April 13, 2013, 08:20 PM | #51 |
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I sorta agree with Glenn in the fact that I seem to be reading a lot of contorted arguments that state while Heller does recognize the RKBA, it doesn't extend to AR-15s and the like, mainly citing the common use argument.
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April 13, 2013, 09:12 PM | #52 | |
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Well, the common-use argument pretty much covers the AR-15. It is our primary infantry rifle, it is a wildly popular civilian gun...I just can't see any kind of credible logical contortion that would say otherwise.
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April 13, 2013, 09:35 PM | #53 | |
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The case was filed back oin July of 2010. a Permanent Injunction was issued against the State in Jan. 20th, 2011. Compared to the federal courts we had been following, this was quite fast. Oh, but it's not over! The State appealed on 06/14/2011 and the appeal is still ongoing, almost 2 years later! I can guarantee that whichever side loses, the case will be appealed to the CA Supreme Court. So we are looking at another 2-3 years of continued litigation on this case. I suspect the reality of the NY cases to be about the same. Meanwhile we are also on course to get another case before the US Supreme Court. The Court may actually prefer to take on the Moore case (for several reasons), so they may decide to delist Kachalsky, in hopes that Madigan will file for cert. Yet Woollard is still alive, because of the petition for en banc. I feel Magiagn will not file for cert. This puts the ball in Gura's court with a possibly delisted Kachalsky and a probable denial of en banc in Woollard - which will then be petitioned for cert. Another possibility is that Kachalsky is granted cert. In which case, Woollard would be granted the en banc rehearing, but would be immediately stayed, pending Kachalsky. Moore is the cleanest case, as it poses a total ban on carry. Woollard is the next cleanest case, as Mr. Woollard actually held a permit, before it was denied at a second renewal, even though Kalchalsky and Woollard are essentially the same, at law. So we have Gura covering all the bases. We also have most all of the lower courts in rebellion against the Heller decision. While we really don't know how the SCOTUS feels about being ignored by the lower courts, I suspect none of the Justices like this, regardless of their personal feelings on Heller/McDonald. Then we have the folks over at SCOTUS Blog who have made Kachalsky, a petition to be watched. These attorneys and court reporters are very good at picking the cases that the Court will most likely select to hear. This brings us the reality that we will have some of the issue of carry outside the home, settled by June of 2014 to about 75%-80%. How far it may be settled will depend upon which of these three cases the Court decides to take. This all ties in with the post by our new member, Charles Mosteller (welcome, Charles). The next "vampire." The idea of "in common use" along with fees will be the next hurdle, with perhaps fees being in a slight lead. Now that the battles seem to have shifted to individual States, we will need more attorneys like James Tresmond (NY), Jason Davis (CA) and Michel & Assoc. (CA) to begin the heavy lifting at this level, while others, Like Gura, Sigale, Manley, Monroe, Kilmer and Jensen continue to hammer away at the Federal Level. |
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April 13, 2013, 10:40 PM | #54 | ||
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All silliness aside, you made a great point. Scalia's words in Heller were well-considered, and despite cries from some in the gun culture ("he didn't repeal the NFA!"), he did quite a bit for us within the context of the questions posed. If he'd gone farther, the accusations of judicial activism from the other side would have rung truer. Quote:
That said, the timing inadvertently ends up being a bit wonky. A case challenging the constitutionality of the NY SAFE Act (or equivalent laws in CO and CT) will have to wait a year or more.
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April 14, 2013, 12:13 AM | #55 | |
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I was hungry, at the time that I posted, though. A good steak for lunch would have been tasty. |
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April 14, 2013, 08:35 AM | #56 | |
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April 14, 2013, 09:52 AM | #57 | |
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To continue with my concerns. I have been involved in the campus carry debate. After all, some of the greatest force for the antigun forces has been the rampages at schools - VT, Columbine and Newton. I have testified for a campus carry bill in TX (which will probably go nowhere yet again in a seemingly progun state), told our Faculty Senate that they were incorrect and had public disagreement with our President (not a shrinking violet am I). Thus, as I said - we can run, hide and flee after the first thirty or so are killed. As quoted in the TX newspapers, I am left with my ninja IPad of death.
All that might have been washed away, except for this pearl of wisdom: Quote:
Again, it will be an empirical question whether prose becomes actuality for gun rights. A 2nd Amend. challenge to carrying in schools seems already lost. Even in strong gun rights states, carry at schools is an iffy proposition. Maybe I will be allowed to carry a Biden Double Barrel Blaster to school - yep. IIRC, in McDonald - the antigun justices returned to the position that there is no right to bear arms as we see it.
