2nd Amendment - To SCOTUS>

[One Eyed Cat]

This may get very interesting. The 2nd Amendment may henceforth mean ,,,,,, whatever Justice Anthony M. Kennedy says it means. The Court is 4-1-4. This could strike down handgun bans across from sea to shining sea, the Supreme Court may punt, or it may overturn it. (The Appeals Court may be able to hear it en banc with all Judges present) This is the biggest 2nd Amendment Case since Miller 70 years ago. - Jackie T

Court overturns D.C. handgun ban

In 2-1 vote, appeals court says Second Amendment is not limited to ‘militia’

NBC News and news services

Updated: 6:32 p.m. CT March 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - In the most important ruling on gun control in 70 years, a federal appeals court Friday for the first time used the Second Amendment to strike down a gun law.

In a 2-1 decision, the court overturned the District of Columbia’s long-standing handgun ban, rejecting the city’s argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.

The majority held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment “are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent” on enrollment in a militia.

The ruling is a victory for Tom Palmer, a Washington resident who was once assaulted and wants a gun in the house for self-defense.

"The fact is that the criminals don't obey the law and they do have guns," he said. "It's the law-abiding citizens who are disarmed by this law."

He was one of six who went to court to challenge the city's gun law, passed as an anti-crime measure 30 years ago. It outlaws handguns or rifles except for residents with permits, mainly police or security guards.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said the ruling could put more guns in the hands of young people. "I am personally deeply disappointed and quite frankly outraged by today's decision," he said. "Today's decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia."

Rival judicial views
The ruling revives a long fight over the 27 words of the Second Amendment:

"A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Gun control advocates argue that the phrase "well-regulated militia" means that owning a gun is a group right, subject to restriction.

But the court essentially said the right to bear arms is an individual right for private activities, including self-defense.

“The district’s definition of the militia is just too narrow,” Judge Laurence Silberman wrote for the majority. “There are too many instances of ‘bear arms’ indicating private use to conclude that the drafters intended only a military sense.”

That's precisely the view that the National Rifle Association has advocated for decades.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, said the decision gives the district “a crack in the door to join the rest of the country in full constitutional freedom.”

Judge Karen Henderson dissented, writing that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia because it is not a state.

Silberman wrote that the Second Amendment is still “subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment.”

Such restrictions might include gun registration, firearms testing to promote public safety or restrictions on gun ownership for criminals or those deemed mentally ill.

Time for Supreme Court?
The city says it will appeal, to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

The Bush administration has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights, but the Supreme Court has never settled the issue.

“I think this is well positioned for review of the Supreme Court,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University. He said the D.C. circuit is historically influential with the Supreme Court because it often deals with constitutional questions.
“You also have a very well-reasoned opinion, both in the majority and the dissent,” Turley said.

If the dispute makes it to the high court, it would be the first case in nearly 70 years to address the Second Amendment’s scope.

Legal experts say Friday's ruling launches a huge battle.

"This is a monumental case that sets up the biggest fight over gun rights in the modern history of the United States," said expert Tom Goldstein.


New York and Chicago have similar strict gun laws. And a host of local and federal laws regulate ownership.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also threw out the district’s requirement that registered firearms be kept unloaded, disassembled and under trigger lock.

Gun control groups fear that if Friday's ruling stands, it could weaken gun laws nationwide.

"You're allowing any sort of a gun law, whether it's a waiting period, a background check, you leave it open to challenge," said gun control advocate Paul Helmke.

NBC's Pete Williams and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17538139/

[Buster Friendly]

interesting, i was just looking at a big glossy photo book of 'gun culture' last night. pictures of folks with their guns, and short quotes from them.

after leafing through like 30 pages or so my first thought was "daaaaaaamn these people are all white. what's up with that." (since a good few of my unwhite friends, and accquaintences have LOTS of guns, i kinda wondered.) i finally found like 4 pictures of some black guys... but it was creepy to see all these middle class folks with guns.... lots of 'alterna-type' folks mouthing crap like 'they can pry it from my dead stiff fingers.' and 'i'm a a patriot, it's my duty to own 15 assult rifles'... huh?

funny thing, guns never make me feel 'safer' even when i'm the one who owns them.... still they're preeeeeety...

