THE LIE THAT IS LIBERAL

That doesn't make the judge's words any less valid.

Here are the judge's exact words (quoted directly from my sig line):
A man has a clear right to arms to protect himself in his house. A man has a clear right to protect himself when he is going singly or in a small party upon the road where he is traveling or going for the ordinary purposes of business.

Nor have I applied any meaning other than the meaning clearly expressed by the judge.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the US did change the right, that would still mean we had to receive it from the British first.

It would be pretty hard for us to change the right if we had never received it to begin with.

joefromchicago wrote:

You're both referring to the same right, aren't you?

Yes. "My claim that the right was created in 1689" and "Parados' claim that the right was created narrowly" do refer to the same right.

So your claim that this isn't true, was incorrect.

I did not take his claim as saying that it was narrow to the point of being illusory. I took his claim as saying that it was narrow.

I am unsure if he and I interpret the text of the English Bill of Rights with a significant difference.

joefromchicago wrote:

oralloy wrote:

I honestly cannot perceive any relevance to the claim that the right was created narrowly.

So if someone says that your position is wrong, that's not relevant to your position?

"Someone saying that my position is wrong" and "someone using an irrelevant point as justification for saying that my position is wrong" are not the same thing.

It means the words don't have any legal weight as a court ruling. They are simply the words of a single judge in a single case. You are attempting to give them a legal meaning that is not there. The judge wasn't creating a legal precedent.

It means the words don't have any legal weight as a court ruling. They are simply the words of a single judge in a single case. You are attempting to give them a legal meaning that is not there. The judge wasn't creating a legal precedent. He was merely stating something that already existed.

They could carry weapons suitable to their condition and as allowed by law.

The conviction proves that carrying weapons in this case violated the law.

And you ignore the context of the case. A man has a right to carry arms suitable to their condition. That was not a question here since they were carrying pikes which was suitable to their position. You are attempting to make it include all arms when the facts of the case are restricted to a few types.

oralloy wrote:

Nor have I applied any meaning other than the meaning clearly expressed by the judge.

Yes, you included arms not in evidence in the case where the statement was made.

oralloy wrote:

Assuming for the sake of argument that the US did change the right, that would still mean we had to receive it from the British first.
It would be pretty hard for us to change the right if we had never received it to begin with.

Let me ask you, do the British have the same gun rights as the US?

If they have the same rights and it was granted to them in the English Bill of Rights then can you explain when that Bill of Rights was repealed?

You started this by claiming that Rex v Dewhurst granted the rights to carry guns in public.
http://able2know.org/topic/344120-2#post-6270734

If Rex v Dewhurst was a precedent then what court cases overturned it because I am pretty sure that Britain doesn't allow it's citizens to carry guns.

So then when parados claimed that "the right to keep and bear arms was not granted to all in the English Bill of Rights," he was directly addressing the argument that you made that "[t]o look at the actual nature of the right [in the USA], you have to look at what the UK created." In other words, you're both trying to determine the extent of the right that was initially created in 1689 by the EBR. Isn't that correct?

oralloy wrote:

So your claim that this isn't true, was incorrect.

As I see it, you're both talking about the same thing, you just have different interpretations of it.

Are you, therefore, suggesting that someone with a different interpretation can't say anything relevant about your position?

oralloy wrote:

I did not take his claim as saying that it was narrow to the point of being illusory. I took his claim as saying that it was narrow.

Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh.

oralloy wrote:

I am unsure if he and I interpret the text of the English Bill of Rights with a significant difference.

Then why do you dispute his interpretation?

oralloy wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

oralloy wrote:

I honestly cannot perceive any relevance to the claim that the right was created narrowly.

So if someone says that your position is wrong, that's not relevant to your position?

"Someone saying that my position is wrong" and "someone using an irrelevant point as justification for saying that my position is wrong" are not the same thing.

That doesn't answer my question.

Indeed. Rex v. Dewhurst was a trial court case. The rulings of trial court judges have no precedential value outside of the case in which they are issued. That rule's the same in the US and in the UK.

So the judge's words are evidence showing the existence of this right.

At the time, this meant that ordinary citizens were allowed to carry flintlock muskets

The value of this case is in the judge's statement that provides evidence as to the extent of the right to keep and bear arms.

The sort of arms used by the defendants in this specific case has no bearing on what sort of weapons are covered by the right to keep and bear arms.

Not anymore. They used to however.

The right that was referred to in Rex v Dewhurst was overturned by the Firearms Act of 1920.

oralloy wrote:

So the judge's words are evidence showing the existence of this right.

Which is not your original claim.

And the right as you claim it existed didn't really exist.

There were some pretty major restrictions you continue to ignore.

oralloy wrote:

At the time, this meant that ordinary citizens were allowed to carry flintlock muskets

Really?

Do you have a citation?

oralloy wrote:

The value of this case is in the judge's statement that provides evidence as to the extent of the right to keep and bear arms.

The value of this case is that people can carry arms but the people that carried arms were convicted of a crime?

Do you not understand that the conviction of those people completely undermines your argument?

oralloy wrote:

The sort of arms used by the defendants in this specific case has no bearing on what sort of weapons are covered by the right to keep and bear arms.

It has a very real bearing because the judge was dealing with this case. He was not ruling in any other case. His arguments can't be used in any other case.

