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A correct ruling on gun rights
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Now what are the 2nd Ammendment voters going to pick as their single issue to vote on? What is the NRA Political Action Committee going to do with their money???
Anyone have an answer? I would really like to know.
However, your reference to the number of handgun murders in the city of Washington is misleading at best. The number of handgun murders in Washington DC has remained constant primarily because the law is ineffective as long as neighboring states, like Virginia where I live, allow the free and unsupervised purchase of handguns. The low murder rates in other nations who partially or totally ban guns would defy your reasoning. At Virginia Tech University, there are 32 dead students whose loss can attest to how this precious right has been abused. I hope not to hear from those who would suggest that arming the students on campus would have saved lives. Common sense tells me that argument is false. While we guarantee individual rights to bear arms, we must find ways to bring sanity to a culture that seems to nullify the value of human life.
same old diehard red-diaper doper babies.
If you cannot handle freedom and responsibility, may
I invite you to leave, and lamonte if you are so concerned about human life, how about you start with
the innocent life of butchered children, in the abortion mills, throughout America.
This is kind of a peric victory. The government retains control.
You have no right to assume any of the claims you have made in your comment.
Imagine that it was unclear whether or not a particular religious sect was in fact a religion entitled to First Amendment protection. We'll call them the Mormons. Now imagine a patchwork of laws banning Mormons from doing all kinds of things: getting on airplanes, going into national parks, failing to register as a Mormon. Finally, a law is passed banning Mormonism altogether.
What would you think of the Supreme Court if it threw out that last law, finding a First Amendment right to be a Mormon, but purported to allow all those other laws to stand? Well, that's pretty much what it just did with gun rights.
Believe me, the heavy lifting is yet to come! (unanswered question number one: does 2A limit the states as well as the federal governement?)
Seems to me that the only person I have heard use the line "red-diaper doper babies" is Mr. Weiner.
Your perspective - if you don't like it leave, is so mature.
I bet you whined about the Supreme Court last week when they said we could not execute child rapists. Does that mean you are going to leave, knowing your mantra "if you don't like it leave."
The injuries sustained were minor up to and including death. An armed society is a safer society, period! I just read of 3 stabbings in Japan in the news paper!
Now for my blind ideology. Since I retired from law enforcement I obtained a concealed weapon permit and since that time My gun has saved me from bodily injury and possible death on 4 occasions. So I will say it again. "An armed society is a safer society, period".
Let's say that a hungry bear wanders into a school. What would be the appropriate response? Lock all the doors so that the bear would have a difficult time breaking into each class. And if the bear was within a classroom when the lockdown occurred, persuade the to limit his attention to only those within that specific class room? Or perhaps if the teacher had appropriate training, he/she could reason with the bear and persuade it to live a peaceful life, eating berries and grass.
Criminals have guns, and most of them have never been purchased. If guns are banned, criminals have the option of arming themselves with other weapons, or actually manufacturing firearms themselves. And the government has guns, and is willing to impose its will on an unarmed populous.
For anyone who takes a reasoned logical look at statistics, private gun ownership decreases crime (violent crime in particular) in virtually all cases. This indeed should have been a 9-0 decision.
The court's five most conservative members have demonstrated that for all of Justice Antonin Scalia's talk about "originalism" as a coherent constitutional doctrine, those on the judicial right regularly succumb to the temptation to legislate from the bench. They fall in line behind whatever fashions political conservatism is promoting.
Conservative justices claim that they defer to local authority. Not in this case. They insist that political questions should be decided by elected officials. Not in this case. They argue that they pay careful attention to the precise words of the Constitution. Not in this case.
The United States and its gun owners have done perfectly well since 1939, when an earlier Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment as implying a collective right to bear arms, but not an individual right.
Here is what the Second Amendment says: "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."
Mike, I think your comments falol right in line with this reasoning. Thanks.
And Lamonte, evidently you have a Government job as you seem to spend lots of time posting on the dn website - and it wasn't an "essay" - it was an editorial.
Remember that DC's gun ban allowed people who defended their families with a firearm against invading killers to be put in jail! Does the Constitution intend such stupid and evil outcomes?
I've always believed the second ammendment means what is says, and now the Supreme court does too.
You can't even conceed that clarifying this is not only good for Conservatives but it is also good for all Americans (that the Constitution was upheld).
