Another major school shooting today ... Newtown, Conn

@oralloy,

Certainly Congress can set limits and they're not bound by Rational Basis Review. and so on.You'd never even heard of them until you read about them somewhere a week or so ago, and I defy you to tell me where they're mentioned in the Constitution as necessary for any law Congress passes. You've just discovered a new obscure point to get hung up and try to impose on everybody and everything you post about, no matter how tortured the connection.
\

2 Replies

@oralloy,

Quote:

The rational basis review tests whether a governmental action is a reasonable means to an end that may be legitimately pursued by the government. This test requires that the governmental action be "rationally related" to a "legitimate" government interest.[1][2] Under this standard of review, the "legitimate interest" does not have to be the government’s actual interest. Rather, if the court can merely hypothesize a "legitimate" interest served by the challenged action, it will withstand the rational basis review.[3

To understand the concept of rational basis review, it is easier to understand what it is not. Rational basis review is not intelligent basis review; the legislature is merely required to be rational, not smart. A court applying rational basis review will virtually always uphold a challenged law unless every proffered justification for it is a grossly illogical non sequitur (or even worse, a word salad). In 2008, Justice John Paul Stevens reaffirmed the lenient nature of rational basis review in a concurring opinion: "[A]s I recall my esteemed former colleague, Thurgood Marshall, remarking on numerous occasions: 'The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.

You will notice the "lenient nature" of rational basis review. Scalia already provided an adequate basis for approval himself in his opinion in Heller. An assault weapons ban would have absolutely no trouble passing. What they should do is follow Australia's lead in banning semi-automatic weapons. Something like thirteen shooting rampages before they passed the van. None since in the ten years or so it's been in effect. Rational empirical evidence. You don't have much of a constitutional leg to stand on, oralloy.

2 Replies

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

Certainly Congress can set limits and they're not bound by Rational Basis Review. and so on.

Well, that depends on whether Congress wants their laws struck down or not.

Yes, they can certainly pass unconstitutional laws. But doing so will not ultimately achieve anything.

MontereyJack wrote:

You'd never even heard of them until you read about them somewhere a week or so ago,

Don't presume, just because you've never heard of the fundamental principles governing the application of the Constitution, that I am equally as uninformed.

MontereyJack wrote:

You've just discovered a new obscure point to get hung up and try to impose on everybody and everything you post about, no matter how tortured the connection.

The fundamental principles that the US courts have always used in applying the Constitution throughout the history of this nation, are neither new nor obscure. Nor is the connection tortured when the subject is the question of whether a proposed law is unconstitutional.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

Quote:
The rational basis review tests whether a governmental action is a reasonable means to an end that may be legitimately pursued by the government. This test requires that the governmental action be "rationally related" to a "legitimate" government interest.[1][2] Under this standard of review, the "legitimate interest" does not have to be the government’s actual interest. Rather, if the court can merely hypothesize a "legitimate" interest served by the challenged action, it will withstand the rational basis review.[3

To understand the concept of rational basis review, it is easier to understand what it is not. Rational basis review is not intelligent basis review; the legislature is merely required to be rational, not smart. A court applying rational basis review will virtually always uphold a challenged law unless every proffered justification for it is a grossly illogical non sequitur (or even worse, a word salad). In 2008, Justice John Paul Stevens reaffirmed the lenient nature of rational basis review in a concurring opinion: "[A]s I recall my esteemed former colleague, Thurgood Marshall, remarking on numerous occasions: 'The Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.

You will notice the "lenient nature" of rational basis review.

I will also note that, since there is no legitimate reason for banning harmless cosmetic features, a ban on assault weapons would not pass muster with Rational Basis Review (to say nothing of the even sterner standards of scrutiny that might be applied).

MontereyJack wrote:

Scalia already provided an adequate basis for approval himself in his opinion in Heller.

No he didn't.

MontereyJack wrote:

An assault weapons ban would have absolutely no trouble passing.

The fact that there is no legitimate reason for banning harmless cosmetic features means that an assault weapons ban would have no chance whatsoever of passing muster.

MontereyJack wrote:

What they should do is follow Australia's lead in banning semi-automatic weapons.

Even assuming that would pass Constitutional muster (a long shot at best, you'd be looking at Strict Scrutiny for that), if they even tried it, the Democratic Party would be out of power for a century.

MontereyJack wrote:

You don't have much of a constitutional leg to stand on, oralloy.

Yes I do. There is no legitimate reason for banning harmless cosmetic features, and there never will be.