You are completely ignoring how the law and courts work.

oralloy wrote:

Not anymore. They used to however.

No, they never really did.

The Bill of Rights allowed for the law to control what weapons could be owned and carried.

oralloy wrote:

The right that was referred to in Rex v Dewhurst was overturned by the Firearms Act of 1920.

No, the right remained.

They could still own and carry arms allowed under the law.

What changed was which weapons the law allowed.

They still had the same right they had when the Bill of Rights was passed.

Not quite correct. I am referring to the right as it existed in society after it was created. I perceive no relevance to the extent of the right at the exact instant that it was created.

It is clear to me that even if the right was initially limited to Protestants (something that I am not convinced is the case, but which I acknowledge could have been true), the right was applied to everyone once the courts started enforcing it.

Not quite the same thing. I was talking about the right as it existed in society after its creation. Parados was talking about its extent at the very moment of its creation.

There is a substantial difference between "a right being narrow" and "a right being so narrow that it doesn't exist".

If it was true that the right at the moment of its creation was limited only to Protestants, it would very much have been an actual right. There were a lot of Protestants in England who could have exercised such a right.

After he repeated his interpretation and complained that I was ignoring it, I stated that I could perceive no relevance to the issue, and asked why he thought it was relevant.

If someone says that my position is wrong and they have a sound argument backing their claim, that is highly relevant.

If someone says that my position is wrong and they don't have a sound argument backing their claim, that is much less relevant.

They can however provide an indication as to how the courts viewed and applied a right.

That strikes me as a singularly odd position to take. If the right as created isn't relevant to the right as subsequently interpreted by judges, then aren't you suggesting that judges are free to make up rights as they go along, without regard to the document that created the right in the first place?

If you take the position that judges are free to expand rights, aren't you also forced to concede that judges are free to restrict them?

As noted above, that's either a distinction without a difference or it's just a rather weird position to take.

In this instance, not much.

But only to the extent that they were permitted by law.

Probably because he couldn't believe you were taking the strange position that you seem to be staking out.

And you get to decide if they have a sound argument or not.

oralloy wrote:

They can however provide an indication as to how the courts viewed and applied a right.

Indeed, they evidently viewed the right as something that could be limited by ordinary legislation.

I'm not saying the right as written was not relevant to the judges who interpreted it. They didn't completely change the right into something else. They merely broadened it a little bit.

They don't seem like the same thing. No one is injured when a right is expanded. Restricting a right injures everyone who wants to exercise that right.

I see a massive difference. In one version we have a right, narrow maybe, but still very much a right. In the other version we don't have a right.

That was no big deal. For the duration of the right in England (from 1689 to 1920), the law allowed people to have whatever was the standard infantry gun of the day. Restrictions were limited to specific types of guns that were conducive to some sort of social ill. The Second Amendment under Strict Scrutiny would be pretty similar to that.

So let me get this straight: the right, as originally created, was relevant to the judges who interpreted it, but it isn't relevant to your position regarding the interpretation that those judges gave to it.

You'll have to explain that one to me.

That's simply not true. In the case of competing rights, recognizing one person's right will infringe on someone else's competing right to do something different. My right to be left alone, for instance, comes into conflict with someone else's right to call me as a witness in a criminal case.

In this particular instance, parliament limited the right in the EBR from the outset.

I'm not sure why, according to your interpretation, it couldn't be limited further by judges. Nothing, after all, compelled them to go in only one direction when it came to changing the contours of the right - or are you aware of some legal or legislative rule that I'm not?

In practice, that's not much of a difference.

oralloy wrote:

That was no big deal. For the duration of the right in England (from 1689 to 1920), the law allowed people to have whatever was the standard infantry gun of the day. Restrictions were limited to specific types of guns that were conducive to some sort of social ill. The Second Amendment under Strict Scrutiny would be pretty similar to that.

Not really.

No. What changed was the power of the government to deny people the ability to own guns.

oralloy wrote:

No. What changed was the power of the government to deny people the ability to own guns.

That didn't change.

The power was always there in the Bill of Rights under the as allowed by law clause.

Between 1689 and 1920, the British government did not have the power to prevent people from owning whatever was the standard infantry gun of the day.

That clause did not authorize the British government to prevent people from owning and possessing whatever was the standard infantry gun of the day.

That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

Of course it did. Just because they hadn't exercised that power didn't mean they didn't have it.

In 1903 they passed the pistols act which required licenses to buy pistols. Are you arguing that pistols aren't a standard infantry gun since you put the date at 1920?

Of course it allowed for the passage of such laws.

Quote:

That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

There is nothing in that clause preventing the government from changing the laws about what is allowed. They can't apply it to only Protestants but they can certainly change what the law allows for everyone.

The fact that from 1689 to 1920 the law and the courts said that people had the right to have guns means that from 1689 to 1920 the government didn't have the power to prevent it.

And as it happens, the standard infantry weapon both in 1903 and 1920 was not a pistol:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee%E2%80%93Enfield

Yes, there was nothing preventing the British government from changing the law to repeal the right. But until they did change the law and repeal the right (which they only did in 1920), the right stood in the way of the government interfering with the ownership of whatever was the standard infantry weapon of the day.