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April 14, 2013, 11:10 AM | #58 |
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Right now the entire "gun issue" in the courts is about three remaining issues:
1) Do we have a right to carry ("bear arms") and if so what is the scope? This will get settled soon, likely via the Kachalsky case...we may know more on that as early as tomorrow. My prediction: the Supremes will take it, and decide that we must have SOME right to carry, with permitless open carry the "baseline" unless there is a respectable form of concealed carry available. This is what Heller footnote 9 is all about, and it also matches the 2003 Ohio Supreme Court decision in Klein. We can live with that because open carry will get us concealed carry in rapid fashion. 2) What rights do we have to own particular guns? "AW" issues, mag capacity, calibers, etc. I consider this of secondary importance after carry, because if necessary we can carry well enough with revolvers, 1911 and various mouseguns. 3) "Who can carry" will mainly revolve around age limits (21 vs. 18) and issues relating to reformed criminals of various types. 4) "Where we carry" runs into that "sensitive places" language Scalia stuck in there. It's a problem. Best solution will be to say "if you're serious, you've got metal detectors up otherwise it's NOT all that sensitive".
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April 14, 2013, 11:28 AM | #59 |
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I'd disagree on your second point, Jim. The defense against tyranny view of the 2nd Amend. would argue against just having revolvers and 1911s for carry.
That would give constitutional approval to a new AWB - which would sale through after another Sandy Hook.
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April 14, 2013, 11:41 AM | #60 | |
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That said, Scalia was authoring a judicial opinion for the Court for a single, particular case - not a personal treatise covering the full range of his thoughts on all matters that the right to keep and bear arms could potentially touch or have relevance to. Scalia full well knows that every case turns on its own facts. The facts of the Heller case did not deal with schools, generally, or with college campuses, just it didn't deal with many other things (whether those other things be the National Firearms Act, abortion, or jaywalking). Scalia's opinion in the Heller case was never intended to be a panacea, for the very simple reason that it couldn't be. That's just not how things work, and certainly not at the level of the Supreme Court of the United States. Page # 1 of the opinion provides clarification on what is under consideration, for the sake of the opinion being rendered. I quote verbatim from the opening of the opinion: "We consider whether a District of Columbia prohibition on the possession of usable handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution." Thus, in accordance with the concept of judicial restraint, other issues must await their day in the constitutional sun to be treated to in-depth scrutiny in binding opinion. It would be premature for Scalia to try and author an opinion on carrying arms on a college campus setting, in a case that had nothing, whatsoever, to do with schools. Also, the Supreme Court doesn't just cast the equivalent of a net, in order to bring cases and controversies before it. It can pretty much pick and choose, where certiorari cases are concerned, but its menu is limited to what others bring to it. Criteria is used to weed out many cases from consideration. That said, how have Scalia's "words of wisdom," as you described it, helped in the battle to allow one to protect against a school rampage? Well, if you extract only a few words that he said out of the whole thing that he said, then you have already made the decision to blind yourself to the full potential of the opinion's eventual impact. It would take some rather bizarre strain of judicial alchemy in order to transmogrify a case about prohibition on the possession of usable handguns in the home into a comprehensive victory for carrying arms on school campuses. Disappointment that emanates from the absence of such judicial alchemy being on display in the controlling opinion in the case serves what purpose? Blinding one's own self to the actual realities of a given case - to include judicial limitations on how far the Court may reach in a single opinion predicated upon a different subject matter, is hardly an indictment of the opinion rendered. With regard to the passage from the Heller opinion that you quoted, Scalia engaged in what I previous described as the "art of ceding." He ceded on the particular (and very narrow) point that the right in question, what he characterized as the Second Amendment right (even though he knows that the actual right in question doesn't emanate or originate from the Second Amendment), in order to get that potential distraction out of the way. In all fairness, Scalia doesn't believe that the right to keep and bear arms is an absolute, unlimited right. Does any sitting supreme court justice actually believe such? When Scalia stated, "It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose," he's absolutely right. Think about what he actually said, in that particular sentence. He's not sanctioning, via the judicial power, the use of any weapon for any purpose. Whatever means whatever - it is a term that is all-encompassing. All-encompassing would include all sorts of crimes. he dealt with much, in a very tidy manner, in doing so. It allows him to be efficient and focused on what remains before him - the actual issue under consideration. When he said, "For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues," one should resist the temptation