Posted on 11/22/2008 9:11:13 PM PST by nickcarraway
Edited on 11/24/2008 9:11:50 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
What happened to ...shall not be infringed?
George Will? Did he used to be a conservative?
That POS is a twit !
2nd amendments main threat after Oh-Crap Inc has the keys to the country is a constitutional convention IMO.
Kramer:”You know who’s an attractive man? George Will.”
Elaine:”Really? George Will? He’s smart....”
Kramer:”No; I don’t find him all that bright.”
To me, a member in good-standing of the great unwashed, this memory-hole double-speak is merely another hack ass attempt to flip the lynch-pin to the entire document.
Common sense in DC aint common.
The 2nd is the 2nd position for a reason, to remind the pols and bureaucrats that The People were inherently endowed with the Right and Duty to Revolt, if need be. That is where the Declaration of Independence rears it’s glorious head in the defense of the R2K&BA. Take away the ‘ability’ to revolt, the balance of power shifts irrevocably thus the balance of rights will then quickly fall away.
Two generations have been subverted by suckling at the ‘teat of marx’.
HOME-SCHOOL!!!
God hath not given Caesar monopoly in perpetuity, but Caesar incessantly attempts that throne.
Slumber at Our Republic’s peril.
Now where is good place to acquire .50 cal. ammo?
Death to Turkeys
tehDeetz
New found, my ass. Idiot.
Wow, you've just exposed the blueprint for the next 4-8 years (or however long it takes to establish the 'change' we're about to inherit). I can't understand why the media are willing to don short-shorts and pom poms?
Here’s the letter I just e-mailed to him about this article:
By describing Justice Stevens’ or Justice Breyer’s opinion in the Heller case as a “powerful, detailed, historically grounded ‘originalist’” argument, one is left with the impression that you didn’t bother to read them, or any of the historical record around the Second Amendment, particularly carefully.
As a reference for proper evaluation of the dissenting opinion, I recommend you purchase a copy of “Origin of the Second Amendment,” by David E. Young: http://www.secondamendmentinfo.com/index.html
I would also suggest you read Clayton Cramer’s analysis of the dissent, at this page: http://www.claytoncramer.com/popular/TheHellerVictory.htm
Any intellectually honest individual, with even a passing understanding of the origin and purpose of the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights in which it is found, can recognize the dissenting opinion for what it is - steaming pile of manure shellacked with the superficial gloss of the imprimateur of the highest court in the land.
Stevens refers to the Miller case in the very first page of his opinion, but he immediately misses the point in order to press his own. In Miller, it was not the use or possession or purpose of the firearm in question, or its use and possession for what purpose by a rum-running lowlife gangster like Miller who had not the slighest connection with any kind of militia organization, but the type of firearm.
If it had been about Miller’s status, the case would have been decided on the basis of standing, not the military usefulness of the firearm he was criminally charged with possessing.
The ruling in Miller wasn’t even definitive - the case was remanded for further testimony which never took place. Had it, there would have been a finding that a short-barrel shotgun did, in fact, have a “relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” as such firearms were used as “trench guns” by soldiers during WW-I.
Stevens and Breyer continue in this same intellectually dishonest vein for many pages.
Not on that, Stevens engages in circular logic by arguing that the majority is wrong because it overturns existing (incorrect) decisions about the Second Amendment. Does that represent the kind of incisive scholarship one should expect from the Supreme Court of the United States?
At its core, the Heller case was about the fundamental individual human right to life, and the corrolary right to defend life. In that light, let alone the Second Amendment, DC’s draconian gun laws are constitionally indefensible in any respect, and the fact that Stevens, Breyer, and the rest of the minority attempts it indicates that they’re less interested in the Constitution than the basest political activsm as enemies of the individual rights law-abiding citizens of the United States set forth in the Bill of Rights.
It is they, not Scalia and the majority, who are seeking to reinvent the Second Amendment.
-Michael Pelletier.
Roe, creating a “right” listed nowhere in the constitution. If anything, the baby has a God-given Constitutional right to live.
Heller, affirming a right CLEARLY listed in the Constitution.
The contrast between them could not be more clear.
A modern interpretation: "Keep your hands off my guns, B*tch!!!"
In making his argument concerning Miller Scalia says, "it was that the type of weapon at issue was not eligible for Second Amendment protection..." Arguing (correctly, IMO) that The Court was not completely reversing an earlier decision, I still think Scalia goes too far. There is no doubt that Stevens also goes too far, pretending, as gun grabbers always have, that Miller allows whatever infringement on the RKBA a court wants simply by a Sophist's definition of what constitutes a suitable weapon. But regardless of whom you believe was correct, Miller opened the door for an interpretation that a weapon suitable for militia use was the only type eligible for Second Amendment protection. Even Scalia acknowledges that, so you'd be well advised not to pretend otherwise.
