Posted on 11/27/2007 2:58:46 PM PST by neverdem
For some 30 years, the District of Columbia has banned handgun ownership for private citizens. It was approved by that city's council in the wake of terrible gun violence and a rising murder rate in the nation's capital.
The ban has stood through this time with other council votes, but without any official review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sometime next year, the high court will make a ruling on whether that law is constitutional.
It is surprising to us that it has taken this long for the court to get this case. It would seem that it would have gone to the highest appeal long before now. We do not understand all the legal entanglements that must have kept it off the court's docket, but it is certainly there now.
And now, if the court is acting properly, the D.C. gun ban should be struck down.
This is a clear case of constitutionality, not politics, not conservative or liberal. If Constitution's Bill of Rights clearly allows gun private gun ownership anywhere — and we believe it does — then it allows it in the District of Columbia.
"The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," is what the Second Amendment says, and there seems to be little "wiggle" room in that statement.
In some instances — Washington, D.C. being one of them — we admit we despair of so many guns in the hands of so many people who would use them the wrong way, but the answer is not to abrogate the Constitution.
If one portion of the Bill of Rights can be limited by a local government, why can't another? There is no logic in saying on the Second Amendment is up for local review. To continue to allow this is to invite a city council or state legislature somewhere to decide that the First Amendment is too broad, or that the Fourth Amendment is too restrictive on law enforcement.
We know there are passionate arguments for gun control and that is part of the problem: The passion has blotted out clear thinking. This time the NRA is right. The law should go.
But you must understand that a nuanced reading of the so called "Bill of Rights" clearly shows that the words "the people" in the second amendment means something different than the words "the people" in all the other amendments.
Consequently, "the people" in the second amendment actually means "the state." Never mind that the words "the state" are even mentioned in other amendments along with the words "the people," clearly defining the difference. "Just ignore the man behind the curtain!"
Mark
Given McCain/Feingold and Kelo, this could get VERY ugly.
Mark
Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
Yes, he goes on to make a case for a select militia as being more practical than trying to turn the whole population into a well-drilled fighting force ... yet nonetheless he notes that a self-armed general population is indeed reasonable and desirable.
The Founding Fathers were intelligent enough not to use the same term in two different ways in a single Bill of Rights, let alone in subsequent Articles.
As far as the “white male” interpretation, that’s fairly silly. Do you think they’d change the right of franchise back to only the land-owning class? No. That definition has been permanently changed/clarified through the amendment process. It would take an amendment to take away the right to vote from all individuals, and it would take an amendment to take away the right for all individuals to purchase firearms. That's what the case in DC is about (is a local law in violation of the US Constitution?) and why it has elevated to the USSC.
Actually, according to the Miller decision, you're right. According to the SCOTUS, a "sawed off shotgun" can be outlawed, since it's not a weapon applicable to the "militia." Yet another example of the courts not knowing a damn thing about those things upon which they're ruling.
Mark
And thus .... what?
How about, "The clear implication here is that Madison is envisioning the "militia" referred to in the 2nd Amendment as consisting of ALL able-bodied men, and thus the right to keep and bear arms would necessarily be extended to ALL able-bodied men.
Not every person. Your logic eludes me.
"which means that only those with sufficient upper-body strength to be able to fight with sword and bayonet would be credible members of the militia"
Correct. And the second amendmwent protected their right to keep and bear arms. Why would the second amendment protect the right of a blind man? A six-year-old child? An 80-year-old woman?
Why can't their right be protected by their state?
There's no federal "right" to vote in the Constitution.
Mark
Everyone? Foreigners? Illegals? Convicts? Felons? The insane?
"We're all a national community. Let's all get in a circle, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya."
Those who are actually PART of the national community, who actually HAVE a connection to this country, are those who can vote. If you can't (or won't) vote, then you're just along for the ride.
In 1792, the only ones who could vote were adult, white, male citizens. Coincidentally(?), the only ones qualified to be in a Militia. Which was my point.
Today? Today, nonwhites and women are allowed to vote. They are now part of "the people".
Nice try at evading the issue with an ellipsis. The fact is that every statement pertaining to voting is conditional (i.e. shall not be infringed for reason X) but the statement pertaining to the RKBA is absolute.
Nor did they write, "the right of citizens to keep and bear arms", which is what you are implying it means.
Article I, Section 2 says that the voters who meet the state's criteria for electing state representatives to the larger house of state government elect House members. There is no such qualifier (or qualifier of any other sort, either) to be found in the Second Amendment
Strike Two....
I honestly don't understand why someone would want to expend such energy in defense of gun confisication while pretending to be a conservative.
Ah, so you agree that there is meaning in the fact that they wrote “the right of the people” instead of “the right of militia members”!
