|
Forum Rules | Firearms Safety | Firearms Photos | Links | Library | Lost Password | Email Changes |
Register | FAQ | Calendar | Today's Posts | Search |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
March 24, 2017, 08:22 PM | #26 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: December 13, 2005
Posts: 4,454
|
Quote:
The portions you reference are misused by courts giving a rationale for restrictions of the right; that is a flaw in the rationale of those decisions rather than Heller itself. There is no language so clear that it can't be misinterpreted by someone intent on misinterpreting it. When speculating about what language may have been necessary to form a majority opinion (speculation that strikes me as completely plausible) we shouldn't look right past the central trait of the decision. It is a majority decision. I know Scalia signed some brilliant dissents, but I am happy he didn't get another of those chances in Heller. I am certain that if the right involved were to be exclusively interpreted by Zuk and AB it would have a clarity and breadth it doesn't currently enjoy. Insisting on that degree of clarity and breadth a decade ago would have put the Bush admin on the other side of the issue and might have gotten only Thomas and Scalia, maybe Alito. It's important to place a smart Federalist in each slot that opens, and to have the political apparatus in the exec and Senate to make that happen. Once that foundation is laid there will need to be additional litigation. I see the issue outliving us both.
__________________
http://www.npboards.com/index.php |
|
March 24, 2017, 08:31 PM | #27 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: October 23, 2005
Location: US
Posts: 3,657
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
March 24, 2017, 10:06 PM | #28 | |
Staff
Join Date: September 25, 2008
Location: CONUS
Posts: 18,468
|
Quote:
|
|
March 25, 2017, 11:28 AM | #29 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: June 24, 2008
Posts: 2,607
|
Quote:
|
|
March 25, 2017, 03:35 PM | #30 |
Senior Member
Join Date: November 17, 2000
Posts: 20,064
|
Ah - that's what I've been saying, the judges decide on the basis of their ideology and then look for phrases and precedents that support their view. These might be very tortured but that's what's been happening in the EBR, mag limit cases.
Thus, again - the prose left this vulnerability. Sorry to repeat myself, but that's the way I call it. The theoretical legal discussions are great but if the judicial behaviors are negative - that is not good. Also, the assumption that a future court will overturn these lower decisions is not a good one, IMHO.
__________________
NRA, TSRA, IDPA, NTI, Polite Soc. - Aux Armes, Citoyens |
March 25, 2017, 05:01 PM | #31 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: December 13, 2005
Posts: 4,454
|
Quote:
Between 1986 and 2003, the composition of the court changed to that Bowers v. Hardwick was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas. I don't think the philosophical victors in Lawrence simply assumed that they would prevail one day, but instead did the work of laying the foundation that would hand it to them.
__________________
http://www.npboards.com/index.php |
|
March 25, 2017, 05:09 PM | #32 |
Senior Member
Join Date: November 17, 2000
Posts: 20,064
|
I understand that. In Lawerence, there was a societal change for keeping the government out of the bedrooms of consenting adults. In other cases, where restrictions were overturned (like Brown v. Topeka) there was a societal shift also.
So having the ground work in place would be a good thing. So: 1. Is having these negative lower court decisions sitting a ground work for a better decision? 2. Is there a societal shift such that a future SCOTUS will undo the past injustices of the lowers courts? Or do the lower court decisions reinforce many in society to say that these restrictions make sense to them?