How can you say, "Yep, now with that ruling the NRA and GOP have prevailed. Congratulations to them, they have now lost the election year wedge issue"?
Was this REALLY a GOP&NRA vs what ever you are competition for you?
That's the whole point of this article. That this wasn't a Partisn issue to many. Even liberal THINKERS like Eugene Robinson and Pat Leahy see that.
But YOU have to carry on the partisan rhetoric and pretend this is a GOP vs whatever you are issue.
The Bill of Rights ISN't just for the GOP. The 2nd Ammendment ISN't just for the GOP. This SHOULDN'T be a partisan issue, but some people insist on pushing it that way and making this right guaranteed in the Constitution out to be a GOP operative or a NRA stuge. When are you going to take off your political blinders and see that this is a right for all of us (not just GOP)?
Now I can get a couple of AK-47's and I'll rule the world!
from Webster's online dictionary we find that an essay is defined as:
a: an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view b: something resembling such a composition
I think that definition sounds like an editorial to me so they are most likely the same thing, but thanks for your opinion.
I was also wondering if you conservatives could actually make a point without using the terms Marxist, Hitler, or socialist? But then again I be stretching it if I claim you're making a point as oppsoed to calling people names..
I have always believed in gun ownership and the .38 undr my mattress will back this up. I am glad that this is finally settled, an individual right (as I have always interpreted it) exist to keep and bear arms.
Notably though Scalia also pointed out that it is not an absolute right (ie resrtictions for felons etc.).
My Point was now that this is settled, what is all the NRA money going to be spent on? This is no longer a wedge issue.
Even Obama has recognized that individuals have the right to own guns and voted he voted for the Vitter Amendment that "prohibit the confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law" after the Bush Adminstration confiscated weapons after Hurricane Katrina.
So my real question was, now that individual gun ownership has been taken of the table as a wedge issue, what is next?
Maybe we can move on to solving problems instead of voting on single issues that are now settled.
Are you just trying to reiterate Obama's assertion that the GOP = the NRA, and the whole stereotype of conservatives being a bitter people who have to hold on to guns and their religion to have a purpose in life?
If you agree with the SC decision... Why not just say, "It was the right decision", instead of going off on some tangential rant about the GOP and the NRA? That's what I think makes you look like a partisan yammerer... That even something you agree with you turn into a little rant about your stereotype of the GOP (gun nuts).
What did I say that disparages the GOP?
I first said "Yep, now with that ruling the NRA and GOP have prevailed. Congratulations to them, they have now lost the election year wedge issue.
Now what are the 2nd Ammendment voters going to pick as their single issue to vote on? What is the NRA Political Action Committee going to do with their money???
Anyone have an answer? I would really like to know."
What is the disparaging point?
I think you are a bit defensive, and I challenge you to find a disparaging point in my post.
@ lamonte - like I said ... you must have lots of time on your hands
Head 'em out.
Shoot 'em up.
What deluded fools!
Second, the "gun death" numbers you're using come from the same political activists who count 20-year-old drug dealers among the "children killed by guns." They count any death in which a firearm was present as a "gun death," even if there was no shot fired.
The actual number of shooting deaths is about 25,000, and this number includes suicide, police-involved shootings, defensive uses, etc.
Or, in other words, you are 4 times as likely to die because of an incompetent doctor than you are because of a bullet.
I do know that doctors try to improve their skills all the time, but I'm not sure that gun owners do. How many deaths would it require for you to consider gun deaths, whatever the number, as "too many"? The SCOTUS says you have the right to own firearms for home protection. Fine. But no right is absolute. Isn't there anything we can do to reduce gun deaths, INCLUDING all those you seem to think don't count mentioned in your third paragraph? After all, the bullet stoppers in each case are just as dead.
The fact is, the police have no obligation whatsoever to protect us. The police are rarely "on scene" when a crime is committed, and they cannot be there instantaneously when one's life is threatened by another.
The Supreme Court got it right this time---it should have been a unanimous vote if these dissenting judges were really interpreting the meaning of the Second Amendment as it is written and in a common sense manner.
Now for a common sense question: If the 2nd Amendment was only for "the militia" and not for the people---why do we have miilions of guns, gun owners and gun merchants? Have the police and the government just been turning a blind eye to these facts since the 2nd Amendment was ratified?
Who is the militia but the people? There was no national guard when the 2nd Amendment was ratified--it has always been "the people's" right!
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