Re: The Second Amendment in court

"Leif" <leifrakur2@xxxxxxxxxxx> said in
<news:1166590674.740604.104000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on Tue 19 Dec
2006 10:57:54p:


The Lone Weasel wrote:
"Kent Finnell" <kentfinn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said in
<news:jSXhh.3503$AY1.981@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on Tue 19 Dec 2006
02:22:14p:
"Leif" <leifrakur2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1166552000.403214.209000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jfma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On 19 Dec 2006 16:05:51 GMT, The Lone Weasel <loneweasel@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"David Halpern" <photonicbandgap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said in
<news:IOWdnXBq0Y_3VxrYnZ2dnUVZ_qGjnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx> on Tue 19 Dec
2006 05:18:00a:
"Leif" <leifrakur2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1166500269.714304.206590@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Saul Cornell poses the question: "Gun Rights or Gun Wrongs:
Will the Courts Rewrite the Second Amendment?"

http://blog.oup.com:80/oupblog/2006/12/parker_and_the_.html

Saul Cornell is delusional.

Gunspeak for "he's a real historian

Like your discredited Bellisilles?


so we're gonna ruin his academic career
to teach him a lesson."

Bellisilles ruined it himself. Cornell is just another gun
control advocate that is attempting to justify his preconceptions.

Leif speaking: If you disagree with something Cornell said, why
don't you say specifically what it is and explain why you think he's
wrong. Name-calling's a waste of time.

Well, Leif, with Lee (Lone Weasel) Harrison as an ally, you need no
enemies. You two need to get a room.

Who says we're allies? We disagree with each other almost as much as I
disagree with you. I just got Cornell's book today and spent as much
time yelling at him as reading his book.

My disagreement with you is like a god trying to explain to a crappie
why he should not eat worms attached to fish hooks. See the carp over
there? He sucks in the bait then spits it out. You're not that smart,
crappie. If you suck in the bait you'll be hooked. Just don't do it.

They never listen.

As to Cornell, I'll let Lawrence Tribe (a bonafied LIBERAL
constitutional law professor at Harvard) refute what the piddly
little historian from Ohio State has to say about the matter.

You mean this Laurence Tribe, punk?

[begin excerpt]

Yet an avalanche of scholarly investigation, including my
own research on the subject (not previously published), has
required me to revisit the meaning of that amendment, with
its peculiar preamble about "a well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State" - peculiar, that
is, for provisions of the federal Constitution; state
constitutions regularly contain such purposive preambles.
My conclusions, without giving the game away, are: (1) that
it's extremely misleading to frame the debate in terms of a
clash between those who think the Second Amendment protects
only the militia and the rights of the states, and those who
think the Second Amendment protects individual rights to
keep and bear arms and therefore makes pretty much all forms
of gun control presumptively unconstitutional; (2) that the
Second Amendment does indeed protect individual rights as
well as collective rights - but not in a way that creates
significant obstacles for any program of gun control short
of a federal disarmament campaign designed to eliminate all
private gun ownership, which isn't remotely in the cards
anyway; and (3) that the biggest payoff from studying the
Second Amendment is the value of being forced to grapple
with difficult interpretative issues in a politically and
emotionally charged environment.

Laurence Tribe. American Constitutional Law, V1, 3rd Ed,
2000. vi.

[end excerpt]

The individual right Tribe mentions is almost certainly that of a
member of the National Guard to bear arms on active duty.

From http://www.nrawinningteam.com/emerson1.html

In the other article, author Tony Mauro states that the growing
support constitutional and legal scholars have been giving to the
individual right argument "angers liberals." Tribe, who some feel is
the most influential American constitutional scholar today, stated,
"I've gotten an avalanche of angry mail from apparent liberals who
said, 'How could you?'" He responds by stating, "[A]s someone who
takes the Constitution seriously, I thought I had a responsibility to
see what the Second Amendment says, and how it fits." The 1978
edition of his legal treatise American Constitutional Law gave little
attention to the Second Amendment, while his recently revised
version, which has caused such a stir, gives far more attention to
the belief in the individual right to keep and bear arms. "For Larry
Tribe to say that there's more to the Second Amendment than
originally thought is very important," commented Drake University law
professor Tom Baker.

[begin excerpt]

Finally, it should be underscored that the academic debate
over the scope of the Second Amendment is largely irrelevant
to contemporary gun control proposals, which by and large do
not seek to ban all firearms, but seek only to prohibit a
narrow type of weaponry (such as assault rifles) or to
regulate gun ownership by means of waiting periods,
registration, mandatory safety devices, or the like. Such
measures are plainly constitutional. Even in colonial times
the weaponry of the militia was subject to regulation, and
Article I, [Section] 8, Clause 16, evidently contemplates a
continuing role for Congress in deciding how the "militia"
may be "organiz[ed], arm[ed], and disciplin[ed]."

Laurence Tribe, American Constitutional Law, 3rd Edition.
Volume I. p 902. New York, NY: 2000.

[end excerpt]

There are others of the liberal stripe who also support the
individual right interpretation, i.e. Akhil Amar and Leonard Levy.

Cite it or shut up.

Leif speaking: Thanks for the excerpts from Tribe's work, LW. Gun
worshipers are fond of invoking his name, but not of posting what he
has actually said. Now I can see why.

I bought AmConLaw in 2000 hoping to find his views on gun rights, but he
wasn't forthcoming in Vol 1, and hasn't put out a Vol 2 yet. I think he
realized the paper trail is largely based on invalid historical claims, and
there's mountains of it around now.

I read Cornell's conclusion where he oversimplifies the division between
constitutional realists and gunlobby fantasists. I don't really give a
fuck if many Americans believe there's an individual right to have guns
granted by the Second Amendment - they do so at the risk of their real
state gun rights and moreso the risk of their state's power to make weapons
laws. I've asked gunloons many times what would happen if they were
suddenly granted an individual gun right under the Second Amendment apart
from militia service, and none of them have the slightest notion how that
would work. I'm sure that once that state right was thrown out it would
never come again, and weapons regulation would just be the first of many
state powers reserved under the Tenth Amendment to be overturned using the
stupid precedent of the Second Amendment. And home rule for municipalities
would be wiped out. I think we might have what Madison feared, a central
nationalist government consolodating power over states rather than a
federal government sharing powers between the states.


--

Yours truly,

The Lone Weasel


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