hold the presses!! You are trying to blame parents for their children's choices, and yet you want to complicate any possible problem by allowing the poliferation of drugs?

What responsible parent is going to push for the poliferation of drugs? You are contradicting your earlier statement?

Legalizing drugs will lead to more kids trying drugs, which will enevitably lead to more addictions amongst those kids, and lead to more crime not less?

First kid: Hey lets get some heroin at the drug store.
Second kid: No my dad says that drugs can be addictive.
First kid: Well I heard your dad saying that selling drugs was okay, so it can't be that bad, besides, I heard that it will give you an awesome feeling.
Second kid: No, I trust my dad, I don't want to get addicted.
First kid: Come on....we will just do it once and never again.
Second kid: It gives you an awesome feeling?
First kid: Yeah, another friend of mine tried it yesterday and he loved it.
Second kid: Okay, maybe just this one time!!

Can anyone say "Slippery slope"?

Show me unbiased statistics that indicate that areas with gun control have unarguably higher gun crime rates.
There are plenty of statistics that show the number of crimes in a certain area in a certain year. show me the percentge of crimes based on the population of an area. Show me that but compare gun crimes against crimes where a gun was not used. Show me something definitive.. Nobody else has been able to provide that unbiased data. which is why we are all still here after days and pages of back and forth arguments.
To make blanket statements without any sort of proof doesnt contribute to your argument at all.

Sure thing. Here are examples of how getting rid of firearms in England caused crime rates to explode. I have included several sources from varying years just to prove to you that this is indeed a fact. Enjoy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/07/17/nhand17.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2640817.stm
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/805190.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-537568,00.html
http://hematite.com/dragon/ukcrimeup.html
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/gun_ban_utopia_creates_crime.htm

That doesn't necessarily mean that there will be more crime though. Look at the prohibition of alcohol: addictive drug that greatly impairs judgement and sensory perception. Prohibiting its sale and consumption had an adverse effect upon crime rates in America.
Congrats sir, you get the understatement of the year award.

And this is why Anti-Gun politicians are consistantly losing at the polls and Anti-Gun Groups are seeing a drop in support:

The Second Amendment Foundation recently released the results of a recent poll it commissioned, conducted by Zogby International, which shows overwhelming rejection by likely American voters of the notion that banning guns would be effective in the fight against terrorism.

Since the 9/11 tragedy, anti-gun forces have tried to use the threat of terrorism to disarm law-abiding sportsmen and gun owners.

Asked whether they agreed or disagreed that banning guns would reduce the threat from terrorists, poll respondents disagreed by a margin of 75 percent. Only one in five supported the notion, and five percent were not sure. Zogby polled 1,009 likely voters chosen at random nationwide with a margin error of plus/minus 3.2 percent.

http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14321781&amp;BRD=2305&amp;PAG=461&amp;dept_id=478568&amp;rfi=6

Have you provided any findings of fact at all in this thread.. All of your offhand comments to Cat-Tribe have been solely attacks on thier credibility. I have read through this thread and cnat figure out whether you are just a troll or are just not mentally capable of providing a finding or agument in your favor without resorting to personal attacks and harassment designed to derail the ability to maintain a civil conversation.

I have not commented on this thread very much as I admit, my knowledge of miller and other case findings is very minimal and my job does not permit me to spend hours reading case law.

I would ask that you case and desist from making personal judgments and harsh personal attacks and reserve your commentary specifically for points which express or further your own political agenda on the subject.
Since you are not able to view anything but both sides obviously, at least you could stick to your side and make a point thats relevant.

thank you very much


Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.

If you were to accept CT's version of miller, you have to ignore that.

Also, if you are to accept, as CT does, that miller supports a colective rights view, then you would have to ignore the factual posture of the case.

Frankly, my opinion has always been that miller does not speak to either position -as CT well knows - and our little fracas was about something different. And has been subsequently resolved. AFAIK.

Now, if you want to put your oar in go ahead. But honestly, you are really just trying to instigate another flame war, which IMHO, is possibly boderline trolling.

Also, if you had read the thread, you would know I have made this point.

How is your husband?

If you were to accept CT's version of miller, you have to ignore that.

Also, if you are to accept, as CT does, that miller supports a colective rights view, then you would have to ignore the factual posture of the case.

Frankly, my opinion has always been that miller does not speak to either position -as CT well knows - and our little fracas was about something different. *snip*

Your "CT well knows" is ridiculous. Miller does speak to a collective rights position -- as every US Court of Appeals has held (although th 5th has since wavered). My interpretation of Miller is consistent with that of SCOTUS itself.

Your version of Miller relies on that one sentence -- which does not affirmatively state what you read into it -- and ignores the rest of the case -- particularly the preceding sentence and the next paragraph. You have yet to explain "the factual posture of the case" or how that is remotely relevant.

BTW, I have been meaning to ask -- as you are not a lawyer, what are you? are you a law student?

Sure thing. Here are examples of how getting rid of firearms in England caused crime rates to explode. I have included several sources from varying years just to prove to you that this is indeed a fact. Enjoy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/07/17/nhand17.xml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2640817.stm
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/805190.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-537568,00.html
http://hematite.com/dragon/ukcrimeup.html
http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/gun_ban_utopia_creates_crime.htm
Now try the report from the Home Office (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hosb1004.pdf) that will refute most of what you have posted and offer some genuine explanations. :eek:

In 1999, there were 62 murders with firearms in the UK, for the same year, there were 8,259 murders by firearms in the United States (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_wit_fir). Simple math dictates that more guns = more deaths.

I am not, starting this up again.

However, the interpretation of Miller per se is completely outside the scope of lower court decisions. (as any lawyer would know)

Your "CT well knows" is ridiculous. Miller does speak to a collective rights position -- as every US Court of Appeals has held (although th 5th has since wavered). My interpretation of Miller is consistent with that of SCOTUS itself.

I was simply pointing out that we had both agreed that many legal scholars view miller as silent. You have so agreed, don't make me look up old posts in this thread. Please. Frankly, I just don't want to the flame war to start again.


Your version of Miller relies on that one sentence -- which does not affirmatively state what you read into it -- and ignores the rest of the case -- particularly the preceding sentence and the next paragraph. You have yet to explain "the factual posture of the case" or how that is remotely relevant.

No, it also stands on the factual posture. In other words, what was actually being adjudicated. But nevermind.

BTW, I have been meaning to ask -- as you are not a lawyer, what are you? are you a law student?

Ha, when did I say I was not a lawyer?

Now try the report from the Home Office (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hosb1004.pdf) that will refute most of what you have posted and offer some genuine explanations. :eek:

In 1999, there were 62 murders with firearms in the UK, for the same year, there were 8,259 murders by firearms in the United States (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_wit_fir). Simple math dictates that more guns = more deaths.
Which was completely irrelevant to his point. He was talking about violent crime you twit, not a direct comparison of murders

And this is why Anti-Gun politicians are consistantly losing at the polls and Anti-Gun Groups are seeing a drop in support:

The Second Amendment Foundation recently released the results of a recent poll it commissioned, conducted by Zogby International, which shows overwhelming rejection by likely American voters of the notion that banning guns would be effective in the fight against terrorism.

Since the 9/11 tragedy, anti-gun forces have tried to use the threat of terrorism to disarm law-abiding sportsmen and gun owners.

Asked whether they agreed or disagreed that banning guns would reduce the threat from terrorists, poll respondents disagreed by a margin of 75 percent. Only one in five supported the notion, and five percent were not sure. Zogby polled 1,009 likely voters chosen at random nationwide with a margin error of plus/minus 3.2 percent.

http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14321781&amp;BRD=2305&amp;PAG=461&amp;dept_id=478568&amp;rfi=6
So let me see if I have this right.......politicians that back the US Constitution in its' entirety but are a bit soft on the 2nd Ammendment (support some gun control), are less likely to get elected?

If that is the analogy that you are bringing forward, it doesn't say much about your Constitution or the politics of your country?

I am not, starting this up again.

However, the interpretation of Miller per se is completely outside the scope of lower court decisions. (as any lawyer would know)

Actually, lower courts routinely interpret and apply Supreme Court decisions -- as any lawyer would know. As would any non-lawyer who read the cases from which I supplied quotes interpreting and applying Miller.


I was simply pointing out that we had both agreed that many legal scholars view miller as silent. You have so agreed, don't make me look up old posts in this thread. Please. Frankly, I just don't want to the flame war to start again.

I have no intention of starting a flame war. You implied I have been advocating a position that I know is false. You are wrong.

Many legal scholars view Miller as supporting an individual rights view, many view it as supporting a collective rights view, and many view it as silent. Some of them have to be wrong.

No, it also stands on the factual posture. In other words, what was actually being adjudicated. But nevermind.

Agreed, nevermind.

Ha, when did I say I was not a lawyer?

Fine.

Are you or are you not a lawyer?

If not, what is your education status? What is your occupation?

(You can obviously lie, but at least make a statement.)

Which was completely irrelevant to his point. He was talking about violent crime you twit, not a direct comparison of murders
Nor was I referring specifically to deaths by firearm, but it sure is an interesting point to raise. The report (if you took the time to read it) details the reasoning behind "perceived" increases in violent crime, and methodology of reporting. But then you would have known that if you had read the report and would have been less likely to respond with an ad hominen attack. :eek:

'Anyways, I believe guns are dangerous but in the right hands, it's a life-saver. A lot of my friends carry guns and it definitely makes me feel safer to be around them.'

I have NEVER understood this US perspective. You have this insane notion that you need a lethal weapon to defend yourself aganist others with the same weapon. Here in the UK virtually no-one has a gun, thus no-one else needs one to defend themselves.

US gun crime murders: 10,000 (roughly)
UK gun crime murders: not sure, but its under 100.

Compare the population of the US
(270 million)
to the population of the UK
60 million.
In one year london suffered 171 gun related murders. Not under 100.

But they have a ban on handguns which explains why theres less gun crime.

