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Retired SCOTUS Justice Wants To 'Fix' the Second Amendment
CanHasDIY (1672858) writes "In his yet-to-be-released book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, John Paul Stevens, who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court for 35 years, believes he has the key to stopping the seeming recent spate of mass killings — amend the Constitution to exclude private citizens from armament ownership. Specifically, he recommends adding 5 words to the 2nd Amendment, so that it would read as follows: 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.'
What I find interesting is how Stevens maintains that the Amendment only protects armament ownership for those actively serving in a state or federal military unit, in spite of the fact that the Amendment specifically names 'the People' as a benefactor (just like the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth) and of course, ignoring the traditional definition of the term militia. I'm personally curious about his other 5 suggested changes, but I guess we'll have to wait until the end of April to find out."
What I find interesting is how Stevens maintains that the Amendment only protects armament ownership for those actively serving in a state or federal military unit, in spite of the fact that the Amendment specifically names 'the People' as a benefactor (just like the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth) and of course, ignoring the traditional definition of the term militia. I'm personally curious about his other 5 suggested changes, but I guess we'll have to wait until the end of April to find out."
When the constitution was ratified, the militia was the only defense that the United States had, and all able bodied men were expected to be ready to serve.
The Marine Corps was founded 10 November 1775. The consitution was signed 17 September 1787.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It's already part of 10 US Code 311 - Militia: composition and classes, last passed in December 2013 by the House and March 2014 by the Senate...
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Everyone should be armed.
This is how Switzerland does it. They haven't been in a foreign war in two hundred years. Even Hitler decided not to try it.
Their crime rate is very low and they actually have a civil defense plan that doesn't involve people hiding in closets and hoping somebody shows up to save them. Plus, obviously they don't need to incur all the costs of foreign wars, so they can run data centers, banking platforms, and ski resorts instead.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
you sure can.
the branch dividians purposely didn't pay the tax on their weapons in order to instigate a standoff with the Feds. if you pay the proper tax, you can legally own any of the weapons they were killed over.
the FBI/ATF did not have to step in and stop it anymore then they have to enforce any other failure to pay taxes.
the Man wanted blood and the dividians gave them an excuse. just remember, all those people died because they didn't pay the tax. money == freedom and in this case life.
No illegal automatic weapons
No kiddy diddling (the entire reason for the raid).
The charges that were actually upheld in court related solely to firing on federal officials. Whether or not they were justified is another can of worms.
It wasn't a standing army. That is specifically why that amendment is there. If the US could \have afforded a standing army at the time, that amendment would not exist.
The Marine corp was a group of militia that fought on ships in order to seize British supplies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You really have no idea. Go find a Mosin Nagant, an ancient Russian military rifle capable of hitting a target at over 200 yards with a high-power round for about $100.
Are expensive guns better than cheap ones? Sure! But there are cheap (and effective) guns for anyone who wants one.
(A clip is not a magazine...)
Homicide rates in the United States have been dropping and are the lowest since 1906 or so.
http://www.ricknevin.com/uploa...
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Thomas Jefferson, proposed Virginia constitution, June 1776. Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C. J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." Thomas Jefferson, quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in "On Crimes and Punishment", 1764, pp 87-88.
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." Samuel Adams, During the Massachusetts U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788
"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at the individual discretion, in private self-defense." John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-88
"I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." George Mason, during Virginia's ratification convention, June 4, 1788 (From J. Elliott, Debates in the General State Conventions 425 (3rd ed. 1937).
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of people, trained in arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country." James Madison, I Annuals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789)
That was almost word for word the phrasing of the 2nd Amendment, which makes our 4th President essentially the author of said amendment. But he also had this further to say in "The Federalist", in which he DEFINES what it means:
"The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." James Madison, The Federalist No. 46
That last one was straight from the author of the amendment himself....
Well, yeah, raping children and giving them drugs
Other than unsubstantiated allegations, there is no evidence for that. Some children made statements about abuse, but later retracted those statements and said they were pressured into making them. The FBI and ATF were caught lying about almost every aspect of the standoff, so they have zero credibility.