__________________
NRA, TSRA, IDPA, NTI, Polite Soc. - Aux Armes, Citoyens |
March 25, 2017, 08:43 PM | #33 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: December 13, 2005
Posts: 4,454
|
Quote:
Plessy surely reinforced the position of those to whom it made sense. Plessy didn't hamper the court in Brown. Bowers was vindication those who found no right to sodomy in the COTUS, but that was no restraint on the majority in Lawrence. I do believe there is a cultural shift from 30 and forty years ago when the loudest and most strident voices in the public policy room dismissed the very idea of an individual right as Bircher lunacy. In many places, public culture is less alarmed by the idea of non-police carry. Those changes aren't trivial. As to your first question, adverse decisions in lower courts don't help except to highlight the need to address court composition through the political process, the same process that has brought forth Gorsuch. Allow an exercise in best case scenarios. If Gorsuch is confirmed (how happy are we that he is the nominee under discussion rather than Garland), and Kennedy, Ginsberg and Thomas are all replaced with people of the same general view as Gorsuch or Thomas, maybe the next 2d Am. case won't be 5-4 and we would see more of the sort of rebuke issued in Caetano where states attempt prohibitions of arms in common use.
__________________
http://www.npboards.com/index.php Last edited by zukiphile; March 26, 2017 at 06:54 AM. |
|
March 26, 2017, 11:19 AM | #34 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: June 24, 2008
Posts: 2,607
|
Quote:
Quote:
No matter how an individual Supreme Court justice may feel about the issue at hand, they simply can't allow lower courts to dump on Supreme Court decisions like this. Not if the word "Supreme" is going to mean anything. |
||
March 27, 2017, 11:51 AM | #35 | ||||
Junior member
Join Date: March 25, 2017
Posts: 115
|
Regarding Feinstein's words as given in the OP...
Quote:
As Frank Ettin pointed out in post #5, the quote that Feinstein there took from Heller was not, as she presented it, a conclusion of the majority, but was instead part of a conditional clause (she omitted the "if"). So, Feinstein misrepresented Heller. I think that it is likely that Scalia wrote the opinion as he did because he was a precise writer and he wished to make it clear that the majority was limiting the scope of their decision to the laws challenged in case at hand (the DC handgun ban and the DC ban on keeping guns at home if they are unlocked and functional). We can speculate as to whether such an explicit limiting of scope was required by one of the other justices, to get him to sign on to the majority. The majority in Heller does seem to indicate that certain firearms can be subjected to the tax and registry requirements of the NFA: Quote:
True: the opinion seems to recognize a Miller-imposed limitation of 2nd Amendment protections on arms: Quote:
Quote:
So one may well consider whether the 2nd Amendment does indeed protect the ownership of machineguns, even supposing that they are to be considered “dangerous and unusual weapons.” |
||||
March 28, 2017, 07:36 PM | #36 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Quote:
Quote:
Last edited by LogicMan; March 28, 2017 at 07:47 PM. |
||
March 28, 2017, 07:44 PM | #37 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Quote:
The AWBs use the phony "military-style features" claim for their "logic." Quote:
National reciprocity may also, if passed, get struck down as unconstitutional as that too may well be a violation of states rights. |
||
March 28, 2017, 08:46 PM | #38 |
Senior Member
Join Date: November 17, 2000
Posts: 20,064
|
If you view the RKBA as a right guaranteed by the BOR and thus the Constitution at a level determined federally, states could not constrain it.
State discriminatory laws on race and voting were struck down as they violated basic rights. States trying to impose their religious views were struck down federally. States trying to define marriage according to race were struck down. Thus, I see no states rights argument for limiting the RKBA beyond a Federal limit. The 2nd supposedly applies to the states now.
__________________
NRA, TSRA, IDPA, NTI, Polite Soc. - Aux Armes, Citoyens |
March 28, 2017, 08:50 PM | #39 | |
Staff
Join Date: September 25, 2008
Location: CONUS
Posts: 18,468
|
Quote:
If the feds can argue (as they have) that they have jurisdiction over marijuana that was grown, sold, and smoked entirely within one state on the grounds that by growing, selling, and smoking that weed the pricipals affected interstate commerce by NOT importing the marijuana from another state, they can certainly assert jurisdiction over things that really ARE in interstate commerce. |
|
March 28, 2017, 08:57 PM | #40 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Quote:
|
|
March 28, 2017, 08:58 PM | #41 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Quote:
|
|
March 28, 2017, 09:51 PM | #42 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: November 17, 2000
Posts: 20,064
|
From Wikipedia on the Voting Rights Act:
Quote:
If the lower courts struck the law down on a states rights argument, they would undercut all the rights protecting decisions that they agree with.
