Posted on 03/22/2008 12:02:27 AM PDT by neverdem
The U.S. Supreme Court should allow Dick Heller to keep a handgun in his home.
Dick Anthony Heller is a 66-year-old security guard who carries a handgun to protect the employees and property at the federal building where he works in Washington, D.C.
Because Heller also is a resident of the District of Columbia, he is prohibited from having a handgun in his home for self-protection.
Heller sued to overturn the city of Washington’s 1976 gun-control law that also requires all rifles or shotguns in D.C. homes to be disassembled or kept under trigger lock.
Heller sued claiming that the D.C. law violated his Second Amendment rights.
That amendment 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.”
The meaning of those 27 words, including how they are punctuated, has been argued, debated, cussed and discussed since the Bill of Rights was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791.
Actually, the wording of the Second Amendment was controversial and often changed from the time that founding father and leading Federalist James Madison proposed this compromise provision years earlier.
Struck down city gun law
To the surprise of many observers, Heller won his lawsuit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when that court struck down the city’s gun law. Previous decisions of a similar nature around the country had gone the other way.
Now it is up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Heller has a constitutional right to keep a handgun in his home, located only a mile away from the court.
No one knows what the justices will rule when the decision is announced a few months from now, but Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who now is watched as the deciding swing vote on the divided court, appeared to side with Heller’s argument in saying, “In my view, there’s a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia either way.”
Over the years, gun control advocates, gun owner groups and constitutional scholars have debated the meaning of “militia,” “the People,” “keep and bear arms,” “bear arms,” “shall not be infringed” and the significance of the two clauses along with the many changes the amendment went through before it was finally adopted.
During the arguments involving Heller’s case, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito Jr. appeared to support Kennedy’s assertion that there is a general right for the people to own guns aside from the reference to a well-regulated militia.
Although Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t tip his hand during the Heller arguments, he has previously indicated support for the idea that the Second Amendment protects individual rights to own guns.
Even if the court does decide that the amendment protects the individual rights of gun ownership, lawyers in support of the D.C. law still hope to prevail on the argument that the city has the right to ban “uniquely dangerous” weapons such as handguns that are used in much gun violence and criminal activity and can easily be taken into schools, buses and other public gathering places.
The 1934 National Firearms Act attempted to control such “uniquely dangerous” firearms as automatic-fire machine guns, short-barreled shotguns and rifles, silencers and other “gadget-type” firearms and accessories.
If the D.C. city council can decide its own definition of “uniquely dangerous” weapons, so could every other city and state, which potentially could restrict gun ownership to the point that all guns could be rendered useless for personal defense.
“If you have time, when you hear somebody crawling in your — your bedroom window, you can run to your gun, unlock it, load it and then fire?” Scalia asked the D.C. lawyers.
In essence, the D.C. law prevents citizens from using guns for self-defense. This is fine with many gun-control advocates.
Personally, I think Heller should be able to keep a handgun in his home for his protection.
Rowland Nethaway’s column appears Wednes- day and Friday. E-mail: RNethaway@wacotrib .com
I believe my comment was that handguns in the military were not in common use in combat. Sure, handguns are issued and carried around. But they're rarely used in combat. I had assumed with the rest of us that the Miller phrase "in common use" meant "in common military use".
But, as we see from the oral arguments, "in common use" means "in common civilian use". I'm not the one who "flipped". SCOTUS did.
"Aren't there more handguns in civilian hands than there are in military service?"
Yes.
"Also, there are more AR-15s lawfully in civilian possession than there are M16s in military service."
Yes. And of the two, which one "bears a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated Militia"? No contest.
"If the lower court's holding prevails, wouldn't that prevent Congress from banning the AR-15?"
What lower court's holding? I thought we were discussing US v Heller?
I asked for comments from the Founding Fathers, not someone a few months ago.
FWIW, I read “To the extent that non-whites, women, and the propertyless were excluded from the protections afforded to ‘the people’...” as referring to deficiencies and malice, which were later eradicated - NOT to any particular intent of the Founding Fathers to deny protection to a majority of the people in the country which they had just fought a major war to liberate.
To that end, the question remains per my prior post.
Willfully thick.
If you are discussing Heller, it's kind of hard to do so without sometimes referring to how Heller came to be (to wit: the lower court's holding, aka Parker).
Neither SCOTUS nor Congress were anxious to protect the "full" rights of persons who couldn't even vote. When women and blacks were given the right to vote, then they were included in "the people".
My only reason for going back so far was that we had a Militia back then and "the people" were clearly defined. Then it was easy to compare the two groups to find that they were the same persons -- adult, white, male citizens. Which then led me to conclude that the right was protected for Militia members only.
"Shouldn't these people have the same protection for the 2nd Amendment that the other Amendments enjoy?"
No. Some amendments protect the right for all persons, citizen or not. Some amendments only protect the right for "the people".
I think that was my point to RobertPaulsen way back in post #65.
