Thoughts on gun control

Except when it comes to privacy and tapping phones without warrant.

1 ) As a matter of constituional law,
it can be amended by a vote of 2/3 of each house of Congress,
ratified by 3/4 of the 50 states.

2) It is questionable whether a NATURAL RIGHT,
such as self-defense from violent depredations, can be abrogated,
altho political tyranny can be established to violate it.

David

Here u address freedom of government,
as distinguished from freedom of the individual citizen.

Domestic government power and personal freedom
are inversely proportional.

David

Well, in all fairness, Oralloy, a lot of criminals
interviewed in prison ( on TV )
have declared that guns in private hands
are indeed retrograde and obstructive
of the continued practice of their careers.

David

The grammar of the amendment is meaningless. What is relevant is the legal meaning of the amendment.

In this case, the amendment merely places into the Constitution rights that came from the English Bill of Rights:




This phrase "that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of parliament, is against law" reflected a primary concern that standing armies be curtailed.

However, when the Framers were writing the Constitution, the biggest objections centered more on the fear that the militia would be unjustly curtailed.

Therefore, we had George Mason's proposal that combined provisions supporting the militia with the traditional provisions restricting standing armies:





And when James Madison boiled down and consolidated all the various proposed amendments, the parts about standing armies were removed completely, leaving only the protections for the militia.



And that was further modified by Congress, leaving us with what we have today, an amendment with two independent (legally speaking) clauses.

The first clause insists that the government maintain the militia on hand for the defense of the country.

The second clause insists that people have the right to keep and bear arms as part of that militia.

The primary way the Framers intended the militia to protect us from tyranny was not by being a force to potentially fight the government, but by being the government's main source of military strength.

They felt that a government which had a standing army at its beck and call would naturally become tyrannical, but that a government which had to rely on a militia to carry out its orders would never become tyrannical, since a militia would not carry out a tyrannical order.





Yes. And it is a violation of our rights for the government to not provide such a militia for us to join.

People also use guns for hunting, particularly the larger revolvers.

But the most important civilian use of handguns comes from legitimate self defense.

Unless the laws were changed to explicitly allow people to carry loaded long-guns at the ready everywhere they go, banning handguns would place unacceptable restrictions on people's ability to defend themselves.

To defend themselves from....other people with handguns!

So the solution is....

Doh!

Gun Control
Hi,

Regarding gun cun control; you might want to consider using both hands when aiming the weapon.

B.P.

Re: Gun Control

good point, I prefer the carbine.

Here are some exerpts of 2 brief articles
qua parsing the grammar of the 2nd Amendment,
by professionals of English usage.

They worked on a purely professional basis.
Tho the periodicals in which the articles
were published may well have been partial,
the experts showed their dispassionate work.

I will highlight the most interesting parts.
The highlighting makes it easier to find the best stuff.
OmSigDAVID

The Unabridged Second Amendment
by J. Neil Schulman


The following article appeared in the September, 1991 issue of
California Libertarian News, official newsletter of the California Libertarian Party.

English Usage Expert Interprets 2nd Amendment

I just had a conversation with Mr. A.C. Brocki, Editorial Coordinator
for the Office of Instruction of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Mr. Brocki taught Advanced Placement English for several years
at Van Nuys High School, as well as having been a senior editor for
Houghton Mifflin. I was referred to Mr. Brocki by Sherryl Broyles of the
Office of Instruction of the LA Unified School District, who described
Mr. Brocki as the foremost expert in grammar in the Los Angeles Unified
School District - the person she and others go to when they need a
definitive answer on English grammar. ...

"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."

I asked him to rephrase this sentence to make it clearer.
"Because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

I asked him whether the meaning could have changed in two hundred years.
He said, "No."

I asked him whether this sentence could be interpreted to restrict the right
to keep and bear arms to "a well-regulated militia."

He said, "no."

According to Mr. Brocki, the sentence means that
the people are the militia, and that the people have the right which is mentioned.
I asked him again to make sure:
Schulman:
"Can the sentence be interpreted to mean that the right can be restricted to "a well-regulated militia?"
Brocki: "No, I can't see that."

Schulman:
"Could another professional in English grammar or linguistics interpret the sentence to mean otherwise?"
Brocki: "I can't see any grounds for another interpretation."

I asked Mr. Brocki if he would be willing to stake his professional
reputation on this opinion, and be quoted on this. He said, "Yes."