On the other hand, there are far more robberies with knives and other weapons which can kill you just as well, especially at mugging distance.

that entire article sums down to an argument that we have heard time and time again:

if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns


well, i have a novel approach:

why not stop making the damn things?

seriously, if we stopped making them completely, and publicly bought and destroyed the oned already in existance, nobody would have guns, criminal or innocent alike.

then you can block imports, and all you have to worry about is smuggling, and we already have a system in place to deter drug smuggling, so why don't we beef that up and modify it slightly to include dangerous firearms?

i can hear you already: "but the second amendment! the second amendment!"

1) i doubt any of you NRA idiots even know the whole thing. no, it is not "the right to bear arms" google "constitutional amendments" and read the entire thing.

2) while you're at it, go read the twenty first amendment. i'm serious, go read it before you move on to the next bit.


see? the amendments are not set in stone. why do you think they're called 'amendments'? they're there to be changed, modified, and updated as the times move onwards.
Stop making them? And we should also tell Fidel Castro that his dicatorship is mean and nasty because its going to be just as effective at solving that problem as the ridiculous notion you can fight off the gun manufacturing industry. Lets face it, if no one has guns then you get stabbed. Gun making in the US is a billion dollar industry much of that from private sales.

Your living in fairy tale land, why don't you come back to reality.

Actually, lower courts routinely interpret and apply Supreme Court decisions -- as any lawyer would know. As would any non-lawyer who read the cases from which I supplied quotes interpreting and applying Miller.
Ah, but an actual decision was not made. Instead the case was remanded back to the lower courts. The Supreme Court did not rule on either sides' favor. What they did end up doing was defining militia so as to slap the prosecution's face as to how they brought their case against the defendants. However, they could not find favor in the defense's case because the weapon in question had not been shown to be able to contribute to the preservation of or the efficiency of the militia. Given that it was a break-open side-by-side double barrelled sawed-off, it probably wouldn't have been.

Ah, but an actual decision was not made. Instead the case was remanded back to the lower courts. The Supreme Court did not rule on either sides' favor. What they did end up doing was defining militia so as to slap the prosecution's face as to how they brought their case against the defendants. However, they could not find favor in the defense's case because the weapon in question had not been shown to be able to contribute to the preservation of or the efficiency of the militia. Given that it was a break-open side-by-side double barrelled sawed-off, it probably wouldn't have been.

That is completely wrong.

An actual decision was made.

The defendants had been indicted for the crime of transporting in interstate commerce the sawed-off shotgun.

The lower court had dismissed the case on the grounds the statute the defendants violated the Second Amendment.

The Court reversed that decision and remanded for further proceedings -- i.e., the dismissed prosecutions!

The Court did not remand any questions to the lower court and its decision was a pure win for the DOJ.

Actually, lower courts routinely interpret and apply Supreme Court decisions -- as any lawyer would know. As would any non-lawyer who read the cases from which I supplied quotes interpreting and applying Miller.

Yah, but frankly, that's not definitive is it? (In fact, even a supreme court ruling about any given matter is not definitive. (something about sodomy - I can't recall))




I have no intention of starting a flame war. You implied I have been advocating a position that I know is false. You are wrong.

Many legal scholars view Miller as supporting an individual rights view, many view it as supporting a collective rights view, and many view it as silent. Some of them have to be wrong.

Should I chop your statements the same way? Look, It's silent. Why is it silent? There is no general consensus as to what miller actually speaks to. And if you are intellectually honest, you would agree that the facts of the case militate against a collective rights interpretation. (Given that miller was never in the millitia &ct.)

Yes, someone, one day, in the future, when this is all wrung out is going to prevail.

What annoys me, is that people say something as reasonable as "many scholars view miller as silent", while all the time accepting that you do not share the same view, yet you view it as an attack on your integrity, and belittle them. As I have said before, it is all never no mind to me. I just didn't like the way you spoke to others: And I admit that I was over the top in my responses to you - for which I have apologized.

I find it funny however, even when I respond to someone else's posts, you distort what I have said.

Frankly, I don't give a shit about the gun issue, because I have democracy on my side.



Fine.

Are you or are you not a lawyer?

If not, what is your education status? What is your occupation?

(You can obviously lie, but at least make a statement.)

You have no problem with miller, what's your problem now.

We need more guns in the right hands and better shots .

We need more guns in the right hands and better shots .
CCW carriers tend to be better shots than most cops.

Yah, but frankly, that's not definitive is it? (In fact, even a supreme court ruling about any given matter is not definitive. (something about sodomy - I can't recall))

The 66 years of caselaw with scores of decisions rejecting the individual rights view is not absolutely definitive. It is fairly strong evidence, however.

Should I chop your statements the same way? Look, It's silent. Why is it silent? There is no general consensus as to what miller actually speaks to. And if you are intellectually honest, you would agree that the facts of the case militate against a collective rights interpretation. (Given that miller was never in the millitia &ct.)

Yes, someone, one day, in the future, when this is all wrung out is going to prevail.

What annoys me, is that people say something as reasonable as "many scholars view miller as silent", while all the time accepting that you do not share the same view, yet you view it as an attack on your integrity, and belittle them. As I have said before, it is all never no mind to me. I just didn't like the way you spoke to others: And I admit that I was over the top in my responses to you - for which I have apologized.

I find it funny however, even when I respond to someone else's posts, you distort what I have said.

Frankly, I don't give a shit about the gun issue, because I have democracy on my side.

I did not belittle you. I challenged you. You repeated your attack on my view. And saying I am not intellectually honest is an attack on me as opposed to my view.

I would have let it pass except I thought you were saying "CT well knows" that Miller is silent. I know realize that you meant "CT well knows" that Lacadaemon's view is Miller is silent. You could have simply corrected my error as I was explicit about what in your post I found objectionable. Nevertheless, I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion. I am a not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.

There is a general consensus among the courts as to what Miller (and the Second Amendment) means -- which as been my theme all along.

You have no problem with miller, what's your problem now.

You have implied you are a lawyer -- even speaking of firing junior associates.

You then implied that you were not.

Now you refuse to answer. It is a simple question and I am curious -- are you or are you not a lawyer? If not, what are you?

CCW carriers tend to be better shots than most cops.
Of course you can back up your statement?

In 2003, a total of 52 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in 46
separate incidents in 25 states. (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/leoka03.pdf)

Weapons data reported to the national UCR Program in 2003 revealed that of
the 52 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, 34 were slain with
handguns, 10 were killed with rifles, and 1 officer was shot with a shotgun.
Eleven of the slain officers were shot with their own weapons.

Now try the report from the Home Office that will refute most of what you have posted and offer some genuine explanations.



That report doesn't prove anything, and is only government propaganda. What do you think they are going to say?

"Our decision to ban all guns caused crime to go up. We made a bad move"
?

In 1999, there were 62 murders with firearms in the UK, for the same year, there were 8,259 murders by firearms in the United States. Simple math dictates that more guns = more deaths.

Simple math dictates that more churches = more deaths.
Example, In 1999 there were 153 churches in the UK, for the same year there were 2392 churches in the United States.

Stupid correlation fallacy, you learn about those your first year in science courses.

Correlation is not evidence of causation.

And I would also like to add that the united states gun deaths include suicides, gang shootings, and justified self defense killings. I'd like to see exactly what criteria the 62 number represents, and how they went about getting that information.

Your "CT well knows" is ridiculous. Miller does speak to a collective rights position -- as every US Court of Appeals has held (although th 5th has since wavered). My interpretation of Miller is consistent with that of SCOTUS itself.


And I didn't say that you didn't accept the collective rights position from miller.

So just stop. Alright. In the interest of collegial intercourse, just stop.

I all was suggesting is that you are well aware that many legal scholars are not convinced that miller entails a collective rights viewpoint.

I honestly think that you are a very intelligent and well read poster. Let's just agree to disagree.

If you think I misrepresented your position there - even when I explicitly stated that you believe it militates a collective rights view - just say so.

Hold the presses!! You are trying to blame parents for their children's choices, and yet you want to complicate any possible problem by allowing the poliferation of drugs?

What responsible parent is going to push for the poliferation of drugs? You are contradicting your earlier statement?

Legalizing drugs will lead to more kids trying drugs, which will enevitably lead to more addictions amongst those kids, and lead to more crime not less?

First kid: Hey lets get some heroin at the drug store.
Second kid: No my dad says that drugs can be addictive.
First kid: Well I heard your dad saying that selling drugs was okay, so it can't be that bad, besides, I heard that it will give you an awesome feeling.
Second kid: No, I trust my dad, I don't want to get addicted.
First kid: Come on....we will just do it once and never again.
Second kid: It gives you an awesome feeling?
First kid: Yeah, another friend of mine tried it yesterday and he loved it.
Second kid: Okay, maybe just this one time!!

1) of all, you have a minimum age so people are old and hopefully wise enough to make a reasonable descision. We do this with alcohol, tobacco, cars, guns even contracts. We can most certainly do this with drugs.

2) Is your sense of history so limitted that you do not realize that drugs were LEGAL throughout most of the US's history. It is only from parts of the 20th century that they became illegal. Where was the rampant drug use then? More importantly where was all the crime that is supposedly(according to use) associated with drugs existance rather than their illegality?

3) Responsible parents TEACH their children to behave in a responsible manor. That's what being a parent is all about. So yes, parent's are, to a large extent, responsible for their children's choices.

4) Prohibition didnt stop alcohol consumption, all it did was leave the descision of whom to sell to in the hands of criminals. Why do you think that prohibition on drugs is any different?

5) I read somewhere that alcohol consumption went down after the repeal of prohibition. I see if I can find a source, though I am sure you will find some reason to ignore it. Assuming it does actually say what I remember it saying.

*snip*

Why did you respond to an old post if you want the discussion to stop?

I am perfectly willing to stop.

I am still curious as to whether or not you are a lawyer and, if not, what you are. You appear to be ducking the question -- neither answering nor expressly refusing to answer.

