Justice Stevens says that the student demonstrations last Saturday are "a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms."
But the students should ask for more — send more clear signs — and "demand a repeal of the Second Amendment." Usually, advocates of gun control tend to give assurances that they're not out to repeal the Second Amendment. A forthright demand for a repeal of the Second Amendment would wreck those assurances and elevate the pro-gun side, which could credibly intensify its rhetoric with reality-based anxiety that they are coming to take away your constitutional rights. If they can take away your Second Amendment rights — if the Bill of Rights is on the chopping block — they may come for your freedom of religion next, they can take away your freedom of speech, you right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures — whatever they like, whatever they think stands in their way.
The op-ed quickly shifts to a repetition of the argument made by the losing side in the 2008 Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Heller and set out in Justice Stevens's dissenting opinion. Stevens could have written an op-ed simply saying that Heller is bad and should be overruled. Then he wouldn't be directly threatening our constitutional rights, just informing us that we're mistaken about the existence of one of them. Indeed, we would be "overturning that decision" with a constitutional amendment:
[Heller] has provided the N.R.A. with a propaganda weapon of immense power.Rights as propaganda. Look around. How often do we use "rights" as propaganda? That question used to dominate discussions within legal academia. You can get up to speed on what I lived through in the 1980s by reading "legal theory: critical theory/Critical Perspectives on Rights... The Critique of Rights." I'll just list the 5 propositions discussed at that link, which goes to a Harvard website:
1. The discourse of rights is less useful in securing progressive social change than liberal theorists and politicians assume.Back to Justice Stevens:
2. Legal rights are in fact indeterminate and incoherent.
3. The use of rights discourse stunts human imagination and mystifies people about how law really works.
4. At least as prevailing in American law, the discourse of rights reflects and produces a kind of isolated individualism that hinders social solidarity and genuine human connection.
5. Rights discourse can actually impede progressive movement for genuine democracy and justice.
Overturning [Heller] via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.I had to go back to the NYT webpage to recheck the language even though I knew I copied and pasted it. I was shocked at "get rid of the Second Amendment." Get rid of. Not "repeal." Get rid of. Not get rid of Heller, but get rid of the Second Amendment.
And it would be simple!? That's just a weird thing to say. It's not simple at all to amend the Constitution. Not only do you need 2/3 supermajority in both Houses of Congress, you are defeated if one house in the legislature of 13 states says no. This is why I was so damned sure in 2004 that George Bush's anti-gay-marriage amendment would never become part of the Constitution.
It would not be simple to get rid of the Second Amendment through the amendment process. It would be virtually impossible.
And the idea that you'd excise a right from the Constitution to "weaken" a lobbying group that "stymie[s] legislative debate" is repellant. Notice the motive of restricting speech. A group speaks too powerfully; we need to change the Constitution.
Stevens concludes:
That simple but dramatic action would move Saturday’s marchers closer to their objective than any other possible reform.We should remove rights from the Constitution because it would be dramatic and because it would move marchers closer to their objective??
I am very sad to see Justice Stevens writing like that, but he's made this proposal before. Back in 2014, he published a not-well-received book — "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution" — that reframed various old dissenting opinions of his as proposals to amend the Constitution. Of course, the Second Amendment was in the set of six.
What's new is that his proposal to get rid of the Second Amendment is tied to the student protests: Let's seize upon their youthful enthusiasm, let's weaponize their passion, and use it to get somewhere we've always wanted to go.
I like kids as much as the next guy, but I'm not on the follow-the-kids bandwagon, especially when it comes to the value of respecting the American tradition of constitutional rights.
Posts
265 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 265 of 265We know that the American will never repeal the Second Amendment.
Correct.
Ditto, abortion.
Ditto, same-sex marriage.
Only because abortion and same-sex marriage don't require an amendment to overturn...all they require are five Justices willing to defend the meaning and integrity of the actual written Constitution.
ARM said...As you note, the restrictions have become more restrictive over time. If it was not possible to make even more restrictions all the hysteria about 'gun grabbers' gaining control of the Supreme Court would be mere hysteria.