[mmmcherry]

'i'm a a patriot, it's my duty to own 15 assult rifles'

o.0 ermmmm.... yeah. WHAT THE FUCK!??!

[Donald Rilea]

Read this thread, and was gonna post a response about it here, but it turned out to be too damned long.

So, I put it up on my blog, A Fistful Of Teeth, at http://afistfulofteeth.blogspot.com/, where it's the first item up on the list, for anyone who wants to see it.

If not, that's OK, too.

[One Eyed Cat]

Read this thread, and was gonna post a response about it here, but it turned out to be too damned long.

So, I put it up on my blog, A Fistful Of Teeth, at http://afistfulofteeth.blogspot.com/, where it's the first item up on the list, for anyone who wants to see it.

If not, that's OK, too.

At present, there is no uniform interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The last SCOTUS ruling was the (very convoluted) Miller case in the 30s. The recent trend is more towards an individual rights interpretation. The Supreme Court will have to speak to the issue soon. Like I said, it will come down to Justice Kennedy.

JT

[bohoki]

sounds a bit scary if they rule that dc can ban handguns then any city can ban anything and everything if they rule that its unconstitutional then what becomes of any federal or state regulations

since bad guys can get anything they want why not allow the law abiding to get anything they want as well

freedom freedom freedom hey lets all do the freedom dance

[ForrestBlack]

lots of 'alterna-type' folks mouthing crap like 'they can pry it from my dead stiff fingers.' and 'i'm a a patriot, it's my duty to own 15 assult rifles'... huh?

I don't need a water-tower full of scotch either, but if they tried to ban hard alcohol for my own good, I might take issue with it. Pushing almost any rights argument into the land of the absurd can make is sound stupid and less worthy of support.

Hugo Chavez purchased 100,000+ AK-103's from Russia and is building two factories of his own to manufacture more. The only forces that have been able to actually maintain their own land in my recent memory have been those where essentially small arms have been available to the native people. As a capitalist nation, I don't think we should have to turn to the black market when it's written right in the Constitution.

[Mr Karl]

I always figured you guys south of canada were always so big on guns was so you could take out your government if you had to

[karyn]

Read this thread, and was gonna post a response about it here, but it turned out to be too damned long.

So, I put it up on my blog, A Fistful Of Teeth, at http://afistfulofteeth.blogspot.com/, where it's the first item up on the list, for anyone who wants to see it.

If not, that's OK, too.

here you go:

My Response To A Blue Blood.com Topic Post About The Striking Down Of D.C,'s Gun Law

Was gonna post this in response to a topic post on a recent US Appelate Court decision striking down Washington D.C.'s gun law that I saw on the boards at Blue Blood.com to-day, in the forums there. But, was informed that my post was much too lengthy to be posted there, without some trimming down.

Well, decided instead to simply post my answer here, and, the next time I posted my answer there, I would simply enclosed the link to my response here.

So, for better or worse, or neither of the two, here's the link to the original Blue Blood topic post, http://www.blueblood.net/boards/showthread.php?t=8718, and the full text of my response below.

Anyhow, Folks. There they are, for better or worse. Hope they prove to be of some interest.


Oh, man, is this a tricky question to address, particularly as down here in the States, it's such an emotionally charged one, and has been for at least thirty years.

[karyn]

continued from fistful of teeth

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution's Bill of Rights states that a well-regulated militia, since it's necessary for the common defence of American soil, property and liberties, means that the rights of the citizenry to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

On the face of it, that would seem to be a pretty straight-forward statement that all American citizens, as either current or at least, potential members of a well-regulated, probably meaning either locally- or state-run units of a much larger state and national militia body, have the right to keep and bear arms as a means of providing for the common defence in the cases of either a civil disturbance or foreign invasion of the United States and its territories.

But, and, no, I don't know the legal history here, so I will leave that in Mr. Jackie's capable hands to explain, this is certainly no longer the generally accepted interpretation of the Second Amendment, both in legal circles and generally speaking.

