@oralloy,
First, you know about the US Constitution, and the rights enumerated in it a lot less than I do. So telling me that I want to infringe on your right to bear arms is prima fascia evidence that you are not right in the head.
There is nothing unconstitutional about a ban on assault weapons.
DC v Heller does not offer carte’ blanche on them, as Scalia said. So you can not to use that line of argument to defend your demand that you have a constitutional right to use an Uzi, M15 or AK-47 to protect yourself from a burglar invading your home.
Even Justice Scalia noted in his decision that if the handgun ban fell on the basis of an individual right to self-defense, the District’s ban on machine guns would need not also be overturned.
The Court's ruling does not affect the District's ban on "machine guns," which under DC law includes any gun "which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot semi-automatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading."
This definition includes virtually all semiautomatic handguns. As a result, the District's ban can remain in force for those types of handguns. In essence, the Court's ruling for the most part will only affect revolvers and derringers.
See the pdf file from the SCOTUS decision, District of Columbia versus Heller.
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-2901.pdf
If you castigate Obama for trying to restrict assault weapons then you ought to do so to Scalia who claims in
DC v Heller that the individual right to bear arms does not include
"M-16 rifles and the like" because it covers only those weapons
"in common use at the time" of the amendment's adoption in the 18th century and not
"dangerous and unusual weapons."
FROM PAGE 54 ONWARD OF SCALIA’S DECISIONIN DC V HELLER
Quote:Like most rights, the right secured by the Second
Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through
the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely
explained that the right was not a right to keep and
carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever
and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume
346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152"153; Abbott 333. For example,
the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the
question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed
weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or
state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann.,
at 489"490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2
Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n.
11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an
exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the
Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be
taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the
possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or
laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places
such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing
conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms
We also recognize another important limitation on the
right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have
explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those
“in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think
that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition
of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual
weapons.” See 4 Blackstone 148"149 (1769); 3 B. Wilson,
Works of the Honourable James Wilson 79 (1804); J.
Dunlap, The New-York Justice 8 (1815); C. Humphreys, A
Compendium of the Common Law in Force in Kentucky
482 (1822); 1 W. Russell, A Treatise on Crimes and Indictable
Misdemeanors 271"272 (1831); H. Stephen, Summary
of the Criminal Law 48 (1840); E. Lewis, An Abridgment
of the Criminal Law of the United States 64 (1847); F.
Wharton, A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United
States 726 (1852). See also State v. Langford, 10 N. C.
381, 383"384 (1824); O’Neill v. State, 16 Ala. 65, 67 (1849);
English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 476 (1871); State v. Lanier,
71 N. C. 288, 289 (1874).
But here is the critical part relevant to the topic at hand.
Quote:It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful
in military service"M-16 rifles and the like"may be
banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely
detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said,
the conception of the militia at the time of the Second
Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens
capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of
lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia
duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as
effective as militias in the 18th century, would require
sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at
large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.
We turn finally to the law at issue here. As we have
said, the law totally bans handgun possession in the home.
It also requires that any lawful firearm in the home be
disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering
it inoperable.
As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate,
the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the
Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a
prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly
chosen by American society for that lawful purpose.
The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the
need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.
Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied
to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,”
Do you understand this? Because from your argument that you possess an inherent constitutional right to have assault weapons, apparently, you don’t. It means that while
Quote: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.
It does not preclude that the government can not regulate weapons in the home that would be of a nature used by a militia if such weapons are “dangerous and unusual weapons.”
Home protection and self preservation has relied upon handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles historically and it is these weapons which fall under protection by the DC v Heller decision, and not those of an inherently military nature like assault weapons.
This is the salient point of Scalia stating that…..
Quote:the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.
Again, the SCOTUS decision in Heller did not overturn the District of Columbia’s ban on machine guns. Aka “assault weapons,” because of the preceding quote from the decision.
So stating that I want to infringe upon your inherent constitutional right to possess them is wrong, because you have no inherent constitutional right to possess them, according to Scalia. Not me.
As to your boogeyman concern about gun confiscation, you ought to revel in Scalia’s Heller decision.
The gun lobby effectively thwarted efforts to pass many sensible gun laws by arguing that even modest gun control would lead down the path to a complete ban on gun ownership. It is the classic "slippery slope" argument, and it has served the gun lobby well politically.
