Posted on 05/10/2002 10:35:56 AM PDT by Richard Poe
IN THE CLASSIC STAR TREK episode "I, Mudd," Captain Kirk short-circuits a dangerous android by talking circles around it. The Bush Justice Department has accomplished something similar, driving the gun-ban movement into a full-fledged system meltdown, with nothing more than a few, well-chosen words.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson filed two briefs with the Supreme Court Monday, which stated, among other things, that the Second Amendment guarantees to all citizens the right "to possess and bear their own firearms."
No big deal, most Americans would say. We always knew we had a right to keep and bear arms. But the gun-ban cyborgs reacted as if someone had dropped a W32.Klez virus into their brains. One can almost hear the smoke hissing from their ears, as they stammer, "This does not compute!"
CBS correspondent Jim Stewart declared that Olson’s briefs have reversed, "25 years of Justice Department policy…"
Brady Center president Michael D. Barnes said the brief has reversed "at least four decades" of federal policy.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert averred that federal policy has opposed individual gun rights, "for more than 60 years."
Abe Lincoln himself opposed individual gun rights, insists Paul Begala of CNN’s Crossfire. Begala says that Olson’s brief gives the Second Amendment a "new meaning that no scholar has ever found."
The cyborgs seem confused. Did the government revoke our gun rights 25, 40, 60 or 140 years ago?
John Ydstie of National Public Radio’s All Things Considered says it happened in 1939, when the Supreme Court ruled in a case called United States v. Miller.
Two gangsters named Jack Miller and Frank Layton had been charged with transporting an unregistered short-barreled or "sawed-off" shotgun across state lines. The National Firearms Act of 1934 imposed special taxes and registration requirements on machine guns and short-barreled shotguns. It was the first federal gun-control law in America. Ostensibly passed to crack down on gangsters such as Miller and Layton, the law was controversial, since it limited gun rights for all Americans.
The charges against Miller and Layton were dismissed in district court, on the grounds that the National Firearms Act violated states’ rights and the Second Amendment. However, prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court.
That’s where the confusion begins. According to media cyborgs, the Supreme Court ruled against Miller and Layton on the grounds that they were not members of a state militia and therefore had no right to keep and bear arms.
But that is not what the court said.
In fact, the court conceded that the gangsters were militiamen, inasmuch as the militia included "all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense." However, the justices were not sure whether sawed-off shotguns qualified as militia weapons.
The gangsters might have won their case by arguing that sawed-off shotguns were used by U.S. infantrymen in World War I. However, neither Miller, Layton nor their attorney showed up in court. Only the prosecution presented its case.
Lacking sufficient evidence to rule on the case, the justices sent it back to the lower court for additional fact-finding. But the fact-finding never took place. Jack Miller was shot dead by unknown assailants. Frank Layton pleaded guilty and got four years probation.
At best, United States v. Miller ended inconclusively. However, even liberal law professor Sanford Levinson notes that Miller can be construed to mean "that the individual citizen has a right to keep and bear bazookas, rocket launchers, and other armaments that are clearly relevant to modern warfare…" This is a far cry from the Brady Center’s interpretation.
Levinson is a rarity in the legal profession – an honest liberal. Another liberal recently stricken with honesty is Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.
In 1999, Tribe announced that he had finally gotten around to studying the Second Amendment and, wonder of wonders, had discovered that Americans really did have a right to "possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes."
Unfortunately, Tribe’s treatise American Constitutional Law – which took a dim view of individual gun rights – had been a standard text in many U.S. law schools since 1978. Tribe revised the 1999 edition to reflect his new thinking. But he was 20 years too late.
Thanks to liberal law professors, generations of lawyers, prosecutors and judges have been indoctrinated with lies about the Second Amendment.
Just as it took generations to undermine gun rights in America, it will take generations to undue the damage. Ted Olson’s briefs are a small but important step in that direction.
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Per NFA'34, a firearm with a bore over ½" is a "destructive device" unless the Treasury Secretary deems it suitable for "sporting purposes". A 28ga shotgun should be chokable down to 0.499" without any problem; a 20ga or 12ga would require a larger bore.
But I doubt they will ever have the guts to flat outlaw 12 ga shotguns. - Bullpup 'style' sure, they will no doubt try.
They already have. But regulations require enabling legislation; there is no enabling legislation that would allow them to ban a double-barrel or semi-auto bull-pup shotgun whose bore size was 0.499".
Actually, there are already a variety of interesting non-class-III guns available that shoot .410 shotshells. For example, I've seen a revolver which holds five .410" shotshells and has probably about a 3" rifled barrel; the rifling is not for accuracy, but rather to make the thing be a "handgun" rather than a "shotgun". My suggestion to use .28ga, possibly in a longer cartridge, is intended to produce something more powerful than a .410 in "interesting" configurations.
On 12 February 1999, the US Army Armaments Research, Development, and Engineering Center awarded a contract to Heckler and Koch, in Sterling, Virginia for a 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun, the new HK/Benelli M4 Super 90 (M4S90) for the US Armed Forces.
Designated the XM1014 Joint Services Combat Shotgun (JSCS), the shotgun was developed by Benelli Armi S.p.A. of Urbino, Italy for HK, Inc.
It comes stock with an 18.5" barrel, but if you'd like you can get a militia approved 14" barrel. So apparently barrels less than 21" are appropriate militia weapons; incorrect understanding of English language grammer with respect to the 2nd Ammendment notwithstanding. Dah. What lumbskulls them judges are.
You are such an extremist... ;P
While jogging in Europe I was harassed regularly by dum dogs, and I can tell you, it is very humiliating to find yourself intimidated and helpless against an inferior animal that rounds you like a sheep. Gun-controlers need to live by their words, with dogs barking around them, helpless, and then they can let us know if they like their sheeple lives.
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Personally, I would consider a short-barrelled shotgun (10-12") a nearly ideal weapon for dispatching critters. It would fit nicely in the console of the truck, too. For years I carried around a 22 under the back seat, and am still surprised at how often it came in handy. Took up a lot of room, though.
In my state you can't have a handgun in the passenger compartment, so the options are pretty limited without some sort of lockable storage in the truck bed.
Only if you view guns a sexual objects. Do you?
Thanks for the welcome. Actually, I first joined FreeRepublic.com in March 1999, but under a different name.
I re-registered under my real name on March 1, 2002, figuring that would be more appropriate for the purpose of posting my own articles. At least people would know who to blame for the posts.
Instead, we get decades of creeping legislation.
I'm no constitutional scholar, but any fool can read the thing and understand the meaning and intent. "The People" throughout the document clearly means individual citizens. Free speech rights have been construed out to the hilt in sophist interpretation to include flag-burning and child porn. But, when it comes to the 2nd, everyone becomes a bunch of scalian textualists.
Come on, guys. Do the honest thing -- amend the constitution, or follow the letter and spirit of our founding documents.
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