I think I've followed RobertPaulsen's arguments correctly over the last few months. It seems that when the facts change, so do his arguments. It's always a contortion towards the worst possible scenario. Hey, he may be vindicated after all. I'm not clairvoyant and neither is he.
Lately though, I've started to wonder if he isn't Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. :)
That's BS.
BY DEFINITION, "the people" meant the enfranchised body politic. It excluded non-voters. That's just the way it was.
If the Founders wated to protect everyone, they used "persons". If they were referring to only citizens they wrote "citizens".
Yes, you should be able to find something akin to that (not that blatant, obviously, but along the lines of “should we use ‘persons’, ‘people’, ‘citizens’, or something else in this?”).
So show me the definition, written circa 1791.
DC’s briefs went to great lengths trying to demonstrate, thru written materials leading up to the 2ndA, that the Founding Fathers indeed meant to limit it to “the militia”. Surely you can find SOMETHING applicable from there.
If they meant “the militia”, to the point of actually mentioning it in the subordinate clause, surely they would have used it in the operative clause instead of something different (as you have acknowledged that “the militia” did not literally mean exactly the same thing as “the people”).
Nope. You have enough. More than enough. Now you're getting to the ridiculous stage.
If you find something that proves me wrong, bring it on. Until then, my definitions stand as gospel.
So it is your contention a prisoner, say, a murderer serving a life sentence cannot own a firearm, and you have the citations to prove it, which you are unwilling to share with either me or anyone either registered inside Free Republic or browsing from around the world.
And you will not waste your time with THEIR foolishness.
Is it your contention it was EVER possible for a prisoner to own a weapon?
Answer carefully, your reputation may be at stake here.
You have nothing beyond your own assertion that “militia” = “the people”, which your own comments have disproven.
Funny, any time you lose an argument you take on a self-righteous “I’m smarter than you, I’m tired of you, I’m not wasting any more time on you” when it’s you that hasn’t justified squat.
I suppose it fits someone whose chosen handle, backed up by links on his profile page, is a fictional character whose primary claims to fame is having (A) been emasculated, and (B) died doing something stupid. (Yes, folks, the name “Robert Paulsen”, reinforced by the audio link on his profile page, refer to a not particularly respectable character in the movie “Fight Club” - fitting for someone whose MO on FR is to pick all the fights he can.)
I never said the milita equals the people. You do that again, we're done on this thread.
I said "the people" were adult, white, male citizens and the militia consisted of adult, white, male citizens, leading me to conclude that the RKBA was protected for Militia members.
Move on.
Have you been reduced to arguing this to make some obscure, irrelevant point? Pathetic.
And just two sentences later in the same post, you write:
I said "the people" were adult, white, male citizens and the militia consisted of adult, white, male citizens, leading me to conclude that the RKBA was protected for Militia members.
Your words. Yes, you might as well stop talking to me because at this point you're arguing with yourself.
A weapon is anything at hand. Sometimes it is a fist or a foot.
Other times (and it should be most times) it is a handgun or long gun.
No, we will go through your fallacies, your errors of omission and commission, your urban myths one by one, brick by brick until resolution is achieved.
The question stands, produce your citation to back your position - is it your contention prisoners cannot legally acquire, transport, possess and use weapons?
A man with your grasp of legal issues should be able to dispose of this effortlessly and without prevarication.
And sometimes you mention voters. Were all militia members entitled to vote? Even the 17 year olds?
I'm still amazed that you don't think the Second Amendment protected the right of the majority of our Founders, who were mostly over 45, to keep and bear arms.
What do you suppose that nonsense meant in Dred Scott, about Scott being able to carry arms wherever he went? Did that imply that Scott would become a voter wherever he went? He certainly wasn't white, so according to you he wasn't going to become a militia member.
If you are threatened, do you have a God-given inalienable right to shoot the guy?
"I'm still amazed that you don't think the Second Amendment protected the right of the majority of our Founders, who were mostly over 45, to keep and bear arms."
Were they in the Militia? Then their right to keep and bear those arms was protected by the second amendment. If they weren't in the Militia, what's the point? Why would their arms be protected?
Keep in mind (and you often don't): Their arms may not be protected by the second amendment but that does NOT mean the federal government can take them or that those arms are automatically illegal. If their arms aren't protected, it means their arms aren't protected. That's ALL it means.
It is, and has been, my contention that they do not have that right. It is most certainly not a God-given inalienable right.
You really need to take five minutes to read that decision. Seriously. This is getting flat-out ridiculous, and I'm getting tired of responding to it.
Time after time you misrepresent the case -- you either don't understand what the case was about or you do understand but think you can get away with lying about it.
"It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."
"Citizen of a state". This has nothing to do with the second amendment. It has to do with the rights of citizens of a state.
If a white citizen had the right to carry arms in his state, then so would a "person of the negro race" who was recogized as a citizen of another state.
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