__________________
NRA, TSRA, IDPA, NTI, Polite Soc. - Aux Armes, Citoyens |
|
March 28, 2017, 09:52 PM | #43 | ||
Junior member
Join Date: March 25, 2017
Posts: 115
|
Quote:
However, before the time the NFA was passed, there were no federal restrictions on "NFA firearms"--machineguns, short-barreled shotguns, etc. Therefore if NFA firearms were indeed at that time--1934--already "not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes," then under the Heller rule they would be unprotected. And since their "not typically possessed[, etc.]" status was not caused by some previous restriction, there is no circularity. The real problem comes with newly invented arms. Any innovative weapon--revolvers, fixed-ammunition firearms, lever-actions, semi-autos, etc.--will naturally be "not typically possessed" at the time of their introduction. So, if the government simply makes it a practice to restrict new weapons as soon as they're invented, that seems not to violate Heller. There is a way out of that circularity: Quote:
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery...100006&EXT=pdf |
||
March 28, 2017, 09:55 PM | #44 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Quote:
|
|
March 28, 2017, 09:56 PM | #45 |
Senior Member
Join Date: November 17, 2000
Posts: 20,064
|
All in all, I go back to my view that waiting for the SCOTUS isn't going to work. Why not try a legislative attack on gun control. Currently, the progun politicians are strictly defensive for the most part. Vote for us as it could be worse.
Proactive bills are left to languish as they babble about crap.
__________________
NRA, TSRA, IDPA, NTI, Polite Soc. - Aux Armes, Citoyens |
March 28, 2017, 09:57 PM | #46 |
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Personally, I do not think that the logic of regarding the Second Amendment as applying to only weapons typically possessed by law-abiding citizens as being logical, as there are plenty of weapons that are clearly "arms" but yet not typically possessed, for example battle axes, war hammers, swords, shields, bow and arrow, crossbows, etc...
|
March 28, 2017, 10:02 PM | #47 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: January 16, 2013
Posts: 280
|
Quote:
But yes, we need a gun rights offense at the federal level, not defense. The problem is unfortunately, too many of the pro-gun politicians don't know much about the subject to adequately defend it |
|
March 28, 2017, 10:09 PM | #48 |
Senior Member
Join Date: November 17, 2000
Posts: 20,064
|
Well, sadly that's true. We saw idiotic antigun congress critters denouncing things that go up! Then a candidate for Secretary of Education supports guns in schools in places where there are grizzly bears. That really helped.
The collective intelligence from all of the Congress isn't really that impressive (on all sides).
__________________
NRA, TSRA, IDPA, NTI, Polite Soc. - Aux Armes, Citoyens |
March 28, 2017, 10:15 PM | #49 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: January 30, 2006
Posts: 1,433
|
Quote:
__________________
Vietnam Veteran ('69-'70) NRA Life Member RMEF Life Member |
|
March 28, 2017, 11:05 PM | #50 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: October 23, 2005
Location: US
Posts: 3,657
|
Quote:
And I realize that is a lot of "ifs" but honestly Heller was gutsy. Lot's of Pro 2A folks didn't fully support it in the beginning as they feared a ruling negative to us. If states keep piling on the stupid anti-gun legislation, I believe we need to just go for it. See if the court grant a writ, and then see what they decide. You are right, though. I see nothing wrong in trying legislative means if we can't get court rulings to go our way in a reasonable time. The SCOTUS is picky on granting certiorari on gun rights as it is. I think they would rather not touch it if they can help it, but if there is a split between circuits and enough plaintiffs file briefs then they can't really avoid it but so long. |
|
|
|