The 66 years of caselaw with scores of decisions rejecting the individual rights view is not absolutely definitive. It is fairly strong evidence, however.

I never said they didn't. But you could say the same about the 150yrs of case law against the minimum wage.



I did not belittle you. I challenged you. You repeated your attack on my view. And saying I am not intellectually honest is an attack on me as opposed to my view.

I would have let it pass except I thought you were saying "CT well knows" that Miller is silent. I know realize that you meant "CT well knows" that Lacadaemon's view is Miller is silent. You could have simply corrected my error as I was explicit about what in your post I found objectionable. Nevertheless, I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion. I am a not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.

This is why you and I fight. To begin with, I never said you belittled me. I said you belittled others. Further, I did not imply ever that you believed that miller's view was silent. I did however imply that many others - legal scholars amongst that crowd - view it as silent. But as I say, no never mind.

There is a general consensus among the courts as to what Miller (and the Second Amendment) means -- which as been my theme all along.

And I have never gainsayed that, I merely posited that it was perhaps incorrect, and you should refrain from speking to people in terms such as "okay skippy".

You have implied you are a lawyer -- even speaking of firing junior associates.

You then implied that you were not.

Now you refuse to answer. It is a simple question and I am curious -- are you or are you not a lawyer? If not, what are you?

If you can't see how this is relevent then I am not going to help you.

BTW, miller is moot.

I am still curious as to whether or not you are a lawyer and, if not, what you are. You appear to be ducking the question -- neither answering nor expressly refusing to answer.

Was miller in the millitia?

Was miller in the millitia?

It doesn't matter if he was or not, he failed to produce evidence that revealed that the possession and use of a shotgun with a barrel of less than 18" long had any relationship to the maintenance of a well regulated militia - that is why his 2nd A. claim failed, no proof that the type of gun involved had anything to do with the militia.

I never said they didn't. But you could say the same about the 150yrs of case law against the minimum wage.

There was no such case law.


And I have never gainsayed that, I merely posited that it was perhaps incorrect, and you should refrain from speking to people in terms such as "okay skippy".

Actually, I started that post by saying that, because the author I was responding to had included those same type of snide remarks in his/her post, I would do the same.

Nonetheless, your point is well-taken.



If you can't see how this is relevent then I am not going to help you.

BTW, miller is moot.

Do you mean "irrelevant"?

I agree. But you brought it up originally and I am now curious. Your dodging the question can only lead me to conclude that you are not a lawyer and were falsly implying that you were.

You appear to misunderstand the meaning of "moot." You may argue the issue was moot and the Court shouldn't have decided it -- but once the case is decided it cannot be moot. And you have never established that the issue was, in fact, moot.

Was miller in the millitia?

No.

Which is part of why his defense was erroneous.

Are you incapable of answering the question of whether you are a lawyer?

Or do you refuse?

No.

Which is part of why his defense was erroneous.

Are you incapable of answering the question of whether you are a lawyer?

Or do you refuse?

I'll answer, I am a lawyer. I wouldn't say Miller's defense was erroneous, I'd say it was just lacking in proof that the type of weapon involved had anything to do with a well regulated militia.

The courts don't have the power of judical review, so all your attempts to discredit the constitution are in vein.

I'll answer, I am a lawyer. I wouldn't say Miller's defense was erroneous, I'd say it was just lacking in proof that the type of weapon involved had anything to do with a well regulated militia.

I want to be clear.

I am a lawyer as well. But I don't think whether or not one is a lawyer is particularly important or relevant. I have never said or tried to imply that I am an authority because I am a lawyer.

I wish to know if Lacadaemon is a lawyer because of a particular exchange we had earlier in the thread. I think he/she clearly implied he/she was a lawyer and then later implied otherwise. I don't want to get into further details as we have largely settled the issue and you can see tempers are still ready to flare.

I debated the meaning of Miller for many days over many, many pages of this thread. I did not mean to get into it again.

I do not read Miller as turning on the nature of the weapon involved. I understand it can be read that way. The consensus about the US Courts of Appeals is not to read it that way. More importantly, the consensus view of the Second Amendment is that it does not protect an individual right to possess or use firearms.

You and anyone else are free to disagree with any of my statements.

The courts don't have the power of judical review, so all your attempts to discredit the constitution are in vein.

its "vain" not "vein" and whether you like it or not, they do have the power of judicial review. We can argue all day whether it is constitutional for them to exercise or claim that power, but it is accepted that they do have that power.

If guns shall be banned because they are meant to kill people, or can be used to kill people, then we also have to ban:

swords
knives
hammers
axes
baseball bats
stones
cars
pillows (you can suffocate someone with them, dangerous weapon!)

etc etc etc...

Anything can be used to kill someone, a gun makes it easier only to a certain point. If I want to kill someone I WILL kill him, with a gun or without wouldn't matter in that case.

Only a few days ago some nut stormed a church in Stuttgart, Germany. He killed one person and badly wounded several others with a sword before police came to handle him. According to police it looked a bit like the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill. No gun ban could prevent that. I'm actually waiting for people to scream for a ban of swords now.

But see, you have a majority of gun owners, who know what they're doing. Then you have one idiot who has to run around and pull shit and suddenly all gun owners are claimed to be like him.

After a kid ran into a school in Germany and killed several people there a few years ago, media put it that way that everyone who plays ego-shooters is a potential mass murderer, a ticking time-bomb.

That's the way it goes. Media brainwashing.

I know several people who play shooters and softair and own several guns. I wouldn't consider anyone of them a potential mass murderer.

There was no such case law.

Yah, there is. In fact, there are some Georgia rulings that helped precipitate the civil war, they run up until west coast, IIRC.


Actually, I started that post by saying that, because the author I was responding to had included those same type of snide remarks in his/her post, I would do the same.

Nonetheless, your point is well-taken.


Not the one I am thinking of, but I might be mistaken. So I will stipulate at this point - as indeed I believe I did in the moderation forum- that my previous actions were indeed uncalled for.

Do you mean "irrelevant"?

Clearly not. Think about it. The opposite of relevant !=irrelevant.

I agree. But you brought it up originally and I am now curious. Your dodging the question can only lead me to conclude that you are not a lawyer and were falsly implying that you were.

When did I say I was a lawyer. When did I say I was not. Does it matter either way? Only to you. It's not a fact in controversy. At best it is colleteral to your argument. So drop it. No impeachment on colletral arguments. (Actually, I'm a judge on the Fifth Circuit, but it's none of your business).

You appear to misunderstand the meaning of "moot." You may argue the issue was moot and the Court shouldn't have decided it -- but once the case is decided it cannot be moot. And you have never established that the issue was, in fact, moot.

If you actually bothered to read, I said the case should never have been heard because it was moot; I never denied that it was heard. The fact that there was no respondant is certainly salient, however.

It was moot when it was heard though, and any lawyer worth their salt would bring it up.

In the final analysis; your requirement that miller mandates that possesion of firearms is only protected if, and when, the possesor is on duty as part of a state millitia obligation is clearly counterfactual.

And the court could so have said.

I want to be clear.

I am a lawyer as well. But I don't think whether or not one is a lawyer is particularly important or relevant. I have never said or tried to imply that I am an authority because I am a lawyer.
I understand, and I, likewise, do not claim to be any great authority or "super-mind" on the issue. I was just willing to answer your question.

I wish to know if Lacadaemon is a lawyer because of a particular exchange we had earlier in the thread. I think he/she clearly implied he/she was a lawyer and then later implied otherwise. I don't want to get into further details as we have largely settled the issue and you can see tempers are still ready to flare.
OK

I debated the meaning of Miller for many days over many, many pages of this thread. I did not mean to get into it again.
OK, I'm just responding to the last few posts and pointing out what I think, that's all.

I do not read Miller as turning on the nature of the weapon involved. I understand it can be read that way. The consensus about the US Courts of Appeals is not to read it that way. More importantly, the consensus view of the Second Amendment is that it does not protect an individual right to possess or use firearms.
With all due respect I disagree with your view and the "concensus" and side with the 5th Circuit which has clearly rejected that view and held that the 2nd A. does protect an individual right. I'm willing to agree to disagree with you on that point though. I would like to add though, if you'll permit, that it is my belief and understanding based on my research and readings that the "militia" is composed of all free people of the various states and that the 2nd A. protects their individual right to keep and bear arms such as they could reasonably be expected to bring into service themselves were they called up to defend the nation in a national emergency - just like the minutemen brought their own rifles and pistols, but not cannons, into the revolutionary war, I think it protects an individual right to keep similar type weapons - I'm not an absolutist who argues it lets you have tanks and bombs, but I think it is like a sort of 1st amendment, Libel, slander and obscenity get no 1st A protection and tanks, bombs and bazooka's get no 2nd A. protection in the hands of private citizens, only those weapons reasonably suited for personal use while serving in the militia. Hopefully that makes sense to you (though I understand you still likely disagree, that's ok, just wanted to make my view clear).


You and anyone else are free to disagree with any of my statements.

Well, I did above, but hopefully in a reasoned, non-accusatory or flaming manner.

That said, don't you wish that either way the SC would take on a 2nd A. case and settle it?

In the final analysis; your requirement that miller mandates that possesion of firearms is only protected if, and when, the possesor is on duty as part of a state millitia obligation is clearly counterfactual.

That is not my view.

I never said that.

And I have explained that is not my view numerous times.

I will not respond to your posts any further.

1) of all, you have a minimum age so people are old and hopefully wise enough to make a reasonable descision. We do this with alcohol, tobacco, cars, guns even contracts. We can most certainly do this with drugs.
Yeah, like all kids respect minimum age laws, and with illegal drugs, there is no minimum age.

