Letters to the Editor
-
Hmm let's review
Let's take a look at all the countries where bands of self governing rebels, lightly armed with small weapons are fighting the good fight
Sri Lanka
Sierre Leone
Cote d'Ivoire
Uganda
Congo (Kinshaha)
Western Sahara
Central African Republic
Sudan
Somalia
Afghanistan
Iraq
Chechnya
Thailand
Philippines
Indonesia
Columbia
These guys are your heroes? These guys are the defense of your argument to keep stockpiles of guns in your house?
Wow what a bunch of fucking retards you all are. You have never gone a day without TV and 3 hot meals let alone get shot, starved, burned out, raped and terrorized. Tell me about your fucking high ideals then.
-
Second Amendment is an Individual Right Part 1
WeikuBoy's Response: The Emerson case didn't overturn a gun control law. It merely talked about the 2A in the gun lobby's preferred way of talking about the 2A. As near as I can tell, no case has ever overturned a gun control law on 2A grounds, and certainly none has done so since the Supreme Court's 1939 decision in the Miller case.
--------------------
You can’t tell because you suffer from a disorder that facts that do not support your conclusions cannot be accepted.
Emerson.
“A textual analysis of the Second Amendment supports an individual right to bear arms.”
“A historical examination of the right to bear arms, from English antecedents to the drafting of the Second Amendment, bears proof that the right to bear arms has consistently been, and should still be, construed as an individual right.”
“The individual right to bear arms, a right recognized in both England and the colonies, was a crucial factor in the colonists’ victory over the British army in the Revolutionary War. Without that individual right, the colonists never could have won the Revolutionary War. After declaring independence from England and establishing a new government through the Constitution, the American founders sought to codify the individual right to bear arms, as did their forebears one hundred years earlier in the English Bill of Rights.”
As proof you never actually read the cases in question.
“18 U.S.C. §922(g)(8) is unconstitutional because it allows a state court divorce proceeding, without particularized findings of the threat of future violence, to automatically deprive a citizen of his Second Amendment rights.”
Specific wording in the specific case in question directly ruling a Gun Control law unconstitutional on Second Amendment grounds.
In case the above wasn’t clear enough.
“Therefore, by criminalizing protected Second Amendment activity based upon a civil state court order with no particularized findings, the statute is over-broad and in direct violation of an individual’s Second Amendment rights.”
“It is absurd that a boilerplate state court divorce order can collaterally and automatically extinguish a law-abiding citizen’s Second Amendment rights, particularly when neither the judge issuing the order, nor the parties nor their attorneys are aware of the federal criminal penalties arising from firearm possession after entry of the restraining order. That such a routine civil order has such extensive consequences totally attenuated from divorce proceedings makes the statute unconstitutional. There must be a limit to government regulation on lawful firearm possession. This statute exceeds that limit, and therefore it is unconstitutional.”
Now, you at least knew the name of the case, so you have no excuse for your ignorance of Emerson’s conclusion. This is just a prime example of your dishonest approach to the subject. Even when something stands clearly and equivalently in refutation to you position, you simply chose to pretend such facts do not exist.
====================
WeikuBoy: The Miller case involved a sawed-off shotgun transported by Mr. Miller across state lines in violation of federal law. Miller's status (adult civilian; not an infant, insane, incarcerated, etc.) was not an issue. The court held that his right to keep and bear such a weapon required a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."
--------------------
You originally and repeatedly wrote, “The right to keep and bear arms must have a ‘reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.’”
The attempt to modify your position, yet still word it in such a manner as to be misleading has not gone unnoticed.
Now you attempt to twist the words of Miller yet again, by linking the actual facts; that certain arms are not afforded constitutional protection, with wording that could be construed as reflecting upon an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. The Court did not rule on Miller’s right to keep and bear arms.
The Court ruled, “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.”
You wish for a stronger finding an attribute meaning to Miller’s conclusion that does not exist. In both versions of your quoting of Miller you use either REQUIRE or MUST, when Miller uses specific wording that is the opposite of those terms. Miller uses, “In the absence of evidence” and “we cannot say.”
You attempt to mislead the reader into thinking the language found in Miller is much stronger than is actually true, and that is dishonest.
====================
-
Part 2
“WeikuBoy: It had been probably three or four years since I'd last read Miller. I did reread it yesterday, and was struck by its brevity (gotta love the brevity of the pre-word
processor era) but otherwise found it as I'd remembered it.”
--------------------
Then your ignorance of the facts in question is inexcusable and it must be assumed the distortions you presented were based on a lack of veracity rather than ignorance.
====================
WeikuBoy: The Miller case, just discussed, said that Miller's "right" to his weapon must have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." Since the Miller case was decided in 1939, all nine or ten of the dozen federal appeals courts have found the 2A protection is not an individual right.
--------------------
Again, you use the word must when it is not found in Miller in the manner you proscribe. Absence of evidence and we cannot say only become Must and Require in the mind of a propagandist who is less concerned with truth than agenda.
====================
Xanthro: "Cite one Supreme Court decision that even tangentially States that Second Amendment Protection is not an individual right."
WeikuBoy: No, it did not. Verdugo-Urquidez was not a 2A case, nor did it so find.
--------------------
Whether Verdugo-Urquidez was directly a Second Amendment case is not salient. That’s what tangentially means. Since you seem unfamiliar with the word here’s a link to its meaning http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/tangential?view=uk
Verdugo_Urquidez used the Second Amendment as an example of individual rights.
“The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and
established by "the People of the United States." The Second
Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to "the people." See also U. S. Const., Amdt. 1 ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble") (emphasis added); Art. I, section 2, cl. I ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States") (emphasis added). While this textual exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and
to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth
Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.
Verdugo-Urquidez directly links Constitutional protection afforded by the First, Second, and Forth Amendments. The phrase “the right of the people” occurs in each. And the Supreme Court used the Second Amendment as an example of an individual right. Whether on not the case specifically was a ruling on Second Amendment protection is moot.
Find a Supreme Court decision that has wording that the Second Amendment is a collective right.
====================
WeikuBoy: Yes. And my contention is that as far as I can tell NO CASE HAS EVER STRUCK DOWN A GUN CONTROL LAW ON 2A GROUNDS, and certainly not in the modern post-Miller era. And you have already confessed that except for Emerson (which found against the gun owner and struck down no law on 2A grounds) no case has discovered such an individual right.
Again, no law has been struck down for violation of the Third Amendment. Whether or not the Court has ruled on something directly is meaningless. According to you weird logic, the Third Amendment does not exist since its judicial history is non existent.
I’ve already posted the conclusions of Emerson, which consistent with your previous methods, you'll simply chose to ignore because they refute your position.
=============================
WeikuBoy: Which was all I wanted from you. You are free to shout all day long that it is your opinion that the 2A protects the rights of individuals to guns and not the rights of states to well-regulated militias. But the law does not support you, and it is wrong of you to try to mislead Salon's readers, just as the gun lobby has misled America on this for so long.
--------------------
Once again, even your favorite case, Miller, finds the opposite. Second Amendment rights cannot be a State right since State’s have no Constitutional right to keep troops in times of peace as found in Article 1 Section 10 of the United States Constitution.
“The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress [307 U.S. 174, 179]. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia — civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.”
You’ll chose to ignore this evidence as well because it cannot be refuted. The stance that Second Amendment protection is a State right is not only internally inconsistent with the Constitution, it also requires one to ignore the history of the Bill of Rights and Constitutional debate, all of which uniformly and without exception support the conclusion that the Second Amendment is an individual protection.