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Thread: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

  1. #1
    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    (snip)"
    US Supreme Court ponders gun law

    The US Supreme Court is to consider Americans' right to bear arms for the first time in nearly 70 years.

    It has agreed to rule on whether a ban on handguns by the city of Washington, DC complies with the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

    The US capital has banned handguns since 1976.

    The case is expected to be heard next spring, with a ruling in summer, and therefore could influence the presidential election in November.

    The Supreme Court will consider a case brought by a Washington resident, Dick Heller, against his city council, arguing that he should be allowed to keep a handgun for his own protection.

    The case was initially rejected, but a federal appeals court later overturned that judgement.

    The city of Washington asked the Supreme Court to rule on the case, and on Tuesday it said it would - the first time it will have ruled on the divisive Second Amendment since 1939.

    High murder rate

    The Second Amendment 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."

    The powerful gun lobby says this guarantees that citizens may bear arms, and is vehemently opposed to restrictions on that right.

    But states which wish to impose gun control measures argue that it only means a "militia", ie a modern-day police force, is entitled to be armed.

    A lawyer for Mr Heller and other Washington residents said: "We believe the Supreme Court will acknowledge that, while the use of guns can be regulated, a complete prohibition on all functional firearms is too extreme.

    "It's time to restore a basic freedom to all Washington residents."

    Washington council maintained: "Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the district to stand by while its citizens die."

    With gun crime endemic in the US, the issue provokes heated argument. Some blame guns for the problem, while others say they are the best way to protect themselves against violence.

    Handguns are used in two-thirds of robberies and assaults and in half of murders in the US, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

    But supporters of gun rights point out that having one of the toughest laws in the US has not stopped Washington being one of its most murder-ridden cities - with 169 killings in 2006."(snip)

  2. #2
    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    I look forward to this. It is really going to say how the constitution is going to be interpreted in the future regarding our rights.

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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    Well, don't you all know?

    Amendments 1, 3-9 are all individual rights...apparently 2 is the only collective right.

    Now tell me how that makes any sense.
    Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

    William F. Buckley, Jr.

  4. #4
    Jay Zeno
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    Lots of meaningless arguments will happen between now and then. They won't influence the only nine people who really matter to the result.

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    and here's another case that begs for a US supreme court ruling ...



    (snip)" Wednesday's ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal by Terence Lawrence, who said his right to due process was violated because he was prosecuted for two murders for killing a woman and her 4- to 6-week-old fetus.

    The court ruled unanimously that state laws declaring a fetus an individual with protections do not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that protects a woman's right to an abortion.

    "The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but 'from the outset of the pregnancy,'" the court said. "The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings."

    Lawrence was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life for the 2004 shooting death of his girlfriend, Antwonyia Smith, and the couple's unborn child. Lawrence shot Smith after learning she was pregnant with his child, according to court documents.

    Lawrence's appeal argued that he should not have been prosecuted for the death of the fetus because it was not viable. Supreme Court precedent in abortion cases has established that states have no compelling interest to interfere before a fetus would be old enough to live outside the mother's womb, he said.

    However, the court said abortion precedent is based on the premise that a woman wants to have the procedure.

    "The 'compelling state interest' test, along with the accompanying 'viability' threshold, has no application to a statute that prohibits a third party from causing the death of the woman's unborn child against her will," Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote."(snip)


    There seems to be a huge pile of paradoxes in logic here, with the first being that a fetus of less than 3 months development is apparently now considered a human being thus justifying a murder charge upon its 'death' at the hands of a 'third party'. However, the mother is 'immune' from the same murder charge, as are any doctors / medical staff designated by the mother to cause a similar 'death' of her less than 3 months developed fetus.

    The second paradox is that there is apparently no longer any legal distinction here in regard to the viability of the fetus. As such, does this mean that the mother's right of choice to have an abortion no longer has a limit at the 3 month point of viability, and now extends all the way up to the day before the baby is to be born ?

    The third paradox is that if a fetus of less than three months development is now considered to be a human being from a standpoint of legal protection, and if a fetus of 3 to 9 months developement was already considered to be human beings from the standpoint of legal protection, and if a mother's right to choose allows her to voluntarily choose to cause the 'death' of her human being child superseding legal protections against 'third parties' doing the same, does the mother's right over her child's life also now extend beyond the point that the baby is born ?