It certainly hasn't been customarily seen that way for quite a long time now, since, and am guessing here, probably at least the early 20th Century, when the various state militia bodies were formed into what to-day's known as the National Guard and Reserve, which itself, especially within the past twenty-six years, has become more and more an important component of the American defence establishment, rather than as just a set of local defence units acting as a supplement to the Regular Army, Navy and other Armed Services of the United States.

The UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, among other countries, have had auxillary militia and volunteer components as part of their defence establishments for much of their histories, and both the concept and word come from the Roman Republic and Empire, which, I believe, first started the idea, though I could be wrong on that score.

Switzerland, whose armed forces are mainly composed of either conscripts doing a one-to-two year term of national military service, a relative handful of military professionals, and a larger force of reservists, who are called up every now and then for military service, works on much the same lines, and Swiss citizenship, and the right to vote in Swiss elections, is conditioned on the individual's willingness and ability to serve in the Swiss armed forces. That's why Swiss women, and I don't know if this is still true to-day, historically couldn't vote, because they weren't permitted to serve in any branch of the Swiss military.

As for gun possession in Switzerland, I don't know if civilian gun ownership is permitted there, outside of reservists' having government-issued weapons stored in their homes in case of civil disturbance or foreign attack, but certainly for military reservists, gun ownership is allowed, though I don't know if there are any conditions as to how the weapons and ammunition in their possession are to be stored and maintained. I imagine there may be some, but I don't know.

Why bring these examples up??? Well, to show that there are and have been different interpretations of militias and the right to bear arms in other parts of the world throughout history, and how they contrast with the current popular American definitions of the terms.

To most Americans currently walking around, a militia brings more to mind the image of a far right wing paramilitary group out running around someplace in the boondocks, looking for those ever-evasive UN black helicopters in the service of the "New World Order", as was at least the popular conception of them in the US in the mid-and-late '90's, especially after the Oklahoma City bombing in April, 1995, than a legally-constituted body of armed local citizens in the service of whatever locality or state where they lived, as would have been the case for the bulk of American history.

[karyn]

continued from fistful of teeth

Now, those groups, which, ideologically, were generally the descendants of right wing paramilitaries like the Posse Comitatus, that was popular in a good part of the American West and Midwest in the late '70's through mid-80's, and the Minutemen(No, not the boys who gave the British Army a bloody nose at Lexington and Concord back in 1775, even if that organisation named itself after their Revolutionary War predecessors), which was one of the more important, and feared, by both the general public and the American political establishment and Left in the 1960's, and sought, by organising themselves into militias, to both protest the Brady Act, which placed a ban on certain types of self-loading(generally known as automatic or semi-automatic weapons, which is kind of a misnomer)handguns and rifles, back in the late '80's, and, if need be, to both get around that act, and to move against any projected government attempt to seize whatever weapons their members had.

All that said, the militia movement in the US began fading out, after a few years of brouhaha about their existence and beliefs, in the late '90's, and, after 9/11, have been keeping a very low profile for the most part.

Either way, the common definition of the word militia in this country has changed considerably from how the Founding Fathers' generation, and many generations after them, would have understood the term.

As for gun possession, well, back in the early Republican(meaning the American Republic and not the political party, folks)period of US history, the sorts of firearms then available would have been single-shot, flintlock muskets or pistols, or single-shot rifles or shotguns, that used loose gunpowder, wadding and shot for ammunition, and that would have taken probably around a minute or so for a reasonably well-trained user to load, aim and fire. Muskets generally tended to effective at no more than about fifty to a hundred yards, while rifles, such as the famous Kentucky Rifle, could probably go up to about two to four times the distance a musket could.

Now, without getting into a loooonnngg dissertation on firearms technology and its history, which I wouldn't even know that much about anyhow, by the 1870's, there were pistol revolvers, like the famous Colt 1873 "Peacemaker", pump-action rifles and shotguns, like the Winchester '73, where you'd just load in a rifle bullet or shot, pump the lever or handle either below the weapon or below its barrel, aim, pull the trigger, and, Presto!!!, one or more dead sons-of-bitches.

Breech-loading rifles and pistols had also been developed by that time, and those meant that, by being able for a shooter to load and aim a pre-made cartridge or bullet into the gun's breech, which is a Helluva lot closer to him or her than the muzzle, or end, of a muzzle-loading musket, rifle or pistol, would be, one could easily and more safely load in more ammo, and throw off more shots at a given target or targets than ever before.

