Loading ...District Of Columbia’s Unconstitutional Gun Ban To Be Banned This Week As Fundamental Civil Right Hits The SCOTUS
Annnnd, heeeeeeeeere’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, and I boldly predict our Constitutionally protected Right To Keep And Bear Arms will be protected in a 5-4 decision by the Republican-dominated Supreme Court of The United States of America.
The four “nays” of course, will give plenty of fodder for my well-meaning fellow libs for decades to come as the losing justices will write blistering, dissenting comments in favor of a town’s “right” to trump our individual, God-granted RIGHT to point a gun at a raving lunatic on crack with bad intentions and bulging muscles.
Somehow, predictably (as per Darwin’s Theory), many of my fellow libs will tell us this is why we have the police; we just need a larger “Police State” and everybody will play “nicey-nice” with each other once all of the rocks, sticks, baseball bats, SUV’s (remember the terrorist who ran down a bunch of college students with one of those?), knives, box-cutters, steroids and weight sets (gotta eliminate those bulging muscles from the “bad guys”, right?), and, oh yeah — GUNS, TOO — from “society”. And, again — four SCOTUS justices will be in agreement with them. Only, they’ll not have the GUTS to speak it.
Indeed, those four justices (care to guess who they will be?) will choose to hide their opinions by digging their heels in to say our Founding Fathers didn’t REALLY mean that frail old lady down the street in that bad neighborhood was given a gift from God — a gift of battling brawn with brains — and a “big stick”. A “big stick” with the ability to reach out and penetrate the armors of serial killers such as former Republican activist and paid G.O.P. staffer, Ted Bundy, just for a random example. Or, perhaps even a drunken, irresponsible gun owner such as a “Vice President Dick Cheney” hunting in her neighborhood with a shotgun while seeing double.
THINK, my fellow Citizens — THINK. You mean to tell me there is somehow, a “legal argument” against this? Are we to believe our Founding Fathers were this stupid — that they REALLY meant the “frail old lady” in my analogy was granted the “right” via the 2nd Amendment to pay taxes in order to fund an armed military; NOT the right to survive in a tough, cruel world? Haven’t militaries always been armed anyway? Oh, excuse me — “militias”, I meant…
Here we go — the “latest” from The Washington Post (who better than the “would be” Utopia of Wershington D.C.’s home town noozpaper, correct?):
D.C.’s Gun Ban Gets Day in Court
Justices’ Decision May Set Precedent In Interpreting the 2nd AmendmentBy Robert Barnes
Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it examines whether the District’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.
The nine justices, none of whom has ever ruled directly on the amendment’s meaning, will consider a part of the Bill of Rights that has existed without a definitive interpretation for more than 200 years.
“This may be one of the only cases in our lifetime when the Supreme Court is going to be interpreting the meaning of an important provision of the Constitution unencumbered by precedent,” said Randy E. Barnett, a constitutional scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center. “And that’s why there’s so much discussion on the original meaning of the Second Amendment.”
The outcome could roil the 2008 political campaigns, send a national message about what kinds of gun control are constitutional and finally settle the question of whether the 27-word amendment, with its odd structure and antiquated punctuation, provides an individual right to gun ownership or simply pertains to militia service.
“The case has been structured so that they have to confront the threshold question,” said Robert A. Levy, the wealthy libertarian lawyer who has spent five years and his own money to bring District of Columbia v. Heller to the Supreme Court. “I think they have to come to grips with that.”