to not read into what he has said, things that he has not said. He did not say, in that statement, for example, that the issue of concealed weapons prohibitions could not be visited or revisited another day. He also did not say that all of those existing prohibitions would ultimately or necessarily prevail, if they are challenged properly. Rather, in the space of a single paragraph, he is merely wasting little time expounding upon lots and lots of things that are not at issue in the case under consideration. That's in the interest of judicial economy, if nothing else. Of course, you may well disfavor the final two sentences in that paragraph that you hold in disdain, and that you so lament over. So, let's ponder it a bit, also. "The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons." The reason that the Court's opinion in Heller, the opinion that Scalia authored, should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms, is for the very simple reason that the case at hand wasn't an inquiry into those other things. That the current case was ripe for consideration did not mean, therefore, that everything else under the proverbial sun was suddenly fair game for a big game safari hunt by the Article III court in session. The final sentence, "Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons," was quite deliberate on Scalia's part, I believe. Again, all of this that I am writing is my opinion of one, just myself. The point to focus on? Dangerous and unusual weapons. The issue is not whether a given arm (weapon) is dangerous, and the issue is not whether a given arm is unusual. Dangerous and unusual is a category all its own. So, the fact that some (or even many) guns are designed to kill is largely irrelevant. The "in common use" selection by Scalia is intended, I believe, to serve as a foundational cornerstone to protect most weapons in use by the law abiding in the republic. Scalia is doing what is known as "cabining it off." By cabining them off, Scalia is laying the ground work to protect them - in future cases that come under consideration by the court. Scalia is a smart old bird. He already full well knows that the absolute vast majority of guns do not fall under the specific category of being dangerous and unusual. You crave constitutional gold, and yet you bemoan Scalia for giving you constitutional rubies. Go figure. To deal more fully with "school carry," the Court requires school carry cases to be brought before it. Not even Scalia can spin constitutional gold out of thin air. He's a gifted writer, to be certain, and I love his use of colorful prose, when he authors opinions. But, no supreme court justice is so gifted that they can spin constitutional gold out of the thin air of the judicial firmament. |
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April 14, 2013, 11:50 AM | #61 |
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We shall see how it plays out, won't we?
As I said, the behavioral consequences are the game and not the rhetoric of Scalia's genius prose. I'm waiting - glad you are so optimistic. BTW, if the Heller case didn't deal with schools, why did the wiley old bird lay such a rotten egg on schools? Since, I work in such - I don't think he helped me. Your sesquipedalian exposition is not the current reality on the ground. I'm glad you feel SAFE.
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April 14, 2013, 12:30 PM | #62 |
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Thanks Charles, and welcome. I much prefer your brand of optimism to the sharpening of pitchforks, an increasingly tempting alternative.
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April 14, 2013, 04:10 PM | #63 |
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I believe that issues such as school carry are going to be a state issue, the current congress is not going to repeal the school carry laws and the supreme court is not going to find any restriction on school carry unconstitutional. Some states do allow school carry and we can hope the same trends that first expanded the number of shall issue states shall also lead to more school carry states and more non-permit conceal carry states. VA has tried the last two sessions to get non-permit conceal carry, so far nothing has passed and previous attempts at college carry have also failed, but as long as we continue to try we have hope.
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April 14, 2013, 04:23 PM | #64 |
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While the question of what constitutes a sensitive place is potentially colored by Scalia's remarks about schools, GFSZ's (gun free school zones) are even more broadly prohibitive of the exercise of the right than bans on actual school property. In many urban areas it is impossible to traverse a region without running afoul of a GFSZ.
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April 14, 2013, 06:18 PM | #65 |
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Scalia is NOT our friend. Where in the 2nd Amendment does it say our rights are limited to reasonable restrictions?
I live in NY and I woke up on 1/16/2013 and my gun rights were gone. 95% of all handguns are outlawed, AW ban, gun registration, ammo purchase background check......ammo purchases reported to local police and on and on and on.... Sure some of this garbage will be stopped by the courts but that will take at least 5-10 years. |
April 14, 2013, 08:06 PM | #66 | ||
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So that raises the whole issue of what we, each of us, is doing to help change attitudes by being good ambassadors for gun owners and gun ownership -- dispelling the negative stereotypes many members of the public have. That's another dimension of advocating for the RKBA. But it's beyond the scope of this thread.
