DC vs. Heller:ALL Related Discussion: VICTORY! Merged - Page 17

tabsr · March 22nd, 2008, 01:09 AM

Gee rock, you must be smart, know about watergate and own a glock. http://www.combatcarry.com/vbulletin..._1/ubbloco.gif

ccw9mm · March 22nd, 2008, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Where there is individual ownership of weapons there is liberty, where there is not there is tyranny because powerful organizations and governments will have a monopoly on it. The latest developments in this case are not a "victory" for the second amendment, on the contrary, they constitute its very undoing.

It could be said the torch has been lit, by the very act of discussing "reasonableness" of restrictions on a right which shall not be infringed. The 2A doesn't say might be infringed if ... or, can be reasonably infringed so long as. It says: shall not be infringed.

Imagine if the 1A were whittled down on all the edges. Can't write political analysis or criticism, Op.Ed of any kind, novels, history books outside the 'approved' variant, letters to the editor, interviews that appear in publication to more than 500 people, publication via the internet. What you'd have is a small army of authors who could only write ditties on greeting cards, and even then you could be strung by the toenails if it were too "spicy."

Imagine if the 2A were whittled down on all the edges. Can't buy more than N number of handguns a month. Can't possess a gun with capacity over N rounds. Can't buy ammo in a caliber ever used by the military. Can't buy a firearm unless you have a mommy-may-I (FOID, whatever) card. Can't get a mommy-may-I card so save your life. Can't have anything, anywhere, at any time that allows you to effectively defend yourself. Saving your life isn't considered sufficient cause. Protecting you from yourself is considered sufficient to continue taking ... and taking ... and taking.

And here the "justices" are mincing words, worrying about placement of commas and the like.

What a screwed up, tyrannical little web we're weaving for ourselves, this grand experiment in government of the people, by the people, against the people. Better than many other attempts, but going down the flusher quicker 'n' you can say mommy-may-I.

Now, where did I put that copy of Atlas Shrugged.

nutz4utwo · March 22nd, 2008, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nutz4utwo

None of them on this forum...

Kudos to Mr Gura, I do not agree with everything he said, but he took us a giant leap in the right direction. He has a pretty pragmatic hold on the situation too.

...

I am changing my mind. After listening to the oral arguments again and reading some of the Gun Owners of A statement, I believe Mr. Gura made some serious errors. Machine guns are arms that are related to military/militia and are protected. Trigger locks render arms useless and are unconstitutional. 'shall not be infringed' does not mean "unreasonably restricted"

there was discourse about machine guns not being "common" and therefore not meeting the Miller test for protection:

It is interesting that machine guns are not common because of the NFA act that highly regulates them. Considering that NFA should be declared unconstitutional, machine guns would become extremely common. Every AR-15 and AK would immediately be full auto. There is a cycle where there is unjust law making something uncommon justifying an unjust law.

...

Rock and Glock · March 22nd, 2008, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccw9mm

And here the "justices" are mincing words, worrying about placement of commas and the like.

Now, where did I put that copy of Atlas Shrugged.

It's a battle of incrementalism. It's the same theory used by many proponents of social change successfully over the last several years. A small change here, a tiny change there, and twenty years latter they've met the overall goals.

It's similar to the ammo micro-stamping legislative attempts, the ammo limitation bills, the limit on the number of guns per month......ad infinitum ad naseum.

I just hope the SCOTUS gives us a ruling that we can live with.

BigEFan · March 22nd, 2008, 10:16 PM

It is killing me that people are beating up on Gura over the machine gun issue and reasonable restrictions. The NRA, the GOA and every member of this forum that lives in this Country can file a suit if they want the NFA repealed. In fact any of them could have done so since 1934 and they haven't.

I think GURA saw that as the red herring that would be used to sink him. GUra and his client decided not to make that as part of their fight and I think it is hilarious that the rest of us are criticizing him for not doing so while we were at home on bean bag eating cheetos. You want to challenge the NFA do it on your time and your dime.

Rock and Glock · March 23rd, 2008, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigEFan

It is killing me that people are beating up on Gura over the machine gun issue and reasonable restrictions. The NRA, the GOA and every member of this forum that lives in this Country can file a suit if they want the NFA repealed. In fact any of them could have done so since 1934 and they haven't.

I think GURA saw that as the red herring that would be used to sink him. GUra and his client decided not to make that as part of their fight and I think it is hilarious that the rest of us are criticizing him for not doing so while we were at home on bean bag eating cheetos. You want to challenge the NFA do it on your time and your dime.

Yep - You called it right! +1

Being in front of SCOTUS is something most attorneys only dream of - let alone us peons.