Yes, they did not use the term “citizens” - perhaps because the right extends beyond formal citizenship to humans in general. In protecting a right very broadly, perhaps they considered the right should be protected for not only citizens, but also for those who are not formally citizens but nonetheless are part of the community which forms this nation (such as Native Americans and permanent resident aliens (such as my wife)). In trying to write a consice statement enunciating protection of a right, it behooved them to not get caught up in trying to precisely define a line which they had no intention of drawing: suffice to say “the right of the people” to construe the intention that everyone has that right.
As Hamilton noted the desirablility of having “the people at large” armed, others wrote similarly, and nowhere did anyone argue for _limiting_ the broad coverage of the term “the people”, it is safe to presume that “the people” meant everyone*.
(* - insofar as you may roll out examples of people who should not be armed, the issue of “reasonable restrictions” comes back to those who are demonstrably/ajudicated/sworn a danger to society, at which point others are free to exercise their 2nd Amendment right to disarm them.)
“Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense... ” -- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the USA, p.471
"The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals." -- James Monroe, November 16, 1818
"No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the State. Such are a well regulated Militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen, and husbandman; who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen." - James Madison, United States Congress, Bill of Rights Ratification, 1779 (NOTE: also attributed to Richard Henry Lee, State Gazette (Charleston), September 8, 1788)
"Every one who knows the Texans, or who has heard of them, would naturally conclude that they never would submit to be disarmed. Any government that would attempt to disarm its people is despotic; and any people that would submit to it deserves to be slaves!" - Historian H.Yoakum, History of Texas From Its First Settlement in 1685 to Its Annexation to the United States in 1846. Vol. 1 of 2. Redfield 34 Beekman St., NY 1855. (also falsely attributed to S.F. Austin, 1835)
But it only applied to white able-bodied men right? Wrong. The militia act spelled out certain qualifications they were looking for to serve in active duty militia capacity. The Right goes beyond mere militia service.
You know this. You've been proven wrong in your assertions time and again, and yet you still push the idiotic fiction of a "select militia" having some "collective" right.
Either your are a masochist and enjoy being humiliated, or you are a paid shill with a vested interest in beating a dead horse.
Let's see... who do you sound like... Oh yeah... these retards...
"There is no reason for anyone in this country - anyone except a police officer or military person - to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns." - President Bill Clinton while signing the Brady Bill in 1993
"You don't need an Uzi to go deer hunting, and you don't need an AK-47 to shoot skeet. They are military weapons, not meant for a day in the country and certainly not meant for a night on the street." - President Bill Clinton, April 6, 1998
"I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers."- Allan Rock, Canada's Minister of Justice in Maclean's "Taking Aim on Guns", April 25, 1994, page 12.
"In 1986, while governor of Massachusetts, (Michael) Dukakis in effect enunciated the program associated with the anti-gun view: 'I do not believe in people owning guns. Guns should be owned or possessed] only [by the] police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.'" - Don B. Cates, Jr., Bigotry, Symbolism And Ideology In The Battle Over Gun Control, Public Interest Law Review, Copyright, 1992, National Legal Center for the Public Interest
"In fact, only police, soldiers - and, maybe, licensed target ranges - should have handguns. No one else needs one." - Michael Gartner, president of NBC News, in The Wall Street Journal, January 10, 1991
"They are looking only to protect gun owners' quote - and I stress that - rights, because I don't believe gun owners have rights. The Second Amendment has never been interpreted that way. Now I am not for taking guns away or denying guns to law-abiding citizens, but I don't think it's a constitutional right that they have, and every court case that's ever come down has shown that." - Sarah Brady, 10/97
Interesting fellow travelers you have there Bobby....
Alternately...
The people who elect House members is a group which, through repeated successful Constitutional challenges and amendments thereto, has been expanded to include the whole of adult citizen non-felons. Ergo, should “the people” be the same as both those who elect House members and those who enjoy a protected RKBA, then those who enjoy a protected RKBA are the whole of adult citizen non-felons - which is exactly what most of us here mean by, and believe the Founding Fathers meant, by “the people”.
Taken to every logical conclusion, RP’s arguments prove that which he is passionately trying to disprove.
It's the same argument robertpaulsen has been making on other threads, which is that only white property owning males constituted the "the people" at the time. There is however inconsistency in the posts of his because he also says "the people" was clearly defined in the Militia Act of 1792 but that required ALL white males between 18 and 45 to enroll whether property owners or not.
It's obvious to most of us though "the people" in 1791 and as confirmed by court rulings of that era meant all free citizens, including women who were indeed protected by the BoR. Since they obviously would not serve in a militia that implies the 2nd Amendment as with all the amendments referred to everyone and not just a select group of people and that it would be limited in practice to them only.
From ctdonath2 in #167:
Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large,
This answers your argument Paulsen. Remember this is the part of your cite that you left out convieniently.
Interesting little speech by Madison...
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