That "slippery slope," however, is now gone. The U.S. Supreme Court took it off the table in their D.C. v. Heller opinion. Government is now barred from "taking away" the guns of law-abiding Americans.
Because of this Court decision, proposals such as Brady background checks on all gun sales, limiting bulk sales of handguns, restricting access to military-style assault weapons, and strengthening the power of law enforcement to shut down corrupt gun dealers can now be debated on their merits without them being seen as a "first step on the road to gun confiscation."
While the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the District's ban on handguns, they also made it clear that the Constitution allows for reasonable restrictions on access to firearms. As Justice Scalia said, "the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited." When the dust settles, most Americans will come to see that there are some positives in this decision.
Elected officials will no longer be able to use a mistaken, absolutist misreading of the Second Amendment as an excuse to do nothing about gun violence in our country. Politicians can't hide behind the Second Amendment anymore.
As to your unsubstantiated remark that you are not arguing the NRA’s talking point about Obama you certainly are doing it, even if inadvertently.
The NRA continues to suggest that even tepid gun-control advocates like Sen. Obama favor confiscation. This is from Politico:
Quote:"A recent mailing from the president of the National Rifle Association to its members says that Barack Obama wants to ban the possession of handguns, and that 'never in NRA's history have we faced a presidential candidate " and hundreds of candidates running for other offices " with such a deep-rooted hatred of firearm freedoms.'"
To put it briefly, all constitutional rights can be infringed if the state's interest in doing so is "compelling" enough in the Court's eyes. There have been some judges, who have been "absolutist" on certain constitutional rights, meaning that they believe that under no circumstances can the state infringe a particular right.
But the Court's long-standing consensus has been that all rights can theoretically be infringed if the reason is good enough. Deciding that the Second Amendment confers an individual as opposed to a collective right to gun ownership is, in effect, to decide only what level of "scrutiny" with which to assess laws that infringe the Second Amendment.
Had the Court come down in favor of the collective rights position, it would have applied moderate scrutiny to the D.C. law, and asked only whether the law had a "rational basis." Under this level of scrutiny, the D.C. law probably would have stood. But
by deciding that the Second Amendment confers an individual right, the Court had to apply the level of scrutiny that it applies to all constitutionally protected individual rights: "strict scrutiny." Under this scrutiny, the D.C. law was bound to fall. Breyer suggested it might not have to, because he considers the state interest in safety to be very, very compelling, but inevitably, strict scrutiny = no more handgun ban.
Now, as for the assault weapons and machine gun bans:
Yes, those bans would likely survive strict scrutiny, as even Justice Scalia noted. And yes, that's a judgment call that the Court has to make.
Their judgment would likely be based upon the argument that assault weapons and machine guns serve no purpose except to make violence more efficient and successful.
The state interest in reducing violence is more compelling than the individual's right to keep an assault rifle, because there's no good reason to have an assault rifle in the first place, they would say.
There is a good reason to have a handgun--- protection. Since you can protect yourself as well with a handgun (or shotgun, or hunting rifle) as easily as you can with an assault rifle, and since the purpose of the Second Amendment was (in the Court's majority view in Heller ) to protect the individual's right to self-defense and not to protect any and all acts of gun violence, states and cities can and should be allowed to restrict certain classes of firearms.
So who gets to define what infringements on the second amendment is reasonable?
The answer to every "Who gets to decide?" question is: your elected representatives, and the courts. Congress, state legislatures, and city councils write laws defining terms like "assault weapon" and "machine gun," and then, if those laws are challenged, the courts decide whether those definitions are fair and accurate and, if so, whether banning those guns is "reasonable.
Obama, who was and is pro-gun control, is not one you might call a gun control absolutist, or those who favor bans and confiscations. Obama favored the D.C. ban and a similar Illinois ban, but there's no indication he would seek a national policy along those lines. His operating principle is that states and cities (like Illinois or D.C.) should decide gun policy because gun violence is a localized phenomenon, and because those governments can best assess what restrictions are in keeping with "people's traditions." It just so happens that Chicago and D.C. have pretty bad gun violence. But the concern that Obama wants to take away everyone's guns has no evidence to back it up. And doing so would be impossible now anyway.
But it is clear that he is very sympathetic to the idea of gun control, even though he wouldn't turn that support into a national policy.