You really think most of the 1,000 folks there were wealthy?
You can buy a decent 22 caliber semi-automatic rifle for $100. It's getting hard to do that for a pair of shoes.
Then you need to read more sir.
If I told you that in order to file your next W2 you had to sign a form. That form stated that from henceforth, you can only earn 10% of what you are currently earning. You refuse to sign, cause that's ridiculous.
Then I claim the reason we're arresting you is because you failed to pay taxes. BS. You failed to basically be put out of business.
And please realize this has NOTHING to do with tortoises, just like California Central Valley issue had nothing to do with a tiny fish. This is ALL about water for urban Californian cities. That is why the Federal government used an environmental law to shutdown ranching in a huge portion of Nevada. In order to reduce the water usage so more was available to California.
Terrifying. Unaccountable quasi-military organizations that tend to be high on ideology and low on reason. What happens if they were to try and pull the same shit to enforce their own rules (like they effectively did here) beyond just allowing a freeloader to not pay for grazing rights?
They've been peaceful the whole time, and did nothing more than provide a presence and protest. The only difference between them and Occupy $location is the presence of firearms - none of which were brandished by the protesters, let alone used in a threatening manner.
Honest question: Are you terrified because they don't share your ideology, or what?
Managing land to keep it from being destroyed like it was during the Dust Bowl is important and costs money.
The Dust Bowl was caused by a trifecta of over-farming, monoculture (wheat), and a massive drought - not grazing. It was also caused by activities performed primarily on private land, so the comparison is invalid on two fronts. Methinks you're reaching too much for hyperbole to support an otherwise somewhat valid point. Also, why does the federal government have to supply this management, instead of by the state whose borders encompass the land in question?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Lets remove the tortoises for the equation. This man has been using public lands to graze his cattle subsidized off our dime for 20 years. The price the BLM charges is way cheaper then it would be if he had to pay private owners/companies to let him graze..
Next they were not arresting him from what I saw, they were removing his cows from PUBLIC land, where they had a lawful court order to remove them, yet he and his "friends" blocked and threatened those officers with violence.
If this had been almost any other group the conservatives would have been calling them all sorts of names like welfare queens, lazy, whatever.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
not only did the gun buyback slash gun crime
But not, according to your own government, all crime, which went up.
it also halved the suicide rate
The gun suicide rate, but not, according to your own government, the overall suicide rate, which was unchanged.
Most of the land was originally the feds in the first place and only leased to others. And before then the land belonged to the natives who lived in the area before the white man came and decided they wanted it instead. At no point in the long history of southern Nevada was there ever a divinely granted right to this farmer or his ancestors to own or occupy the land.
You have pretty much all of your facts wrong.
In Australia, gun deaths dropped, and overall violent crime also dropped. You're cherry-picking a brief increase right after guns were regulated, which was then followed by a sustained decline in both gun deaths and violent crime in Australia.
It's absurd to pretend that "the only thing standing between a crazy gunman and an elementary school is a piece of paper" - laws are enforced. If nobody (other than the police) at a school can have a gun, then anyone with a gun is obviously breaking the law and can be stopped. If people with guns can roam the school, the only way to tell that one of them is a killer is that they've just shot someone.
The shooting in the movie theatre illustrated how ineffective people with guns (there were several in the audience) actually are in stopping gunmen, which is to say that they didn't do so. The reality is that a gunman can position themselves, and have body armor, and then then shoot everyone in sight. And that generally speaking civilians without training for combat situations cause a lot more harm than help, because they tend to panic and shoot the wrong people, or fire and miss, etc. There's a reason that policemen and soldiers train constantly, and it's because it's the critical difference that makes them effective.
Also, most gun deaths are suicides. More guns strongly correlates to more successful suicides. Limiting access to guns reduces suicides.
Similarly, letting soldiers on bases carry loaded guns leads to more people getting shot, not fewer. That's why soldiers are only issued ammunition when they need it. I'm pretty sure that the Army isn't anti-gun, but they do like to keep our soldiers alive.
I agree that you're not a lawyer, and deliberately misleading.
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