Re: OT: 2nd Amendment case


Well, that's good. Then you can show us the documentation in the
historical
record that shows that "once the constitution was adopted it was it was a
fait acompli that the federal government would take over from the states."
We'll be waiting.

Gee Ed, don't you think the historical record is clear on this? Once the
constitution was ratified it's been a trend in one direction, i.e. federal
power was going to continue to grow and become one mother of a central
government? You need documentation for proof of that?


All the debating about the states and what
rights they will retain in regard to the federal government turned out
wrong. That's my point. The fact that I could see where they were making
their mistakes doesn't make me a genius. They made mistakes about
letting
slavery expand to get the south to join the union. They didn't see
hardly
anything that has come in the years since they lived.

They were short of crystal balls, having shot them all at the British.

Which just goes to prove my point. They didn't know what they were doing was
going to produce and that's why they were debating the wrong things and
coming to the wrong conclusions. I understand they didn't know the future
but we know what happened and we know where their decisions led. Not at all
where they expected.

History happened. Things changed.

We've got the kind of government that Hamilton
wanted not what the side that prevailed wanted. They didn't have much
foresight. Hamilton had it right.

Good for him. What does that have to do with original intent?

It means that original intent is irrelevant in many cases. But the point was
that the outcome of where the constitution started and where it is now had
its own trajectory. They couldn't see where it was going to end up back then
but we know exactly where it started and where it is now. That's what I have
said all along. I knew how this turned out. I don't see where there is a
debate about this because this is just plain American history. Maybe you
don't like the way I put it. But it's still true.


That doesn't matter. They had the final say, by voting their
representatives
in or out, based on what they (the people) wanted done.

Sounds good in theory but that's not the reality. They had very little
say,
and they were ignorant and illiterate. They didn't even popularly elect
senators. You had to own property to vote. It was an elitist government.
Don't believe me, look it up.

If there's a conclusion you're drawing from this, perhaps you could let us
in on it? Are you suggesting that the elite wanted a strong federal
government, and that they thought of themselves as Americans first, but
that
the common people did not? Do you draw this conclusion from something that
the "elite" were saying? Something from the record of the Constitutional
debates, perhaps?

I would have thought you knew this. First off most people in the colonies
thought of themselves as British. Secondly, most colonists never were for
independence. All the founders were the elites and what they wanted and what
the "people" wanted were not the same. The people didn't think of themselves
as "Americans" until well after the adoption of the constitution. I won't
get into what all the different signers of the constitution wanted because
they all didn't want the same things, as we saw in the debates. They
compromised to get things done. None of them knew what to expect so they
just did the best they could. But one thing they were saying was that they
had a strong disregard for the "mob" and they wanted the people to have as
little say in the government as possible. They thought of them as ignorant
rabble as many of us do even now.



You're time-traveling again, and not very accurately. It's clear that
the
propositions for federal supremacy over the states were soundly
rejected.
That, in fact, is what the 9th and 10th Amendments were about.

It was rejected then, yes. But the people back then had an inordinate
fear
of tyrannical or monarchical government and that is why it was difficult
to
get the consitution passed. Several states voted against it. It didn't
pass
by that big a margin. Read Thomas Paine. He was against it. Point being
that
the people had a fear that was not realistic but when they adopted the
constitution they unwittingly set in motion a process that was to lead
to
a
monstrous centralized government.

Why was their fear not realistic? Was there some history for them to draw
from, to realize they were unrealistically fearful? If so, why did they so
strongly object to a federal, standing army?

It was unrealistic because the probability of a home grown tryanny or a
monarchy was low. And history shows that none of those fears was realized or
even came close to happening. They feared standing armies because they were
aware of the history of Europe. Their fear of monarchy came from Britain but
after dumping that they had little to fear from foreign sovereigns taking
them over.


They might as well wonder how they could have been so stupid as to
write
it
as a nominative absolute sentence, which was known at the time, as it
is
known now, to have explicit meaning only in context. What they forgot
is
that they had the context in their heads and never put it on paper,
leaving
us to paw through antique documents to try to figure out how to
interpret
what they said.

Do you actually believe the men who wrote the bill of rights and the
other
documents of the time knew what a nominative absolute sentence is?

Yes. They were a well-educated and literate bunch. Would that our present
leaders were half as literate. They might have called it the "ablative
absolute," since many of them were educated in Latin.