Rock and Glock · March 23rd, 2008, 01:01 AM

Here's the New York Times analysis:

Quote:

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: November 21, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it would decide whether the Constitution grants individuals the right to keep guns in their homes for private use, plunging the justices headlong into a divisive and long-running debate over how to interpret the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

The court accepted a case on the District of Columbia’s 31-year-old prohibition on the ownership of handguns. In adding the case to its calendar, for argument in March with a decision most likely in June, the court not only raised the temperature of its current term but also inevitably injected the issue of gun control into the presidential campaign.

The federal appeals court here, breaking with the great majority of federal courts to have examined the issue over the decades, ruled last March that the Second Amendment right was an individual one, not tied to service in a militia, and that the District of Columbia’s categorical ban on handguns was therefore unconstitutional.

Both the District of Columbia government and the winning plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller, a security officer, urged the justices to review the decision. Mr. Heller, who carries a gun while on duty guarding the federal building that houses the administrative offices of the federal court system, wants to be able to keep his gun at home for self-defense.

Mr. Heller was one of six plaintiffs recruited by a wealthy libertarian lawyer, Robert A. Levy, who created and financed the lawsuit for the purpose of getting a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court. The appeals court threw out the other five plaintiffs for lack of standing; only Mr. Heller had actually applied for permission to keep a gun at home and been rejected.

The Supreme Court last looked at the Second Amendment nearly 70 years ago in United States v. Miller, a 1939 decision that suggested, without explicitly deciding, that the right should be understood in connection with service in a militia. The amendment states, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The justices chose their own wording for what they want to decide in the new case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The question they posed is whether the provisions of the statute “violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.”

The court’s choice of words is almost never inadvertent, and its use of the phrase “state-regulated militia” was somewhat curious. The District of Columbia, of course, is not a state, and one of the arguments its lawyers are making in their appeal is that the Second Amendment simply does not apply to “legislation enacted exclusively for the District of Columbia.”

For that matter, the Supreme Court has never ruled that the Second Amendment even applies to the states, as opposed to the federal government. It has applied nearly all the other provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, leaving the Second Amendment as the most prominent exception. The justices evidently decided that this case was not the proper vehicle for exploring that issue, because as a nonstate, the District of Columbia is not in a position to argue it one way or another.

Because none of the justices now on the court have ever confronted a Second Amendment case, any prediction about how the court will rule is little more than pure speculation.

Of the hundreds of gun regulations on the books in states and localities around the country, the district’s ordinance is generally regarded as the strictest. Chicago comes the closest to it, banning the possession of handguns acquired since 1983 and requiring re-registration of older guns every two years. New York City permits handgun ownership with a permit issued by the Police Department.

The District of Columbia ordinance not only bans ownership of handguns, but also requires other guns that may be legally kept in the home, rifles and shotguns, to be disassembled or kept under a trigger lock. The capital’s newly empowered City Council enacted the ordinance in 1976 as one of its first measures after receiving home-rule authority from Congress.

The court’s order on Tuesday indicated that it would review the handgun ban in light of the provision that permits, with restrictions, the other guns. The opposing sides in the lawsuit presented very different views of how the various provisions interact.

To the plaintiffs, the restrictions on the conditions under which rifles and shotguns may be kept means that homeowners are denied the right to possess “functional” weapons for self-defense. To the District of Columbia, the fact that these other guns are permitted shows that the ordinance is nuanced and sensitive to gun owners’ needs. It takes about one minute to disengage a trigger lock.

In any event, a Supreme Court decision that finds the district’s ordinance unconstitutional would not necessarily invalidate other, more modest restrictions, like those that permit handgun ownership for those who pass a background check and obtain a license. Since the only claim in the case is that law-abiding people have the right to keep a gun at home, the court will not have occasion to address restrictions on carrying guns.

In fact, lawyers on both sides of the case agreed Tuesday that a victory for the plaintiff in this case would amount to the opening chapter in an examination of the constitutionality of gun control rather than anything close to the final word.

“This is just the beginning,” said Alan Gura, the lead counsel for the plaintiff.

Mr. Gura said in an interview that “gun laws that make sense,” like those requiring background checks, would survive the legal attack, which he said was limited to “laws that do no good other than disarm law-abiding citizens.”

Whether the handgun ban has reduced crime in a city surrounded by less restrictive jurisdictions is a matter of heated dispute. Crime in the District of Columbia has mirrored trends in the rest of the country, dropping quite sharply during the 1990s but now experiencing some increase.

In striking down the district’s ordinance, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that an individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment would still permit “reasonable regulations,” but that a flat ban was not reasonable.

Dennis A. Henigan, a lawyer at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates strict gun control, said that if the justices agree with the appeals court, an important question for future cases will be “what legal standard the court will eventually adopt for evaluating other gun regulations.”

