Then who/what were you referring to?
That begs the question; Is this an enactment of authority or an exercise in despotism? They are two quite different things.
Yes, if we break duly enacted laws, we are criminals, however, if we break laws which were made despotically, i.e., laws passed without authority, we are merely resisters of despotism, not criminals. Often, resisters of despotism even get shot or put in jail by the despots they are resisting. That, however, does not make one a criminal. One is only a criminal when one breaks laws duly enacted, and this is precisely the question we are dealing with here. Are these laws duly enacted, or are they acts of despotism? If the authority to pass said laws was not delegated via the US Constitution, then they are acts of despotism by definition.
The Real Hawkeye said:
The commerce clause authorizes Federal regulation of commerce between the States. What does that have to do with what kinds of guns you, a non-interstate trader, own or can buy? Additionally, authority to regulate commerce is not authority to regulate the items which can be in commerce. To regulate is not to ban or prohibit. Regulate means to make regular, i.e., establish regular rules of conduct, and for resolving and avoiding conflict and confusion. There is no authority given over what things can be in commerce, but only to make commerce regular by establishing rules for the commerce itself. If you are arguing that the commerce clause gives the Federal Government the ability to stifle commerce in certain items, you will have to show me the language to that effect. If you cannot, it does not exist.
You are mistaken. If I cannot legally purchase a newly manufactured weapon, then I am being prohibited from doing so, and you bear the burden of showing me from where in the Constitution the authority to do this derives.
Or at least stop protecting it and let natural selection run its course?
I guess I should have said that a little differently. This is how I should have said it: If you are arguing that the commerce clause gives the Federal Government the ability to stifle commerce in certain items, you will have to show me the language IN THE CONSTITUTION to that effect. If you cannot, it does not exist.
And you interpret this to mean that judges may legislate from the bench? This is not a license for judges to expand their own, the Congress's or the president's powers extraconstitutionally.
Yes, I remember those cases well from law school. I remember my amazement at the disingenuousness with which the Supreme Court manufactured Federal powers where non existed.
"Should an unwarrantable measure of the Federal Government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand... But ambitious encroachments of the Federal Government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every Government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combination in short would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case, as was made in the other... The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain that with this aid alone, they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the national force; and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be able to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition, that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures, which must precede and produce it." - Alexander Hamilton
The Constitution's meaning is clear in the vast majority of its content. It only became unclear to those who began to see it as a set of limits on an otherwise unlimited Federal Government, rather than what it is, i.e., a set of delegated powers, to be narrowly defined in accord with the Tenth Amendment to said document. A long train of treasonous acts on the part of the Supreme Court does not justify the usurpations of the last century.
The arguments used in those cases are mere contrivances designed to permit the Federal Government to do what it wishes, under the apparent color of law, despite not having been actually delegated the authority to do them. The proof of this is that Prohibition required an amendment to the Constitution specifically delegating to the Federal Government authority to regulate alcohol. No such amendment was sought, however, for the war on some drugs. The Supreme Court simply decided that the Constitution had become a "living document," able to morph at will so as to grant new powers to the Federal Government as the times required. This is an obviously disingenuous stance. I am surprised that you fell for it.
Ok, now I am beginning to question the sincerity of your pretended stance.
I'll step up and say that I think the 14th "Amendment" is beyond judicial activism ... it is despotism. One of the very basic premises of free government is that the government cannot modify the Constitution against the will of the people, yet the 14th is just exactly that very thing.