I don't think you can look at the Court's history and say that it's a straight line of "more restrictions." Heller confirmed a personal/individual right. Incorporation means that right applies to the states. The classes and types of weapons available to the individual today are different from what was available a hundred years ago, sure. But I'd say applying your point to the pro-control people we'd have to call they hysterical for wanting to ban/further restrict guns TODAY--after all we can't easily buy automatic weapons like we used to be able to, so what's the problem?
Anyway the repeated mantra of "we just want common sense regulation" or your framing of increased incremental regulation as being no big threat is remarkably selectively applied, with respect to rights. I mean I support common sense restrictions on when abortions can be performed--almost all civilized nations around the globe have much more stringent regulations on that than we do--but any move for such regulation is greeted with just the type of hysteria you reference. That hysteria, though, is cheered & amplified by the national Media and man nice centrist folks, while similar "hysteria" in opposition to firearm restrictions is treated as shameful or somehow dangerous.
Just a weird double standard, I guess.
Everytime I see the words Molon Labe, I see it as Molon Labia.
Stevens is just another leftwing crypto-fascist finally saying what he really thinks. These folks hate free speech because people say things they don't like. They hate the 2nd amendment because it allows people to defend themselves. They hate due process because it protects people (e.g., men, Christians, straights, conservatives, Republicans) they'd love to throw in jail for badthink. All of these things are bad because they impede progressives steamrolling over society to create the Diversitopia that they've been dreaming about since they were brainwashed in college.
Getting there, however, will look like the Great Purge, the Cultural Revolution and Tienanmen Square, and the results will be Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
This is a stunning admission. The left needs to remove all opposition for its ideas to flourish. That says a great deal about those ideas - they are not only incompatible with our basic freedoms, but exclusive of them.
But anyway I keep saying: let's go! Start your repeal movement. If you really think huge majorities agree with you then get to it already. From that perspective I appreciate this article (and others like it). That people at rallies like the ones recently publicized SAY they represent the vast majority of the people but ACT like they understand actually repealing the 2nd is beyond their reach (and thus argue for infringing the right via regulation instead) shows, to me, that even they don't believe their own spin.
Many NYTimes commenters seem to, though. Let's go, then!
Molon labia doesnt work too well, labia bein Latin, not Greek, being also a noun not a verb, etc.
Molon labe is more literally "as long as you are here, take them". A lot has been left out, implied, because of course it's laconic.
Using the same implications, and leaving aside infelicities of language, then- molon labia
"As long as you are here, lets have some pussy"
Which is not a very #metoo sentiment.
As you note, the restrictions have become more restrictive over time. If it was not possible to make even more restrictions all the hysteria about 'gun grabbers' gaining control of the Supreme Court would be mere hysteria.
This is a narrow view. In red states the laws are becoming more liberal, more open carry, easier to obtain concealed carry. And those states are more peaceful than gun-grabber states like IL and NY and my lively CA.
Gun control. Transgender/homosexual marriage. Elective abortion. Liberals want the law to be a progressive congruence ("=") that serves their weird faith and favors their political sensibilities. It is literally not for the "children" and it is for every other American, selectively.
easier to obtain concealed carry. And those states are more peaceful
A climate of rights and responsibilities. They should close Planned Parenthood and open Responsible Personhood.
Everytime I see the words Molon Labe, I see it as Molon Labia.
I see Molson Lager.
“As long as you are here, lets have some pussy"
Which is not a very #metoo sentiment.”
LOL! I can’t stay mad at you for long Buwaya, I do appreciate your sense of humor. I knew what Molon Labe meant, Ive seen it many times in any given discussion on 2nd Amendment Rights and I always see the absurdity in it. No one’s going to take your precious guns, at least not until us old farts die off.
Elective abortion is a single-use policy (the wicked solution, the final solution): to terminate a human life that has been deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable. Pro-Choice, including selective-child, diversity, and congruence ("="), is a quasi-religion doctrine that removes agency from women and men.
Guns, as scalpels, are dual-use tools, with a multi-role capacity.
