Posted on 01/15/2008 8:00:29 PM PST by Atlas Sneezed
Pretty simple. In the Navy you have to defend against the possibility that your ship was boarded by the enemy. Clearing them out of below deck spaces would be very dangerous. Not only might they shoot you, but your own weapons could open up high pressure pipes (which modern warships have LOTS of) and end up being boiled alive by the steam escaping from them. Use of a shotgun allows you to effectively deal with the boarders using a caliber of shot which would not penetrate the piping, but would make sausage out of the enemy. OK?
Statistically zero, perhaps... but there was *one* murder in which a legally registered Class III firearm was used. The perpetrator and registered owner of that particular machinegun was a police officer, IIRC.
Lots of cops used to have NFA weapons before the prices went sky-high; as often those were the only guys who could get the approval of the local sheriff on the federal paperwork.
Quite simply, the shotgun pellets won’t penetrate the exposed steam lines that usually cross or run the length of a passageway. The lines usually carry raw 1200-psi steam which you don’t want explosively venting in a confined space.
Well, let them go back to collecting taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.
Statistically zero, perhaps... but there was *one* murder in which a legally registered Class III firearm was used. The perpetrator and registered owner of that particular machine gun was a police officer, IIRC.
Blackstone, writing on the English Declaration of Rights of 1689:
The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defense, suitable to their condition and degree and as allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same Statute 1 W&M s. 2 c. 2 and is indeed a public allowance under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self preservation...
St. George Tucker, in an appendix to his 1803 edition of Blackstone's Commentaries:
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed ... and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government ...."
and
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty .... The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Whenever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bears arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally under the specious pretext of preserving the game; a never-failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy; but their right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words "suitable to their condition or degree" have been interpreted to authorize the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, by any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty. [80] [Page 24] Blackstone himself wrote of the tradition of European kingdoms "to keep the rustici or natives of the county ... in as low a condition as possible, and especially to prohibit them the use of arms."
...
The bill of rights, 1 W. and M., says Mr. Blackstone, (Vol. 1. p. 143), secures to the subjects of England the right of having arms for their defense, suitable to their condition and degree. In the construction of these game laws it seems to be held, that no person who is not qualified according to law to kill game, hath any right to keep a gun in his house. Now, as no person, (except the game-keeper of a lord or lady of a manor) is admitted to be qualified to kill game, unless he has 100l. per annum, &c. it follows that no others can keep a gun for their defence; so that the whole nation are completely disarmed, and left at the mercy of the government, under the pretext of preserving the breed of hares and partridges, for the exclusive use of the independent country gentlemen. In America we may reasonably hope that the people will never cease to regard the right of keeping and bearing arms as the surest pledge of their liberty.
The law was mostly a "Good Thing", removing many of the more onerous features of the '68 Gun Control Act. The Machine Gun Ban was another of those middle of the night voice vote things, with Congressman Charlie Rangell sitting in the Chair. Reports are that the voice vote was more NO than yes, but Rangell, a gun grabber from way back, ruled that the ayes had it. The Senate then quickly passed the NRA backed bill. Reagan likely never knew the ban was in there until after he'd signed the law. Either that or he figured, like Bush with CFR, that the Courts would throw out that provision. They haven't.. yet anyway.
SCOTUS should be smart enough to do their own research on subjects and not rely on the stoolpigeons of the President who sent Ramos and Campean to hell through his puppet Sutton.
I hope you’re right. They failed in 1939, and I fear they may do the same this year, especially with Bush giving them cover on the right.
No, he died between oral arguements and the issuance of the decision. If you go to This collection of Miller documents, also available here, you'll find that "The Southwest American reported on April 6, 1939, that Miller's body had been found in the "nearly dry" bed of Little Spencer creek, nine miles southwest of Chelesa, Oklahoma. He had been shot four times with a .38. Miller's ".45 calibre pistol," from which he had fired three shots in his defense, was found near his body"
The government's brief was dated march 1939, the case was argued March 30, 1939, and the opinion of the Supreme Court was dated May 15, 1939.
I saw it happen on C-SPAN. It was the infamous “Tip” O’neil who did it in the last few seconds of the passage of the 1986 “Gun Owner’s Protection Act”. The NRA had forced passage of the act to mitigate some of the worst abuses of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
Tip could not abide by even a little “gun control” being reversed, so when the pro-gun congressmen passed a suspension of the rules to force the vote, immediately after it passed, he recognized a confederate who called for an amendment that imposed the “freeze” on machine guns. He then immediately got a second from another confederate, and called for a voice vote, then (even though the voice vote was clearly against him) he declared the amendment passed.
He tried to get another amendment through, as I recall, freezing “suppressors”, but the majority was on to him by then, and were able to stop the madness.
Yes, we owe the unconstitutional freeze to “Tip” O’neil. He is dead now. I only hope that he gets what he deserves for violating his oath of office.
Not quite. As written, the US brief denies and ignores the real purpose of the second amend amendment to the constitution, and, thereby, constitutes a dimunition of that contract between governed and government. Accordingly, it renders that contract null and void, and as a result, the entire document is defaulted as a result, not just the second amendment. Including the first four articles of the constitution, authorizing and establishing the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government they establish and their powers and duties thereof, and even the legacy of the Preamble of the constitution, which the document's writers told us did ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
With a defunct and moot constitution, there no longer is a constitutionally authorized government, and accordingly, no lawful charge of treason to that then-nonexistant document and the institutions that had previously existed under it can be sustained.
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