From "We Clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America Is Getting Heller Wrong" by Kate Shaw and John Bash (NYT).
May 31, 2022
"Justice Scalia... could not have been clearer in the closing passage of Heller that 'the problem of handgun violence in this country' is serious..."
"... and that the Constitution leaves the government with 'a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.' Heller merely established the constitutional baseline that the government may not disarm citizens in their homes. The opinion expressly recognized 'presumptively lawful' regulations such as 'laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,' as well as bans on carrying weapons in 'sensitive places,' like schools, and it noted with approval the 'historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons."' Heller also recognized the immense public interest in 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.'... Heller [does not] prohibit giving law enforcement officers more effective tools and greater resources to disarm people who have proved themselves to be violent or mentally ill, as long as due process is observed.... Most of the obstacles to gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal; it’s laws that never get enacted, rather than ones that are struck down, because of an unduly expansive reading of Heller.... As the nation enters yet another agonizing conversation about gun regulation in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy, all sides should focus on the value judgments and empirical assumptions at the heart of the policy debate, and they should take moral ownership of their positions."
From "We Clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America Is Getting Heller Wrong" by Kate Shaw and John Bash (NYT).
From "We Clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America Is Getting Heller Wrong" by Kate Shaw and John Bash (NYT).
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68 comments:
I'm Ok with common sense laws that actually accomplish something - like keeping guns out of the hands of nutters.
The FBI is useless to combat crime before it happens because they are an arm of the Democrat party and most of their resources are used to build fake Narratives. Fake narrative like for instance when Agents gathered 4 people who never met and paid some of them 60,000 to bribe them into building a fake crime/ kidnapping the governor or Michigan. Or, breaking down the door and seizing electronic devices from the people who run project veritas...
Because PV might have a Biden diary.. or might be successful in gathering the real story behind what the progressives in the hack press are up to.. in their own words.
or the Same FBI who has CNN follow them when the arrest ultra dangerous man Roger Stone!
I keep hearing about these "historical restrictions" on gun ownership. Brandon talks about Cannon ownership being regulated. Now this from a Supreme.
Can anyone point me to any federal laws regulating who could buy what ki d of guns before 1920-1930?
Up to and including heavy artillery? High explosives etc?
As far as I can tell there never were any.
John LGKTQ Henry
all sides should focus on the value judgments and empirical assumptions at the heart of the policy debate, and they should take moral ownership of their positions
umm ... OK
I'm amazed how conservatives always fall into the trap set by the Liberal/left MSM. We have 15,000 murders in the USA every years. We have one of highest rates of drug use and mental illness among the G20. We have big cities full of crazy homeless people. We have 12 people being shot every Summer weekend in Chicago.
We just had DA's let Gang members who'd engaged in a sidewalk shootout go free, because it was "Mutual combat". We had the whole Democrat party let BLM/Antifa burn, riot, and loot without jail time or punishment. And we just had someone murdered on the UC Berkely campus and it seems the Judge/DA and UC Berkeley President care more about the Murderer than the victim.
Yet, according to the MSM, all that matters is Assault Rifles. if only we'd destroy the NRA and get rid of Assault rifles, everyhthing would change. The political elite have only one answer to crime/shooting - get rid of Guns. Which won't solve the problem and they know it.
If police won't go after an active shooter in progress, no amount of pre-crime gun legislation is going to be a remedy for mass shootings.
Most of the obstacles to gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal
Exactly. If people wanted gun regulations, we'd get gun regulations. But people don't want them, so we don't get them. Shaw and Bash are a little too focused on their hobby horse to see what's actually going on.
Enforcing existing gun laws would be a good start. An "active shooter" case in Illinois involved a disgruntled employee who had just been fired. He had a felony record but had been able to legally purchase a gun because the state never updated its records for background checks.
Martin was convicted in 1995 for a felony aggravated assault in Mississippi,[16][17] and served two-and-a-half years in prison in Mississippi for that conviction.[15] Aurora police stated that he had six arrests with the Aurora Police Department, including arrests for domestic violence and violating a restraining order, and that he had a 2017 arrest in Oswego, Illinois for disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property.[13][18]
Martin was not legally allowed to possess a gun in Illinois because of his prior felony conviction in Mississippi. However, in 2014 he applied for, and was issued an Illinois FOID card by the Illinois State Police. In March 2014, he was able to buy a gun (which he is believed to have used during the shooting) from a licensed gun dealer in Aurora using that FOID card. The FOID card is a permit. It was against the law for him to have one.