The stakes are obviously high for the District, which passed the nation’s strictest gun-control law in 1976, just after residents were granted the authority to govern themselves. It virtually bans the private possession of handguns, and requires that rifles and shotguns in the home be kept unloaded and disassembled or outfitted with a trigger lock. …”
Hold on now — I must be fair to the liberals — many are beginning to see things MY way. Another “snip”, same article:
“… The Supreme Court’s endorsement of an individual right would be a monumental change in federal jurisprudence, but perhaps not surprising. Even a small but growing group of liberal constitutional scholars — “against my political instincts,” in the words of Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe — have endorsed the individual-right view. …”
Good for you, Mr. Tribe. No need for “asterixes” on this one either — a civil right is a civil right is a civil right, and I reserve my God (oops, excuse me — “Creator”, I do believe is how our Founders put it) granted right to blow a “Ted Bundy” off the map should he believe HE has a “right” to my life, liberty, or property or that of my loved ones…
And once this RIGHT has been narrowly-reaffirmed by our SCOTUS, it will be interesting to see how our presidential candidates (the two-party “system” ones, anyhow) will be weighing in. They’ve all weighed in, mostly with a couple of “asterixes”, but I would love to see any and all of those “asterixes” removed, THEN I would like to see how Barack Obama, “Panama John” McCain, Sir Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ralphie Nader weigh back in on their views. Believe you MOI — this WILL affect the 2008 election somehow, some way — so stay tuned.
Unfortunately, I do expect at least a couple of “asterixes” to remain, if not blatant ones, again; by the dissenting justices’ “opinions”. I’m not talking about common-sense “asterixes”, I’m talking about a couple of “hoss-tradin’ asterixes”. We’ll see, won’t we?
***
Thanks again to MemeOrandum for featuring this post…
A big thanks to our good friend William Teach of McCain Blogs (Blogging for Victory) for linking in…
Thanks also to my good friend and fellow Airman, Jay, of Stop The ACLU! for quoting this article…
Stop The ACLU // Mar 16, 2008 at 12:04 PM
Second Amendment Gets Its Day In Court…
Washington Post:
Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it exa…
Sunday Linkage | McCain Blogs // Mar 16, 2008 at 2:44 PM
[...] good liberal blogger friend, The Gun Toting Liberal (who will probably be annoyed that I included him at a pro-McCain blog
) is excited about the [...]
Just another example of the protection of our rights brought to you by the Bush Administration !
Republicans are good for something after all eh, like keeping our country free…
A couple more conservative justices and we might even be able to end the Holocaust that abortion has become in this country.
GTL
Notice that it is a “small but growing” group of “liberal” scholars. This just illustrates that it takes liberals decades longer to come to a “right” answer than us conservatives.
I disagree. I predict 5/4 vote to uphold the ban. Remember, the same anti-freedom justices that violated the Constitution to give us Kelo v. New London are still sitting on the bench.
Sadly, the Second Amendment is toast.
at any rate, the term ‘militia’ most likely refers to what we would now call the millitary.
not that i agree with 2nd amendment as i interpret it though.
the last thing i want is for Americans to be sitting around with baseball bats and golf clubs if something should happen to this country.
and NO, consevatives are not smarter than liberals, they are two peas in one unhholy marital pod.
try a new party anyone?
Dave
Good to hear from you buddy. Just so I’m clear on what you’re saying. You think that the founders put an amendment to the constitution that said government has the right to bear arms? If for moment, we accept that as true, does that not sound that like the founders were on acid? So, what does that mean for the other amendments? I guess that the first amendment only applies to literal presses.
f*ing spam protection deletes my writing everytime…wtf. i just spent a f*cking hour trying to thoughtfully explain my opinion.
submit…and poof! it vanishes.
because i forgot to take the f*ing math test…
guess i should learn some arithmetic before i sound off on politics.
Chuck- to my knowledge we did not have a standing army or millitary at that time in our nations history. we had a loosely organised militia. allowing members of the militia, who were NOT millitary personel, to bear arms was a good and necessary idea- a nation doesn’t want it’s militia to have to go weapon shopping in case of emergency.
that was my frustrated and condensed response…
where’s my ginko biloba?
Under current Stare Decisis, the modern-day equivalent of the concept of a well-regulated militia is the national guard.
As far as the question of whether the second clause of the second amendment is conditioned upon the first clause or co-exists with it, that is an answer that we hope to hear soon.
