So apparently the US Army believes that a very short barreled shotgun does indeed have considerable military significance.
Posted on 03/29/2007 12:48:37 PM PDT by neverdem
Actually he wasn't dead when arguments were heard and briefs presented. (well the government's argument and brief). He was dead by the time the ruling was issued. He was found in a nearly dry creekbed in the general vicinity of Tulsa OK, dead of gunshot wounds from a .38, and with a .45 nearby which had been recently fired. He wasn't a "good guy", and obviously had enemies.. which is probably why he had the short shotgun in the first place.
So? Swiss militia officers and some NCOs as well as some others are issued with handguns.
But then again, Chuckles and "Conflict of Interest" Fienswine (and The Impeached One) always asserted that semi-auto versions of assault rifles were massively associated with crime and criminals. Surely you don't mean to suggest that two US Senators lied through their teeth... do you? :).
A Good Question. And yes they are arms, well within the meaning of the term in the second amendment. Up until 1934, you could own such weapons with no "mother may I" nor confiscatory tax. When the second amendment was written, individuals owned cannon and ships armed with them.
The power of Congress to grant letters of Marque would not be of much utility, if private citizens could not own and operate cannon armed ships.
If I know I'm going to need a weapon, I'll take a long gun almost every time. Handguns are just, well, handy. I generally don't do it anymore, since I don't live in the same place, but I used to keep an M-1 Carbine beside my computer table, which was right in front of a bay window, in an area where drive by shooting were more likely than in many places. As I told my wife, they'd better not miss or they're going to be in for a rude surprise, sometimes, just because I could, I'd substitute an SKS, with bayonet of course, for the Carbine.
I don't know if it was this or another thread about Parker v. D.C., but I saw somewhere that if citizens have different rights recognized in different federal jurisdictions, then SCOTUS will have to resolve the issue. Chicago comes to my mind. They can decline to grant cert with Parker, but they won't be able to do it forever, IMHO.
SCOTUS doesn't *have* to do anything. However they do tend to agree to hear cases involving such situations as you describe. Just not always, and trying to predict what they will do in any given case is about as accurate as predicting the weather a week in advance.
Why go back a few decades? Why not simply go back to a world war they just finished fighting -- WWI?
In that war, the military used 20" shotguns. Seems to me that if the barrel was less than 20", certainly if it was less tham 18", its military "significance" would be questionable.
"and even at the time were in use by police"
Did the Miller court bring up "police"? Why are you?
But before that war, the military used much shorter shotguns, especially for mounted troops. The only thing the longer barrel gives you is more rounds, and that only if the shotgun uses a tubular magazine under the barrel. If, as a few do, it uses a box magazine, then the long barrel is a downside, for example when exiting a vehicle or clearing the inside of a building.
Did the Miller court bring up "police"? Why are you?
Just to illustrate why the military generally, but not always, preferred longer weapons, once repeating shotguns came to be. When the most you got was two shots before reloading, and the length of the barrel gave no advantage in that regard, the military preferred the shorter barrels for the same reason the police continue to do so. The military too has bought shotguns with shorter barrels, as you well know, since evidence of the Navy buying 17" barreled, Mossberg M500A1 shotguns has been posted to you before.
Remember that the Miller ruling, to which you allude, just indicated that no evidence had been presented that possession of a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches in length was militarily significant and that the lower court should not have taken judicial notice that it was or could be, rather than ruling that it did not have such military usefulness.
The Army is currently fielding a shotgun that is much smaller. It can be mounted under an M-4/M-16, or used stand alone in two different configurations. It uses a 5 round box magazine, thus not needing the long magazine tube.
The barrel is 7 3/4 inches long. From Strategy Page
The LSS (Lightweight Shotgun System) weighs less than three pounds ( 2 pounds, 11 ounces) and has a five round magazine, versus three for the earlier, nine pound, "Masterkey Breaching Module." The LSS is a 16.5 inch long, 12 gauge shotgun and can be operated right or left handed. ... A stand-alone version weighs 4 pounds, 3 ounces, is 24 inches long (with the stock collapsed).
So apparently the US Army believes that a very short barreled shotgun does indeed have considerable military significance.
How much before and why would the Miller court want to go back that far? And how much shorter?
