DC v. Heller update - latest amicus curiae
Who supports the Second Amendment? Why, your government does! Well, most of it. I notice that Hillary and Obama didn’t sign this one, though McCain did.
Been starting to hear Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison being floated as a possible VP candidate.
I notice John McCain on the list. Not that long ago, he was pushing a gun control agenda. That’s exactly the kind of 2 faced move that disgusts me. Does he think we’re all so stoned and drunk that we can’t remember what he said or did before? I remember when we were being called “Joe Six Pack” and “Nascar Dads”. Those names seem to imply less than functioning brain cells. I can respect someone I disagree with, I will not respect someone who lies to me and treats me like a fool.
I think that a reasonable argument could be made that since the Amendment say “bear” it is limited to arms that the citizen can actually carry. No nuclear missiles. No aircraft carriers. No cannon (well, maybe for Mr. Universe candidates).
Just a thought.
Posted by neyland_tarr
02/09/2008 at 08:38 AM
It’s a DAMN good start! Really, if we get this through, it’s the start of a recovery the likes of which deals a severe body blow to the antis. It certainly looks to me like the wedge is in place and the lever is being fit.
One of the problems in defining the meaning of the 2nd Amendment is the Constitution’s use of 18th Century English. Sorry, but that is when it was written. For an easy example would be the word “regulated”. In modern English, to say that something is regulated is to say that it is controlled. For example a flow regulator would control the flow of something, such as a valve on a water pipe. In archaic English, the meaning is one of preparedness or state of readiness. A well regulated clock would be an accurate one and “A well regulated militia...” would be one that is trained and equipped, ready to do battle. You must remember that at that time, the spelling of words changed from document to document and sometimes even within a document itself. Noah Webster didn’t even publish the first dictionary until 1806.
So given that, the bearing of arms takes on a much wider meaning than what one man may carry. Now, I don’t even like the idea of other countries having nuclear weapons, let alone individuals, but it may be within the scope of the 2nd Amendment. Jeff Cooper (PBUH), was of the opinion that the 2nd Amendment at a minimum, included weapons that could be served by one man and not a crew. At this point, we are now well past rifles and pistols and up into the realm of the M2, LAW, Stinger, Hand Grenade and lots of other items you don’t want to be down range of.
If Heller finally comes down on the side of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, this is something we may have to examine very carefully. 18th Century United States Citizens, generals and politicians might have dreamed of weapons like the M16, AK47, UZI, M2 and would have little trouble understanding a 105mm Howitzer. Those items are but technological refinements of the weapons of the day. Biological and chemical weapons were already in use, but the concept of a weapon that could wipe an entire city from the face of the earth, just didn’t exist. G_d or Satan might have such power, but mortal man didn’t. It is somewhere between howitzers and atom bombs that I think the legal line might be drawn.
Nevertheless, I truly tend to believe this is the start of something good, and is the base case from which others will flow.
"The concept of a weapon that could wipe an entire city from the earth just didn’t exist”
Well, it didn’t.... and yet it did. The idea of catapulting the corpses of those dead of plague or typhus over the walls of a city under siege goes back *at least* to the Romans. And the result of such could, in a matter of days, leave the inhabitants of the city in no better shape than the population of Hiroshima after the bombing. There was more than one Chinese general who broke a levee on the Yellow River and not only wiped out the opposing army, but utterly ERASED several towns and wiped out literally MILLIONS of Chinese civilians.
True, you are unlikely to get such devastation from ONE corpse catapulted over the walls, though it’s theoretically possible, and you CERTAINLY wouldn’t get the wholesale devastation of both populace and infrastructure in *seconds* that you would with a nuke. There would, in theory, be time to take steps to limit the destruction, but given the state of the art of medicine at the time, the practical answer was the same as for a nuke today: The only effective solution is not to be where it happens. You could get such wholesale destruction from breaking a levee… but not on any of the rivers in the 13 colonies at the time of the Revolution, and arguably not from any river in North America, ever.Yes, I realize there are too many differences to equate them, or really even come close. The point I’m making is that those brilliant men were quite able to *conceive* of a “weapon of mass destruction”, as the *concept* was over a millenium old already. And yet they made no provision to prohibit citizens from launching bodies of plague or typhus victims into enemy shipping, or prohibit them from poisoning an enemy’s wells in time of war, or any number of things that would outrage most citizens today.
Go figure.
Sad state of affairs that from the People’s Republic of Maryland, only the congrssman from my district (go Roscoe!) appears on this list. And we too face the same BS re “micro stamping” of ammuntion at local level legislation. What f’in cowards!, they don’t dare show their ‘anti gun’ colors, try to end run us.
That just made my day! It is very good to see McCain vote the ‘RIGHT’ way for this. This is a very concerning and extremely important case. Thank you for the posting.
~M
Posted by museofcheerios
02/11/2008 at 10:39 AM
02/09/2008 at 01:54 AM