From my understanding, one of the premises that the Founders, and primarily the People to whom the Founders had to answer (which is why there is a Bill of Rights in the first place, as the Constitution we have would not have received sufficient votes to ratify without the promise of the Bill of Rights) were concerned with was a government that would become overpowerful and oppressive towards the people. By taking away the principal means by which the People can voice their objection and petition the government for redress of their grievances, and second, sever the ties of tyranny, be it across the ocean or on some swampland 10 miles square, the Government is much freer to impose its will on those who don’t walk the line. The Founders were aware of this, and sought to protect against this threat.
Interestingly, though, there are some who speculate that the founders did not consider the Constitution or the Bill of Rights as Law, but rather as ideals, or suggestions (this I glean from having recently read “Freedom for the Thought We Hate,” which was interesting, though perhaps not the alpha and the omega on the matter). At least part of the evidence for this comes from the Sedition Act, which, when challenged, was not challenged under First Amendment grounds (this law was passed under the argument of necessity to protect against French Terrorism). If this is the case, that the Founders did not intend these Bills of Rights to act as the final say (and here I look to the plain language of article VI to say that at least, they considered it to be the final word), then it would be very easy to say that this gun ban is perfectly legal.
If on the other hand, you look at the context from which the Bill of Rights was drafted, particularly having just won their independence from what the Founders viewed as an oppressive regime, then it would seem that the two clauses co-exist, rather than exist conditioned upon each other. That is to say, one would argue that the right to keep and bear arms is necessary in order to be able to join a militia, vice being necessary only in the event of belonging to a militia.
This is all a lot of conjecture, and it’s not exactly well researched, as I’ve been writing for only about 6 minutes, indeed, it should not be considered as anything more than a quick rambling on a subject of which I am decidedly not an expert, but it should be able to serve as starting points for further discussion.
Steve- great response:
“Under current Stare Decisis, the modern-day equivalent of the concept of a well-regulated militia is the national guard”- wish i’d written that, i was going to suggest the Army Reserves.
my view:
then= make sure we have an ‘armed militia’ in case of the redcoats, french, dutch, indians etc…
now= make sure some crackhead doesn’t mug my wife.
thoughts?
though my most cynical view on the constitution and bill of rights is that the more it changes the more it stays the same- rich guys making up the rules as they go along.
With comments such as these from the founders and framers I fail to see how any reasonable person can twist the meaning from an individual protected right to a power of the State:
Thomas Jefferson: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Quoting 18th Century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment (1764).
Thomas Paine: “…arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”
– Thoughts on Defensive War, (1775).
John Adams: “Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion… in private self defence.”
– A Defense of the U.S. Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787-88).
The following is from an AP story:
“By MARK SHERMAN (AP) A line forms outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, March 17, 2008, where, on Tuesday, Advocates of gun rights and opponents of gun violence demonstrated outside the Supreme Court Tuesday while inside, justices heard arguments over the meaning of the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms.”
Gun right advocates vs opponents of gun violence? These are NOT separate groups. I don’t know any advocate who isn’t also opposed gun violence.
On a separate note, I read somewhere that “well regulated” meant “well equipped” back then. Can’t find a citation.
“Gun right advocates vs opponents of gun violence? These are NOT separate groups. I don’t know any advocate who isn’t also opposed gun violence.”- exactly
divide and conquer, straw dummy defense.
probably true:
“On a separate note, I read somewhere that “well regulated” meant “well equipped” back then. Can’t find a citation”.
however, this doesn’t mean arms activists are threatened in the least. unless you listen to alex jones and believe the government is after anything but your tax dollars. and arms as home defense can’t be reasonably challenged.
Republicans keeping our country free? I don’t know about that. Maybe the Republicans of old but not nowadays. I think you have to look to the Libertarians for that. The Republican party has been over run by the religious right in my opinion.
Now in regards to the DC ban, I think its ridiculous. The criminals are running around with the guns but law abiding citizens can’t legally defend themselves. Blows my mind. Lastly, just as an FYI most of liberal friends also think the DC ban is unconstitutional. Not all dems/liberals are anti-second amendment!
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