Why not enforce the laws on the books first ?
What a laugher. Two LAW CLERKS are now telling us the secret thoughts of Scalia and Stevens? I don't care what JP Stevens thinks as he's the worst SCOTUS Justice since Roger Taney. Stevens gave us the case that allowed the EPA to find that carbon dioxide is pollution.
Aren't we all strict constructionists now? Talk about a slam on the memory of Scalia.
These two are just virtue signaling and showing off to their liberal buddies.
How would laws enacted by these two philosopher-kings have stopped the Uvelda shooter?
And if the Mayor of Uvelda doesn't fire the police chief, things are seriously wrong.
We are a society in serious moral decline. Regulating guns won't make a bit of difference. A lunatic or criminal can always find a way to get a gun.
The Second Amendment is crystal clear, the people are the Militia. Just wait until AOC figures that out and decides to well regulate the shit out of it.
You people only want the Rights not the responsibilities associated with the Second Amendment.
John Bash went to Harvard College and Law School. He now works in DC.
Kate Shaw is a law professor at a school not anywhere near as good as the University of Wisconsin.
They have not added a thing to the national discourse. They haven't offered any solutions other than to say the obvious: Some regulation of firearms is permissible.
Their message: We were Supreme Court law clerks and therefore have special insight into the plain language of Heller. Total BS.
America's getting Heller wrong?
Shit, the District of Columbia is getting Heller wrong! Try and get a gun legally in the District of Columbia. Go ahead, try. I'll wait in the car...
It might be nice for those who oppose gun ownership to be honest & upfront about the fact, that even when they lost a very specific & targeted Supreme Court case, the government of the District of Columbia basically has refused to comply with the ruling. It reminds me of growing up in Alabama in the 60s when the state essentially ignored SCOTUS rulings on school desegregation.
When the Left wins at the SCOTUS, the Right are "terrorists" for not going along. When the Right wins, it's "the pursuit of social justice" when the Left refuses to obey the law.
’As the nation enters yet another agonizing conversation about gun regulation in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy…’
I don’t remember yet another agonizing conversation about gun regulation in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, or when a BernieBro tried to assassinate a score of Republican members of Congress at a baseball game.
It is rather simple. Tyrants and would-be tyrants wish those to be ruled to be defenseless against their orders. The American tradition, one embodied in our Constitution, is to blunt that wish.
Control criminals, not the law-abiding citizens who want/need protection from tyrants.
The gun policy aspect is important, but we need to do a really deep dive into what is happening here. Who are the perpetrators? what are they going through? What do we see in their lives that could have been an intervention point? When in the process do they buy their guns? Who notices they are troubled? In what ways are they troubled? What were their communications like as they started getting this idea in their head? Are their signs of mental illness? Are their signs of abuse or abandonment?
What police actions were taken with this suspect prior to the incident? What police actions were taken during the incident? What are best practices for the police?
Perhaps this can expand to studying handgun violence, which seems to be more home-based and inner city. Both of these kinds of gun violence kill too many people, and we deserve better. A serious government would realize they need to leave no stone unturned in trying to figure out what is going on.
We had a 911 commission and the Mueller commission and there's even a commission to get to the bottom of the "insurrection". You will notice all of those things involve DC, where the politicians themselves live and work. Do they are about the rest of us out here? I don't know. Maybe only to get our votes and our campaign contributions and our outrage that they can use to their advantage.
Summary of a recent article by the GREAT Kate Shaw, "In this short Essay, we discuss the lack of racial and gender diversity on and around the Supreme Court. As we note, the ranks of the Court’s Justices and its clerks historically have been dominated by white men. But this homogeneity is not limited to the Court’s members or its clerks. As we explain, much of the Court’s broader ecosystem suffers from this same lack of diversity."
How about geographic diversity? How about diversity in educational institutions? How is it that the Ivy League has a lock on SCOTUS clerkships? What's wrong with Big Ten and Pac 10 schools? NYU Law?
And with KBJ, we have seen what a diversity hire she was. KBJ will forever be remembered as the woman who didn't know what a woman is.
The Ivies running the country have fucked things up royally. Biden's staff and Cabinet is full of Ivies.
When does someone expose the DEI scam?
Kate Shaw? That's married to PMSNBC's Chris Hayes?
