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To: You Gotta Be Kidding Me
"The Supreme Court last dealt with the issue directly in 1939 when it clearly backed they collective, no-individual right position."

This, too, is an outright lie. The US Supreme Court did no such thing and the lying S of a B knows it.

When a Supreme Court decision is published, it is accompanied by a syllabus which is written by court staff--not by the justices themselves and which is supposed to give the gist of a decision but carries no legal weight. Unfortunately, the published syllabus for U.S. v. Miller does not accurately reflect certain key aspects of the decision, and seems to have been cited in some cases where it disagrees with what the actual decision says.

Contrary to what many people have been led to believe, neither Miller nor his co-defendant Layton were ever convicted of carrying a short-barreled shotgun. The Supreme Court did not uphold their conviction because there was no conviction to uphold. All the Court did was allow the government to bring its case when the government claimed that it could show that a sawed-off shotgun is not a suitable militia weapon. Had the government not plea-bargained away the charges for Frank Layton it would have had to have proved the impossible. Instead, however, the government declared victory and went home.

It's interesting that the government 'won' its case against Miller and Layton while plea-bargaining for nothing beyond time served. Of course, most of us would think that an odd form of 'winning'.

46 posted on 11/15/2002 4:55:20 PM PST by supercat
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To: supercat
bump it
47 posted on 11/15/2002 8:20:31 PM PST by flamingbug
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