2) Is your sense of history so limitted that you do not realize that drugs were LEGAL throughout most of the US's history. It is only from parts of the 20th century that they became illegal. Where was the rampant drug use then? More importantly where was all the crime that is supposedly(according to use) associated with drugs existance rather than their illegality?
I think my sense of history is pretty good. Perhaps you would like to share your knowledge as to what drugs were legal and when they became illegal and why? BTW, there have been many societal changes over the past 229 years of US history?

3) Responsible parents TEACH their children to behave in a responsible manor. That's what being a parent is all about. So yes, parent's are, to a large extent, responsible for their children's choices.
I believe myself to be a fairly responsible parent, but that doesn't preclude that my kids could end up doing something to harm themselves or others. BTW, crime, and alcohol/drug abuse is classless.

4) Prohibition didnt stop alcohol consumption, all it did was leave the descision of whom to sell to in the hands of criminals. Why do you think that prohibition on drugs is any different?
YOU would legalize all drugs and that in itself makes you a criminal in my eyes. Alcohol and hard core drugs are totally different animals.

5) I read somewhere that alcohol consumption went down after the repeal of prohibition. I see if I can find a source, though I am sure you will find some reason to ignore it. Assuming it does actually say what I remember it saying.
I stand by my earlier statement. If you legalized all drugs, you would see an increase in addictions, crime, and violent crime.

That is not my view.

I never said that.

And I have explained that is not my view numerous times.

I will not respond to your posts any further.

Wait: In this thread you said that was exactly your view. I am going to go digging.

BTW, can anyone here tell me when the last drive by knifing occurred in the US?

I stand by my earlier statement. If you legalized all drugs, you would see an increase in addictions, crime, and violent crime.

Why have those things gone down in the Netherlands then?

its "vain" not "vein" and whether you like it or not, they do have the power of judicial review.


Ok, show me where in the constitution they are granted that power?

Ok, show me where in the constitution they are granted that power?

Perhaps you should have read the entirety of my post where I followed up that statement by saying:
We can argue all day whether it is constitutional for them to exercise or claim that power, but it is accepted that they do have that power.

I didn't say they exercised that power pursuant to a constitutional provision, I said it was accepted that they had that power.

That quote still did not say anything about the nature of the weapon. Did it vague refer to weapons? Yes. Did it say anything about the nature of them? No.



If Miller's possession of the shotgun had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, the outcome would have been different.

If Miller's possession of X had some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.

It is not the type of weapon that is relevant.

It does not matter whether a shotgun has military use.

Scenario 1:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. Weapon A is used by the military or the National Guard or by a state militia.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is not protected by the Second Amendment.

Scenario 2:
1. TC possesses weapon A at X time and Y place.
2. TC is a member of a well-regulated militia maintained by the state and his on duty and required to possess weapon A at X time and Y place.
3. TC's possession of weapon A is protected by the Second Amendment




Post 500, I believe.

Now this is what bothers me about you. You just change things to suit your own outlook: If, and when, it fits.

You'll dismiss the whole judicial notice part of miller as 'just a sentence', then later on you claim that scenario II, which you herein proclaim, is not actually your reading of miller.

Now, not to mention that you were quite abusive to many other posters in the run up to this, I think it is incumbent upon you to explain exactly what you believe miller stands for; if not scenario II which you described here.

No.

Which is part of why his defense was erroneous.

Are you incapable of answering the question of whether you are a lawyer?

Or do you refuse?
And he gave no defence.

Why have those things gone down in the Netherlands then?
Hard core drugs are illegal in the Netherlands (http://www.answers.com/topic/drug-policy-of-the-netherlands), and consider the following:

Cannabis remains a controlled substance in the Netherlands and both possession and production for personal use are still misdemeanors, punishable by fine. Coffee shops are also illegal according to the statutes.

However, a policy of non-enforcement has led to a situation where reliance upon non-enforcement has become common, and because of this the courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted.

Hard core drugs are illegal in the Netherlands (http://www.answers.com/topic/drug-policy-of-the-netherlands), and consider the following:

Cannabis remains a controlled substance in the Netherlands and both possession and production for personal use are still misdemeanors, punishable by fine. Coffee shops are also illegal according to the statutes.

However, a policy of non-enforcement has led to a situation where reliance upon non-enforcement has become common, and because of this the courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted.

I understand, but under the policy of non-enforcement, useage has gone down, not sky-rocketed as you seem to claim would happen if it were legalized.

Ha, I finally bashed him down. I win.

Ha, I finally bashed him down. I win.
Maybe, but he's offline, so maybe not. :)

I understand, but under the policy of non-enforcement, useage has gone down, not sky-rocketed as you seem to claim would happen if it were legalized.
Why do people like to sensationalize things? Did I say "sky rocket"? No....I said "increase", and there is a difference.

You are talking about soft drugs that are semi legal in the Netherlands and I was talking about "hard core" drug use in the US, and again there is a huge difference.

BTW, there is a huge difference in the addictive properties of heroin and cannabis.

Maybe, but he's offline, so maybe not. :)

Oh, he'll be back, I am sure. But so will I.

A lot of unconstitutional laws are "accepted" by the sheeple. That doesn't make them right, or even lawful. All laws that violate the constitution are null and void.

Judicial review gives the Supreme Court too much unchecked power. Being able to say that the constitution means whatever they say it does, is an absurd power for them to have. Which is why the founding fathers never bestowed them with it. They can say that a black man isn't a human being, or that the states don't have the right to secede, or that the 2nd amendment isn't a prohibition on the government. It doesn't make it so.

Ok, show me where in the constitution they are granted that power?

Article III of the Constitution (emphasis added):

Section 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. ...

And judicial review was established by individuals who were Founding Fathers themselves in Marbury v. Madison (http://laws.findlaw.com/us/5/137.html ), 5 US 137 (1803):

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void.

This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is consequently to be considered by this court as one of the fundamental principles of our society. It is not therefore to be lost sight of in the further consideration of this subject.

If an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the courts and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory; and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on. It shall, however, receive a more attentive consideration.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. So if a law be in opposition to the constitution: if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law: the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

If then the courts are to regard the constitution; and he constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law.

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions. It would declare that an act, which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare, that if the legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.

That it thus reduces to nothing what we have deemed the greatest improvement on political institutions-a written constitution, would of itself be sufficient, in America where written constitutions have been viewed with so much reverence, for rejecting the construction. But the peculiar expressions of the constitution of the United States furnish additional arguments in favour of its rejection.

The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution. Could it be the intention of those who gave this power, to say that, in using it, the constitution should not be looked into? That a case arising under the constitution should be decided without examining the instrument under which it arises?

This is too extravagant to be maintained.

In some cases then, the constitution must be looked into by the judges. And if they can open it at all, what part of it are they forbidden to read, or to obey?

There are many other parts of the constitution which serve to illustrate this subject.

It is declared that 'no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.' Suppose a duty on the export of cotton, of tobacco, or of flour; and a suit instituted to recover it. Ought judgment to be rendered in such a case? ought the judges to close their eyes on the constitution, and only see the law.

The constitution declares that 'no bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.'

If, however, such a bill should be passed and a person should be prosecuted under it, must the court condemn to death those victims whom the constitution endeavours to preserve?

...

It is also not entirely unworthy of observation, that in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the constitution, have that rank.

Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

Chief Justice Marshall's logic -- particularly in light of Article III and Article VI of the Constitution -- ins essentially unassailable. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to decide all cases arising under the Constitution. Hence, the power of judicial review.

I don't disagree. The congress should disestablish the federal courts.

Post 500, I believe.

Now this is what bothers me about you. You just change things to suit your own outlook: If, and when, it fits.

You'll dismiss the whole judicial notice part of miller as 'just a sentence', then later on you claim that scenario II, which you herein proclaim, is not actually your reading of miller.

Now, not to mention that you were quite abusive to many other posters in the run up to this, I think it is incumbent upon you to explain exactly what you believe miller stands for; if not scenario II which you described here.

Meh.

You are being deliberately obtuse and trying to provoke me. Although I wish to simply ignore you, my willpower is insufficient.

What you quote does not say that scenario II is the holding of Miller. To the contrary, I was illustrating a point by creating two scenarios at different points of a spectrum -- scenario II being at an extreme end that was obviously covered under Miller. I never said nor implied it was the only circumstances covered by the Second Amendment under Miller.

I have explained this at least 3 times previously. Even if my original statement implied scenario II was the holding of Miller (which it does not), it was immediately clarified. Every time I have explained this you have simply ignored my post.

Here is the original post (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8644198&postcount=500) with context.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8645248&postcount=526) is one of the times I tried to explain to you that scenario II was not my view of the holding of Miller.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8646246&postcount=542) I point this out again.

I have explained my views on Miller repeatedly. I am certain that most of the regular participants of this thread are sick of hearing them. I have also specifically stated my views on Miller for your edification.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8644845&postcount=509) is where you previously asked me to state what my summary of the holding of Miller was and I responded.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8644884&postcount=514) is my more detailed summary of Miller in response to you.

Now, I am done with you.

Meh.

You are being deliberately obtuse and trying to provoke me. Although I wish to simply ignore you, my willpower is insufficient.

What you quote does not say that scenario II is the holding of Miller. To the contrary, I was illustrating a point by creating two scenarios at different points of a spectrum -- scenario II being at an extreme end that was obviously covered under Miller. I never said nor implied it was the only circumstances covered by the Second Amendment under Miller.

I have explained this at least 3 times previously. Even if my original statement implied scenario II was the holding of Miller (which it does not), it was immediately clarified. Every time I have explained this you have simply ignored my post.

Here is the original post (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8644198&postcount=500) with context.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8645248&postcount=526) is one of the times I tried to explain to you that scenario II was not my view of the holding of Miller.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8646246&postcount=542) I point this out again.

I have explained my views on Miller repeatedly. I am certain that most of the regular participants of this thread are sick of hearing them. I have also specifically stated my views on Miller for your edification.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8644845&postcount=509) is where you previously asked me to state what my summary of the holding of Miller was and I responded.

Here (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=8644884&postcount=514) is my more detailed summary of Miller in response to you.

