US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment

[Nostradumbass at SAFe-mail.net]

> At 08:10 PM 1/9/2004, Greg Broiles <gbroiles at parrhesia.com> wrote:
> 
> Did you actually read the opinion, or just read some screwball summary of it?

Obviously not well enough.  Thanks for straightening me out.

> 
> >In Cases v. United States, 131 F.2d 916 (1st Cir. 1942) the Supreme Court 
> >[...]
> 
> Nope. That opinion was written, as the citation indicated, by the Court of 
> Appeals for the First Circuit, not the Supreme Court.
> 
> >  unbelievably held that U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) had not 
> > intended "to formulate a general rule" regarding which arms were 
> > protected by the Second Amendment and therefore many types of arms were 
> > not protected.
> 
> While I do think that the 2nd Amendment does, in fact, protect an 
> individual right to keep and bear arms, I think that the 1st Circuit's 
> reasoning re _Miller_ in _Cases_ is actually quite reasonable. The opinion 
> points out that interpreting _Miller_ so that it says the 2nd Amendment 
> means that Congress can regulate firearms, but only ineffective or useless 
> ones, is nonsensical. While I don't think the Ninth Circuit reads _Miller_ 
> in a reasonable fashion, I don't think the "only useless weapons may be 
> regulated" is an especially rational interpretation of it, either.
> 
> >A plain reading of Miller meant only weapons with non-military application 
> >could be regulated by Congress and that could not be right because it 
> >challenged the 'right' of government to have a force monopoly.  So the 
> >Court's reasoning was that the Founders could not have meant for the 
> >federal government to have any effective deterrent to its tyranny from the 
> >citizenry.  Even after absorbing the opinion, I cannot fathom how 
> >convoluted a reading of the historical record those on bench needed in 
> >order to arrive at their conclusion.  Pretzel logic indeed!
> 
> Yes, that is an unreasonable conclusion to reach. It is also unreasonable 
> to conclude that the 2nd Amendment means that no regulation of weapons is 
> constitutionally permissible. 

Its hard to square the Founder's purpose of providing the common citizen, through a militia (which a National Guard), with an effective physical deterrent to governmental tyranny with many restrictions on the type of weapons a citizen in good standing may keep and bear.  Though allowing the guy next door to own a nuke or a F-15 may be going too far, its not unreasonable for any of us to keep and bear any arm that our police forces (including S.W.A.T. teams) field.

>Even the 1st Amendment - which contains the 
> words "shall make no law" - is interpreted to allow some regulation of 
> speech. (e.g., shouting theater in a crowded fire, etc.)

Only if there is no fire.  When a government comes to a bad end there is indeed a fire in the theater.