Then, with other innovations like the magazine-loading bolt-action rifle, the self-loading, or automatic, pistol, the machine-gun and sub-machine gun, the fully-automatic rifle, assault rifle, and greater ammo magazine loading and storage capacities, combined with smaller, more easily managed and operated weapons, whether handguns or long guns, weapons technology just exploded from the 1880's 'til the present day onwards, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

With each of these innovations, came an even greater killing and other destructive capability than had existed before.

Hence, a good deal of the problem with the social effects of having that kind of weaponry around.

Whether school shooters or mass murderers in the US and other parts of the developed world, or child soldiers, private armies and terrorists in other parts of the world, it's now far easier to train, learn, and use even a relatively simple assault weapon like the various makes and models of the AK 47 or M16, for individuals and groups than ever before, and, because of the large number of weapons of various sorts making their way around the globe than ever before, they're also generally easier and cheaper to get than at any time in history prior to the late 19th and 20th Centuries.

This means that it no longer takes as many people, if sufficiently equipped and trained, to potentially devastate a given area of a locality as it might have even, say, 50 years ago.

Mind you, street gangs, militias of various ideological persuasions and the like in the developed world have yet to get their hands on grenade launchers, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, mortars, and heavier grades of artillery, and Thank God for that, or otherwise, some parts of American inner cities and European suburbs would look like Beirut at the height of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-90.

But, as in Lebanon of the period mentioned above, or in Yugoslavia of the 1990's, some such groups in other parts of the world have and did, with disastrous results for those societies.

Do I think that street gangs, etc, will get their hands on such weapons? Probably not for some time to come, as they aren't manufactured in quite the mass quantities as handguns, shotguns and rifles are.

But, even without those heavier weapons, an individual or a determined group can do an incredible amount of damage with the kinds of modern infantry weapons I've described above.

Thus far, in the US, we've been relatively luckier than many around the world, in that we've not had the kinds of genuinely determined and able political and social armed groups, like, say, the Lebanese Phalangist Party or Hizbollah, that could capably make urban warfare, or just plain classic warfare, on a large enough scale and for a long enough time to really bugger things up here.

Yeah, there have been groups like the Minutemen, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Posse Comitatus that have been potential threats.

But, whether because of Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies(sometimes illegal and unConstitutional efforts like the old FBI Cointelpro programme)operations, as in the cases of the Minutemen and Black Panthers, or a combination of similar law enforcement efforts combined with sheer ineptitude on the targeted groups' parts, as in the Weathermen's and SLA's cases, those groups were eventually whittled down to size and quashed.

Instead, urban, suburban and rural discontent and anger has generally manifested itself in the US through riots, one-on-one, or group-on-one assaults, murders and other crimes, and occasional out-breaks of mass murders and school shootings, as well as gang violence.

[karyn]

last piece from fistful of teeth

There are a whole lotta factors that go into that, and I won't discuss 'em in this post, which is Hellaciously long enough already.

Safe to say, though, that a long simmering anger and discontent with much of the ways in which business of all sorts and life is lived in this country, combined with a perceived declining sense of community, too, is a contributing factor in these problems, and, sad to say, there aren't any really nice, simple, easy-to-implement answers to them, waiting to be taken out of the can.

The late science-fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, once wrote that "An armed society is a polite society."

I disagree.

If the only thing holding any society together is armed force, whether through a government monopoly on it, or through millions of individually armed people, then it will eventually fail, because, without some commonly understood customs and manners about how an individual or group should conduct him-,her- or itself in public, without having to resort to force, unarmed or armed, as well as laws and customs that punish the use of force outside of commonly understood boundaries of self-defence and defence of other people's lives, whether by public servants or private citizens, there will eventually arise an individual or a group, or even a set of groups, that will simply call everyone else's bluffs, and have both the willingness and abilities to successfully do that.

No matter how fast and accurately one thinks that he or she can fight and shoot, sooner or later, the likelihood of one running into someone else who's that much faster, more accurate, or just plain sneakier or luckier, than oneself, and losing a fight with that opponent increases over time.