At no point in the conversation did I ask Mr. Brocki his opinion on the
Second Amendment, gun control, or the right to keep and bear arms.
- July 17, 1991



The following is reprinted from "The Text of The Second Amendment"
in The Journal on Firearms and Public Policy, Summer 1992, Volume 4, Number 1.

The Unabridged Second Amendment

If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you'd ring up Carl Sagan, right?
If you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be
Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it, but who would you call if you
wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution?

That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, Editorial Coordinator of the
Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers
- who himself had been recommended to me as the foremost expert
on English usage in the Los Angeles school system. Mr. Brocki told me to
get in touch with Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the
University of Southern California and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus.
A little research lent support to Brocki's opinion of Professor Copperud's expertise. ...
He's on the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary,
and Merriam Webster's Usage Dictionary frequently cites him as an expert.
Copperud's fifth book on usage, American Usage and Style: The Consensus,
has been in continuous print from Van Nostrand Reinhold since 1981,
and is the winner of the Association of American Publishers' Humanities Award.

After a brief telephone call to Professor Copperud in which I introduced myself
but did not give him any indication of why I was interested,
I sent the following letter on July 26, 1991:

I am writing you to ask you for your professional opinion as an expert in English usage,
to analyze the text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution,
and extract the intent from the text.

The text of the Second Amendment is,
"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."

[Copperud:]
The words "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,"
contrary to the interpretation cited in your letter of July 26, 1991,
constitute a present participle, rather than a clause. It is used as an adjective,
modifying "militia," which is followed by the main clause of the sentence
(subject "the right," verb "shall"). The right to keep and bear arms is asserted
as essential for maintaining a militia.

In reply to your numbered questions:
[Schulman:
(1) Can the sentence be interpreted to grant
the right to keep and bear arms solely to "a well-regulated militia"?

[Copperud:]
(1) The sentence does not restrict
the right to keep and bear arms,
nor does it state or imply
possession of the right elsewhere
or by others than the people;
it simply makes a positive statement
with respect to a right of the people.

[Schulman: (2)
Is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" granted by the words
of the Second Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume
a preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms,
and merely state that such right "shall not be infringed"?

[Copperud:]
(2) The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed.
The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for
the sake of ensuring a militia.

[Schulman: (3) Is the right of the people to keep and bear arms conditioned upon whether
or not a well-regulated militia is, in fact, necessary to the security of a free State,
and if that condition is not existing, is the statement
"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed" null and void?

[Copperud:] (3) No such condition is expressed or implied.
The right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment
to depend on the existence of a militia.
No condition is stated or implied
as to the relation of the right to keep and bear arms
and to the necessity of a well-regulated militia
as requisite to the security of a free state.
The right to keep and bear arms
is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence.

[Schulman:
(4) Does the clause:
"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the
security of a free State," grant a right to the government to place conditions
on the "right of the people to keep and bear arms,"
or is such right deemed unconditional by the meaning of the
entire sentence?

[Copperud:]
(4) The right is assumed to exist and to be unconditional,
as previously stated. It is invoked here specifically
for the sake of the militia. ...

Professor Copperud had only one additional comment, which he placed in his cover letter:
"With well-known human curiosity, I made some speculative efforts to decide
how the material might be used, but was unable to reach any conclusion."

[ Suppressionists of the rights of self-defense
and of access to vital defensive emergency equipment
are invited to offer counter-evidence from expert professionals
concerning the grammatical analysis of the 2nd Amendment. ]




I ask that this grammatical parsing be
considered together with the USSC's holding
in VERDUGO (set forth below, for your convenient reference):

The USSC has held
in the case of US v. VERDUGO (199O) 11O S.Ct. 1O56
(at P. 1O61) that:

" The Second Amendment protects
'the right of the people to keep
and bear arms' ".

THE SUPREME COURT THEN PROCEEDS TO DEFINE "THE PEOPLE" AS BEING
THE SAME PEOPLE WHO CAN VOTE TO ELECT THE US HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES EVERY SECOND YEAR. ( Let us note that, one need not join
the militia in order to vote for his congressman.)