Now, I am done with you.


As per post 526


I did not say that Second Amendment only applied during "on duty" periods in the state militia and only when such possession had been so ordered. I said it was clearly protected under such circumstances. I did not say such circumstances were necessary. Read what I said, not what you assumed.


So then, the individual right could indeed be necessary to provide for a militia. (Which is why I have said all along it is silent). And indeed, miller itself, given the factual posture does not gainsay the individual right especially in light of:


Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.

Blah, that stupid sentence again.

Now be done with me.

Yeah, like all kids respect minimum age laws, and with illegal drugs, there is no minimum age.

I think my sense of history is pretty good. Perhaps you would like to share your knowledge as to what drugs were legal and when they became illegal and why? BTW, there have been many societal changes over the past 229 years of US history?

I believe myself to be a fairly responsible parent, but that doesn't preclude that my kids could end up doing something to harm themselves or others. BTW, crime, and alcohol/drug abuse is classless.

YOU would legalize all drugs and that in itself makes you a criminal in my eyes. Alcohol and hard core drugs are totally different animals.

I stand by my earlier statement. If you legalized all drugs, you would see an increase in addictions, crime, and violent crime.


This is off topic, so I am going to start a new thread for it. Havent seen a drug thread in a while in any case.

BTW, can anyone here tell me when the last drive by knifing occurred in the US?

You'll notice the sudden popularity of using an airplane as a weapon. More deadly than any gun. And the guys who hijacked the last set used knives.

So you have stated your opinion what the problem is, now what is YOUR solution?


This is going to sound incredibly harsh and completely un-Libertarian of me, but take the child away from the people that can't take care of him/her.


There is a poliferation of drugs and alcohol in our society, and quite often alcohol is glamourized. While you don't want to blame "inanimate objects", they do exist, and yes many individuals will succumb to the allure, and many will become addicted. What is your solution?


Again, hold them responsible for their actions. Do not coddle them. They kill or assault someone, put them in prison or give them the death penalty. If they can't operate in society they need to sink or swim. If they can't hold a job because they were stupid enough to try the drugs that are so horribly addictive, or so weak that they "need" a drink or a hit just to get by in their "horrible" lives, they're on their own.

Succumb to the allure. What a lame excuse. There is such a thing as will power.


I am against the poliferation of these "inanimate objects", yet you suggest that I am enabling them? How so?

You are coming from the standpoint that it's a disease, and not some lapse in will. At least that's what it seems like. Like once they become addicted to the habit or addicted to the chemical itself, that they no longer have a choice, that they can no longer control their actions, and are no longer responsible for taking that first step. Again, that's how it seems you are approaching it. I may be off in my interpretation.

I think he meant you're 'enabling' irresponsible behaviours, not inanimate objects, Canuckheaven.

Bingo.

Hold the presses!! You are trying to blame parents for their children's choices, and yet you want to complicate any possible problem by allowing the poliferation of drugs?

What responsible parent is going to push for the poliferation of drugs? You are contradicting your earlier statement?


Nope. You take away the taboo, and suddenly there is no "allure".


Legalizing drugs will lead to more kids trying drugs, which will enevitably lead to more addictions amongst those kids, and lead to more crime not less?


More kids trying drugs recreationally, yes. Less addicts though. If it's not "glamorous" people try it and then move on.


First kid: Hey lets get some heroin at the drug store.
Second kid: No my dad says that drugs can be addictive.
First kid: Well I heard your dad saying that selling drugs was okay, so it can't be that bad, besides, I heard that it will give you an awesome feeling.
Second kid: No, I trust my dad, I don't want to get addicted.
First kid: Come on....we will just do it once and never again.
Second kid: It gives you an awesome feeling?
First kid: Yeah, another friend of mine tried it yesterday and he loved it.
Second kid: Okay, maybe just this one time!!

So, again, where were the parents? Why hadn't they talked to their kid's friend? Their kid's friend's parents?

Canuck, I think the point we're trying to make is that illegal drugs are causing the same type of violent and gang creation that the prohibition of alcohol caused. There's ample proof that when alcohol was legalized again the gangs largely disappeared (with a few exceptions who turned to illegal drugs) and the violence was dramatically lowered.

Sure, we have alcoholics. But they aren't as bad a problem as people running around killing each other with machineguns, nor is it as corrosive a problem as gangs bribing government officials to look the other way.

I don't believe we would suddenly be awash in addicts. Most of the addicts we're going to have are already there - the price of most drugs is so low that even very poor people who can scrounge five dollars can buy some.

The low price is also ample proof that the law enforcement effort is having zero effect on the availability of drugs. The violence is an indicator that the competition is stiff - the price is already as low as they can go, and multiple vendors now must resort to something other than price competition - that is, they must kill each other to gain market share.

I can't say if consumption and complications due to alcohol dropped after prohibition, but they certainly went up DURING prohibition.

http://www.geocities.com/athens/troy/4399/

Canuck, I think the point we're trying to make is that illegal drugs are causing the same type of violent and gang creation that the prohibition of alcohol caused. There's ample proof that when alcohol was legalized again the gangs largely disappeared (with a few exceptions who turned to illegal drugs) and the violence was dramatically lowered.

Sure, we have alcoholics. But they aren't as bad a problem as people running around killing each other with machineguns, nor is it as corrosive a problem as gangs bribing government officials to look the other way.

I don't believe we would suddenly be awash in addicts. Most of the addicts we're going to have are already there - the price of most drugs is so low that even very poor people who can scrounge five dollars can buy some.

The low price is also ample proof that the law enforcement effort is having zero effect on the availability of drugs. The violence is an indicator that the competition is stiff - the price is already as low as they can go, and multiple vendors now must resort to something other than price competition - that is, they must kill each other to gain market share.

As usual, WL, you hit it on the head.

It seems that people here want to
A)ban guns
B)stop gun production all together
and C) Make gun smuggling laws

Heres the probelem with that. You see, guns aren't the enemy, its the people who don't know how to use them for their primary purpose, hunting.
Every year many more people are killed by automobiles, so should we ban those too? Besides, how are a bunch of unarmed hippies going to get some guys winchester collection without a fight? It's not going to happen.

For those of you who think gun production should stop, go into a gun store some day and read what it says on the side of the gun. It says MADE IN USA.

Oh and there are gun smuggling laws, lots of them.

Somehow I think this line from the movie "Collateral" belongs in this thread:

"You killed him!"
"I didn't kill him, I just shot him, the bullet and the fall killed him."

For those of you who think gun production should stop, go into a gun store some day and read what it says on the side of the gun. It says MADE IN USA.



What if you pick up and Uberti or a Bennilli, maybe even a Beretta? :rolleyes:

What if you pick up and Uberti or a Bennilli, maybe even a Beretta? :rolleyes:
Every Beretta sold in the US is made in Accokeek, Maryland at the Beretta plant.

Every Beretta sold in the US is made in Accokeek, Maryland at the Beretta plant.
Which is really funny cause they don't like you carrying them around.

Every Beretta sold in the US is made in Accokeek, Maryland at the Beretta plant.


Learn something new everyday. :)

My point was that there are still plenty of imported guns though.

Learn something new everyday. :)

My point was that there are still plenty of imported guns though.

The interesting thing is the definition of a "firearm". It's the "receiver" portion of the firearm - not the barrel or any other part.

So, for your typical semiautomatic pistol, strip off all the parts except the portion of the frame that the grip is attached to. That's the firearm.

Common practice today is to make that part in the US - thus avoiding the "importation of firearms", and importing the other parts from other countries, performing final assembly here.

Multinational corporations at work...

This is going to sound incredibly harsh and completely un-Libertarian of me, but take the child away from the people that can't take care of him/her.
Zieg Heil Herr Commandant!

I suppose you are also for genetically producing "perfect" people like yourself?

Again, hold them responsible for their actions. Do not coddle them. They kill or assault someone, put them in prison or give them the death penalty. If they can't operate in society they need to sink or swim. If they can't hold a job because they were stupid enough to try the drugs that are so horribly addictive, or so weak that they "need" a drink or a hit just to get by in their "horrible" lives, they're on their own.Everyone is responsible for "their" own actions. Parents can only offer life skills to their children, it doesn't mean that they will follow the right path. How naive are you?

Succumb to the allure. What a lame excuse. There is such a thing as will power.
You really need to do some research about addiction, and its' affects?

You are coming from the standpoint that it's a disease, and not some lapse in will. At least that's what it seems like. Like once they become addicted to the habit or addicted to the chemical itself, that they no longer have a choice, that they can no longer control their actions, and are no longer responsible for taking that first step. Again, that's how it seems you are approaching it. I may be off in my interpretation.
Alcohol and drug addiction can be and are linked to disease. Look it up (http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/aa022697.htm).

Zieg Heil Herr Commandant!
I suppose you are also for genetically producing "perfect" people like yourself?


Nope, however, I am for smacking people that don't think before they bring a life into this world.


Everyone is responsible for "their" own actions. Parents can only offer life skills to their children, it doesn't mean that they will follow the right path. How naive are you?


In the US (don't know how it works elsewhere) parents are responsible for everything their children do, until age 18.


You really need to do some research about addiction, and its' affects?
Alcohol and drug addiction can be and are linked to disease. Look it up (http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/aa022697.htm).

Okay, fine--let's do it your way--put them all in asylums.

Don't even get me started. The only disease they're linked with is stupidity, which got their body addicted in the first place. Too many people hide behind "compulsions". Too many get away with crimes in that fashion.

Article III of the Constitution (emphasis added):

Section 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section 2.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. ...

And judicial review was established by individuals who were Founding Fathers themselves in Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137 (1803):

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature repugnant to the constitution is void.

This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is consequently to be considered by this court as one of the fundamental principles of our society. It is not therefore to be lost sight of in the further consideration of this subject.