They were well educated for the time but standards were a bit different back
then. For example, "reading" law for 6 months or a year made one a lawyer.
It's tightened up some since then. And while they were well educated for the
time not all were equally educated. In the 1700s if you had equivalent to a
high school education you were way up there. If you read Adams then you
should know that his class at Harvard had about 30 people in it. Very few
people were educated and the ones who were learned different things than we
do now. I'll grant you that some of them knew what a nominative absolute
sentence was in practice but they didn't know the term. Bottom line, I don't
believe most of them knew what you are talking about. On this we can
disagree but can't prove it one way or the other.



Adams was a
prolific writer. After reading that I seriously doubt that he ever even
heard the term nominative absolute sentence. Other than an English
teacher,
who would have?

They only wrote one in the Bill of Rights, and Adams didn't write it.

That isn't why I brought him up. He was a prolific writer of the era. If you
read what he wrote you can get a good idea of how they wrote, what kind of
language they used, and what their views on issues were. After reading his
and Abigail's letters I think I know something about them and where they
stood on the important issues. Like guns for example. Adams was no anti gun
pacifist.


If you had read much of what was written in the 18th century
you would know that it is considerably different than modern English. So
I
reject out of hand your idea of the nominitave absolute sentence, and
what
that is supposed to mean as it relates to the writing style of the
founders
and what they understood what they wrote actually meant.

You're in over your head, Hawke.

You're entitiled to your opinion, for what it's worth.



If the SC rejects
the DC argument then it means that they too agree with me and find that
the
meaning of the 2nd amendment is easily understood for the simple reason
that
it was meant not to be ambiguous. I find it an insult to the founders
that
you think so little of their competence in English that you don't think
they
couldn't even write a 2nd amendment that everyone would understand. You
think you could do better?

Any good high school student could have done better. It wouldn't be as
elegant, but it would be much clearer.

So on the one hand you are saying how brilliant and well educated the
founding fathers were and how they understood nominitave absolute sentences,
but in the same breath you're saying their combined effort at crafting the
2nd amendment was no better than what a high schooler could accomplish. Wow,
so which is it? Is their English writing and composition no better than high
school level or are they highly educated experts at the English language?
Let me know. But how about this, could they have written it the way they did
because that was standard english writing at the time? They assumed that
everyone would understand the meaning of what they wrote just like you would
if you wrote the amendment today. Could two hundred years in the future
people read your 2nd amendment not understand it? Could you see that
happening even after you made it clearer?


In a way I think you and the DC lawyers are
intentionally "playing dumb". Anyone that is truly confused as to what
the
2nd amendment means, in my view, doesn't have the advantage of having
English as their primary language.

Maybe they have the advantage of knowing something about the debates about
it.

Are you saying that you can't understand what the meaning of the Bill of
Rights is unless you read the debates first? If that is so then virtually no
American has ever understood their own BoR. I submit that even thought the
writing was late 18th century in style it is understandable by anyone with a
high school level of education. And they don't need anything other than
being able to read and write English to comprehend the Bor. You're being
awfully elite if you think that only scholars can understand the language of
the BoR.



How about a test. You give me some of those sentences and I'll tell you
what
they mean. I bet I get them right too.

Which sentences are you talking about?

Any ones you want? I'm saying that anyone with a good understanding of
English can figure out what the author of most of those sentences meant when
they wrote them.


But then I do have the advantage of
having read and written English for around fifty years. Does that make
me
cocky?

Yeah, it does.

Opinion noted.

Again, I have said that this position is the correct one. The 5th
circuit
had it right.

I seriously doubt if you've ever read the opinion, or that you have any
idea
what you're talking about. It runs to around 105 pages.

Have you?

Yes. The citations are excellent, and probably the best collection of
references we have favoring the argument that an individual right was
intended.

Glad to hear it. If I ever need legal citations for 2nd amendment arguments
I know where to look. Thanks, but I don't see that happening in the near
future. I'm done with school and if I was doing legal research I already
know how to do that. I also know that if you haven't had legal training you
don't.


But the answer is nope, I haven't. I don't see what that would do
for me.

Well, for one thing, it would show that you've put your foot in your mouth
up to your ankle. You would know that the 5th Circuit's decision didn't
overturn the law that prohibited the plaintiff from owning a gun. It
allowed
wide latitude for gun-control legislation. The first time a
pro-individual-right decision at the Circuit Court level overturned a gun
law was in the Heller case, and that was the DC Circuit.

I don't see how. The history of gun control legislation in this country goes
back a long, long time. The government has been restricting firearms since
day one of the country. Doesn't everyone know by now that there are laws
restricting every kind of firearm made? The police power gives the
government the power to reasonable restrictions on firearms and it has been
doing so for years. Every level of government has regulations on firearms.
No one is arguing the government can't restrict firearm access. We're
talking about what the scope of the 2nd amendment is. Not about IF guns can
be regulated. Obviously they can.


