Skip to comments.Law professor keeps steady hand in analyzing gun control(Adam Winkler's book)
Posted on 01/02/2012 6:17:59 AM PST by marktwain
Adam Winklers Gunfight is a potboiler of constitutional interpretation and is both a vital history and an intellectually satisfying, emotionally rewarding tale of a great case.
The backbone of the book is District of Columbia v. Heller, a landmark gun-control case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. Heller tested the question of whether the Second Amendment protected militias and reached individuals only derivatively or whether it guaranteed every American the right to own a firearm. No decision of the Supreme Court had ever reached the latter conclusion, and others had tipped the other way, upholding, for instance, the right of the government to restrict machine guns.
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
The second amendment as RATIFIED by the states. 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. Maybe you can explain how for the entire history of English language, that the independent clause of a complex sentence, has always set the meaning of the complex sentence. (the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed) Yet Winkler now claims the dependent clause (A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State) is the determinator of the complex sentence meaning and history and English scholars have all been wrong throughout the history of written English. Have at it Winkler, but warn us when Hades will be freezing over for you actually having data to support your claim.
Lets see, Winkler has removed the 30 plus references from the congressional writings 1774-1789 & the federalist papers showing well regulated as to meaning well trained in the arts of war? Much less all those dictionaries that say the same thing? No, he has not. Reference Karpeles Museum, CA.
Maybe he removed that original draft of what became the second amendment. You know, the one that was clearly written as a collective right, but then was changed to what exists today. Original proposed draft ?of ?the right to keep and bear arms ?of the ?BILL of RIGHTS ?(17 TH of 20 amendments) on display at the Karpeles Manuscript Library ?Santa Ana, California "That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power." Why did our founding fathers change the amendment draft if it was what they wanted? Oh thats right, actions do speak louder than words. Ref Karpeles Museum, CA again.
Then of course, here is the logic failure the antis always have. They always fail to prove, that the miltia existed before the armed individual. Funny how all that was before the 2008 rulings eh? Funny how Winklers dishonesty comes down on the side which relies only on emotional ka ka and lies to support their failed idea that gun control actually works. Winkler has failed to address these obvious facts in his work, instead dancing around them in a vain and failed attempt of the premise that if they are not recognized, they will cease to exist. Yep, that kind of blatant ignorance and malfesciance means Winkler wishes everyone to belieive the moon is made of cheese just based on his say so, uh yeah right.
Such gun control as checking their guns while in town was unconstitutional then and now, but because it was done then in the one horse and trail drive towns, that makes it constitutionally legal today. Using that logic, slavery in the US should be legal today because it was allowed to happen then eh? We see what happens when the police are the bullies and criminals themselves, things like the OK Corral occur. Boy that there gun control really worked then didnt it. Why is it, for all that violence and craziness in the wild west, that during its heydays 1870-1885, there were only 45 murders with firearms in ALL those wild west towns? Funny thing, most of those western towns were where the cowboys would go at the end of a hard trail drive to blow off steam, look at a few pretty girls and drink. Guess you and Winkler can prove EVERY town had such gun control. Oh wait, you cant. What was that percentage 1%, 5% 10%, do tell? Besides, all that was for actually was so the cowboys wouldnt be drinking and carrying at the same time. So if they arent drinking then or now, gun control shouldnt exist when they werent drinking, should it.
Get a clue, WInkler is a book smart hack, with no common sense or integrity, otherwise he would have reviewed and attempted to debunk the points above. But he did not, and we understand why, because he cant and it would ruin his opinion, nothing else.
Scalia -- dishonest, sleigh-of-hand, inconsistent, shady, personal preferences.
Uh Huh. Sure.
I ain't no Constitootional scholar or nuthin', but I'm prit near sure The Founding Fathers put that bit about "well regulated militias" in there to nip in the bud any fool notion that what they was talkin' 'bout was protectin' our right to go huntin'.
Your post isn’t clear in and of itself, and I’m curious as to what you’re trying to imply.
Admittedly, in the sentence “The second amendment as RATIFIED by the states.”, the correct usage is “states”, not “state’s”, but that’s not marktwain’s work. Marktwain was quoting Jarious Head (Jarhead1982), most likely using “copy and paste”.
Do you mean to imply marktwain should have reviewed the entire quote for punctuation and made corrections? What about grammar, spelling, sentence structure and so forth?
Admittedly, marktwain added paragraphs to the quote, but he told us about that. If he changed anything else, wouldn’t he also have to tell us about it?
Should we make substantial changes to what is supposed to be a quote? If so, when does it cease to be a quote and become our own work?
Did you go to the original and inform Jarious Head (Jarhead1982) of the error?
What are you trying to get at?
Thanks. My spell checker doesn’t catch the difference between there and their and the little grey cells often seem to go on automatic with homophones.
I always get a bit nettled when I read responses from readers that demonstrate how poorly they have been trained in grammar, particularly in the use of the apostrophe.
Thanks for this hint to pass on --
No decision of the Supreme Court had ever reached the latter conclusion, and others had tipped the other way, upholding, for instance, the right of the government to restrict machine guns.
I assume the writer is referring to the 1939 Miller case. That's the case that the right of the government to tax, let alone ban private ownership, of a weapon that "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia" or "is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense." It has been Circuit Courts of Appeal that have misread the Miller case; and now, in Heller, Scalia bootstrapped the longstanding error into a justification to prohibit private ownership of certain weapons (e.g., post 1968 full automatic weapons) that the Miller case said were properly in civilian hands, and that it was unconstitutional to tax such possession/ownership..
The Federal District Court, in Miller, found the 1934 NFA to be unconstitutional. SCOTUS said it could neither affirm nor reverse, because it didn't know whether or not a short barrel shotgun "is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense."
Anyway, my point is that if the writer can't get the Miller case straight (and it is an easy case to understand), then I wouldn't trust anything the writer has to say. Read his sources for yourself.