Kate Shaw? That's from Australia, and has a degree in Communist takeovers of Democratic Countries?
THAT Kate A. Shaw?
The second amendment is clear and obvious in it's language.
But I think we should amend it.
Democrat voters commit well over 90% of all gun crimes. Democrat voters have proven to be violent as a group. They have obvious mental problems.
Anyone who votes for democrats should not be allowed to own guns.
WE are fucked when people like Sussman never have to pay for their crimes. We need our guns now more than ever.
Last comment. How do Shaw and Bash know what America thinks?
Objection. Speculation.
Sustained.
you know, though... Maybe they're RIGHT?
Maybe (just maybe) we need 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.
Maybe (just maybe) we should be giving LEO's more effective tools and greater resources to disarm people
They Just Might be ON TO SOMETHING!!
Blade violence, including: knives, and scalpels, is the primary cause for concern for human welfare. The prioritization of rare and isolated violence conducted with a handgun can only considered a sincere effort to redirect, deflect attention, an act of misinformation, disinformation.
The school shootings are the disease playing itself out. We're surrounded by other symptoms of this disease. Another law won't make a whit of difference except to make the media, academia, and some actors and singers feel better about themselves. It may keep some insane young person from getting armed to the teeth. It may not. It may keep a law abiding citizen from getting a gun. But do you know who typically do not go to a gun shop to buy their guns? The criminals killing and shooting the vast majority of shot and killed Americans. They will continue to get guns.
So what changes? Do the new laws mean a weekend in Chicago is not akin to hanging out in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico? No. I'm sure the gangs in Chicago aren't following this debate. Does it mean that people will be taken off the streets and rehabbed or institutionalized in San Francisco for shitting in the streets, raping people, and shooting up all day? Does it mean that we'll no longer stand for people bringing in garbage bags to load up at Walgreens and simply walk out? Does it mean New York's subways are not a game of Russian Roulette?
Does it make our kids safe? Does it remove their faces from their iPhones? Does it clear minds and bring peace? Does it make our kids less insecure? You know there are more young people committing suicide than ever. More killing others and themselves than ever. Do you think we've got a larger issue here?
Would a new gun law do any one thing to change our societal devolution?
I would tell you that it will not. It will only make the talking heads happy. Those living the day to day around this country will soon realize, this is like waving feathers at Smallpox to cure it. It has no relation to the actual problem. It is not the problem. We've always had the guns. We've never seen this much carnage.
When I read stuff like this and how so many seem to rush to find some SCOTUS protection for their view, I remember this observation below and the wonder if we aren't approaching the next iteration of the English Civil War (which includes our War of Independence) where some limitations on the judiciary will need to be imposed to protect the individual rights of The People. No one seems to be philosophically exploring how to protect the people against the judiciary. It might get ugly.
"The study of Anglo-American constitutional law is that of the liberties of the people. Neither a body of dry technicalities, as the demagogue is prone to consider it, nor an instrument new created in the year 1787 and now but an inconvenient impediment to the national destiny, our own Constitution registers the totality of those principles which, in eight hundred and forty years of struggle, the Saxon peoples have won back again from Norman kings, the common law from Roman conceptions of a Sovereign State; each rising wave of freedom leaving its record in some historic document, then perhaps to recede again until the next flood left a higher record still. And if to the Mother Country is due the invention of the Constitution as a bulwark of the people against the Executive, to our forefathers belongs the glory of protecting the people against the Legislative as well; and against the usurpations of any Government or law, even of their own making, on that irreducible minimum which time has shown to be necessary to the English-American people for freedom as they understand it. Give them less than this and they will fight."
--THE CONSTITUTION AND THE PEOPLE'S LIBERTIES, F. J. STIMSON. (1907)
Stimson speaks of the English-American people, but it is those who American-American they should fear, as they identify as such because they've no "old country" they are nostalgic for.
Scalia got Heller wrong. Our second amendment rights are so that we can fully defend ourselves from our government. The SCOTUS can’t take that right from the people.
Here’s what I suggest. I suggest a constitutional amendment that fully vests our constitutional rights at age 25. Prior to age 25, states can license those rights to underage people under certain conditions (military service, training, demonstrated competencies, etc. Prior to age 25, a state can restrict fire arm ownership, voting, drinking, driving, marriage, abortions, you name it. Before 25, you don’t have rights. You may have privileges you can earn. But no rights. Oh, and you’re not an adult.