If an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void, does it, notwithstanding its invalidity, bind the courts and oblige them to give it effect? Or, in other words, though it be not law, does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory; and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on. It shall, however, receive a more attentive consideration.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. So if a law be in opposition to the constitution: if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law: the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

If then the courts are to regard the constitution; and he constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law.

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions. It would declare that an act, which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare, that if the legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.

That it thus reduces to nothing what we have deemed the greatest improvement on political institutions-a written constitution, would of itself be sufficient, in America where written constitutions have been viewed with so much reverence, for rejecting the construction. But the peculiar expressions of the constitution of the United States furnish additional arguments in favour of its rejection.

The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution. Could it be the intention of those who gave this power, to say that, in using it, the constitution should not be looked into? That a case arising under the constitution should be decided without examining the instrument under which it arises?

This is too extravagant to be maintained.

In some cases then, the constitution must be looked into by the judges. And if they can open it at all, what part of it are they forbidden to read, or to obey?

There are many other parts of the constitution which serve to illustrate this subject.

It is declared that 'no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.' Suppose a duty on the export of cotton, of tobacco, or of flour; and a suit instituted to recover it. Ought judgment to be rendered in such a case? ought the judges to close their eyes on the constitution, and only see the law.

The constitution declares that 'no bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.'

If, however, such a bill should be passed and a person should be prosecuted under it, must the court condemn to death those victims whom the constitution endeavours to preserve?

...

It is also not entirely unworthy of observation, that in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the constitution, have that rank.

Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

Chief Justice Marshall's logic -- particularly in light of Article III and Article VI of the Constitution -- ins essentially unassailable. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to decide all cases arising under the Constitution. Hence, the power of judicial review.


Nice quotes. Yes, I am aware of the constitution and what it says. Nothing in those quotes establishes what is known as "Judicial Review". You even admited yourself that it does not grant such power, are you now going back on your word and trying to claim that it does?

Thomas Jefferson rejected judicial supremacy. Thus, in a letter to William Jarvis in 1820, Jefferson wrote:

"It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy" (p. 3).

On an earlier occasion, he wrote in 1810 that judicial review allows for a Supreme Court "which from the citadel of the law can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend" (p. 3).

And what is the unchecked power of interpretation by a few men, but an oligarchy? Certain things were written into the constitution as prohibitions AGAINST the federal government's power in order to preserve and maintain those rights of the people.

Giving the power to a group of men to decide amongst themselves what rights they deem the people should have is a perversion to the purpose of the bill of rights, and was the furthest thing from the minds of many of the founding fathers.

The bill of rights means what it says it does, the notion that it needs to be interpreted is foolhardy. If you need interpretation, you just have to look at what James Madison, father of the constitution, had to say about it.

The point is, the bill of rights was a list of prohibitions against the federal government's power. So how can you, or anyone else, proclaim that a branch of the federal government has the right to supercede that check by having the power to interpret the prohibitions anyway they deem necessary? It is not difficult to interpret a document in a way that totally perverts and distorts the original meaning so that it is no longer recognizable, but instead, is reinterpreted into what you want it to mean.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0302/articles/george.html

Lincoln on Judicial Despotism

Robert P. George

Copyright (c) 2003 First Things 130 (February 2003): 36-40.

