Slappy McGee
Member
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2007
- Messages
- 61
I read the transcript of oral arguements for Heller and found it very intersting. I'm not a legal scholar or SCOTUS follower, but it was largely eminently readable.
What surprised me was the frequent mention of machine guns, and that "our side" basically said they supported reasonable restrictions, and repeatedly said machineguns were off the table and fell under "reasonable restrictions." The gentleman making the arguement did say he was concerned about what "reasonable" meant, and either he was put in a bind by some good questioning or hedging his bets to give the SC an out from having to render an opinion that would clearly allow MGs as the lower court's opinion seems to do. I was frankly a bit underwhealmed by the arguements in support of Heller.
DC's representative was fairly weak, and a very interesting point was that he repeatedly said DC recognized an individual right to self-defense, and there was nothing illegal about using a firearm to do so. When he tried to raise the old "it's for the children" and that there were >100,000 machineguns in circulation one of the judges said something like: Out of 300M people that's basically a statistical anomoly; stop using scare tactics. The justices did recognize that the primary arms of the "militia" were pistols and automatic weapons, and this did not seem to generate the fear and loathing I thought it might engender among the justices.
A general who presented (it was unclear to me which side he was supporting) repeatedly said that the militia provision meant that the 2nd applied to the most common arm fielded by the national guard: the machinegun.
All in all a very interesting read. Don't be put off by the 100+ page PDF document. About 30 pages are the index and the transcript style makes it shorter than the pagecount would indicate.
What surprised me was the frequent mention of machine guns, and that "our side" basically said they supported reasonable restrictions, and repeatedly said machineguns were off the table and fell under "reasonable restrictions." The gentleman making the arguement did say he was concerned about what "reasonable" meant, and either he was put in a bind by some good questioning or hedging his bets to give the SC an out from having to render an opinion that would clearly allow MGs as the lower court's opinion seems to do. I was frankly a bit underwhealmed by the arguements in support of Heller.
DC's representative was fairly weak, and a very interesting point was that he repeatedly said DC recognized an individual right to self-defense, and there was nothing illegal about using a firearm to do so. When he tried to raise the old "it's for the children" and that there were >100,000 machineguns in circulation one of the judges said something like: Out of 300M people that's basically a statistical anomoly; stop using scare tactics. The justices did recognize that the primary arms of the "militia" were pistols and automatic weapons, and this did not seem to generate the fear and loathing I thought it might engender among the justices.
A general who presented (it was unclear to me which side he was supporting) repeatedly said that the militia provision meant that the 2nd applied to the most common arm fielded by the national guard: the machinegun.
All in all a very interesting read. Don't be put off by the 100+ page PDF document. About 30 pages are the index and the transcript style makes it shorter than the pagecount would indicate.