The Greatest Gun Battle in History Begins This Tuesday

[lazs2]

bingie.. people will live anywhere and real estate salesmen will say anything..

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004902.html

At 44 murders per 100,000... DC is right at the top

it only looks good when you compare it to new orleans and... it only looks "normal" when you compare it to cities with a million or more population..

By contrast.. the rate for all of America is 5.6

I don't think that using the "gun control makes us safer" arguement and then using DC as an example of socialist paradise is gonna play to well.

lazs

[SIG220]

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The ban on handguns in Washington DC was enacted back in 1976.   For many years after that ban went into effect, crime dramatically rose in Washington DC.

If you want to view the year by year data for murders in Washington DC from 1960 forward, you can view a chart with this data online here:

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm

If you look closely at the data, you will see that it peaked in 1993, which is the same year that overall US violent crimes peaked.   Since that time, the United States has had a dramatic drop in the rate of all violent crimes, including murders.

Just look at this chart from the US Department of Justice, showing the National overall violent crime rate trend:





And if you compare the Washington DC data, you will see that it simply follows this national trend.   It has absolutely nothing to do with any effect from any gun laws.


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[Jackal1]

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Who will prevail in this epic battle over the rights of United States citizens???

It`s a toss up. It`s a good thing on one hand........but could go very wrong on the other.
At any rate it will be most telling.

The agitator at the center of this case is Dick Heller, a police officer for the federal government who in his job patrolling federal buildings carries a handgun. But D.C. law prohibits him and nearly every other resident from registering a handgun for personal use.

That short statement says a lot in itself and sums it up pretty well if you consider it.
Government..guns OK.
Individual......guns not needed.
There is not but one reason a government does not wish it`s people to be armed.

[Arlo]

thing I'd like to know is how many of them are actually consitutional scholars as opposed to glorified ambulance chasers handed a judgeship

Hell, there's posters here that think they are. Many a president pretended to be. But if you want to prep yourself to place blame in case the SC doesn't rule the way you want, chew on this:

It's the people who allow the system to maintain status quo and who, though the years, supported political machines who's agendas may or may not have included their best interests at heart. It's the people who didn't bother understanding their own form of government, the history behind it or the ramifications of not being as active as they probably should have throughout their lives in influencing it. It's the people who don't bother really getting to know the candidates ... from their local dog catcher to the POTUS ... and who blindly follow their favorite flavor's smear campaign and end up with a president that barely understands how to form a sentence (and has the power to nominate for appointment SC judges to a congress that's elected on somewhat equal merit to him/her).

If you've lost faith in the SC then you've really got nowhere else to turn your blame and you might have to face reality. If the system isn't working for you and it's your own fault then it's just way too convenient to blame the system. Especially since it was designed, from the begining, to include you.

TY TYVM.

[Arlo]

What about non-violent gun violence?  No one cares about that?  What about the effects that non-violent gun violence has on our children?

Non-gun violence is illegal. You don't have the right, via the Constitution or otherwise, to use any form of violence illegally. I'm pretty sure that's not on the SC docket. And you still can own a gun (disclaimer: local laws notwithstanding - local laws under dispute, if so). Reality check courtesy of "Citizens who recognize hyperbole when they see it."

[Bingolong]

bingie.. people will live anywhere and real estate salesmen will say anything..

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004902.html

At 44 murders per 100,000... DC is right at the top

it only looks good when you compare it to new orleans and... it only looks "normal" when you compare it to cities with a million or more population..

By contrast.. the rate for all of America is 5.6

I don't think that using the "gun control makes us safer" arguement and then using DC as an example of socialist paradise is gonna play to well.

lazs

So back when in 1991 it was by far the leader lazie hands down, murder capitol. now its near the top? Has it gotten better there or not? I don't live there but I would bet like any city some good spots some bad spots. On the whole murders have been cut in half I would say that's progress. Is it because of no handgun law? Or is it the way the populace views guns? I don't know. I wonder how many others have been prosecuted for having a handgun in DC.

[SIG220]

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Well, again, their improvement is roughly the same improvement that has been seen nation wide with the national average during the same time frame.


Here is another chart from the Department of Justice showing the trend of the National homicide rate:





The current homicide rate is only slightly worse than what the country had back in 1950, when gun laws were extremely lax nation-wide.

If all of the very many gun laws past since 1950 have had any effect on homicide, it has been quite minimal.

If you look at this chart, you would think that the United States went crazy back in the late 1960's, and did not begin to become sane again until the mid 1990's


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[Toad]

The same is true of nations with draconian gun laws.

If you chart the gun homicides in England, you get the same result. The basic rate hasn't changed since they began keeping records despite ever more strict gun laws and the handgun ban.

Australia, same-same.

[Toad]

As for those that believe they are incapable of understanding the Constitution as written, well, what can you say?

The basic parts of it were written by men with less education than today's average college graduate. However, what those men may have lacked in formal education they more than made up for in character, common sense and a willingness to decide between right and wrong. Most of today's Americans seem lacking in all three of those.

I'm sure there are those that would wait for a Constitutional scholar to tell them if having the FBI arrest someone for making a political speech against a particular government policy would be unconstitutional.

I'm glad I'm not one of those.

[Bingolong]

As for those that believe they are incapable of understanding the Constitution as written, well, what can you say?

The basic parts of it were written by men with less education than today's average college graduate. However, what those men may have lacked in formal education they more than made up for in character, common sense and a willingness to decide between right and wrong. Most of today's Americans seem lacking in all three of those.

