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Saturday, June 28, 2008

A right to what, exaclty?

David Kopel asks: What is the right protected in the Heller dissent?
I have not yet studied the Stevens dissent in depth, but on my initial read, I was confused as what exactly is the scope of the individual right that Justice Stevens thinks the Second Amendment does protect?
Of course, as Kopel points out later, no right is protected. Stevens' argument it merely a "continuing repackaing of efforts to deny the validity of the Standard Model." The opinion, and the amici supporting Stevens, are trying to say "not an individual liberty" without using the word "not"; an impossible task. Maybe Bill Clinton could do it, but he's the master at that sort of doublethink; in a class by himself. Others ply his trade at their own peril!

The antis want an individual liberty that guarantees the right to gun laws; or, maybe a right to a cityscape undisturbed by gun stores. What they don't want is you having the right to own a gun. They especially don't want you using that gun to defend yourself or your family from a criminal assault.

Maybe they want to preserve your right to be beaten, raped, and murdered. Silly, you say? The truth is that they really don't mind you dying so long as no one suspects their cowardice. You see, they can't picture themselves doing what many gun owners have steeled themselves to do if, God forbid!, the occasion arises: To use their own arms to defend themselves without the government's help. To them, that's the stuff of action movie heroes, not them. They are convinced of their own cowardice. The last thing they want is a mere mortal like you doing what they fear they cannot. That would draw attention to their own inadequacies. Or so the tortured logic plays out in their minds. Thus, they rage against the very idea of self defense.

Are you saying to yourself "That's sick"? You should. This is what we have been fighting for all of these years. We have been fighting against laws written to cater to the irrational fears of a small, but politically influential, group of people. Now, thank God, the era of "gun control" is drawing to a close.

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A new national holiday?

From FreeRepublic.com: An Annual Celebration?: Heller Day

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He was for it before he was against it...

Where have I heard that before?


From Hot Air

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San Francisco: Fighting to keep gays and lesbians disarmed

In response to that city's stubborn efforts to deny the rights of its citizens, the NRA sues to overturn San Francisco gun ban in city housing.
The San Francisco challenge includes an anonymous individual plaintiff, identified as "Guy Montag Doe," who is a gay man living in a San Francisco Housing Authority unit who said in court papers that he keeps a gun in his home to protect himself against hate crimes based on his sexual orientation.
In response, Mayor Newsom has vowed to keep his city's underprivileged unarmed and vulnerable. (Well, no... He didn't put it in exactly those terms. He used much nicer sounding words. But if you were on the receiving end of what Hizzoner would undoubtedly call a "hate crime", you'd be hard pressed to see the difference.)

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Friday, June 27, 2008

And so it begins...

SCOTUSblog » New case tests Second Amendment’s reach

A lawsuit (McDonald, et al., v. City of Chicago, et al.) has been filed against the city of Chicago alleging that their DC-esque handgun law violates the 2nd and 14th Amendments.

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Down the memory hole

I've noticed a funny trend in stories about Heller. Nearly all, as might be expected, make mention of Miller. But in pre-decision stories, Miller was usually characterized as saying the 2nd Amendment applied only to State militias; i.e. the National Guard. This is quite incorrect. Today, stories on Heller now correctly state that Miller was about the applicability of the 2nd Amendment to a sawed-off shotgun. I guess the previous Miller mythos has gone down the memory hole.

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Not even one page in...

I kinda hoped I could get more than one page into Justice Stevens' dissent before I found myself shouting WRONG!! But alas, that wasn't to be. I got to the 3rd paragraph and just had to stop...
The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia.
That just isn't true. If that were the case, then the text of the amendment would read "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to maintain a well regulated militia shall not be infringed." I rather doubt that "keep and bear arms" was a typo or that the Founders simply misspelled "maintain a well regulate militia".

Update: I had to stop reading Stevens' dissent. The stubborn, don't-bother-me-with-the-facts nonsense was making my head hurt. I didn't even get to Breyer. I took a peek at it and it looks like Breyer is merely standing on Stevens' goofy shoulders.

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Listen to the Brady Bunch squeeeeeal!!

Gun-Control Supporters Show Outrage - NYTimes.com - Am I having too much fun today?

The Antis are screeching and squealing over Heller. Of course, we knew they wouldn't be happy, but could they at least come up with some original material? Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is typical and predictable...
“Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?”
he said at a news conference. “If they think that’s the
answer, then they’re greatly mistaken. Then, why don’t we
do away with the court system and go back to the Old West? You have a
gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle in the streets.
The ol' Wild West gambit: Blood in the streets, gunfights in the parking lot, yada, yada, yada... Never mind that the "wild" west was considerably safer in its day than the "civilized" cities of the East. And the same holds true today. Those jurisdictions with lax gun laws are much safer than Washington DC, Chicago, New York, or any other gun control haven.

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An end to some silly pontifications...

I'm really sick and tired of hearing aspiring intellectuals chatter on about how the text of the 2nd Amendment is vague, ambiguous, or "open to interpretation". Go read Justice Scalia's opinion. He makes it abundantly clear that there is one and only one possible meaning to the text; that individuals have a right to keep and bear arms for their own purposes, regardless of their status within the militia.

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Justice Stevens gets a spanking

I'm about 1/4 of the way through the opinion. I wonder Justice Stevens' backside is stinging.