It would be great if these clerks can tell us how a government that can’t deprive a person of life, liberty, and property without due process can deprive you of the means of self-protection by the small hurdle of calling you crazy. Please, own that moral position while also standing with BLM to defund police.
To Biden And Kamala
Ok, they made their laws, the people consented, and there we were.
Then those very same people to whom said monopoly on the use of deadly force was delegated stood around with their dicks in their hands after one of the teachers deliberately propped a door open and, I remind you, all of the school staff failed to lock the building down when a nutjob was just across the street firing at civilians a few minutes before he decided to gain entry through said open door.
Open door violence. Take a knee, beg, good father? Good mother?
That said, they think that they can abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too. They are playing with a double-edged scalpel on diverse domestic, foreign, and humane issues, which is clearly a first-order forcing of their progressive approval.
Obviously, we can't prohibit former Supreme Court law clerks from trading on their proximity to the justices they worked for. But still, it is unseemly for them to try to wrap themselves in their employer's reputation, especially where that person has since died. Argue all you want about gun control, but don't pretend like you have the inside track on what Scalia might have thought about today's issues, if only he were alive.
We have reasons to pay attention to what Scalia thought about this issue. Kate Shaw and John Bash, not so much.
Pretty much everyone agrees that criminals and mentally ill people shouldn't possess guns, but banning some of the commonly owned guns because they look scary to Ivy League elites violates the fundamental rights of Americans to arm themselves for protection and does not effectively deal with that particular problem. It's the politicians who are getting the 2nd Amendment and Heller wrong since they're always aiming to ban guns or make it near impossible to own guns.
There are 400 million+ guns in this country, including 10s of millions of semiautomatic rifles. There are a handful of these mass shootings every so often. The issue is how to keep guns out of the hands of this very minute population of would-be mass shooters without violating the rights of all Americans. Broad gun bans and restrictions won't solve that issue.
I don't think conservatives are getting Heller wrong. They may use it as an argument, but, because of the ignorance on the left, it often works. Whether it applies or not.
Regardless, there are plenty of laws that the left could come up with, that would be at least palatable, but they try and go all fanatical, and have no plan to implement such laws without running afoul of constitutional rights or existing laws.
These two are able to channel the dead?
Open borders, government gun running, the audacity to dream of single/central/monopolistic use of force.
West Virginia woman with pistol shoots, kills man firing at graduation party: 'Saved several lives'
"Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night," Chief of Detectives Tony Hazelett told news outlets Thursday.
She exercised her natural right, her civil right to self-defense, did not take a knee, beg, and submit when encountering violence, and armed, skilled, and with courage, made a choice to preserve the viability of several lives.
I had hoped after Heller and McDonald established an individual right to bear arms, that the federal and state legislatures would get on with the business of adopting reasonable regulations, such as improved background checks, red flag laws, and magazine limits. Without the fear of the right being taken away, one would have hoped that the NRA would taken a lead role in developing the rules we need to make our society safer from gun violence, as it had historically done. But that’s not the way politics works in our country - Heller and McDonald just opened the door to more craziness.
What the gun control activists clearly want, and what Heller and the 2d Amendment clearly don't permit, is to deny entire categories of people the right to purchase, possess, and carry guns. Sure, Heller may actually permit the denial of those rights with respect to certain individuals who have been shown to be dangerous or incompetent, but the left is looking to impose vastly more sweeping restrictions. These gun-grabbers have made it clear that they're anti-GUN per se. Any "common sense" regulation they propose today is intended as a mere starting point for enacting wholesale restrictions.
It's similar to the "diversity" rationale for AA. The left took that one, narrow exception to the illegal use of race in college admissions and then proceeded to drive truck through it over the last 40-50 years.
I scrolled the comments and gave up trying to find any 2nd Amendment/“Gun Rights” support. I’m sure there is one in there somewhere but it’s the NY Times so wasn’t expecting much of anything.
The comments are hung up on the “Militia” clause and seem to tend toward Scalia just ignoring or erasing it from the argument.
Should someone tell them who the “Militia” is?
Putting aside the constitutional issues, what is it that the left really hopes to accomplish by continuing to advocate for gun control? There are probably as many guns in private hands in the U.S. than there are people (IOW, over 300 million). Those guns aren't going away on their own and there's no plausible means of confiscating them even if the government wanted to. Given this, I don't understand why people think any particular regulation is going to make material difference in the number of murders.