In the former, the issue is normalization/promotion of rites and irresponsibility, and transhuman orientation. In the latter, the issue is the exception, including: "fast and furious", Planned Parent, self-abortion, and criminal loopholes.
"One door at time. Once words get around, sheep will start turning their guns in. And the feds know where they. And now physicians are asking whether guns are in the house. The hard core won't turn their gun in, but that number will dwindle as time goes on. And then it will get interesting."
I don’t think that you quite get it. 200,000 armed federal agents to disarm 100,000,000 armed Americans. Each one would have to disarm 500, but that ignores that they would probably have to work in teams for safety, so, better than 1,000 per 2 man team. Assuming that every armed federal agent could be used, which means no DEA, ICE, etc. Going door to door. May work in parts of suburbia. Not so well in either the ghetto, or rural America. Get the military involved? Likely get their officers shot, if they could get beyond Posse Comitatus. National Guard? Need the governor for that, which leaves you a handful of Guards in deep blue states. Ditto local LEOs. They have to live in their communities, and that isn’t going to work if they try to disarm their neighbors. We saw what happened there in CO when the Dem Legislature passed unpopular gun laws. All except a handful of the (elected) Sherrifs in the state flatly refused to enforce the laws. Their budgets couldn’t handle the added costs, etc. We are talking sherrifs in almost 60 of the 64 counties. LEOs could try to disarm the gangbangers in Denver and Aurora, and the hippies in Boulder protecting their pot grows, but that was about it.
And, yes, a lot of the commentators here may be blow hards. Demographically, a lot of us are well beyond our prime. But, you are also talking disarming a segment of the population who take their gun ownership very seriously. In particular here, note that the two overlapping demographics that have traditionally constituted the “tip of the spear”, who form the bulk of those enlisting in combat arms, are the Scotts Irish, and those in rural America, probably have the highest rate of gun ownership in the country . Pretty much everyone I know in rural MT is well armed, and know how to use them. Partly, it is the self-reliance, with a county 100 miles long that may have only one deputy working late nights. Partly, it is living amidst a lot of 4 legged predators. We are talking disarming millions of combat vets whose heritage includes both independence from authority and gun ownership.
So, as they say, go ahead, and make their day.
Molon Labe. I have the bumper sticker on my rear window, nice and high for visibility. It has cause more than a few to ask the question (Inga and her gutter mind notwithstanding).
But, Inga, they will take the guns. And it does not matter when, just that it is inevitable. It is a side effect of cultural entropy. Its what happens, usually, when a smothering blanket of tyrrany comes down on a culture, which is the result of degeneracy or exhaustion.
Guns for the people are a statement of virile independence, a promise to spit in a tyrants eye, a threat to bring down the system if need be. Creation requires destruction, birth needs death, the world quite often needs to be turned upside down.
When the point of life is safety, not struggle, not conquest, then you are, culturally, in the declining years.
"Make us safe!" is a very decadent demand.
A addled old man has enormous power to trigger the weak, impotent and stupid... film at eleven.
Before you know it, we'll have self-driving guns.
The first & second amendments are first & second for a reason. They are important. w/o them, the rest of the bill of rights and amendments are meaningless. Without Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to bear arms, what will restrain the federal government? What will keep the United States of America from becoming a tyranny?
Decadence happens, you are seeing it now and you can't stop it. The odd part is that some celebrate it. That is to be expected, decadent peoples like decadence.
The pro-gun people are like the ancient Romans, holding to the ancient virtues of their greatness, those of Cato the Elder and Cincinnatus. A declining number, but everything considered, as with the Romans, they are in the matter of the ancient virtues the best of you. They will however lose, and that will be your tragedy. One day you will get writers, your Juvenals say, asking about the loss of these virtues.
The way out of decadence is going to be extremely painful. It will require revolution or foreign conquest by a more virile and violent people.
“But, Inga, they will take the guns.”
I seriously doubt it. Try to curb your enthusiasm regarding the demise of the US.
John Henry said: "I just can't conceive of any possible offer that would induce you, me or anyone else who believes in it to give it up.
Can you?"
In a practical sense, no.
