Monkeyleg
Member.
The following Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial is so wrong on so many points that it's hard to figure out where to start. Perhaps the editorial board should first be admonished for putting words in Madison's mouth that he surely never would have uttered.
And, of course, the editorial refers to decades of jurisprudence about the Second, ignoring the fact that such members of the Right Wing Conspiracy as Lawrence Tribe, Alan Derschowitz and others have taken a second look at the Second Amendment in the last decade or so, and have discovered that it means individual rights, not the right of states to form units of the National Guard.
And then there's the pesky old "musket" argument. On the one hand, the framers were brilliant men who constructed the most perfect political document in history. But they were such short-sighted dullards that they couldn't imagine that there might be advances in technology.
They were also apparently anal-retentive, and would insist that the right of citizens to keep and bear arms means that citizens could only bear arms with muskets, while criminals and tyrants would be free to bear whatever weaponry future technologies would produce.
And what of the Journal Sentinel and the rest of the media's obsession with claiming First Amendment rights when journalists leak classified documents? If we can put "reasonable regulations" on one right, why not on all the others?
God, how I hate this state.
******************
Editorial: A deadly wrong ruling
Two wrongs don't make a right: Washington, D.C., overreached in banning handguns; a federal appeals court overreached in striking down the ordinance.
From the Journal Sentinel
Posted: March 15, 2007
The drafters of the U.S. Constitution get much credit for their foresight in that they came up with a blueprint for a national democracy that has withstood the test of time. But what if these agrarian, 18th-century thinkers had gotten a glimpse of today's urban warfare in America - made possible in part by guns far more accurate, speedy and deadly than the single-shot, muzzle-loading firearms around when they wrote the Second Amendment?
James Madison might say: Hey, we'd better clarify that amendment so it won't hamper government in enacting sensible regulations for these future weapons of much destruction.
That didn't happen, of course. So last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia interpreted the ambiguously worded amendment in a way that permitted it to declare unconstitutional D.C.'s strict gun-control ordinance.
Indeed, the ordinance goes too far in that it effectively bans handguns at home. Another defect is that it does not specifically permit the use of long guns for self-defense. But the court went too far, too. It should have left to the democratic process any correction of these defects.
The three-judge panel was too activist. It departed from mainstream jurisprudence, which is to regard the Second Amendment as safeguarding more the right of states to form militias than the right of individuals to carry arms. The dissenting opinion even argues that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to D.C., since the amendment's focus was on protecting states from the standing army of the federal government. It makes no sense to give the federal seat the right to defend itself against itself.
But the legalities aside, the wise course is for the people, through their government, to have the right to regulate firearms for safety's sake. The people ought not to overregulate - which D.C.'s ban on pistols and revolvers not registered before Sept. 24, 1976, does.
The gun-control ordinance calls for keeping firearms in the home unloaded and disassembled or disabled by a trigger lock. But the wording is such that it can be interpreted as barring the assembly of the weapon or the removal of the trigger lock in a moment of self-defense. That defect needed fixing, but not by the courts.
The district may appeal the verdict to the full Court of Appeals, which should reverse. Meanwhile, D.C. should loosen the ordinance to permit the licensed possession of handguns in homes and the use of firearms in self-defense.
And, of course, the editorial refers to decades of jurisprudence about the Second, ignoring the fact that such members of the Right Wing Conspiracy as Lawrence Tribe, Alan Derschowitz and others have taken a second look at the Second Amendment in the last decade or so, and have discovered that it means individual rights, not the right of states to form units of the National Guard.
And then there's the pesky old "musket" argument. On the one hand, the framers were brilliant men who constructed the most perfect political document in history. But they were such short-sighted dullards that they couldn't imagine that there might be advances in technology.
They were also apparently anal-retentive, and would insist that the right of citizens to keep and bear arms means that citizens could only bear arms with muskets, while criminals and tyrants would be free to bear whatever weaponry future technologies would produce.
And what of the Journal Sentinel and the rest of the media's obsession with claiming First Amendment rights when journalists leak classified documents? If we can put "reasonable regulations" on one right, why not on all the others?
God, how I hate this state.
******************
Editorial: A deadly wrong ruling
Two wrongs don't make a right: Washington, D.C., overreached in banning handguns; a federal appeals court overreached in striking down the ordinance.
From the Journal Sentinel
Posted: March 15, 2007
The drafters of the U.S. Constitution get much credit for their foresight in that they came up with a blueprint for a national democracy that has withstood the test of time. But what if these agrarian, 18th-century thinkers had gotten a glimpse of today's urban warfare in America - made possible in part by guns far more accurate, speedy and deadly than the single-shot, muzzle-loading firearms around when they wrote the Second Amendment?
James Madison might say: Hey, we'd better clarify that amendment so it won't hamper government in enacting sensible regulations for these future weapons of much destruction.
That didn't happen, of course. So last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia interpreted the ambiguously worded amendment in a way that permitted it to declare unconstitutional D.C.'s strict gun-control ordinance.
Indeed, the ordinance goes too far in that it effectively bans handguns at home. Another defect is that it does not specifically permit the use of long guns for self-defense. But the court went too far, too. It should have left to the democratic process any correction of these defects.
The three-judge panel was too activist. It departed from mainstream jurisprudence, which is to regard the Second Amendment as safeguarding more the right of states to form militias than the right of individuals to carry arms. The dissenting opinion even argues that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to D.C., since the amendment's focus was on protecting states from the standing army of the federal government. It makes no sense to give the federal seat the right to defend itself against itself.
But the legalities aside, the wise course is for the people, through their government, to have the right to regulate firearms for safety's sake. The people ought not to overregulate - which D.C.'s ban on pistols and revolvers not registered before Sept. 24, 1976, does.
The gun-control ordinance calls for keeping firearms in the home unloaded and disassembled or disabled by a trigger lock. But the wording is such that it can be interpreted as barring the assembly of the weapon or the removal of the trigger lock in a moment of self-defense. That defect needed fixing, but not by the courts.
The district may appeal the verdict to the full Court of Appeals, which should reverse. Meanwhile, D.C. should loosen the ordinance to permit the licensed possession of handguns in homes and the use of firearms in self-defense.