Better by far to have a polite society, armed or unarmed, than to have one, where everyone's armed to the teeth and then some, but that's not only impolite, but actually dangerous to go out into.

Arms alone have never provided security, nor can they. By themselves, they're just objects, with no consciousness whatsoever.

They can hang on a wall, make dandy paperweights, or wound or kill people and animals, and they'll have no problem doing those, because they have no cognitive ability at all.

People with arms, however, can and do wound or kill. Sometimes individually, sometimes in vast quantities of suckers, but they do wound or kill.

Whether the person doing them is a soldier, guerrilla, outraged householder and taxpaying citizen, gang banger, street thug, or angry husband, wife, lover, parent or kid with a grudge, quick temper and a score to settle, the end result comes out pretty much the same, one person making a stupid decision, for reasons of their own, to kill or wound another person.

Stricter gun laws in the absence of legal and other social sanctions against the use of violence won't make much of a difference in how many suckers get killed or wounded, just as stricter law enforcement, and locking everyone up and throwing away the key won't, and hasn't by itself.

Even a more strait-laced, conformist society than the one presently in the US wouldn't make that much of a difference in the absence of legal and customary rules about fire-arms, their possession, and the use of violence in the culture on which most people could generally agree with and effectively live by.

Laws, social rules, manners and practises, as well as other social, legal, political and economic factors, have to come together and be understood as making their own contributions to a culture,as does technology's role, and, as much as possible, some kind of general consensus has to be found to make a generally safer society in the US than at present.

But, that's gonna a long while and a lot of debate and work to accomplish.

As for how the US Supreme Court might rule on this appeal, I have no idea, save a vague opinion that the Roberts' Court might, and I repeat, might, see things in favour of the gun manufacturers and groups like the NRA.

But, then again, it could turn around and surprise the Hell out of us. I don't know.

If you've actually made it this far down, congratulations to you for slogging through this, and my apologies for the lengthy post here. Just had some notions that I had to cough up, like a cat does a hair-ball from time to time.

Be seeing you.

Posted by figurepornography at 3:26 PM 0 comments Links to this post

[Exquisite]

I always figured you guys south of canada were always so big on guns was so you could take out your government if you had to

ditto =)

[Donald Rilea]

continued from fistful of teeth

Now, those groups, which, ideologically, were generally the descendants of right wing paramilitaries like the Posse Comitatus, that was popular in a good part of the American West and Midwest in the late '70's through mid-80's, and the Minutemen(No, not the boys who gave the British Army a bloody nose at Lexington and Concord back in 1775, even if that organisation named itself after their Revolutionary War predecessors), which was one of the more important, and feared, by both the general public and the American political establishment and Left in the 1960's, and sought, by organising themselves into militias, to both protest the Brady Act, which placed a ban on certain types of self-loading(generally known as automatic or semi-automatic weapons, which is kind of a misnomer)handguns and rifles, back in the late '80's, and, if need be, to both get around that act, and to move against any projected government attempt to seize whatever weapons their members had.

All that said, the militia movement in the US began fading out, after a few years of brouhaha about their existence and beliefs, in the late '90's, and, after 9/11, have been keeping a very low profile for the most part.

Either way, the common definition of the word militia in this country has changed considerably from how the Founding Fathers' generation, and many generations after them, would have understood the term.

As for gun possession, well, back in the early Republican(meaning the American Republic and not the political party, folks)period of US history, the sorts of firearms then available would have been single-shot, flintlock muskets or pistols, or single-shot rifles or shotguns, that used loose gunpowder, wadding and shot for ammunition, and that would have taken probably around a minute or so for a reasonably well-trained user to load, aim and fire. Muskets generally tended to effective at no more than about fifty to a hundred yards, while rifles, such as the famous Kentucky Rifle, could probably go up to about two to four times the distance a musket could.

Now, without getting into a loooonnngg dissertation on firearms technology and its history, which I wouldn't even know that much about anyhow, by the 1870's, there were pistol revolvers, like the famous Colt 1873 "Peacemaker", pump-action rifles and shotguns, like the Winchester '73, where you'd just load in a rifle bullet or shot, pump the lever or handle either below the weapon or below its barrel, aim, pull the trigger, and, Presto!!!, one or more dead sons-of-bitches.

