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Yachtie -> RE: All things gun control go here (12/30/2012 7:28:42 AM)
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fr - excerpts. I think its quite on point.
There are those who would argue that The Second Amendment doesn't apply to this sort of arm or that, as it was written in a time and age of muskets, not semi-automatic rifles or even machine guns.
That would be a nice appellation and is often run by leftists such as Arianna Huffington. She conveniently forgets that The First Amendment was written in a time when the only "press" consisted of movable type impressing ink upon paper, and yet she argues at the same time that contemporary means of publication, such as The Huffington Post on The Internet, fall within its meaning.
Certainly if The Internet falls under the meaning of The First Amendment then a semi-automatic rifle -- or even a machine gun -- falls under The Second Amendment.
Because we have an individual in our Senate, Diane Feinstein, who is proposing to put forward a facially-invalid law, on top of the 20,000 already-invalid gun laws on the books, purporting to violate The Second Amendment.
Witness Miller, in which the US Supreme Court remanded a case of a man tried for possession of a sawed-off shotgun, which the National Firearms Act had made illegal without registration and payment of a tax. The US Supreme Court's ruling included the effective claim that the sort of weapon in question was never used in any sort of militia organization.
This foundational claim presented to and accepted by the United States Supreme Court, upon which Miller rests, is a factual lie and the solicitors who presented it either knew or should have known they were lying.
It is a fact, supported by documents archived at the Government Printing Office, that the United States military procured some 30,000-40,000 sawed-off shotguns which it used to guard German prisoners of war during WWI!
If that's not a "militia use" could you please explain to me what would qualify?
Now let's add onto this: It is a fact that semi-automatic rifles with magazine capacities of more than 10 rounds, flash-hiders, pistol-grips, forward grips and various other accessories and "features" are factually militia weapons. So are semi-automatic pistols with more than 10 round capacity; indeed, they are issued today in such service. The very argument used by the gun-banners is the claim that these are "military-style" weapons when they press their argument for registration or a ban and yet it is those precise sorts of arms that Miller held were protected by the Second Amendment!
Therefore, even if we accept Miller as the test then it is facially unconstitutional to propose any law to require registration of, say much less ban, any such firearm.
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