Moreover, one would have to be pretty obtuse not to appreciate the risk that taking away guns from law-abiding citizens will actually increase the prevalence of guns being used by criminals. Unilateral disarmament is not a sound policy.
"Most of the obstacles to gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal"
Correction: Most of the obstacles to enforcing gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal.
How often, in any major city, will police arrest and judges detain and prosecutors prosecute juveniles for merely harming themselves or expressing violent thoughts or being found in possession of a gun?
Nonenforcement is a prog twofer: it lets them parade their concern for the rights of the marginalized at risk of "mass incarceration," and allows enough mayhem to occur to let them bitch and moan about "gun violence" and the "political obstacles" to stopping it.
"as long as due process is observed.... Most of the obstacles to gun regulations are political and policy based, not legal"
The clause preceding the ellipsis invalidates the clause following.
Hacked through and read the article. Wasn't much to it.
They set us a silly strawman (America is getting Heller wrong) and knocked it down with the general idea that Heller did not provide an absolute and totally unrestricted right to own a nuclear bomb without a trigger lock.
I think "America" knew that and I see no purpose in the article other than self-promotion for the two writers.
Also, does anyone know what this means: "Justice Scalia had a practice of signing one opinion for a clerk each term, which permitted the clerk to disclose having worked on that case..."
The modern gun is incredibly safe and well-made. It performs as intended almost 100% of the time without injury to the user.
The authors of this piece are either being disingenous or lacking the skills normally expected of SCOTUS clerks.
"Nothing in Heller casts doubt on the permissibility of background check laws . . . ." The Uvalde killer passed his background check and killed a bunch of people. The Parkland killer did not pass his background check so he killed his mom, took her guns, then killed a bunch of people. Background checks are pretty much meaningless except as an added cost. Here in CA, a background check is $25 per purchase plus $25 for a Firearm Safety Certificate. So if a first time buyer wanted a $500 Glock 19 (3rd generation only because anything newer is not the Approved Roster), the state adds 10%.
"In the 14 years since the Heller decision, Congress has not enacted significant new laws regulating firearms . . . ," but the states have. Look at CA, the very gun in question in Heller is not legal to purchase in CA. Another law in direct opposition to Heller is that guns in the house have to be secured and not readily available.
"Gun free zones" are the problem. We never read about a mass shooting at a police station or gun range since those are the places where a shooter will readily meet opposition.
I've always believed Scalia had to water down his argument to get Roberts on board. Let's see what happens with Bruen next month.
Maybe more laws are legal under Heller. Maybe “politics” explains the difficulty in passing stricter gun laws. But certainly the way current gun laws are ignored by progressive judges for “equity” or charges dismissed to keep criminals on the streets has an effect, an effect on the public who must arm up to protect themselves and the politicians who conclude gun grabbers are disingenuous in their stated goals. Chicago would be a whole lot safer for young black men if the other young black men who were caught illegally possessing guns did the minimum time that the law says they should do. Fen’s Law continues to hold: progressives don’t believe the things they say and won’t abide by laws they impose on us.
What happened when Hunter Biden lied on his form to buy a gun? What happened when he illegally left it in a trash can by an elementary school? Will any law Joe proposes reach his own family and make them comply?
Left Bank none of your list is reasonable or would have prevented the last two mass shooters if any. We already have background checks for any gun resellers or new dealers in every state. That you fools GOT universal background checks and continue to lie about it proves we 2nd amendment advocates should continue to ignore you and your demands. Not sure why you continue to misconstrue the mission of this country’s oldest civil rights organization but you are correct they don’t advocate for curbing more of our rights nor should they. Should planned parenthood be shunned for not advocating for motherhood?
Maybe as a show of good faith the Democrats who run the FBI and ATF could try actually enforcing some of the laws already on the books? Especially when it comes to straw purchasers.
"Justice Scalia... could not have been clearer in the closing passage of Heller that 'the problem of handgun violence in this country' is serious and that the Constitution leaves the government with 'a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.'
Let me know when big city (all Democrat) DAs routinely charge every single handgun carrying criminal for illegally carrying that gun.
What I see is a US where Democrats refuse to enforce existing laws against the criminals, while demanding new laws against the freedom and civil rights of the non-criminal
Not only "no", but "go to hell, scum bag, no fucking way".