Breech-loading rifles and pistols had also been developed by that time, and those meant that, by being able for a shooter to load and aim a pre-made cartridge or bullet into the gun's breech, which is a Helluva lot closer to him or her than the muzzle, or end, of a muzzle-loading musket, rifle or pistol, would be, one could easily and more safely load in more ammo, and throw off more shots at a given target or targets than ever before.

Then, with other innovations like the magazine-loading bolt-action rifle, the self-loading, or automatic, pistol, the machine-gun and sub-machine gun, the fully-automatic rifle, assault rifle, and greater ammo magazine loading and storage capacities, combined with smaller, more easily managed and operated weapons, whether handguns or long guns, weapons technology just exploded from the 1880's 'til the present day onwards, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

With each of these innovations, came an even greater killing and other destructive capability than had existed before.

Hence, a good deal of the problem with the social effects of having that kind of weaponry around.

Whether school shooters or mass murderers in the US and other parts of the developed world, or child soldiers, private armies and terrorists in other parts of the world, it's now far easier to train, learn, and use even a relatively simple assault weapon like the various makes and models of the AK 47 or M16, for individuals and groups than ever before, and, because of the large number of weapons of various sorts making their way around the globe than ever before, they're also generally easier and cheaper to get than at any time in history prior to the late 19th and 20th Centuries.

This means that it no longer takes as many people, if sufficiently equipped and trained, to potentially devastate a given area of a locality as it might have even, say, 50 years ago.

Mind you, street gangs, militias of various ideological persuasions and the like in the developed world have yet to get their hands on grenade launchers, shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, mortars, and heavier grades of artillery, and Thank God for that, or otherwise, some parts of American inner cities and European suburbs would look like Beirut at the height of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-90.

But, as in Lebanon of the period mentioned above, or in Yugoslavia of the 1990's, some such groups in other parts of the world have and did, with disastrous results for those societies.

Do I think that street gangs, etc, will get their hands on such weapons? Probably not for some time to come, as they aren't manufactured in quite the mass quantities as handguns, shotguns and rifles are.

But, even without those heavier weapons, an individual or a determined group can do an incredible amount of damage with the kinds of modern infantry weapons I've described above.

Thus far, in the US, we've been relatively luckier than many around the world, in that we've not had the kinds of genuinely determined and able political and social armed groups, like, say, the Lebanese Phalangist Party or Hizbollah, that could capably make urban warfare, or just plain classic warfare, on a large enough scale and for a long enough time to really bugger things up here.

Yeah, there have been groups like the Minutemen, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Posse Comitatus that have been potential threats.

But, whether because of Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies(sometimes illegal and unConstitutional efforts like the old FBI Cointelpro programme)operations, as in the cases of the Minutemen and Black Panthers, or a combination of similar law enforcement efforts combined with sheer ineptitude on the targeted groups' parts, as in the Weathermen's and SLA's cases, those groups were eventually whittled down to size and quashed.

Instead, urban, suburban and rural discontent and anger has generally manifested itself in the US through riots, one-on-one, or group-on-one assaults, murders and other crimes, and occasional out-breaks of mass murders and school shootings, as well as gang violence.

Thanks, Karyn, for re-posting my original reply here. As you can see, it was entirely too long for posting here.

Incidentally, and wanted to say this at the close of the original post, but thought of other things to say there, it's not that I advocate a more strait-laced or conformist society, nor a locking people up and throwing the key away approach to crime, or even gun laws as strict as, say, Japan's.

But, I do believe that there are many factors at work in the problem of American gun violence, and that it will take time and work, and even then, not all Americans are going to agree on the solutions to come and their implementation.

But, I personally believe that there are other choices besides laissez faire gun manufacture, sale and possession, and their reverse counter-parts.

I would hope so, at the very least.

Otherwise, I wouldn't see much hope for America nor Americans over the medium to long term, as no society can have the wide use of violence on the individual and group levels, and not either eventually end up becoming more authoritarian, or disintegrating into some form of chaos, however temporary.

The America, or whatever successor states that might emerge from it, at the end of that chaos, would, I think, generally be places in which no one would want to live, as more likely than not, they would be mini-despotisms run by Little Hitlers and their associates.