The NYT is not always agreeable to me, but they are one of the more widely read papers in the US, so here it is.

Sorry if this has already been posted.......

Like it or not, this could be close to the result.....

Quote:

Dennis A. Henigan, a lawyer at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates strict gun control, said that if the justices agree with the appeals court, an important question for future cases will be “what legal standard the court will eventually adopt for evaluating other gun regulations.”

This may well be the seminal issue..........

HotGuns · March 23rd, 2008, 01:15 AM

Quote:

It is killing me that people are beating up on Gura over the machine gun issue and reasonable restrictions. The NRA, the GOA and every member of this forum that lives in this Country can file a suit if they want the NFA repealed. In fact any of them could have done so since 1934 and they haven't.

I think GURA saw that as the red herring that would be used to sink him.

The "machine gun" issue is a completely different issue. Although I don't agree with it, it is a "tax" on a weapon that must be paid for ownership of such in states that allow it, therefore it should not be included in the discussion,of whether owning firearms are an individual right or a collective one, as no good would come from it.

Over the years, much ado has been made of the fact that a citizen can own a machine gun or any other class 3 object in states that allow it. As a "stamp" owner myself, I tend to pay attention to these things. Politicians and aspiring lawyers and judges for various anti gun entities have always made much alot of noise about the issue, but in every case they are shut down, because it is a tax issue, and not one that anyone wants to mess with. It is already a highly regulated activity. The numbers are small enough and the actual crime rates with these guns are so minute that any further legislation against them would be meaningless. Once they loud mouthed idiots figure this out, they usually abandon that platform and go onto one that affects more people.

Its likely that Gura knows and understands this, and realizes that its a different fight for a different day and chooses not to devote any more time or energy on that issue than is necessary.

In my opinion, "reasonable" restrictions on something that says "shall not be infringed" is not only wrong, but stupid. Allowing it is not only wrong, but stupid and its the very reason that this issue is even being discussed.

I can say this...working at a Nuclear Plant, the word SHALL...means that NO deviation will happen. If you deviate, you can be fined,jailed and fired on the spot. There is no excuse, no allowance, no tolerance, shall means shall.

If our Justices and attorneys were held to the same standards, we wouldn't be in the mess that we are in now, and there probably wouldn't be many of them left to practice whatever it is they practice.

Captain Crunch · March 23rd, 2008, 02:45 AM

Departing from the intellectual discussion in this thread, for those that are interested, the March 17th 2008 issue of U.S. News & World Report has a feature article on the Heller case.

It contains some slanted "facts", one being that allowing private citizens to carry concealed firearms hasn't proven to reduce crime, but overall, a pretty good article.

HotGuns · March 23rd, 2008, 02:46 AM

Got a link?

March 22nd, 2008, 01:09 AM	#161
tabsr Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Minnesota Posts: 215	Watergate Gee rock, you must be smart, know about watergate and own a glock. http://www.combatcarry.com/vbulletin..._1/ubbloco.gif __________________ "Politicians and Bureaucrats, depend very much on the complicity of their victims, and like criminals, are flummoxed when we don't play the victim role."

March 22nd, 2008, 10:16 PM	#165
BigEFan VIP Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Central California Posts: 2,034	It is killing me that people are beating up on Gura over the machine gun issue and reasonable restrictions. The NRA, the GOA and every member of this forum that lives in this Country can file a suit if they want the NFA repealed. In fact any of them could have done so since 1934 and they haven't. I think GURA saw that as the red herring that would be used to sink him. GUra and his client decided not to make that as part of their fight and I think it is hilarious that the rest of us are criticizing him for not doing so while we were at home on bean bag eating cheetos. You want to challenge the NFA do it on your time and your dime. __________________ *Lex et Libertas — Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!* "Not only do the people who put their lives on the line to protect the rest of us deserve better, we all deserve better than to have our own security undermined by those who undermine law enforcement." -Thomas Sowell

March 23rd, 2008, 02:45 AM	#169
Captain Crunch Senior Moderator Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Montana, The Treasure State Posts: 6,763	Departing from the intellectual discussion in this thread, for those that are interested, the March 17th 2008 issue of U.S. News & World Report has a feature article on the Heller case. It contains some slanted "facts", one being that allowing private citizens to carry concealed firearms hasn't proven to reduce crime, but overall, a pretty good article. __________________ Memo to the President: I'll keep my guns, money & freedom... You can keep the "change!" Terry

March 23rd, 2008, 02:46 AM	#170
HotGuns Moderator Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Arkansas Posts: 5,160	Got a link? __________________ AR. CHL Instr. To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas.' Dr. G. Brock Chisolm

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