The Court further defined "the people" to mean those people who
have a right peaceably to assemble [1st Amendment] and those who
have the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures
[4th Amendment] in their persons houses, papers and effects
(personal rights, not rights of states, as the
authoritarian-collectivists allege of the 2nd Amendment).
THE COURT HELD THAT THE TERM "THE PEOPLE" MEANS THE SAME THING
EVERYWHERE THAT IT IS FOUND IN THE CONSTITUTION OF 1787, AND
EVERYWHERE THAT IT IS FOUND IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

In VERDUGO (supra), the Court indicated that THE SAME PEOPLE
are protected by the First, SECOND, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth
Amendments; i.e., THE PEOPLE who can speak and worship
freely are THE PEOPLE who can keep and bear arms.

It is most noteworthy that the Court RELIED upon its
definition of "the people". Its conclusion in the VERDUGO case
is founded upon that definition, so that stare decisis attaches,
thus creating binding judicial precedent,
explaining WHO THE PEOPLE ARE who have the said rights.
That law SHOULD control the courts, thus disabling all governments in America
from violating our personal rights to weaponry and self-defense.
David

U ignore the fact that criminals can MAKE their own firepower
( the same as kids build hotrods, if they enjoy doing that ),
or if too lazy to do so, they can get it from blackmarket gunsmiths/gunmerchants,
the same way that they get marijuana now
or how they got bathtub gin in the 1920s.

U repressionists want to remove guns, saying they are sometimes used to facilitate crime.
U fail to understand that the actual weapon is the HUMAN MIND,
whose cleverness has not been controlled nor restrained ( even in prison ).
This mind expresses itself perseveringly, into the manifestation of its felt needs
or desires, and it has FOREVER to do the job that it selects (e.g., the art of the gunsmith/merchant).
Prohibition is futile.

Another way to look at it: Lizzy Bordon and Jack the Ripper never owned guns.

For that matter, Genghis Khan never owned a gun...

Also to defend against people with knives, people with clubs, and even some people who attack with their bare hands.





The solution is to eliminate all prohibitions against civilian use of armor-piercing ammo.

Happy ending:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1666238/posts

Contrast that with the unhappy endings you read about in cases like that of the poor guy in England who's sitting in prison for using a shotgun to defend himself against thugs who were advancing towards him with weapons in his own home.

I mean, England might have been an interesting place to visit at one time, but I wouldn't set foot in the place so long as things like that were possible there.

And a stray thought here for some of the leftists.....

Einstein called this sort of thing "thought experiments".

Would it be possible to get rid of two or more of these issues which poison American politics via one or more simple exchanges?

One possibility would be an absolute guarantee of abortion rights up to the third trimester for the elimination of all gun laws other than the 2'nd ammendment, UP TO the point at which Uncle Sam would be sufficiently concerned to act were AlQuaeda to acquire a particular weapon.

What that means is that Uncle Sam doesn't give a rat's ass about AlQuaeda owning machineguns or howitzers but will act if Alquaeda tries to acquire AA missiles or anthrax or sarin gas. Logically the same should apply to citizens.

Conservatives would clearly desire to be rid of Affirmative Action and other forms of government preferences. Would a reasonable trade for that one be an end to the insane "War on Drugs"?

There are almost certainly a baker's half dozen or so ideas for similar swapouts to be had if anybody was interested.

Certainly an intersting proposition. I wonder, though, if the 'extreme moralists' on either side would ever allow such a thing to happen.

Also, the groups opposing such things tend to be diverse; for example, loosening gun laws would please many, but the trade-offs (abortion, whatever really) would anger many who are in the same political coalition, which makes it difficult to see such legistlation passing.

Cheers for the good idea though, Gunga

Cycloptichorn

A reasonable gun law:

1) Anyone convicted of the commission of any crime against person or property, while at the time of the commission of said crime having physical, on-person possession of a firearm, whether legally acquired or not, shall be subject to Federal felony penalties including prison of not less than 5 years without the possibility of parole, fine, and such forfeiture of rights as accompany felony conviction.

2) Anyone convicted of the use of a firearm in the furtherence of the commission of any crime against person or property shall be subject to the penalties as described in 1) above with the further provision of Federal imprisonment of not less than 25 years without possibility of parole.


3) Anyone convicted a second time of the criminal use of a firearm in the furtherence of the commission of any crime against person or property, as described in 2) above, or anyone convicted of the criminal use of a firearm resulting in injury to any person shall be subject to Federal imprisonment of life without possibility of parole.

That's totally reasonable.

I believe he shot that robber in the back, after setting an ambush. But, public sympathies here were with the shooter. He had suffered a string of break-ins.

Wondering....I suppose robberies do not take place in the States, since everyone can easily kill everyone else?