The American left looks at the decline of cigarette smoking as a model to achieve its political goals. Not all the people who own guns are 2nd amendment absolutists. for some (like me) shooting is a hobby, some people hunt, for some gun ownership is a family custom (a lot of guns are passed from father to sons when the old man gets too old to use them safely).
So, once the 2nd amendment is out of the way, you start attacking gun ownership on the margins, as, in the 1970s & 1980s, cigarette smoking was attacked on the margins. Increase the financial and social cost of gun ownership, one law at at a time. Eventually the remaining gun owners will be seen as a small, nutty, unhealthy minority, whose obsession with guns is a threat to the majority. Then you will see confiscation.
"It will require revolution or foreign conquest by a more virile and violent people."
That is exactly right.
My bet is on revolution.
Repeal the 2nd and you’ve in effect repealed them all.
I see a lot of comments that if the 2nd is tossed out the 1st follows.
Liberals are already hard at work tossing out the 1st.
Hate speech isn't free speech
Free speech zones- with permits required to practice in them.
Banning of offensive speakers.
I'm sure everyone here can up with a few examples if they want to.
And then there are the imaginary rights that liberals champion- positive rights- that need to be provided by government. None of the rights enumerated in our Constitution need to be provided to us. They simply require government to keep it's grubby hands off them.
I see so many now talking about a right to healthcare, living wage, housing, food... All of which have to be provided for. And how does government provide for them? By using force of arms to take from one set of people to give to another...
I don't want government to have a monopoly on arms.
"One door at time. Once words get around, sheep will start turning their guns in. And the feds know where they. And now physicians are asking whether guns are in the house. The hard core won't turn their gun in, but that number will dwindle as time goes on. And then it will get interesting."
I mentioned earlier about forgotten buyers and unfortunate boating accidents, but it gets worse. In rural America, guns are sold like chainsaws, as tools. Which means that there is a lot of selling and barter going on all the time. When I sold a Polaris several years ago, about half the offers I got included a firearm of one type or another. The one I ended up with is, of course, long gone. That is the other thing, if you like guns, you are always wanting to buy the next shiny trinket. Not all of us are like Sean Hannity, who has a dozen or so Liberty safes. Which untimely means one in, one out, both for the money, and for the storage. A huge amount of turnover, almost all under the government’s radar, and almost all perfectly legal. (I will admit that, apparently, not everyone checks DLs to make sure that handguns aren’t sold across state lines).
Still, there is a lot of paranoia. People buy guns privately, instead of through a FFL, precisely so the feds don’t know every gun that they own, even if the Feds could access all the FFL paperwork - because of the worry that someday the gun grabbers are going to do just that. And those are the guns that are being buried. Along, of course, with ammunition. Paranoid? Not if you watch what went on this weekend with those marches, or reading that comment I have been responding to.
And then the comment about Phil Zimmerman reminded me that gun manufacturer is moving towards self-manufacture. You can buy a Ghost Gunner machine online for maybe $1500, that in maybe 2 hours turns an 80% complete AR-15 lower receiver (the part with the serial number) into a completely operational one. Just buy the rest of the parts online, or at your local gun shop, and, voila, you have a completely functional AR-15 that doesn’t legally require a serial number, unless you want to add one. Key is that you can’t sell or transfer ownership to it - because that would be interstate commerce, which would put it in reach of federal law (and require a serial number). Or, if you are good with machine tools, you can do it by hand. Or, if you are really good, you can build a legally untraceable AR-15 lower receiver from scratch. The tie to Zimmerman Is that the BATFE is apparently trying to treat the programming of the machines to do this as munitions. Good luck there. Ghost Gunners also apparently work on AR-10 lower receivers already. Likely Glocks are next (Lone Wolf, just west of Sandpoint, ID already produces a 100% non-Glock Glock, and sells all the parts required). Modularity is great. Making things worse though - Ghost Gunner takes 80% complete lower receivers and mills them into 100% complete. AR-15 lower receivers have also been built, from scratch, using 3D manufacturing. You can, right now, easily build one in plastic, from plans from the Internet, and fairly cheap machines. Don’t last that well though, cracking under stress of recoil in short order. Maybe a dozen shots. Metal is what is needed. That is clearly today feasible with higher end 3D machines. The problem, right now, is cost. And that will be here in fairly short order.
