From the tone of this article, GWB, Ashcroft, and Ted Olsen really hit a nerve in the Left-wing press and gun-banning camps!I distinctly heard a squeal from the author.
Nice!
Posted on 05/08/2002 8:32:27 AM PDT by an amused spectator
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has declared that the Constitution gives individuals the right to own a gun...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If you don't belong to one of the Gun Groups, join today or as soon as possible.
Indeed, in one of the cases now pending before the Supreme Court, the department agreed that a Texas man who had a restraining order against him for domestic violence should not be allowed to have a gun.
The Justice Department urged the court to turn down both his appeal and that of a man convicted of violating federal law by owning two machine guns.
Don't get too excited. "Everyone has the right to keep and bear arms, except for you and you and you and you and you.....and anyone else we the governemnt deem unfit." Some affirmation of a right.
In November, 1995, I sat down and wrote the words,"America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." That's a line a lot of you have become familiar with, and to the extent that other people have also become familiar with it, it has a lot to do with Arizona libertarians pushing that message.Now it's May of 2002 and people are still being suckered by "the system." Work within the system. The sacred system. If our forbears believed that Baloney Sauce, there wouldn't be an America today. Come to think of it, is there an America today? Or is this "The Truman Show?"Well, I wrote that a year and a half ago, the book was published about six months ago, and now here we are, April 19, 1997. Is it time to "shoot the bastards" yet? This is a question a lot of us have been pondering. Claire Wolfe
From the tone of this article, GWB, Ashcroft, and Ted Olsen really hit a nerve in the Left-wing press and gun-banning camps!I distinctly heard a squeal from the author.
Nice!
Ebel, David M.
"...Our published Tenth Circuit opinions treat the Second Amendment similarly. In United States v. Oakes, 564 F.2d 384 (10th Cir. 1977), we rejected a Second Amendment challenge to the federal law criminalizing possession of an unregistered machinegun, 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d). We found no evidence that the firearm in question was connected with a militia, even though the defendant was nominally a member of the Kansas militia and the "Posse Comitatus," a militia-type organization registered with the state:
The purpose of the second amendment as stated by the Supreme Court in United States v. Miller was to preserve the effectiveness and assure the continuation of the state militia. The Court stated that the amendment must be interpreted and applied with that purpose in view. To apply the amendment so as to guarantee appellant's right to keep an unregistered firearm which has not been shown to have any connection to the militia, merely because he is technically a member of the Kansas militia, would be unjustifiable in terms of either logic or policy. This lack of justification is even more apparent when applied to appellant's membership in "Posse Comitatus," an apparently nongovernmental organization. We conclude, therefore, that this prosecution did not violate the second amendment."
....
Consistent with these cases, we hold that a federal criminal gun-control law does not violate the Second Amendment unless it impairs the state's ability to maintain a well-regulated militia. This is simply a straightforward reading of the text of the Second Amendment. This reading is also consistent with the overwhelming weight of authority from the other circuits. See, e.g., United States v. Napier, 233 F.3d 394, 402 (6th Cir. 2000) (holding that the Second Amendment right "is limited to keeping and bearing arms that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia" (quotation marks omitted)); Gillespie v. City of Indianapolis, 185 F.3d 693, 711 (7th Cir. 1999) (rejecting a Second Amendment challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) because the plaintiff "does not argue (and we do not believe under any plausible set of facts that he could) that the viability and efficacy of state militias will be undermined by prohibiting those convicted of perpetrating domestic violence from possessing weapons in or affecting interstate commerce"), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 1116 (2000); United States v. Wright, 117 F.3d 1265, 1272-74 (11th Cir. 1997) (holding that a criminal defendant must demonstrate a reasonable relationship between possession of a machinegun and the preservation or efficiency of a militia actively trained and maintained by the state), amended on other grounds by 133 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1998); United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273, 286 (3d Cir. 1996) (same); United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016, 1019-20 (8th Cir. 1992) (same).
Applying this standard, it is clear that § 922(o) is facially constitutional. Section 922(o)(2)(A) sets forth a specific exemption for possession of a machinegun "under the authority of" a state; therefore, that section cannot impair the state's ability to maintain a well-regulated militia. Accord Wright, 117 F.3d at 1274 n.19. Haney does not contend that his possession of the machineguns at issue in this case was under the authority of Oklahoma.
Nor has Haney proven several facts logically necessary to establish a Second Amendment violation. As a threshold matter, he must show that (1) he is part of a state militia; (2) the militia, and his participation therein, is "well regulated" by the state; (3) machineguns are used by that militia; and (4) his possession of the machinegun was reasonably connected to his militia service. None of these are established.
The militia of the Second Amendment is a governmental organization: The Constitution elsewhere refers to "the Militia of the several States," Art. II, § 2, and divides regulatory authority over the militia between the federal and state governments, Art. I, § 8. See also Perpich v. Dep't of Defense, 496 U.S. 334, 345-46 (1990) (describing the "dual enlistment" provisions of the militia statutes). Thus, the militia does not include the private anti-government groups that sometimes refer to themselves as "militias." Haney is not part of the "well regulated" militia, that is, a "militia actively maintained and trained by the states," Wright, 117 F.3d at 1272. At best, Haney claims to be a member of the "unorganized" (and therefore not a "well regulated" state) militia. See Okla. Stat. Ann. Tit. 44, § 41 (dividing the population of able-bodied persons between the ages of seventeen and seventy into the National Guard, the Oklahoma State Guard, and the "Unorganized Militia"). Haney does not claim to be a member of the National Guard or the Oklahoma State Guard, and he has submitted no evidence that the Oklahoma unorganized militia and his participation therein are well-regulated by the State of Oklahoma. Accord Wright, 117 F.3d at 1274 ("[T]he substantial segment of the population comprising the unorganized militia is not well regulated as that term was intended by the drafters of the Second Amendment."); see also Oakes, 564 F.2d at 387 (noting that technical membership in the state militia is insufficient to show a Second Amendment violation); Hale, 978 F.2d at 1020 (same). Nor has Haney submitted any evidence that machineguns of the sort he possessed are used by the militia, or that his possession was connected to any sort of militia service.
In sum, § 992(o) does not impair the state's ability to maintain a well-regulated militia and therefore does not violate the Second Amendment.
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According to these "judges", the Founding Fathers were apparently quite worried about the federal government infringing on the "right of the state governments to keep and bear arms."
This spurious contention might actually hold some water if the federal government hadn't basically gutted the Tenth Amendment decades ago:
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"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - Tenth Amendment
"The founding fathers of our country believed in a small federal government with limited powers. So, accordingly, they wrote a constitution that is short, sweet and to the point. In it, they enumerated the powers and the duties of each branch of the federal government. Then, in an attempt to ensure that the federal government would remain small and unobtrusive, they added the Bill of Rights. It's hard to read the news without seeing something mentioned about one of these rights. One that's never mentioned though, is the tenth amendment. Since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the tenth amendment has been completely ignored. As a result, the federal government is now doing all kinds of things that the constitution does not authorize it to do..." - Donald A. Tevault, The Tenth Amendment; Forgotten, But Not Gone
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Apparently, a large percentage of our black-robed rulers have this "understanding" that the "commoners" weren't born with a God-given Right to keep and bear arms. Of course, members of the legal "club" can carry anywhere for their own protection, but us serfs can't own guns except at their magnanimous forbearance.
They've got some freaking nerve.
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