And do you mean, "the military used" or "some guys in the military took it upon themselves to use"?
"the military preferred the shorter barrels for the same reason the police continue to do so"
The Miller court didn't mention police. Let's leave them out.
"since evidence of the Navy buying 17" barreled, Mossberg M500A1 shotguns has been posted to you before."
Gee, with advances in technology, maybe the NFA can be changed from 18" to 17". But since the Mossberg M500A1 shotgun was not available for the Miller court to consider, what's the relevence?
"It can be mounted under an M-4/M-16"
Ditto the LSS. Why are you even bringing these up? You're wasting my time.
Then go hop into your time machine and convince the Miller court. It means diddley squat to me.
“The likelihood is that it will be held that there is an individual right that gives way to a strong, specific state interest expressed in a relatively narrowly tailored legislative provision, under some type of ‘intermediate scrutiny’ test.”
Now, you couldn’t state it more clearly than that if you used five times as many words.
Again? Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?
Gosh, he really went out on a limb with THAT prediction, huh?
I think it would be hilarious if the U.S. Supreme Court followed the principle suggested by theMiller court and ruled the AWB unconstitutional since all those weapons have a military use and cannot be prohibited.
Ol' Sarah would have a heart attack.
Short enough to be easily deployed on horseback. Maybe 20 or 30 years before "Miller", although since the Army still had horse calvary at the time of the Miller decision, they may also have still had some of those shorter shotguns, especially in National Guard (i.e. Militia) units, but that is supposition. Supposition that could have been substantiated in the "further proceedings" that the Supreme Court ordered, but which were never held, Miller being dead and all.
Ditto the LSS. Why are you even bringing these up? You're wasting my time.
No you are wasting our time being deliberately obtuse. At least I think it's deliberate.
The relevance is that the Miller court did not rule that military/militia effectiveness did not stop at 18" of barrel length, but rather that *in the absence of evidence* of such effectiveness, they and they lower court could not say that keeping and bearing such a weapon was protected by the second amendment.
If a modern day court went by the Miller rule, and given the evidence that it is "part of the ordinary military equipment", they would have to rule that the LSS, even with it's 7.5 inch barrel , keeping and bearing one *is* protected by the second amendment.
The Miller court didn't mention police. Let's leave them out
Why? The militia was not just a military unit, but could be called out to aid the civil authorities as well. In fact that is the first function listed under the militia powers of Congress, in Art. I Section 8 "to provide for calling forth the Militia to enforce the Laws of the Union". If the federal police need such weapons for that purpose, why would the militia not need them? Short barreled shotguns are often referred to as "riot guns", since the second function mentioned for the Militia is "to suppress insurrections" and a riot is a sort of insurrection, the Militia would need such weapons as ordinary used by police.
You can't expect the Miller court to have fully explored the nature of weapons needed by the militia, when only the government was represented at the Court and their interest was in seeing the NFA upheld, not keeping in place the protection of the right of the people to keep and bear arms appropriate to Militia requirements.
Actually they don't. No military in the world, AFAIK, issues semiautomatic versions of those weapons. The AWB did not affect the select fire versions which militaries *do* issue and use.
Unless the new and worse AWB, HR 1022, passes and is signed by the President, the Court will never get a look at the original AWB, which expired almost 3 years ago and was not renewed.
Why, I was just trying to apply the "Miller" test, and to provide the evidence that the Court said was lacking.
Bottom line, "Miller" did not really uphold the NFA WRT shotguns, but rather overruled the process the lower court used to declare the law in violation of the Second Amendment, which isn't quite the same thing, although the effect is that the law still stands, pending another Supreme Court ruling on the subject, which there hasn't yet been these past 68 years or so.
Since Miller took place in 1939, you would then be referring to 1909 - 1919. WWI, where they used 20" shotguns, was fought from 1914 to 1918.
Gosh, what if a modern day court went by the Jim Crow rule or the Dred Scott rule?
"the Militia would need such weapons as ordinary used by police."
So what? The standard in Miller was the Militia, not the police. Leave it.
Here you are, arguing that Miller's homemade, sawed-off shotgun has military use, yet a factory-produced, semi-auto version of the M-16 doesn't.
You're credibility on this issue just went down the toilet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.