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Heh, heh, heh...

Is it wrong of me to take delight in the fact that Justice Scalia quotes Justice Ginsburg in his discussion on the meaning of the phrase "bear arms"?

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The Heller Decision

Posted here.

Quoting the syllabus: The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

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And it get's better...

SCOTUSBlog's Tom Goldstein reports that there's only one majority opinion; so, there's no ambiguity about what the Court means in the Scalia-authored opinion.

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Heller...

IS AFFIRMED!!!!!

This means that the lower court ruling, which recognized an individual liberty, is upheld! Details to follow.

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Two down, one to go...

SCOTUS has released two opinions. Heller will be the last of the session.

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A lot of NRA members are watching SCOTUSBlog

They've got a poll up on their LiveBlog...

SCOTUSBlog

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Drum roll please....

Today's the day. Today we find out if the Court will respect the Constitution or if the Justices will mangle the language to see what isn't there and ignore what is.

I've been going back and forth over the last few months as to how optimistic/pessimistic I feel about this Court. They've had a few boners (Which I won't go into details about here since those cases aren't about firearms rights, the subject of this site), but more recent cases give me some hope. But we shall see if that hope is in vain in about 7 minutes.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Heller...

Not today.

The Court will issue more opinions tomorrow. There are still 3 cases outstanding for this term.

(And in an encouraging note, SCOTUSBlog is predicting that Justice Scalia is writing the Heller opinion!)

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Heller this week

...or possibly today!

A good resource for all things Supreme Court is SCOTUSBlog.com. The Court begins releasing opinions shortly after 10am Eastern.

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Sunday, June 15, 2008

You'd think a former ConLaw prof would know better...

The Prof seems to have a bit to learn. From the Barack Obama campaign website...
Respect the Second Amendment: Millions of hunters own and use guns each year. Millions more participate in a variety of shooting sports such as sporting clays, skeet, target, and trap shooting that may not necessarily involve hunting. As a former constitutional law professor, Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he greatly respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms. He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns for the purposes of hunting and target shooting. He also believes that the right is subject to reasonable and commonsense regulation.

Source
As a "former constitutional law professor", Barack Obama should know that the Constitution doesn't "create" new rights; it recognizes pre-existing rights. History teaches us that politicians who fail to recognize this distinction also fail to truly respect the Right to Keep and Bear Arms as an individual liberty. They invariably see the firearms ownership as a privilege granted by, and therefore revocable by, the government; not as a God given right.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The latest info on CA legislation

The latest info can be found on the NRAMemberCouncils.com web site...



















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A reminder...

For those of you in the L.A. area, tonight's our monthly meeting. Click here for directions.

An update from across the pond

The UK, whether the people like it or not, is serving as a living laboratory; testing the more foolish gun laws our politicians propose to pass here in the US. As predicted by many an American gun owner, the UK gun laws are not only failing to live up to the politicians' promises, they are bringing harm down upon the heads of British citizens...



Do you ever wonder why American gun owners fight tooth and nail against "reasonable" gun laws? You can stop wondering. British gun owners were told for generations how this or that new regulation was "reasonable" and they went along without so much as a peep of protest. Now they find their rights all but vanished.

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Defining The Second Amendment

Stephen Halbrook pulls out his copy of Noah Webster's dictionary in Defining The Second Amendment.
Anticipating the Supreme Court's expected late June decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which will decide the constitutionality of a D.C. law restricting gun-ownership rights, many analysts have turned to the Founders' writings in an effort to understand the Second Amendment. What analysts need to do - recognizing that language and word usage change over time - is turn to America's first dictionary.
Much of what passes as legal argument from the antis involves redefining the English language so that the 2nd Amendment says whatever they want it to say. But for the text of the Amendment, or any other part of the Constitution, to have any meaning, we must look at what the writers meant by the words they chose. What the antis and their fellow travelers on the left don't see is the long term danger contained within their desire to distort the meanings of simple words. Larry Elder quotes Alan Dershowitz warning liberals of these dangers:
liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz... scolds fellow liberals for twisting the words of the Second Amendment in a way that could come back to haunt them. "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming that it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard," said Dershowitz, "don't see the danger of the big picture." He added, "They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."
There is hope, however. None of the Supreme Court Justices made any serious attempt to use the antis' redefinitions of the words of the 2nd Amendment. Predicting Court decisions based upon the Justices' questions is risky, but this bodes well in any event.

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Sunday, June 8, 2008

On the Second Amendment, Don’t Believe Obama!

Obama, over the course of the primary campaign, has tried to make some vaguely pro-gun noises. (Perhaps he's trying not to frighten those bitter, clingy, religious voters!) But the truth is that the "Candidate of change" is an old school gun grabber. Here's just a partial list of Obama's true positions on gun rights...

FACT: Barack Obama voted to allow reckless lawsuits designed to bankrupt the firearms industry.

FACT: Barack Obama wants to re-impose the failed and discredited Clinton Gun Ban.

FACT: Barack Obama voted to ban almost all rifle ammunition commonly used for hunting and sport shooting.

FACT: Barack Obama has endorsed a complete ban on handgun ownership.

FACT: Barack Obama supports local gun bans in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities.



You can read more at the NRA-ILA website.

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