Posted on 07/29/2012 4:54:29 PM PDT by BCrago66
This week on Q & A, our guest is Justice Antonin Scalia.
(Excerpt) Read more at c-span.org ...
Thanks
Thanks for the heads up.
Gracias. (A little Spanish lingo)
Thanks!
bttt
Good interview. More about professionalism than policy, but interesting nonetheless.
The interview is already archived (I guess because the interview wasn’t live to begin with):
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Antonin
I’m a bit uneasy about his comments on gun control. It appears he said that controls in place at the time the Second Amendment was adopted could be considered and he said that new gun control laws could be possible.
We HAVE ENOUGH gun control laws. Rhetoric like this ENCOURAGES the Gun Control Crowd, whose ultimate goal is banning everything fr4om air pistols and slingshots to M1-Garands and aR-15S, ENCOURAGEMENT and ideas.
Well, whatever you think about the social consequences, Justice Scalia’s job is to interpret the Constitution, and what he said is consistent with that responsibility. For example, you cannot lift a Tommy-gun, so such a weapon is not protected by the Second Amendment, which speaks of “bear[ing]” i.e., holding, arms.
With regard to restrictions in place when the 2nd Amendment was adopted, those restriction shape the meaning of that Amendment, in the same way that some speech-restrictions at the time the 1st Amendment was adopted shape the meaning of that provision. E.g., defamation, “fighting words,” some kinds of threats, etc. are all speech, yet not protected by the 1st Amendment.
LOL! Uh, I hate to break this to you but, you've got toilet paper stuck to your shoe, shill. Bwahahahahaha!
See:
I agrre the second amendment only applies to shoulder arms. But that INCLUDES those smei-automatic rifles called “Assault Rifles” by the ignorant.
“With regard to restrictions in place when the 2nd Amendment was adopted, “
Kind of vague. What they intended was more important. In some communities, there was a municipal poweder magazine but people could keep their muskets. In other communities both muskets and powder were in a local arsenal. In still others, people kept both powder and muskets and/or rifles.
So what exactly was he saying.
Basically I distrust all Supreme Court Judges and their doctrine of Stare Decisis,
I think the Second Amendment protects all types of military shoulder arms, except possibly fully automatic weapons, But the Brady Bill and other “assault rifle” legislation was directed mainly at semi-automatic rifles as ownership of fully automatic weapons has been limited by Federal Government for a very long time.
I can’t imagine that anyone is impressed by your way of talking, except those similar to yourself, with IQs a couple standard deviations below the norm. There are message boards at Democratic Underground; you might be more comfortable with those of your own kind.
You got me on Tommy Guns. I should have said Gatling Guns.
You conceded that machine guns are not protected by the 2nd Amendment, so I don’t see a great difference in principle between you and Justice Scalia. I don’t think Scalia has thought out what restrictions he would uphold; he takes whatever case is before him. I doubt that he would uphold any restrictions on “assault weapons” when that category is defined cosmetically, as was done in the 90’s.
Differing from you, Scalia would not say that he believes in “original intent” - referring to whatever is subjectively in the minds of the framers. He’s say he interprets the Constitution according to “original public meaning,” which would take account of historical conditions such as some restrictions on guns in the founding era. But that does run into the problem, as you point out, of different restrictions in different parts of early America.
Regards, and good night.
Interesting that he doesn’t like the well-used term “strict constructionalist” in interpreting the Constitution - prefers “Textualist”, meaning someone who interprets the language in a given law as a “typical” person would, and “Originalist”, meaning one who interprets the law according to the circumstances when the Constitution was written, which apparently can best be determined by reading the Federalist Papers according to him.......
Thanks.
But keep these points in mind.
First, just because a justice or even the majority of SCOTUS says something, that doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong. Dred Scott is an example.
Two, MOST of the time, “conservative” judges are our friends. BUT, on occasion, they can drift off to the far right - like FASCIST - when it comes to basic rights.
Thirdly, the people who are pushing the anti-gun agenda, Bloomberg, McCarthy, etc, are not stupid fools. They KNOW stronger gun laws will have little or no impact on maniacs. THAT is not their objective. They are out to eliminate private ownership of firearms because they find them culturally unacceptable and because they don’t trust the mass of the people to have fireams which could threaten the government - and THEM. They will push the anti-gun agenda as far as they can to secure their ultimate goal of national disarmanent.
Finally, the Second Amendment has NOTHING to do with hunting, or collecting, or target shooting, per se. It had EVERYTHING to do with the perceived necesssity to defend the nation against invasion and the people against oppression - foreign and DOMESTIC.
I was deeply disappointed with what Scalia said, but I understand he can’t speak on a law he hasn’t seen, and even then, not until he has reviewed all the evidence and formed his opinion.
But I think he should have been more circumspect in speaking in any detail on this topic to a liberal operative like Wallace.
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