Cicero's problem with defending Rome's ancient virtues, Buwaya, was that these were largely unpracticed in the late Republic. Political office by then was seen as a means to wealth and power. The Republic was doomed by its victory over Carthage.
Cicero was a New Man, Caesar came from an ancient family of aristocrats. If the Republic was to remain, Caesar, not Cicero, should have defended it.
Chuck said...
Oh; one more canard from the gun-banners...
Chuck, you are playing on the side of right and virtue; I may have to treat you as a human being today!
Gahrie,
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to give the people the ability to overthrow a tyrannical government the same way we did during the Revolutionary War.
3/27/18, 11:04 AM
Exactly. What better purpose of weapons in the people's hands than to shoot judges who think that weapons do not belong in the people's hands? /no sarc
"Cicero's problem with defending Rome's ancient virtues,"
I cite Cato, not Cicero. The rot was in long before Cicero. The crisis came with Marius, or before that, when the old order proved incapable of maintaining Roman expansion, which was critical to keeping the empire in being.
The problem with ancient empires was that they were not economically self-sustaining. Athens could be imperial only by extorting tribute from its allies. Rome by outright looting, of treasure, slaves and land. They were like sharks, needing to feed.
"Japan would never invade the United States. We would find a rifle behind every blade of grass." Isoroku Yamamoto
Progressives would learn what the Japanese knew.
“So, once the 2nd amendment is out of the way, you start attacking gun ownership on the margins, as, in the 1970s & 1980s, cigarette smoking was attacked on the margins. Increase the financial and social cost of gun ownership, one law at at a time. Eventually the remaining gun owners will be seen as a small, nutty, unhealthy minority, whose obsession with guns is a threat to the majority. Then you will see confiscation. “
I think that awhile back, back probably when Clinton’s AWB was enacted, that might have bee the case. But I think that gun ownership and usage has become a tribal badge. It has long been tribal, of course, esp with the Scotts Irish and out west. Think Davy Crockett and all those westerns that we have seen. But what the Crooked Hillary campaign did by calling its opponents “deplorables” was to push working class whites out of the Democratic Party, their traditional home, at least since Andrew Jackson. Othering this way works with the aspiring middle class and upper middle class. Not so well with “deplorables”.
I hit a range in the PHX area once or twice a week, do my business (10 targets, 10 mags, 100 rounds), and get out. But a majority of the lanes seem to be In use by people who aren’t all that good. Who are diddling around, plinking away. OFTEN NEWBIES. There seem to be quite a number of people right now who are trying it out. Compared to the range I shot at in CO before the election, it seems to be more than before. Could be different demographics around the two ranges. Still it feels like more. And they seem much more working class - Clinton’s “deplorables”. Which may indicate that gun ownership is becoming even more tribal, with open carry (legal in both AZ and MT) indicating deplorability to the world.
So, yes, maybe if I were younger, I could have been shamed away from gun ownership. I am putitively a member of the social class most susceptible to that sort of thing - aspiring upper middle class professional. But, then, that is also the demographic that would most quickly give up their guns if the govt just asked nicely.
Buwaya wrote:
"They were like sharks, needing to feed."
Yes, under the Republic, the Roman governors were famous for looting their provinces of everything of value (including art) and sending it back to Rome. More treasures of the ancient world were destroyed by Romans than by the people who followed them.
"We know that the American will never repeal the Second Amendment."
The gun grabbers have neither the manpower, the moral right or the balls.
The Constitution will fall before the Bill of Rights.
Chuck, you are playing on the side of right and virtue; I may have to treat you as a human being today!
I want all credit on this going to Althouse. This was an extraordinarily good post by the prof.
Althouse's law posts were what originally attracted me. I love her cultural posts (and most often don't even comment on them notwithstanding my admiration for them) too. But she is just so great, at doing legal writing for audiences of laypersons.
Daniel Shays was a hero and a prophet.