All I need to know is what the holding was. All that matters is that
a circuit court came up with a decision that backs up the position that
I
have taken. That is good enough for me. I trust their competence and
that
their arguments are good ones.

It didn't back up the position you have taken. It's an example of that
wimpy
kind of decision that you so disparage.

If it held that there was any kind of an individual right it backs up my
position. So did they or didn't they?

You better watch yourself and don't be badmouthing Davy Crocket. I loved
Fess Parker when I was a kid and I had a full buckskin outfit including
coonskin cap...and musket!

Fess Parker wasn't really Davy Crockett.

Shhhh, don't spoil the fantasy.


But leaving my idealic childhood aside, you can
go off on how stupid and uninformed most Americans are about history. I
won't argue with that. However, I am not your average American. I've got
20
years of formal education as well as being a bit of an autodidactic. And
I've taken constitutional law too. How about you?

Degrees in political science and telecommunications. Emphases on
international comparative politics and the US Constitution.

I was asking specifically about constitutional law. I took constitutional
law as a requirement for my paralegal certicfication. I don't recall that
being a class that was part of normal political science curricula but was a
pre law requirement. So I only took it as part of law not politics. Did you
specialize in political science or law and did you take constitutional law?

Your problem is that you
are laboring under the misperception that I don't know as much as I do
so
you think I'm just winging it. I'm not. I will admit that I'm too lazy
to
do
citations for my arguments here. Besides that I've read so many books
over
the years that there is no way to go back to them and tell you where I
got
my information. There is a level of trust that has to be accepted. I
don't
expect you to cite everything you assert and all I ask is for the same.
But
it doesn't hurt that I've seen thousands of movies and have seen every
TV
show since it first came on.

The Walt Disney College of American History, eh?

Just another scalp to hand on my tent pole of degrees. You can learn a lot
from TV. Not if you watch American Idol though.


Perhaps they'll ask you for your advice and clear this whole thing up.

They don't need to because even though you have a problem understanding
what
was meant in that nominative absolute sentence, I'm sure the 9 justices
all
think they know exactly what it means.

Right. That's why they were debating it in the oral argument...

The justices were debating? No they weren't, sorry. They don't debate with
attorneys. They question them. Debates are between the justices if they so
choose.


When the time comes to write their
decision they aren't going to be tearing out their hair trying to figure
out
what the 2nd amendment says. Myself, I haven't the least problem with it
either. For a smart guy it's hard to understand why you are having so
much
trouble with it.

Because anyone who thinks it's simple doesn't understand it.

Too hard for us mortals, eh? I guess it must be like seeing the Emperor's
new clothes. You have to be special.


The only goofy thing I'm hearing is that you are so confounded by the
language of the 2nd amendment. No matter how often it's explained to you
it
still befuddles you.

Yup. It's a befuddlement, all right.

Yep, some folks just can't seem to grasp what it's all about.


And I'd much rather be accused of changing my views
than to being befuddled by simple English. It makes me wonder how
difficult
you would find understanding a truly tough sentence.

Oh, they can be hell. That's why I've been Senior Editor of two magazines
and Senior Medical Editor at a medical communications agency. They prefer
editors who are easily befuddled by language. After having roughly 350
articles published in trade and business magazines, and having written
chapters of four manufacturing engineering books for McGraw-Hill, I'm
still
working on it, and I hope to get it right some day.

Keep at it. Maybe you'll get it one of these days. But with that background
and you still can't understand what one simple compound sentence means and
what the writers were trying to convey you're in the wrong business.


Now you're sounding like a prosecutor trying to catch me lying by
telling
me
that my last story didn't match the first one I told you. I'm not
perfect
any more than you are. I could have made a mistake about something just
the
way you could have. But what you have misunderstood is the nuance in my
statements. Like I was joking at one time or another but you didn't get
it.

I think I get the joke.

Good, because not every sentence is meant to be dead serious. But you should
know that.

I was being cynical saying they wouldn't give us an individual right.

Uh-huh.

In
that vein I was expressing my displeasure with former SC decisions by
saying
they would screw us like always. As for my true prognostication as to
what
they will do, I already told you. So look it up.

Which prognostication is the true one?

You mean with all that expertise you still can't tell? All you have to do is
ask me a specific question about a specific matter and I'll give you an
answer. You want my prediction on what the court will do in this summer?
Fire away.

Hawke


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