You can not have any more "gun control" laws until you start rigorously enforcing the laws you already have.
And if that means that thousands of black males get longer jail sentences, then that's what you do.
Because being a "person of color" does not give you the right to violate the law
Heller merely established the constitutional baseline that the government may not disarm citizens in their homes
Yes, because SCOTUS had too many weasels on it who weren't willing to actually enforce the actually written US Constitution
"the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".
You "bear" arms outside of the home.
Heller [does not] prohibit giving law enforcement officers more effective tools and greater resources to disarm people who have proved themselves to be violent or mentally ill, as long as due process is observed
Yep. But you Democrats fight tooth and nail against doing so to violent criminals.
So long as that remains the case, no new "gun control" laws of any sort.
because of an unduly expansive reading of Heller
News flash: "Heller" does not define our rights.
The Second Amendment to the US Consititon defines our rights
And it defines that we are entitled to "keep" (at home) and "bear" (in public) military (which is to say "militia") weapons whose purpose is to kill other people, be they criminals, or domestic enemies of the US Constitution
Howard said...
The Second Amendment is crystal clear, the people are the Militia. Just wait until AOC figures that out and decides to well regulate the shit out of it.
The Federal Government has NO control over "the militia".
The whole purpose of 1: blocking funding for a standing army for a time span longer than 2 years and 2: guaranteeing that the militia could not be disarmed or neutered, was to give "The People" power vs the Federal Government.
I realize taht violates your religion, Howard, but that's just too damn bad for you
Maybe more people should carry in "sensitive" place. Like schools. Right now I'd trust a concerned parent before I'd trust the police.
Howard said...
"The Second Amendment is crystal clear, the people are the Militia. Just wait until AOC figures that out and decides to well regulate the shit out of it.
You people only want the Rights not the responsibilities associated with the Second Amendment."
On top of being a Biden voter you have reading comprehension problems. Over 100 million of your countrymen take those responsibilities very seriously. But. Beta male response. As expected.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
I had hoped after Heller and McDonald established an individual right to bear arms, that the federal and state legislatures would get on with the business of adopting reasonable regulations, such as improved background checks, red flag laws, and magazine limits.
There can be no "reasonable" "magazine limits" on militia weapons, which is what the 2nd Amendment guarantees we all get to "keep" and "bear".
Exactly what is an "improved background check"? Ramos bought from an FFL, which means he PASSED a background check.
So, how are you going to "improve" it?
Could part of the problem here be that he was a Hispanic male, and that your people (leftists) are fighting to "end the school to prison pipeline for young males of color", so they didn't record his crimes in order that he would fail the background check?
Without the fear of the right being taken away
Except that your Democrat President just announced he wants to ban all 9mm pistols
So, only a moron would ever think that the Left would negotiate in good faith, or respect Heller & McDonald 1 second after getting a majority of Leftists on SCOTUS
So we will never cut any deals with you. Because doing so would be suicide.
tl;dr:
Agreeing to a gun control deal with Democrats would be like agreeing to a peace treaty with Putin. You can't trust the other side to honor it, so there's no point in making it
ConradBibby said...
Putting aside the constitutional issues, what is it that the left really hopes to accomplish by continuing to advocate for gun control? There are probably as many guns in private hands in the U.S. than there are people (IOW, over 300 million)
There's at least 500 million firearms in private hands in the US
Those guns aren't going away on their own and there's no plausible means of confiscating them even if the government wanted to. Given this, I don't understand why people think any particular regulation is going to make material difference in the number of murders.
They don't give a damn about the murders. They simply want to turn the Americans they don't like into criminals
Moreover, one would have to be pretty obtuse not to appreciate the risk that taking away guns from law-abiding citizens will actually increase the prevalence of guns being used by criminals. Unilateral disarmament is not a sound policy
It is when you're on the other side.
They don't enforce the law against actual criminals. They do enforce "gun control" laws against ordinary non-criminal citizens
This is because they want is to be victims.
The opinion addresses only firearms in homes because the legal team presenting the case worked damn hard to limit the case from its beginning to that single question - "Do the provisions of the District of Columbia Code that restrict the licensing of handguns and require licensed firearms kept in the home to be kept nonfunctional violate the Second Amendment?"
They then had to bring MacDonald to get the Supreme Court to state unequivocally that the 2nd Amendment as an individual right to keep and use firearms for self defense applies not just to the feds but to the states as well.
