Subject:
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2nd Amednment meets the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 6 Dec 2002 16:51:05 GMT
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Viewed:
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383 times
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Or:
Don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger!
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld California's right to ban
certain types of firearms and place restrictions on them. But the ruling's
foundation has extremely broad implications. Basically, they keyed on the
first half of the 2nd amendment, and the comments by Judge Reinhardt were
extensive, mostly to answer a dissimilar suling by the 5th Circuit Court.
I'll try to summarize the various points:
The purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to ensure the existence of effective
state militias and forbids the federal government to interfere (unstated and
my comment would be that that might mean that California can ban what it
wants, and Texas can allow anything, and both would be right).
It was noted that the 2nd Amendment was enacted soon after an uprising of
farmers in Massachusetts, so the implication is that that was an example of
an "unregulated" mob of armed individuals that the amendment was intended to
control (basically "well-regulated" can only be construed to mean a militia
established and controlled by a government entity).
It was noted that New Hampshire was the only one of the 13 original states
that proposed an amendment to the Constitution explicitly establishing a
personal right to possess arms (the implication being that would only be
necessary if the 2nd Amendment didn't establish a personal right to possess
arms).
Reinhardt writes, "The historical record makes it plain that the (2nd)
Amendment was not adopted in order to afford rights to individuals with
respect to private gun ownership or possession."
And the Supreme Court? It's most recent detailed ruling was in 1939, that
upheld a federal gun control could prohibit transport sawed-off shotguns in
interstate transport because there was no evidence that such weapons have a
"reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a
well-regulated militia."
Exiting the summation mode. Well, the gauntlet has definitely been thrown
down. Knowing the craziness of contraditory rulings and selective citing,
God only knows where this will lead, but it would seem that the Supreme
Court will be dragged into this at some point. It would be a safe bet that
Reinhardt's extensive comments will become the backbone of the
gun-regulation forces.
-->Bruce<--
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