The problem is that it is the 1939 decision actually promotes the sort of idiotic bench legislating that George Will decries in this column. One only need establish that a weapon would not be suitable for use in some local (State) definition of "militia" to exclude it from protection. His critique of Heller by proxy is ironically wrong, because Heller effectively tells gun grabbers that they may no longer point to the 1939 decision as a way of making specific weapons ineligible: before Heller, handguns arguably were not "militia" weapons -- whatever that means.
In any event, Miller wasn't even correct as to facts. The sawed-off shotgun was a weapon in common military use. My father was a BAR man during the Second World War. The sidearm he -- and fixed machine gunners also -- were issued, was a sawed-off shotgun. A facsimile of that weapon hangs over our mantle; just below our copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
"For the people to do what they want to do, they will need guns, and if, at any time the Fed decides to go gangsta tyrant, the people will hook-up to kick whatever punkass lives in the White House and his homies 'cause everybody will have guns (unless they are flat-out crazy, convicted of a violent crime, or smoking crack), and nobody and no one can tell any of the rest of the People to disarm, ever. Keep your hands off our guns, b*tch.
Sometimes when I begin to read articles like this, I wonder if I am just obtuse and stupid. Then, after a minute, I realize that the writer is the one who is obtuse and stupid, and I wonder how it got to print.
Well said.. None of us should forget that even Scalia has the erroneous opinion that a State/local government can regulate/prohibit away our right to carry certain types of arms..
The problem is that it is the 1939 decision actually promotes the sort of idiotic bench legislating that George Will decries in this column. One only need establish that a weapon would not be suitable for use in some local (State) definition of "militia" to exclude it from protection.
Very true, - and, - perhaps Will is making the point that if we allow State/local governments to prohibit arms, we are [in effect] allowing them to prohibit other basic individual rights..
“In Heller, the court was at least dealing with a right the Constitution actually mentions.”
George Wills negates his whole argument with this statement. He tries to compare gun rights with abortion. Second amendment rights are enumerated in the Constitution, abortion rights are not.
Hey George! The Constituion not only “mentions” Second rights, it clearly states them. You really ought to read and understand the Constitution before making such public statements.
Because he is a conservative, Scalia did not issue a sweeping generalization about that question. Had he been a liberal, he most certainly would have, thereby issuing a decision of a case not before the court. Of course, had Stevens prevailed, such would’ve been the outcome, and no Lefty commentator would’ve noticed that there are special rules governing the District of Columbia. But Scalia indicated pretty clearly that the Court might look favorably on an Incorporation case if, say, the NRA challenged the Chicago ban.
Of course, that's the difference. Heller dealt with defining the scope of an actual constitutional right that is actually in the Constitution. Roe dealt with a made up right.
Will's argues that because it is hard to define the actual constitutional right, the court should just punt. That is craven.
I don't see how he draws any valid parallel between a difficult interpretation of something that is actually in the constitution with the difficulties caused when the court makes up a right that isn't there.
Court's are there to interpret the Constitution, even when it's hard.
Of course, this whole post assumes Will's assertion that interpretation of the second amendment is 'hard'. Will's only evidence for that is that four left-wing judges interpreted the Constitution in the predictable left-wing way in Heller. Therefore, because they disagreed with the majority, the question is hard. That's a pretty slim reed. The four lefties on the Court rarely engage in a principled reading of the Constitution. Their Con Law is purely results oriented.
Ink-stained wretches are traditionally low-status and little trusted.
1. They're social climbing.
2. They've been miseducated by doctrinaire Leftists in the schools and colleges.
3. They hate us.
4. They think they'll do better as elements of Minitrue under a totalitarian regime that values their word skills for the dark power they bring as servants of the One Ring. (Sorry, J.R.R. Tolkien fans.) In America, they're no better than the rest of us, an idea their egos hate. They'd rather help rule in Hell than serve in heaven-on-earth.
I scanned through parts of retired Associate Justice William Brennan's book (I didn't want to buy it and see money fall into his left-wing claws), and he gives a lot of credit to Felix Frankfurter, an appointee of FDR, I believe, as the instigator of a lot of the Court's "positivist" results-oriented legal logrolling and pettifogging. (Of course, Brennan didn't call it that.)
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