After the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of public schools in Topeka, Kansas, lawsuits promptly were brought to dismantle legally sanctioned segregation in other states. One of these was Arkansas. There, Governor Orville Faubus and other state officials maintained that they were not bound by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown. That decision was constitutionally incorrect, they insisted, and amounted to a federal court’s usurpation of the constitutional authority of the states. Moreover, Arkansas was not a party in the case. Therefore, they contended that a lower federal court in Little Rock had no constitutional authority to order the desegregation of public schools in Arkansas on the basis of the Brown decision.
Arkansas’ appeal of the lower court’s order eventually made it to the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1958 case of Cooper v. Aaron. No one had any real doubts about what the outcome of that case would be. The Justices would certainly uphold the desegregation order. They did so, however, in a ruling that did more than merely remind the Governor and other state officials that they had “no power to nullify a federal court order.” In a unanimous opinion, the Court asserted, for the first time, that “the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution.”
The idea of judicial supremacy—or the idea that the supremacy of the Constitution entails judicial supremacy in constitutional interpretation—has come to be so widely held not only in the legal profession but also by the public at large that today it seems unremarkable. As the nation prepares for our annual celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, however, we have an occasion to consider just how remarkable it is, and just how far it is from the Great Emancipator’s understanding of the legitimate scope of federal judicial power.
According to the standard account of the matter, the power of judicial review—that is, the authority of the federal judiciary to invalidate acts of Congress and the President when they are deemed to be unconstitutional—came to be entrenched in our law by the acceptance, tacit or otherwise, of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison. Of course, nowhere in the text of the Constitution is any such power granted. Rather, Chief Justice John Marshall inferred the existence of the power, or, at least, something like it, from the fact that the written Constitution declares itself to be the Supreme Law of the Land, combined with the evident principle that, in Marshall’s language, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”
Now, a lively dispute has existed from the moment the Court handed down its decision in Marbury as to the scope of that ruling. Even today, some scholars argue that it did nothing more than declare that the Supreme Court is within its rights in declining to exercise an authority putatively conferred upon it by Congress when such authority exceeds the jurisdiction granted to the Court under Article Three of the Constitution. Certainly, as a technical matter, all the Court did in Marbury was refuse to exercise original jurisdiction beyond what it was granted in Article Three on the ground that the expansion of its original jurisdiction by Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional. So, the contemporary constitutional scholar Robert Lowry Clinton argues that it is a mistake to read the case as claiming a judicial power to tell the President or Congress what they can or cannot do under the Constitution. He maintains that it simply stands for the power of the Court, as a coequal branch of government, to act on its own interpretation of the Constitution in deciding what it can and cannot do. This, Clinton observes, is entirely consistent with the recognition of a like power in the other branches.
Of course, the conventional reading of Marbury—shared by the decision’s friends and foes alike—has it standing for a considerably broader scope of judicial authority. Thomas Jefferson condemned the decision precisely because he viewed it as claiming a power of the courts to impose constitutional interpretations on the other branches. This, he later asserted, would have the effect of “placing us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” And at the opposite extreme from Professor Clinton’s reading is the reading offered by the Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron. What I described as a “remarkable” claim to judicial supremacy, the Cooper Justices presented as nothing more than a straightforward, uncontroversial, altogether mundane and logical implication of Marshall’s proposition about the “province and duty of the judicial department.” Indeed, the paragraph in which the Justices make the claim offers nothing in its support beyond the invocation of Marbury.
Whatever Marbury was supposed to mean about the scope of the power of judicial review, it is a notable fact that the Court declined to exercise that power to declare another act of Congress to be unconstitutional until 1857, when it ruled in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Scott was a slave in Missouri who had been taken by his master into the free state of Illinois and the free Wisconsin Territory. He then brought a suit demanding his freedom in St. Louis County Court under Missouri law, claiming that he was legally entitled to be free by virtue of having resided in a free state or territory. He won in the trial court but the ruling in his favor was reversed by the Supreme Court of Missouri. He then brought a new case in the federal courts to consider, among other things, whether a state could reverse the “once free, always free” principle under which the St. Louis County Court had ruled in Scott’s favor. Once the matter entered the federal courts, it became a massive political hot potato. Sandford (whose name was actually Sanford), acting on behalf of his sister who was Dred Scott’s owner, injected into the litigation the question whether any black person, free or slave, could be a citizen of the United States, and he directly challenged the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which forbade slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of latitude 36° 30’. Although the power of Congress to forbid slavery in federal territories was well–established, Sandford argued that slaves were private property of the sort protected by the Constitution against deprivation without due process of law, and that therefore Congress lacked any constitutional authority to ban slavery in the territories.
When the matter reached the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, writing for a seven–man majority against two dissenters, accepted Sandford’s major contentions, not only sending Scott back into slavery, but holding, in effect, that he had never been free. The majority ruled that blacks could not be citizens of the United States, and therefore lacked the concomitant right to bring lawsuits in federal courts. Moreover, they held that Congress lacked constitutional authority to forbid or abolish slavery in federal territories. And still further, since slaves were, the Court ruled, personal property protected by the Constitution, the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
All of this added up to a sweeping and profound ruling. The Court had massively injected itself into the most divisive and highly morally charged issue of the day. In my edited book entitled Great Cases in Constitutional Law, there is a most interesting exchange between Prof. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago and Prof. James McPherson, my colleague at Princeton, regarding the political impact of the Dred Scott decision. Sunstein defends the commonly held view that the case polarized an already dangerously divided country and made the Civil War and its toll of carnage almost inevitable. Instead of ending the conflict over slavery by definitively resolving it, as Taney apparently hoped to do, the Court, according to Sunstein, intensified the conflict and heightened emotions. McPherson holds the minority view that the case “did not really polarize the country any more than it was already polarized by the issue of slavery in the territories.”
Whichever scholar has the better argument, they agree that the decision focused the debate over slavery and introduced into the already heady brew of issues involved in that debate the question of the scope of judicial power under the Constitution. McPherson points out that “so thoroughly did the Dred Scott decision pervade and structure the Lincoln–Douglas debates [in 1858] that in one of those debates a Douglas supporter shouted from the audience to Lincoln: ‘Give us something besides Dred Scott.’ Quick as a cat Lincoln responded: ‘Yes, no doubt you want to hear something that don’t hurt.’”
To Lincoln Dred Scott was an abomination, but for reasons of principle going even beyond those set forth by the dissenting Justices in the case. That Lincoln was devoted to the Declaration of Independence and viewed its statement of principles as integral to the American scheme of constitutional government is, if anything, an understatement. However, the Declaration was far from the only writing of Jefferson’s of which Lincoln was mindful. In Jefferson’s letter of September 28, 1820 to William C. Jarvis, from which I quoted earlier his line about judicial “despotism,” he explained his opposition to judicial supremacy in constitutional interpretation as follows:
The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments coequal and co–sovereign within themselves. If the legislature fails to pass laws for a census, for paying the judges and other officers of government, for establishing a militia, for naturalization as prescribed by the Constitution, or if they fail to meet in Congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them; if the President fails to provide the place of a judge, to appoint other civil and military officers, to issue requisite commissions, the judges cannot force him.
Now, I daresay that to us—living in the aftermath of an expansion of judicial power that may, perhaps, more properly be conceived as having been expressed and ratified, rather than created, by the Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron—this language is quite shocking. Part of this, no doubt, has to do with the prestige that courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, enjoy in elite sectors of our culture. Criticism of the scope of judicial power is often perceived by its partisans as, in effect, attacking the independence of the judiciary or even the ideal of judicial independence. The key thing to see is that Jefferson’s language was not at all shocking to Lincoln. On the contrary, it is entirely in line with his own fears of the political consequences of judicial supremacy.
Like Jefferson, Lincoln believed that courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, could violate the Constitution and even undermine constitutional government. That judges, whenever they invalidate executive or legislative acts, purport to speak in the name of the Constitution, and claim merely to be giving effect to its commands, was in Lincoln’s view no guarantee against judicial despotism. Judges exercising effectively unconstrained power were, in his view, no less a threat to the Constitution than other governmental officers exercising such power. His fear was not that judges would sometimes err in their constitutional rulings. Given human fallibility, that is inevitable and unremarkable. His fear, rather, was that judges are capable of behaving unconstitutionally, just as other officials are capable of behaving unconstitutionally, by exceeding the authority granted to them under the Constitution and thereby usurping the authority allocated to other officials in a delicate system of checks and balances. Indeed, Lincoln believed that judicial violations of the Constitution were in certain respects graver matters than the violations of elected officials.
Lincoln, of course, was a lawyer. He knew from experience that judges come in all shapes and sizes—competent and incompetent, conscientious and slapdash, honorable and corrupt. He wasn’t a skeptic after the fashion of the legal realists who would rise to prominence in the law schools fifty years or so after his death. But his view of courts was realistic. He knew that it was essential to the success of a lawyer to know the law; but he also knew that it didn’t hurt to know the judge. He believed in courts but he didn’t venerate them. Nor did he automatically identify what the courts did or said with “the law.”
His mature and most profound reflections on the scope of judicial power and the role of the judiciary in the American constitutional system came in relation to the debate over Dred Scott. By 1858, when the question was at the heart of the political contest in which he was engaged, the Court had ruled, but the question of the ruling’s status was far from resolved. Recall that the ruling was the first invalidation of a federal statute by the Court in more than fifty years, and only the second in the nation’s history. The question of the proper posture toward it for the other branches to adopt was very much alive, and a politician’s position on the question might well determine his electoral fate. Bound up, as it was, with the urgent and divisive issue of slavery, there was no avoiding the issue—despite the best efforts of even the most agile political types, such as Stephen Douglas.
Upon his election as President, Lincoln faced the matter squarely in his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861. With the specter of civil war looming, the new President, who had denounced the Dred Scott decision repeatedly in his senatorial campaign against Douglas in 1858 as well as in the presidential campaign, turned attention to it in his remarks to the nation.
I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
For Lincoln, then, the evil of the Dred Scott decision was not merely the expansion of slavery. It was that the decision threatened to undermine the basic principles of republican government precisely by establishing judicial supremacy in matters of constitutional interpretation. It was not merely that the Court decided the suit in favor of the wrong party. It was that the Court claimed authority to decide for the other branches once and for all what the Constitution required, thus placing them in a position of inferiority and subservience. For the people to “resign their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal” would be, according to Lincoln, the abandonment of democratic self–government and the acquiescence in oligarchic despotism. There is a not–very–faint echo of Jefferson in Lincoln’s First Inaugural.
In office, Lincoln gave effect to his position against judicial supremacy by consistently refusing to treat the Dred Scott decision as creating a rule of law binding on the executive branch. His administration issued passports and other documents to free blacks, thus treating them as citizens of the United States despite the Court’s denial of their status as citizens. He signed legislation that plainly placed restrictions on slavery in the western territories in defiance of Taney’s ruling. For his critics, these actions, combined particularly with his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, revealed him to be a lawless and tyrannical ruler, one who had no regard for the constitutional limits of his own power. But none can say that he had not made his opposition to judicial supremacy clear before assuming office.
It is ironic that the declaration of judicial supremacy made by the Warren Court came in the context of the Court’s efforts to enforce a ruling in the cause of racial equality and civil rights. The occasion for Lincoln’s declaration of implacable opposition to judicial supremacy had been a decision which, above all others, stained the Court’s reputation as an institution dedicated to, as it says above the entrance to the Marble Temple in Washington, D.C., “equal justice under law.” Indeed, the popularity of the Court’s ruling in the Brown case (not, initially at least, in the South, but throughout much of the country and certainly among journalists, professors, and other opinion leaders) no doubt helps to explain why the remarkable dictum in Cooper v. Aaron was so little remarked on at the time, and why few have noted its incompatibility with the principles of Jefferson and Lincoln.
I find that my own students are more than merely surprised to learn about the views of the author of the Declaration of Independence as well as the Great Emancipator. They, too, have drunk in the idea that courts, particularly the Supreme Court (upon which more than a few imagine themselves someday serving), are the ultimate protectors of rights and, as such, should have the ultimate say on constitutional questions. After all, they reason, somebody, or some institution, has to have the final word, or else nothing is ever settled. And students, at least my students, want things to be settled. And the ultimate settler of things—when the things in question are politically ultimate things, constitutional things—should be a nonpolitical body. Politics, my students say, is too messy. Democratic institutions are too prone to passion, prejudice, and foolishness for us to entrust to them matters of constitutional significance. We don’t want to make our rights subject to voting, they say. There needs to be a higher institution to provide a check against the bigots and demagogues of politics—an institution where matters are resolved by calm and rational inquiry and judgment; an institution whose membership is drawn from a narrower, more refined, more highly educated circle; one that is not subject to political retaliation for unpopular decisions of principle. What would have happened, they ask, had the political branches felt themselves free to dispute Brown v. Board of Education?
One imagines Lincoln in the classroom reminding the youngsters that the unchecked power to do good is unavoidably also the unchecked power to do evil. If we like what the Justices did in Brown v. Board, let us not forget what they did in Dred Scott. And there is more to the balance sheet. Was it not the Court, after all, that during the period from 1905 to 1937 repeatedly invalidated both state and federal worker protection laws and social welfare legislation? Did the Justices not read into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment a “right to freedom of contract” in whose name they frustrated the legislative will and usurped the constitutional authority of the elected representatives of the people? This, in any event, is the conventional reading of the history by contemporary liberals and conservatives alike.
And then there is the issue of abortion, surely the most vexing, divisive, and morally charged issue of our own time. Does the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down state prohibitions of abortion in the 1973 cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton belong on the plus side of the Court’s ledger with Brown v. Board or on the minus side with Dred Scott? Does that in turn depend on whether one happens to see abortion as a woman’s right or as a violation of the rights of an unborn child? If so, should one’s view of the proper scope of judicial power, and the legitimacy of judicial supremacy, depend upon the contingent fact that the Court happened to come down the way it did on abortion? After all, the Court could have come down, as the German Constitutional Court did in a 1975 decision interpreting Germany’s Basic Law, in precisely the opposite way—invalidating a legislatively enacted liberalization of abortion. Supporters of the right to abortion who criticize the German decision make exactly the same arguments—the same Lincolnian arguments—against judicial supremacy that supporters of the right to life who criticize Roe v. Wade make. Their argument is that, to put it in Lincoln’s language, “if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is author, most recently, of The Clash of Orthodoxies.

I understand, and I, likewise, do not claim to be any great authority or "super-mind" on the issue. I was just willing to answer your question.

OK

OK, I'm just responding to the last few posts and pointing out what I think, that's all.

With all due respect I disagree with your view and the "concensus" and side with the 5th Circuit which has clearly rejected that view and held that the 2nd A. does protect an individual right. I'm willing to agree to disagree with you on that point though. I would like to add though, if you'll permit, that it is my belief and understanding based on my research and readings that the "militia" is composed of all free people of the various states and that the 2nd A. protects their individual right to keep and bear arms such as they could reasonably be expected to bring into service themselves were they called up to defend the nation in a national emergency - just like the minutemen brought their own rifles and pistols, but not cannons, into the revolutionary war, I think it protects an individual right to keep similar type weapons - I'm not an absolutist who argues it lets you have tanks and bombs, but I think it is like a sort of 1st amendment, Libel, slander and obscenity get no 1st A protection and tanks, bombs and bazooka's get no 2nd A. protection in the hands of private citizens, only those weapons reasonably suited for personal use while serving in the militia. Hopefully that makes sense to you (though I understand you still likely disagree, that's ok, just wanted to make my view clear).

Well, I did above, but hopefully in a reasoned, non-accusatory or flaming manner.

That said, don't you wish that either way the SC would take on a 2nd A. case and settle it?

I appreciate your thoughtful position. You definitely did respond in a reasoned, non-accusatory, and non-flaming manner. More calm and unabrasive than most of my posts on the matter.

We do disagree, including about the militia. If I had not already discussed the matter ad naseum and/or had certain events not preceded your joining the discussion, I would be glad to discuss it with you further. Although at times we have played rough (and I have gone overboard at times and apologized), I believe Armed Bookworms and I were able to carry on an intelligent conversation.

Particularly in light of the Fifth Circuit's disruption of the judicial hegemony in Emerson, it would be worthwhile to have the Supreme Court speak to the issue again.

Nice quotes. Yes, I am aware of the constitution and what it says. Nothing in those quotes establishes what is known as "Judicial Review".

Nothing in those quotes uses the phrase "judicial review" they nonetheless establish its existence.

Under Article VI, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Do you dispute this?