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April 14, 2013, 09:11 PM | #67 | ||
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I don't consider myself an optimist, nor a pessimist. I tend to see myself as more of a realist. There are much better examples of optimists around here than myself. Take the following fellow, for example: Quote:
Date: July 3rd, 2008 |
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April 14, 2013, 09:42 PM | #68 | |
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The Constitution (as well as its amendments) enjoy the status of supreme law of the land. But, that said, they are not the only things that hold that status. But, if a statute and a constitutional provision conflicts, the Constitution takes precedence. The Constitution serves as the foundation of our nation's legal system. The sovereign of our nation is We, the People. The Constitution, though supreme law of the land, is not superior to the sovereign, itself. Thus, the Constitution that is supreme law of the land can be amended (or even repealed, if desired), as long as the process laid out by the sovereign is followed. The sovereign reposed the judicial power in our judiciary. The judicial power could be reclaimed, certainly, but until such time as that occurs, it remains where it was reposed. Our system of law is not handicapped by being limited to just and only the Constitution. Over the course of a couple of hundreds years or more, a great body of law has come into existence - American law, if you will. Interpretation of the law - and of the Constitution - is common to many nations. It is a typical function of judiciaries. Back in 1803, there was a case called Marbury v. Madison, and one of the things said in that Supreme Court opinion handed down was the following: It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. SOURCE: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/htm...5_0137_ZO.html Marbury v. Madison Date: 1803 So, with the passage of time, the judiciary has repeatedly interpreted the law. One by product of this is that even fundamental rights, rights that are constitutionally protected, have been interpreted by those in whom the judicial power has been entrusted to mean that they are subject to regulation. We have a constitutional republic, a compound republic, in fact, and we also have a constitutional system of ordered liberty. Not a constitutional system of absolute liberty, but again, one of ordered liberty. |
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April 14, 2013, 09:53 PM | #69 | |
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The right in question to which the Second Amendment refers, namely, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is not a right that has its origin in the Second Amendment. Rather, it is properly termed a preexisting right - for the very simple reason that it preexisted the Constitution, itself. As such, the Second Amendment did not alter the core right in question, effectively changing it into a right that was absolute in nature. Granted and true, the Second Amendment commands that the right in question shall not be infringed - and as I pointed out, previously in this thread, shall is indicative of a word of command. However, that shall is a command, what is to not be infringed is a preexisting right, not an absolute right. Preexisting and absolute are not one and the same thing. The command, itself, the shall not be infringed part, certainly rings with the authority of absoluteness, doesn't it? That's because that's exactly what it is supposed to do. That's the nature of a command, rather than something that is discretionary. The fact that shall can be properly construed to be absolute in nature can be accomplished without the right to which it refers becoming imbued with the nature of an absolute right. Does that help? |
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April 14, 2013, 10:15 PM | #70 | |
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The one thing I can say with certainty is we as a nation will (and do)all pay a heavy toll for government regulations on our freedom.
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April 15, 2013, 09:56 AM | #71 |
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Heller as the wonderful solution:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us...case.html?_r=0 Also, my past optimistic view was evidence based at the time. That is a simple point. I wish I was wrong. I currently see that I was perhaps incorrect. I thought that Obama would talk the ban talk but do nothing for political reasons. But I was wrong. He went full press on the issue. I thought that progun Democrats and most progun Republicans would hold the line (Toomey, Manchin - hey, being touted for President!). We will see about the House. Also, my optimism was based on the history of desegregation. In that case, the Federal government took Brown as a case to move against states. That certainly isn't the case here. If you understand that analyses change based on evidence, you might move beyond rhetoric. I'm not seeing Heller or Mc as a magic wand. I'd bet that the only thing it will protect is the right to have a double barrel - with appropriate registration - when the dust settles. Rights to handguns and EBRs will be iffy. State laws like the SAFE act will limit access to those and will the SCOTUS overturn. Place you bets on the wiley old bird. Note the NYTimes article does discuss the holes I pointed out as legitimizing such laws. See what happens for other cases - Posner's decision? That will tell the tale rather than old wily bird praise.
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April 15, 2013, 02:26 PM | #72 |
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If Woollard is also denied and Moore is granted, then the proverbial pooch will have been screwed.
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April 15, 2013, 04:52 PM | #73 | |
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April 15, 2013, 05:45 PM | #74 | |
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I suppose it's possible that they see Moore as a better vehicle to uphold carry outside the home. Perhaps it gives them more latitude to rule. I pray to God it's so. |
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April 15, 2013, 05:54 PM | #75 | |
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At the moment, all we can do is speculate.
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