Even an America that remained united after such chaos, would probably be a much poorer and sadder place in which to live, in whatever senses of the phrase you might care to mention.

Anyhow, that's it and then some for me. Thanks, Jackie T., for the info on the current legal interpretation of the Second Amendment.

I now yield the floor to everyone else.

So, who's next???

[One Eyed Cat]

The 2nd was a very poorly written amendment. The dispute is always between those who emphasize "well-regulated militia" collective right v. "right to keep and bear arms" individual right.

JT

[One Eyed Cat]

Don,

What are you referring to by posse comitatus? There is a group by that name? Posse Comitatus Act was meant to prohibit military personnel from operating in a law enforcement capacity.

JT

[Donald Rilea]

Don,

What are you referring to by posse comitatus? There is a group by that name? Posse Comitatus Act was meant to prohibit military personnel from operating in a law enforcement capacity.

JT

Yeah, there was a far right group by that name that was especially active in the Midwest and Far West back in the late '70's and early to mid-'80's.

Their programme was essentially this-that only county sheriffs were Constitutionally-designated and authorised officials, with all other authorities, Federal, state and local, being un-Constitutional. It was also anti-income tax, anti-Federal Reserve, pro-gun, and anti-Semitic, and some of its members, most infamously one Gordon Kahl, who died in a shoot-out with FBI agents in either 1981 or 1982(Sorry if am uncertain as to year when incident took place).

The organisation itself doesn't seem to have held together much past about 1985 or 1986, but I think some elements of the Posse's ideology made into some portions of the various militia movement's component groups' ideologies.

Am enclosing a link or two on them for you to peruse.

This one's from the Nizkor Project from the B'Nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/amer...comitatus.html,

and this one's from the FBI's Freedom of Information Act web-page on them, http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/posse.htm.

This article on the Posse can be found on Public Eye.org, a branch of Political Research Associates, which appears to be a Left group, at http://www.publiceye.org/rightist/idennlns.html, and this one's from Nebraska Studies. Org, which presents its article on the Posse in the greater contexts of 1980's Nebraska history, and the farm crisis of those years, in particular, at http://www.nebraskastudies.org/1000/...1001_0115.html.

Hope these prove to be informative and of some help in answering your question about the Posse Comitatus.

[One Eyed Cat]

Yeah, there was a far right group by that name that was especially active in the Midwest and Far West back in the late '70's and early to mid-'80's.

Their programme was essentially this-that only county sheriffs were Constitutionally-designated and authorised officials, with all other authorities, Federal, state and local, being un-Constitutional. It was also anti-income tax, anti-Federal Reserve, pro-gun, and anti-Semitic, and some of its members, most infamously one Gordon Kahl, who died in a shoot-out with FBI agents in either 1981 or 1982(Sorry if am uncertain as to year when incident took place).

The organisation itself doesn't seem to have held together much past about 1985 or 1986, but I think some elements of the Posse's ideology made into some portions of the various militia movement's component groups' ideologies.

Am enclosing a link or two on them for you to peruse.

This one's from the Nizkor Project from the B'Nai Brith Anti-Defamation League, http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/amer...comitatus.html,

and this one's from the FBI's Freedom of Information Act web-page on them, http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/posse.htm.

This article on the Posse can be found on Public Eye.org, a branch of Political Research Associates, which appears to be a Left group, at http://www.publiceye.org/rightist/idennlns.html, and this one's from Nebraska Studies. Org, which presents its article on the Posse in the greater contexts of 1980's Nebraska history, and the farm crisis of those years, in particular, at http://www.nebraskastudies.org/1000/...1001_0115.html.

Hope these prove to be informative and of some help in answering your question about the Posse Comitatus.

Thanks. I do have some issues with Nizkor, but Posse Comitatus was clearly an egregious group of bigots. Would I apply this to a judicial disposition of the 2nd? No, but I can respect the argument.

JT

[Donald Rilea]

Thanks. I do have some issues with Nizkor, but Posse Comitatus was clearly an egregious group of bigots. Would I apply this to a judicial disposition of the 2nd? No, but I can respect the argument.

JT

Thank you, Sir. Always a pleasure to have a debate with a gentleman.