Under Article III, "[t]he judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States .."

If you wish to dispute the power of judicial review, answer Chief Justice Marshall's questions, how does a court decide a case under the Constitution without intrepreting and applying the Constitution?

If a statute conflicts with the Constitution, are courts supposed to follow the statute or the supreme law of the land?

Etc. ...

You even admited yourself that it does not grant such power, are you now going back on your word and trying to claim that it does?

You have me confused with Norleans.

Thomas Jefferson rejected judicial supremacy. Thus, in a letter to William Jarvis in 1820, Jefferson wrote:

"It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy" (p. 3).

On an earlier occasion, he wrote in 1810 that judicial review allows for a Supreme Court "which from the citadel of the law can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend" (p. 3).

1. You realize these were written in response to Marbury in which Jefferson was involved and his side lost. Sour grapes.

2. I have the highest respect for Jefferson, but he was not infallible. I think I need not enumerate his many flaws. Regardless, he was an Anti-Federalist and opposed many parts of the Constitution. His views on it must be respected but taken with a grain of salt.

And what is the unchecked power of interpretation by a few men, but an oligarchy? Certain things were written into the constitution as prohibitions AGAINST the federal government's power in order to preserve and maintain those rights of the people.

Giving the power to a group of men to decide amongst themselves what rights they deem the people should have is a perversion to the purpose of the bill of rights, and was the furthest thing from the minds of many of the founding fathers.

The point is, the bill of rights was a list of prohibitions against the federal government's power. So how can you, or anyone else, proclaim that a branch of the federal government has the right to supercede that check by having the power to interpret the prohibitions anyway they deem necessary? It is not difficult to interpret a document in a way that totally perverts and distorts the original meaning so that it is no longer recognizable, but instead, is reinterpreted into what you want it to mean.


1. The power of the judiciary is hardly unchecked.

2. The power of judicial review is a crucial check on the legislative or executive branches violatins of the Constitution. Without judicial review, what checks remain against federal power prohibited by the Constitution?

3. Marbury v. Madison was decided by many of "the founding fathers." And it involved a dispute among founding fathers.

4. The Federalist Papers provide ample evidence to the contrary.

Federalist No. 80:

It seems scarcely to admit of controversy, that the judicary authority of the Union ought to extend to these several descriptions of cases: 1st, to all those which arise out of the laws of the United States, passed in pursuance of their just and constitutional powers of legislation; 2d, to all those which concern the execution of the provisions expressly contained in the articles of Union; 3d, to all those in which the United States are a party; 4th, to all those which involve the PEACE of the CONFEDERACY, whether they relate to the intercourse between the United States and foreign nations, or to that between the States themselves; 5th, to all those which originate on the high seas, and are of admiralty or maritime jurisdiction; and, lastly, to all those in which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial and unbiased.

The first point depends upon this obvious consideration, that there ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional provisions. What, for instance, would avail restrictions on the authority of the State legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? The States, by the plan of the convention, are prohibited from doing a variety of things, some of which are incompatible with the interests of the Union, and others with the principles of good government. The imposition of duties on imported articles, and the emission of paper money, are specimens of each kind. No man of sense will believe, that such prohibitions would be scrupulously regarded, without some effectual power in the government to restrain or correct the infractions of them. This power must either be a direct negative on the State laws, or an authority in the federal courts to overrule such as might be in manifest contravention of the articles of Union. There is no third course that I can imagine. The latter appears to have been thought by the convention preferable to the former, and, I presume, will be most agreeable to the States.

As to the second point, it is impossible, by any argument or comment, to make it clearer than it is in itself. If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being coextensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number. The mere necessity of uniformity in the interpretation of the national laws, decides the question. Thirteen independent courts of final jurisdiction over the same causes, arising upon the same laws, is a hydra in government, from which nothing but contradiction and confusion can proceed.

...

It may be esteemed the basis of the Union, that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States.'' And if it be a just principle that every government OUGHT TO POSSESS THE MEANS OF EXECUTING ITS OWN PROVISIONS BY ITS OWN AUTHORITY, it will follow, that in order to the inviolable maintenance of that equality of privileges and immunities to which the citizens of the Union will be entitled, the national judiciary ought to preside in all cases in which one State or its citizens are opposed to another State or its citizens. To secure the full effect of so fundamental a provision against all evasion and subterfuge, it is necessary that its construction should be committed to that tribunal which, having no local attachments, will be likely to be impartial between the different States and their citizens, and which, owing its official existence to the Union, will never be likely to feel any bias inauspicious to the principles on which it is founded.
...

5. Federalist Nos. 78-82 explain why the judicial power is vested in a seperate branch of independent judges under a Supreme Court. I will not quote them at length here. What you are arguing against is not so much a change in our constitutional system or an interpretation of the Constitution, but the original structure and purpose of the judicial branch itself. In other words, you are arguing against the Constitution. That is fine. The Anti-Federalists made many critiques of the Constitution that had merit at the time. But, in addition to being contrary to the Constitution itself and its intentions, these views have been contrary to Constitutional practice since 1803 -- practically the onset of our Republic. The genie is out of the bottle.

The bill of rights means what it says it does, the notion that it needs to be interpreted is foolhardy. If you need interpretation, you just have to look at what James Madison, father of the constitution, had to say about it.

A literalist reading of the Constitution is not only impractical but contrary to the Constitution itself -- see the Ninth Amendment.

The views of James Madison alone do not control what the Constitution means -- ironically, Madison and Jefferson both thought their own views were not controlling.

The Constitution is not self-executing. It requires interpretation and application. This is what the Founding Fathers themselves did and what we have done ever since.

Alcohol and drug addiction can be and are linked to disease. Look it up (http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/aa022697.htm).

Disease... yes, Alcohol and drug abuse can be serious contributing factors to physical illness. As a recovering drunk (Alcoholics go to meetings) at 9 years dry, I can testify that it's damned hard to get over any addiction.
However...

Getting hammered/stoned does not excuse bad behaviour or hurting people.
There's simply no excuse for that.
right down to it, you're responsible for your actions, even when you're frying your brains-or at least, that's the HONOURABLE position. (I think it's also the position of the Legal system, but I'm not 100% sure...)
Drug use, Alcohol abuse-these are the result of conscious choices (nobody put a gun to my head and said "Drink the Booze!!!"), if you can't stop yourself, you need to not-start.

Disease... yes, Alcohol and drug abuse can be serious contributing factors to physical illness. As a recovering drunk (Alcoholics go to meetings) at 9 years dry, I can testify that it's damned hard to get over any addiction.
However...



And yet you did it. Congratulations, BTW.


Getting hammered/stoned does not excuse bad behaviour or hurting people.
There's simply no excuse for that.
right down to it, you're responsible for your actions, even when you're frying your brains-or at least, that's the HONOURABLE position. (I think it's also the position of the Legal system, but I'm not 100% sure...)
Drug use, Alcohol abuse-these are the result of conscious choices (nobody put a gun to my head and said "Drink the Booze!!!"), if you can't stop yourself, you need to not-start.

If you don't mind my asking, how did you stop?

Nope, however, I am for smacking people that don't think before they bring a life into this world.
There is only one God and you ain't Him!!
In the US (don't know how it works elsewhere) parents are responsible for everything their children do, until age 18.
It is the same here, but I don't think you realize that there is this thing, especially amongst teenagers, called free will. When the free will kicks in, it doesn't matter how intelligent they are, how well they were raised, or how rich they are.

Okay, fine--let's do it your way--put them all in asylums.And that is where some of them end. Others end up in hospitals, rehab centres, and others unfortunately end up in the morgue.
Don't even get me started. The only disease they're linked with is stupidity, which got their body addicted in the first place. Too many people hide behind "compulsions". Too many get away with crimes in that fashion.
Since you obviously have never done anything stupid in your life, then you obviously know little about these "compulsions", and are completely devoid of any compassion for those less fortunate.

Actually Zaxon, unless changed by statute or court decision, parents are generally not legally responsible (moral responsibility is another issue) for the negligent acts of their children and typically, their liability for their intentional torts is limited.

Actually Zaxon, unless changed by statute or court decision, parents are generally not legally responsible (moral responsibility is another issue) for the negligent acts of their children and typically, their liability for their intentional torts is limited.

Good to know. The children are legally responsible for themselves, then?

There is only one God and you ain't Him!!


You're right, I'm not. I'm still all for smacking idiots that just didn't think before acting on such a huge endeavor.


It is the same here, but I don't think you realize that there is this thing, especially amongst teenagers, called free will. When the free will kicks in, it doesn't matter how intelligent they are, how well they were raised, or how rich they are.


Oh, I understand free will. Yet, I also see some kids doing okay, and others not so much. The only difference is parenting. All kids will have free will. But parenting--that's not all the same.


And that is where some of them end. Others end up in hospitals, rehab centres, and others unfortunately end up in the morgue.


You were the one inferring mental disease. If they're going to run themselves into the ground, I say let 'em. If they have friends, family, and VOLUNTARY organizations comprised of others that went through the same thing, who are willing to support and help them, they are very fortunate. But to take my money to try to restrict behavior that I will never exhibit, that's illogical.


Since you obviously have never done anything stupid in your life, then you obviously know little about these "compulsions", and are completely devoid of any compassion for those less fortunate.

Oh, I've done plenty of stupid things in my life, and I've paid the price for them. But I didn't drag anyone else's money or time into it (which is what prohibitive legislation does). But you are right--I do have VERY little compassion for those that display acts of stupidity. With all the messages and information out there on drugs and alcohol, you had your chance. If you blew it, you blew it. If you didn't, you didn't. If you blew it, and came back from it, you are a VERY impressive specimen.

Good to know. The children are legally responsible for themselves, then?

Generally speaking yes - the courts will look to their level of maturity, age, understanding, etc. in imposing liability on them.

Generally speaking yes - the courts will look to their level of maturity, age, understanding, etc. in imposing liability on them.

How do they determine the levels?