As a law-abiding gun owner, I've been grouped by Clinton, Obama and Biden as the moral equivalent of a mass murderer, and they have none-too-subtly expressed the opinion that eventually, without fail, I will become a mass murderer simply because I legally own guns.
To hell with them, and to hell with that. Group punishment for the offenses of a small subgroup are a human rights violation, IIRC. The point of individual rights includes the concept of individual, not group, responsibility for the exercise of those rights. I didn't gun down a room full of kids, and I refuse to be blamed for it in a vile blood soaked dance on those kids' bodies.
As a libertarian, I take moral ownership of my position. If I'm not harming other people, leave me and whatever weapons I may have the hell alone. That goes for you, too, Dementia Joe.
Joe Biden, when VP, was asked if prosecuting violations of the Brady laws might reduce gun crime. He said nah, there was no time for that, there were too many criminals caught by the FBI background checks to prosecute. Over three years, their entire program was to stop legal gun ownership, not stop criminals from misusing firearms.
https://www.voanews.com/a/gun-violence-task-force/1569277.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/04/what-happened-president-obama-joe-biden-plan-reduce-gun-violence-sandy-hook-san-bernardino
Actually, Mike, Prince Hall Freemasonry, founded in 1784, is American’s oldest civil rights organization. The League of Women Voters, which was formed through the merger of other organizations reaching back to at least 1869, is also an older civil rights organization than the NRA, which while founded in 1871 didn’t begin political advocacy until the 1930s.
Molon labe, bitches.
We can't see any ethical problems when a USSC clerk breaks silence and tells us what his or her Justice really meant when an opinion was written?
Those two really ought not retain their licenses. They should be sitting with the clerk who released the unreleased Roe opinion. (And I don't mean, in the comfy chair.)
I think we need better lunatic control. After all, if this murderer had walked into that school with a machete I think the carnage would still be great. It isn't the gun, it is the person.
(BTW - Ban guns and you get the cartels even deeper into gun-running.)
"Would a new gun law do any one thing to change our societal devolution?
I would tell you that it will not. It will only make the talking heads happy."
It may, but only for a little while. And then, after the next shooting the new law doesn't prevent, the talking heads will be back wanting more "commonsense restrictions".
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Maybe as a show of good faith the Democrats who run the FBI and ATF could try actually enforcing some of the laws already on the books? Especially when it comes to straw purchasers.
Or sons of Presidents.
It is not 'handgun violence' or 'gun violence'... it is plain VIOLENCE that must be stopped.
Dead is dead wither by firearm or knife or club or fist...
Sad thing is they just won't PUT THEM IN JAIL.. See that really is the answer. We just don't ENFORCE THE LAWS. One just needs a law that is enforced like this one:
Use a weapon in a crime and ... 10 years, non probatable, non parolable, must not be served concurrently with other punishment. TEN FULL YEARS.
And if it is a firearm... FIFTEEN YEARS...
Now that would do two things:
1) Serve as some real deterrence to those who would not normally use weapons.
2) Put those that do use them OUT OF CIRCULATION.
Real honest-to-God deterrence!! Can't do crimes if you are in prison... lock them up!!
I don’t like guns, and I don’t see a need for them, beyond a handgun for protection or a hunting rifle. But I also don’t like bossy progressive authoritarians. So pretty well caught between camps here.
Blogger Howard said...
The Second Amendment is crystal clear, the people are the Militia. Just wait until AOC figures that out and decides to well regulate the shit out of it.
The "Militia" was made up of white men between the ages of 17 and 35. Do you want to defend that to your crazy colleagues?
I haven't read the former clerks' op-ed (I don't subscribe to the NYT); did I miss it: Did they identify a law that, if passed, would have prevented the Uvalde massacre? Because as far as I can tell none of the anti-gun whiners has ome up with a law that would do that.
"Banning" certain classes of scarey-looking firearms wouldn't do it. At Uvalde the local police apparently gave the killer enough time to accomplish his killing even if he'd been armed with cap-and-ball pistols. But many conventional un-scary firearms could have sufficed. Prohibiting 18-year-olds from buying certain weapons (even if it were lawful to deny young adults their constitutional rights, which a couple of federal courts have said it isn't), that wouldn't stop a would-be killer from killing a gun-owner to get the gun (it's happened, hasn't it?).