His portrait should be on the twenty.
"Simple" is not the antonym of "Difficult".
"War is very simple, but in War the simplest things become very difficult."
-Carl von Clausewitz
Blogger Inga said...
"I seriously doubt it. Try to curb your enthusiasm regarding the demise of the US."
Not a big history buff, I see.
Etienne said...
The Constitution will fall before the Bill of Rights.
Exactly. The government does not grant these rights. The governments purpose is to protect those rights. To see that all citizens enjoy them. The right to self protection will still exist even if there is no government of the United States. The government couldn't repeal it even if the wanted to for that same reason.
Repealing the Second Amendment would do nothing to end the right to keep and bear arms. It is a natural right. Repeal would simply signify that our government no longer respects rights that we obtain through "Nature and Nature's God."
In light of Stevens' screed, will future prog SCOTUS candidates be asked if they, too, want to get rid of the 2nd? And if they don't, whether they believe that, as written, it confers an individual right to bear arms?
I wholeheartedly endorse the left's attempts to repeal the Second Amendment and subsequent confiscation efforts.
Was it Robert Frost? Don't take down fences until you know why they exist?
These are kids (being whored out by adults). They don't know what they don't know. The don't don't know that the founder studied centuries of failed governments, before crafting a representative republic. They don't know the Bill of Rights was an after thought, added to the Constitution to make the FEDERAL govt more palatable to the people. They don't know the BoR was added to restrict the power of the new Federal govt.
Don't tear down the protection, until you understand why the protection exist.
They do not know.
Senator Grassely of Iowa is head of the Judiciary Committee. He asked during a SCOTUS hearing, which existed first? The Right to keep and bear arms, or the Constitution?
Very simple question. I would love Stevens to answer that question. Because as always this battle is about human rights. Not Guns, or speech, or privacy. They all existed before govt.
Discuss
iowan2 said...
"Was it Robert Frost? Don't take down fences until you know why they exist?"
That would be G.K.Chesterton
Frost wrote a poem about two guys mending a stone wall - Mending Wall:
"Good fences make good neighbors"
Frost was anti-wall.
Interesting take from the Washington Post:
In a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday, Stevens calls for a repeal of the Second Amendment. The move might as well be considered an in-kind contribution to the National Rifle Association, to Republicans’ efforts to keep the House and Senate in 2018, and to President Trump’s 2020 reelection bid. In one fell swoop, Stevens has lent credence to the talking point that the left really just wants to get rid of gun ownership and reasserted the need for gun-rights supporters to prevent his ilk from ever being appointed again
Yep.
some people currently believe that guns make them safer, but the epidemiology argues otherwise.
Weapons will ALWAYS keep one safe from Tyranny. Home safety and zapping Bambi are incidental benefits of preventing tyrants from achieving their dreams.
We should remove rights from the Constitution because it would be dramatic and because it would move marchers closer to their objective??
Well it would save lives but clearly that's not important to you.
I like kids as much as the next guy...
LOL. Talk about a statement without much substance. Not enough to keep them from getting terrorized by the militiamen that the NRA finds worthy of rights protection - like every nut with a semiautomatic. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Howard: "A addled old man has enormous power to trigger the weak, impotent and stupid"
I think you misspelled 'accidentally said out loud what all leftists really want and intend to do'....
“Well it would save lives but clearly that's not important to you.”
Wishful thinking, but no real evidence to support that theory, and some to discredit it.
He advocates using the democratic process to eliminate the Second Amendment rather than judicial fiat.
Like how the Bolivarian cadres immiserated Venezuela, or Erdogan is turning Turkey into the next Iran.
Wishful thinking, but no real evidence to support that theory...