I'm sure there are those that would wait for a Constitutional scholar to tell them if having the FBI arrest someone for making a political speech against a particular government policy would be unconstitutional.

I'm glad I'm not one of those.

     So just read what the simple men wrote. Do you think that they tricked you and that their words need interpretation.  They said:
 
          "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."

They didn't say interpret this did they?  Just read it as the simple founders wrote it. Don't you think that the founders wanted it read the way it is, without interpertation? Simply?

[Toad]

Indeed, please do read it as written.

As I have posted before, the militia clause is a dependent clause. This, I think, will be made so clear by the Heller ruling that even you will understand.

But don't trust me... just read the guys fought for and wrote the Constitution.

“They [proposed Bill of Rights] relate 1st. to private rights….the great object in view is to limit and qualify the powers of government…”
-James Madison– The Papers of James Madison

“…Besides 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.”
- James Madison– The Federalist, No. 46

“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”
- Thomas Paine — Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775

“…who are the militia, if they be not the people of this country…? I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
- George Mason

“The great object is, that every man be armed.”
–Thomas Paine

“Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possesion and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
- Patrick Henry

“… of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms…. If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny.”
- James Monroe

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” and
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion…in private self-defense…”
-John Adams –A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the USA

“No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state…. Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.”
- State Gazette (Charleston), September 8, 1788

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
-Thomas Jefferson –Commonplace Book 1774

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed….” -Noah Webster –An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution 1787

“The few cases wherein these things (proposed Bill of Rights) may do evil, cannot be weighed against the multitude where the want of them will do evil…I hope therefore a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the federal government…”
-Thomas Jefferson — in a letter to James Madison, 1788

For a more modern re-hash for you, from the link I posted earlier in the thread:

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." In United States v. Miller (1939), its only significant case interpreting the meaning of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court reviewed a federal statute prohibiting the interstate transportation of unregistered short-barreled shotguns. The Court's opinion, however, is ambiguous about the Amendment's meaning and scope. The crucial passage says:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a [short-barreled] shotgun at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

D.C.'s gun control statutes forbid almost all civilians to possess handguns and require other firearms to be stored unloaded and mechanically disabled. The question before the Court is whether these laws violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia but wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.

D.C.'s Argument in Favor of Upholding the Statutes

D.C.'s principal contention is that the Second Amendment protects a right to arms only in service of a government-organized militia. Its only effect, then, is to stop Congress from preempting state militia laws that give individuals a right to keep and bear arms while serving in an organized state militia.2

D.C. argues that this conclusion is dictated by the language of the Second Amendment, which is filled with military terminology and refers expressly to the militia without any hint about private uses of firearms. D.C. reinforces its textual argument with historical materials showing (1) that the Amendment was adopted in response to fears that the new federal government might pursue tyrannical aims by disarming the state militias and (2) that there was no discussion of the use of arms for private purposes anywhere in the Amendment's legislative history.

This argument is untenable.

First, it implies that the Second Amendment substantially amended a provision of the Constitution (Article I, section 8, cl. 16) that gives Congress almost unfettered authority to regulate the militia. There is no historical evidence at all to support this conclusion.

Second, a right of the states to organize and arm their own militias as they see fit conflicts with another constitutional provision (Article I, section 10, cl. 3) that prohibits the states from keeping troops without the consent of Congress. Once again, there is no evidence that the Second Amendment was meant to repeal this clause of the Constitution.

Third, the Supreme Court has consistently concluded that the federal government has extremely broad powers to preempt state militia laws and has never suggested that the Second Amendment has any relevance at all to the constitutionality of federal laws preempting state militia regulations.

[lazs2]

yep bingie and 98% of the people who read that simple statement realize that the operative phrase is "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"   They also read that "people" means.. the people not the state.. it couldn't be any clearer.


Arlo.. I agree that we get the government that we ask for.. but.. at this point you can't get what you vote for.. the politicians will all say one thing when they are running and then do the reverse.    How do we deal with that? with being sold down the river?

lazs

[Gunslinger]

Bingie disagrees with TJ lol

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
-Thomas Jefferson –Commonplace Book 1774

[Arlo]

Arlo.. I agree that we get the government that we ask for.. but.. at this point you can't get what you vote for.. the politicians will all say one thing when they are running and then do the reverse.    How do we deal with that? with being sold down the river?

Not ready for the second armed revolution yet, Laz. I'm not seeing the crisis level some are. I can still buy some pretty kick arse guns. And we, as a people, can still vote out dead wood. And if the replacement is dead wood ... we can vote them out, too. Every two years can be the mother of all shakeups until the message is recieved.

[lazs2]

arlo..  I am not for bloody revolution either..  not save for the most dire reasons since the revolution itself causes more grief than it solves in many cases and risks that a power grab by even worse people happen.

I am the optimist tho.. I feel that pendulums swing.   I look forward to that.

That being said.. it is playing with fire.. no matter how you look at the ruling.. to tell 90 million gun owners.. about half the houses in America.. that they have no right to defend themselves with arms save by the grace of their benevolent leaders that year...  it is playing with fire to tell 98% of the population that they can't read and understand what "the people" means.. that they do not have an individual right to keep and bear arms.

I do think that the decison will be a narrow one not making anyone happy but with both sides claiming a victory of sorts in the end.

If they do hear on the individual rights... not avoid it.. they will most likely say that it is an individual right but subject to "sensible" restrictions.. and we will be right back to where we started.



lazs