When something as terrible as this happens, we would all -- ALL -- like to think that there was some easy fix that would prevent it ever happening again. But there isn't.
I don't think they're going to get the results they think they will from eviscerating the 2nd Amendment.
The history with gun control is that they get these draconian laws passed, but then don't actually do anything with them. At. All.
Chicago? LOL... How many prosecutions have there been for firearms violations with all the gang-bangers shooting each other? Do they even bother adding firearms violations when they prosecute? From what I've seen, no. So, what's the point? You plea those away, or don't bother to prosecute them, then where's the incentive to the criminal not to use a firearm?
Washington State passed Initiative 1639, which mandated that any "transfer" of any firearm go through a dealer, have a background check, and a waiting period. Most people who voted on that thought "transfer" meant "sale", but it meant "hand a firearm to a non-family member", period.
Anyone remember the CHAZ/CHOP fiasco, where you saw people on video handing other people weapons out of the trunks of their cars, for "security"? Remember the CHAZ/CHOP "security" people firing those weapons at some kids and killing one of them?
Now, ask the question: Were there any prosecutions that came out of that? Hell, were there even any investigations performed about those obvious and egregious crimes under Initiative 1639?
Nope. Not a one. Only "gun crime" I can find an investigation or prosecution on is the idiot yuppie kid who stole an M4 carbine out of a police cruiser and tried selling it and the accessories for it online. That's it.
They don't use the laws they have, so what's the damn point in passing more? I guarantee you that with the permeable southern border, as well as the piss-poor Customs enforcement in the ports, if they made all weapons illegal tomorrow, you'd have a near-instant black market that would make your head spin. And, the problem would only get worse, because instead of the criminal element needing to worry about armed citizens defending themselves, the criminal element would be the only ones armed.
On top of that? Here's a news flash for all y'all: The 2nd Amendment doesn't protect "sporting arms". It protects weapons appropriate for the militia, which basically means that your hunting rifle ain't addressed; it's those nasty "weapons of war", the guns they most want to ban, that are protected. Hell, you could make a damn good case that the effective ban on fully-automatic weapons is what is unconstitutional, and your dinky little 16-gauge trap shotgun is what they can ban...
Despite Joe Biden's idiotic fantasy, the fact is that even cannons were privately owned when the 2nd was written. You had lots of private militia companies with artillery, and a whole bunch of non-naval ships carrying them for self-defense and privateering. The arsenal at Concord that the British were moving to confiscate was technically quasi-privately owned, being as it was created not by taxation but by donation and local subscription.
All my libtard friends own guns, Doc. We just don't need to stroke and fetishize them in public like you people.
Once again, just for the record, under the original meaning and intent of the Second Amendment, which has never been amended, it would be perfectly legal for private American citizens to own and operate a fully armed and crewed Ford class carrier.
I met Heller once at a gun range. Wasn't that good of a shot but we all have bad days...
The genius that is Howard writes: "All my libtard friends own guns, Doc. We just don't need to stroke and fetishize them in public like you people." No, of course not. Too busy stroking and fetishizing the State.
Howard said...
All my libtard friends own guns, Doc. We just don't need to stroke and fetishize them in public like you people.
Which means none of your libtard friends are going to vote for banning guns.
And since the Democrats politicians just can't stop saying that's what they want to do, that means you libtards are going to lose
The Uvalde killer and the Newtown killer and the Aurora killer and so many more criminals who used firearms against unarmed people could have done just as much damage, just as much murder, with a 1 gallon can of gasoline and a Bic lighter. It isn't their guns that are a problem. Crazy suicidal people who decide to end their lives in an insanely grand fashion, killing others to get the attention they never had and never deserved, are the problem.
Mass killings will continue because they are sensationalized by the press. The losers who want to die while killing others should be presented to the public as the utter assholes they really are. Take away every firearm on earth and they'll be back with a bomb made of flour and powdered sugar.
The Boston Marathon bombers used a pressure cooker as a bomb. Anyone can go to a Home Depot and come out with enough perfectly legal materials to damage a large commercial building. Jim Jones managed to get hundreds to drink the Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide. Everyone in suburbia has a gas can in the garage, for the lawn mower, that would work just fine to kill a classroom full of kids.
And the millions upon millions of law abiding gun owners who safely use their firearms year in and year out are tired of being conflated with the asshole murderers. Stop it. It isn't the firearms, it is the people.
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