0 Replies

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/181830_10200225346100965_27632432_n.jpg

2 Replies

@RexRed,

RexRed wrote:

Gonna bring back the poll tax too?

0 Replies

@oralloy,

Quote:

Yes, they can certainly pass unconstitutional laws. But doing so will not ultimately achieve anything.

It will. It passes the buck to the judiciary. Congress bans assault weapons. Judges strike it down. Next massacre Congress says "it's not our fault folks".

1 Reply

@oralloy,

Quote:

All the Republicans want to do is have measures in place to prevent people from cheating.

Sorry that is not even the words of some of the GOP politicians who got those attempts on the law books.

Once more when you are talking about raising barriers for hundreds of thousands of valid voters to vote and using the excuse that someone might be cheating even when you can not point to one case of that happening in the past there is little question what the hell is going on.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

Bill, you know you shouldn't try to confuse the Oraboy with facts--his mind is already made up and he is better than we are.

Rap

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

Quote:

What they should do is follow Australia's lead in banning semi-automatic weapons.

LOL so instead of trying to seized 300 millions weapons it would be just 200 millions weapons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Assuming that the government is going to paid a fair market price for this seized property say 300 dollars a gun on average that would cost the government 60 billions dollars. Hell 300 dollars is likely to be on the low end when it come to rifles so it might end up costing over a 100 billions.

Then you have the little problem that you would need swat teams backing up search teams going to every home in the nation.

Nothing like touching off a second civil war.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

Oh after all the semi-auto had been seized and paid for I can see the buying of large magazine capable level actions rifles who rate of fired is very little less then the semi-auto that they had replaced.

0 Replies

@RexRed,

I see that Rex is confused again....one needs insurance to drive a car off your property, not to own a car.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

Quote:

Nothing like touching off a second civil war.

There won't be any civil war Bill. It's an empty threat.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

There won't be any civil war Bill. It's an empty threat.

I would not count on it as the Waco conflict was set off by an ATF raid looking for illegal firearms and it resulted in a large numbers of deaths including Federal agents and children and that also led to the Oklahoma bombing that killed hundreds of people including children.

What to bet that we would not have thousands of Waco and Okahoma bombings and so on if the government try to seized 200 to 300 millions firearms?

Footnote then we have the case of a federal raid on a family over a saw off shotgun that resulted in the shooting of the family dog and the young teenager firing into the woods where the shots came from being killed then the uncle of the boy killing the two federal agents that killed the boy and the dog.

Later a federal sniper killed a woman with a new born in her arms.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

i dont think that anyone in Washington wants to fight about guns, it is the abortion fight all over again, nobody wins. there will be some mostly cosmetic law changes and nothing of substance will change.

2 Replies

@hawkeye10,

I think you're the one who is confused. To legally own a car, which means to take title to it, you have to register it, and you can't do that without insurance.

3 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Something has already changed. The talk of banning assault weapons has led to many thousands of extra assault weapons going into circulation and if the talk was just talk the talkers have sold the weapons and lined the coffers of the arms industry so that it can afford more lobbying and other sweeteners. And the polarisation is more extreme.

And the talkers should have known really.

The only way out for them is to deliver. And if they don't want to fight they shouldn't have opened their gobs in the first place in order to court cheap popularity and display their compassion for our admiration.

1 Reply

@spendius,

I don't know, which is why I am silent to your question.
I don't happen to like guns in the first place.

My father had old hunting rifles, which I sold, probably at a hilarious money loss, to Abercrombe and Finch in the late sixties.
My husband came into my life with a rifle, and because of his home invasion past (when the gun did no good in the closet), I didn't throw a fit.
Twenty something years later we split, not at all about guns.

These issues keep coming up.
I think of it as ballooning stupidity.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

i dont think that anyone in Washington wants to fight about guns, it is the abortion fight all over again, nobody wins. there will be some mostly cosmetic law changes and nothing of substance will change.

The first so call assault ban was meaningless/cosmetic however the pro-2 amendment people did not forget and went after the supporters of this ban year after year.

Long after the pressure to do something anything about evil guns driven by the news media is gone the politicians will be facing the NRA and gun owners in general.

They are between the rock and the hard place.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

When politicians can't grasp the nettle they are no longer leaders.

Quote:

Well, the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same, who'll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin
Only a matter of time 'til night comes stepping in.

Bob Dylan. Jokerman.

1 Reply

Another major school shooting today ... Newtown, Conn

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know