The focus of this post like so many others on abstract legal theory, public reaction, and other trivialities to be elevated above just a basic human reaction to the nauseating scale of human tragedy, its abetment by demagoguery and bought-off politicians and the failure of a society to see the problem clearly and act on it are overwhelming evidence. Abstracting a matter of moral tragedy to "countervailing interests" and objectifying the victims is the very definition of callous disregard at best, sociopathy at best. When I read these posts I feel like I'm watching a ten year old rip the wings off of flies and in a very removed way relate how this proves the flies' inferiority and set about pondering how many more advanced animals he can find to torture to prove his superiority to them - with an evil glimmer in his eye. Shutting out the screams of the victims and overpowering them with your own is the definition of psychopathy. Sociopaths simply don't have the necessary emotional reaction to explicit acts of violation that allow the rest of us, the majority, to have a conscience and therefore participate in maintaining a functional society.
Well it would save lives but clearly that's not important to you.
So would banning abortion, cars and swimming pools.....many more than banning guns each.
At least he's honest and understands the words as written.
They don't know the BoR was added to restrict the power of the new Federal govt.
Which makes the fact that it actually greatly increased the power of government (as the Fderalists said it would) all the more damning.
It wasn't an anti-"gay" amendment, but rather a pro-heterosexual position. Ironically, the progressive and liberal sects of the Pro-Choice Church gave us congruence ("=") or selective exclusion. The right side of the liberal/libertarian nexus, joined by conservatives, had a better proposal: civil unions for all, rather than a twilight ruling favored by the left and meandering moderates, which is historically a first-order forcing of progressive corruption and dysfunction.
3/27/18, 8:17 PM
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Wishful thinking, but no real evidence to support that theory...
Shutting out the screams of the victims and overpowering them with your own is the definition of psychopathy. Sociopaths simply don't have the necessary emotional reaction to explicit acts of violation that allow the rest of us, the majority, to have a conscience and therefore participate in maintaining a functional society.
3/27/18, 8:19 PM
Here's the thing, Toothy, you've got it just the other way round.
As Althouse elsewhen posted and as liberals gleefully owned up to at the time, it's the leftists who don't have the gross-out disgust gag reflex type reaction to evil that conservatives do.
They're the ones who stare at pictures of rotting meat or flies on a dying animal or a spider crawling on a human face and go "So?" They're the ones failing the Voight-Kampff test, not us.
Ayatollah Stevens
Discovers some rights ceased to exist
After discovering other rights
were mean to exist in penumbra
The piece of paper
says whatever the Ayatollahs want.
Whatever.
At 97, no one is going to muzzle Justice Stevens. If he thinks the Second Amendment is bad and must go, then let him say so. If he is inspired by the Children Crusade of 1212, against Muslim infidels, then so am I.
"The second movement was led by a twelve-year-old[3] French shepherd boy named Stephen of Cloyes, who said in June that he bore a letter for the king of France from Jesus." Who knew the George Soros was to blame for the failure of the Chilren's Crusade.
http://www.newsweek.com/latest-david-hogg-conspiracy-theory-explained-861747
Bruce was just talking about 3d printed guns and insty links to this. http://www.cedarwrites.com/2018/03/23/pandoras-gun/
It is about how a single use pistol can be printed on an inexpensive 3d printer. All plastic except a small nail as a firing pin.
Can be printed at your local library. Do it a few pieces at a visit so they don't know it's a gun.
I suspect it could be printed on my $250 DaVinci mini printer (great starter printer available through Ann's portal)
Run the build files through pgp and not even nsa can tell whether they are build files for a gun or grandma's brownie recipe.
John Henry
The Bill of Rights, amusingly, enumerates some but not all rights inherent to individuals. Repeal doesn't remove such rights from an individual, it simply infringes on the exercise thereof.
Stevens famously found, along with all other Justices, in a 9-0 decision in Heller v DC that the 2nd Amendment protected an individual right. He then went on to dissent against Heller, with three others, saying that exercise of that individual right, despite its Constitutional enumeration in language clear enough for elementary school children to understand, could be infringed at will by the government to any extent, even the banning of firearms from civilian possession.
Such "reasoning" is beyond me, which is why I will never be a Supreme Court Justice. I guess emanations and penumbras are one thing, while printed text is another entirely.
In the gap left by the repealed Second Amendment, let's put this one in:
"A literate public, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to read and write, shall not be infringed."
There, now the state will be able to regulate who gets to read and write, right? Because "the right of the people" cannot possibly means the right of individual persons.
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