Group files brief that would drastically expand gun rights (READ THIS!)

[Kalahari]

http://theusconstitution.org/

The Constitutional Accountability Center is filing an brief in McDonald v. City of Chicago that takes the power of the 14th Amendment's "Privileges and Immunities Clause" and applies it to the 2nd Amendment; incorporating the right to keep and bear arms against the states. It is a very good argument and even one of my anti-gun friends said he felt absolutely obligated to agree.


You can read the brief (about 33 pages, probably a 20 minute read) here:

http://www.theusconstitution.org/do..._McDonald_Constitutional_Law_Profs_Amicus.pdf

 

[Bill Nance]

Sweet! "liberals" acting ...liberal!

 

[Kalahari]

Yes...this will be a very good thing if it gets to SCOTUS, as some think it may.

At the least it will set a good precedent.

 

[Exousia]

This is worth reading. It would be nice if everyone read it.

 

[terraformer]

I am loving this and I am only a few pages in. They continually come back to the 14th in it's historical context of the civil war and reconstruction or protection of the newly freed slaves. This is excellent given the similarities between today's 2A struggle and the historical plight of race based civil rights in this country. Unfortunately Anti's see civil rights selectively, but this takes the fight directly to their biases and shows that the two are linked, and that if you believe one type of civil right must be protected, you must protect the other. Excellent.

 

[strangenh]

I wouldn't get too excited - Walter Dellinger is on their board.
http://theusconstitution.org/page.php?id=20

I suspect their goal is to provide the courts with a way to hold for the 14th's incorporation of the 2nd and still come away with all but the most extreme laws nevertheless constitutional.

 

[Bill Nance]

I wouldn't get too excited - Walter Dellinger is on their board.
http://theusconstitution.org/page.php?id=20

I suspect their goal is to provide the courts with a way to hold for the 14th's incorporation of the 2nd and still come away with all but the most extreme laws nevertheless constitutional.

Far too many people on the pro-2A side miss the importance and the significant support they could get among the so-called "liberals" if they made the right argument.

I see every day bitching about "those liberals" with no attempt to reach them in their own area. "Liberals" (which is a meaningless term used these days only by people looking for straw-men) are at heart civil libertarians and skeptics of unguarded government authority.

In my own case I was able to convince my father, a self-admitted socialist who considered "liberals" to be "pansies" that the 2A was keeping him safe from RIGHT-wing government.

The argument is the same. Gun control is NOT a "liberal" issue it's authoritarian and trusting of the government, which could switch at any time to a policy you hate, to be benign.

If this argument doesn't work, you aren't dealing with a "liberal" you're dealing with a fool. The two are not necessarily one and the same.

 

[vellnueve]

That's absolutely true, and you'll find that a lot of true liberals are big on individual rights like 2A (look at Vermont).

That said, in a lot of cases, fool and liberal go together. Especially in big, anti-gun cities.

 

[Garys]

Far too many people on the pro-2A side miss the importance and the significant support they could get among the so-called "liberals" if they made the right argument.

For the past several years many prominent liberal legal scholars have started to realize that an assault on th 2A will inevitably lead to restrictions on other rights. Lawrence Tribe, not often thought of as a conservative scholar, is one of them.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/120058.html

Some liberals are far less doctrinaire than others. Or conservatives for that matter.

I wonder what would happen if Lawrence Tribe was appointed to SCOTUS to succeed Justice Ginsburg?

 

[Raoul Duke]

Here's the thing I was/am never able to get my "anti" friends to understand.

IF...IF the government is really the big scary deamon of Republican terror that you seem to think it is, why on earth would you abdicate the one tool you have to opose them in any serious way?

Just don't get.

Didn't then?

Don't now?

 

[packingungal]

This is the 2nd interesting article I have read on this forum today...

 

[strangenh]

Far too many people on the pro-2A side miss the importance and the significant support they could get among the so-called "liberals" if they made the right argument.

I have no argument with that. Indeed, I don't see how my post prompted you to write it. You do know who Dellinger is, yes?

 

[pdogg77]

Very interesting read even outside of the context of 2A and firearms...

It does contain the quote of the day as far as I'm concerned on page 22. We need more of this style legislative debate

Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st
Sess. 1182 (1866); see also id. (“And if the cabin door of the freedmen is broken
open…then should a well-loaded musket be in the hands of the occupant to send the
polluted wretch to another world….”).

 

[Windwalker]

I just finished reading the entire document. Well done! The protections are all there. They just need to be enforced.

 

[lord1234]

would this case be a nullifier for state AWB's? Obviously this wouldn't change the NFA Act of 1939(since thats a federal act) but the MA AWB might be able to to be fought with this data.

 

[cekim]

While I appreciate the "enemy of my enemy" doing good work here, it seems to me there might be some potential "interesting" unintended consequences WRT to unrelated state's rights...

This has long been my complaint about the liberal approach to the courts - they are too eager to slash and burn to get their outcome without considering what the resulting balance of power (checks and balances) will look like WRT to Fed vs State vs citizen...

 

[cekim]

would this case be a nullifier for state AWB's

That's an interesting question - the trouble is that SCOTUS left "reasonable restrictions" very vague in Heller...

IMO, there is no limitation on civilian arms in the constitution - but given the availability of nukes, chemical weapons, etc... I doubt we are ever going to see that sort of protection made available to us despite the reality that 2A was intended to provide to us the ability to fight a fully armed "state" if such a need arose...

 

[FunYun]

would this case be a nullifier for state AWB's? Obviously this wouldn't change the NFA Act of 1939(since thats a federal act) but the MA AWB might be able to to be fought with this data.

Depends on the kind of 'scrutiny' that the courts decide applies. If its 'strict', then yeah, lots of AWB's will find themselves swirling the drain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

 

[JoeyB]

I am loving this and I am only a few pages in. They continually come back to the 14th in it's historical context of the civil war and reconstruction or protection of the newly freed slaves. This is excellent given the similarities between today's 2A struggle and the historical plight of race based civil rights in this country. Unfortunately Anti's see civil rights selectively, but this takes the fight directly to their biases and shows that the two are linked, and that if you believe one type of civil right must be protected, you must protect the other. Excellent.

Early gun control laws were entirely racist, designed to keep guns out of the hands of newly freed slaves and blacks in general.

Far too many people on the pro-2A side miss the importance and the significant support they could get among the so-called "liberals" if they made the right argument.

I see every day bitching about "those liberals" with no attempt to reach them in their own area. "Liberals" (which is a meaningless term used these days only by people looking for straw-men) are at heart civil libertarians and skeptics of unguarded government authority.

In my own case I was able to convince my father, a self-admitted socialist who considered "liberals" to be "pansies" that the 2A was keeping him safe from RIGHT-wing government.

The argument is the same. Gun control is NOT a "liberal" issue it's authoritarian and trusting of the government, which could switch at any time to a policy you hate, to be benign.

If this argument doesn't work, you aren't dealing with a "liberal" you're dealing with a fool. The two are not necessarily one and the same.

Haha +1. You need to figure out how to reach people on their terms, not yours. Good point.

 

[Martlet]

The 2nd Amendment is just the tip of the iceberg when discussing my reasons for disliking liberal agendas.