    The Texas court has opened a deep and dangerous Pandora's Box with this ruling.

    ~
    Last edited by Melonie; 11-22-2007 at 09:41 PM.

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    God/dess Will's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie View Post
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7104800.stm

    (snip)"
    US Supreme Court ponders gun law
    This one is a good read as it relates to this issue. Note who the author is at the end. More states (MA in particular!) needs a AG like this guys...


    Second-Amendment Showdown
    By MIKE COX
    November 23, 2007; Page A13

    The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that will affect millions of Americans and could also have an impact on the 2008 elections. That case, Parker v. D.C., should settle the decades-old argument whether the right "to keep and bear arms" of the Constitution's Second Amendment is an individual right -- that all Americans enjoy -- or only a collective right that states may regulate freely. Legal, historical and even empirical reasons all command a decision that recognizes the Second Amendment guarantee as an individual right.

    The amendment reads: "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." If "the right of the people" to keep and bear arms was merely an incident of, or subordinate to, a governmental (i.e., a collective) purpose -- that of ensuring an efficient or "well regulated" militia -- it would be logical to conclude, as does the District of Columbia -- that government can outlaw the individual ownership of guns. But this collective interpretation is incorrect.

    To analyze what "the right of the people" means, look elsewhere within the Bill of Rights for guidance. The First Amendment speaks of "the right of the people peaceably to assemble . . ." No one seriously argues that the right to assemble or associate with your fellow citizens is predicated on the number of citizens or the assent of a government. It is an individual right.

    The Fourth Amendment says, "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . " The "people" here does not refer to a collectivity, either.

    The rights guaranteed in the Bill of Right are individual. The Third and Fifth Amendments protect individual property owners; the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments protect potential individual criminal defendants from unreasonable searches, involuntary incrimination, appearing in court without an attorney, excessive bail, and cruel and unusual punishments.

    The Ninth Amendment protects individual rights not otherwise enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Here, "the people" are separate from "the states"; thus, the Second Amendment must be about more than simply a "state" militia when it uses the term "the people."

    Consider the grammar. The Second Amendment is about the right to "keep and bear arms." Before the conjunction "and" there is a right to "keep," meaning to possess. This word would be superfluous if the Second Amendment were only about bearing arms as part of the state militia. Reading these words to restrict the right to possess arms strains common rules of composition.

    Colonial history and politics are also instructive. James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights to provide a political compromise between the Federalists, who favored a strong central government, and the Anti-Federalists, who feared a strong central government as an inherent danger to individual rights. In June 1789, then Rep. Madison introduced 12 amendments, a "bill of rights," to the Constitution to convince the remaining two of the original 13 colonies to ratify the document.

    Madison's draft borrowed liberally from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and Virginia's Declaration of Rights. Both granted individual rights, not collective rights. As a result, Madison proposed a bill of rights that reflected, as Stanford University historian Jack Rakove notes, his belief that the "greatest dangers to liberty would continue to arise within the states, rather than from a reconstituted national government." Accordingly, Mr. Rakove writes that "Madison justified all of these proposals (Bill of Rights) in terms of the protection they would extend to individual and minority rights."

    One of the earliest scholars of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, confirmed this focus on individuals in his famous "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States" in 1833. "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms," Story wrote, "has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of republics, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers . . ."

    It is also important to consider the social context at the time of the drafting and adoption of the Bill of Rights. Our Founding Fathers lived in an era where there were arms in virtually every household. Most of America was rural or, even more accurately, frontier. The idea that in the 1780s the common man, living in the remote woods of the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania and Virginia, would depend on the indulgence of his individual state or colony -- not to mention the new federal government -- to possess and use arms in order to defend himself is ludicrous. From the Minutemen of Concord and Lexington to the irregulars at Yorktown, members of the militias marched into battle with privately-owned weapons.

    Lastly, consider the empirical arguments. The three D.C. ordinances at issue are of the broadest possible nature. According to the statute, a person is not legally able to own a handgun in D.C. at all and may have a long-gun -- even in one's home -- only if it is kept unloaded and disassembled (or bound with a trigger lock). The statute was passed in 1976. What have been the results?

    Illegal guns continue to be widely available in the district; criminals have easy access to guns while law-abiding citizens do not. Cathy L. Lanier, Acting Chief of Police, Metropolitan Police Department, was quoted as follows: "Last year [2006], more than 2,600 illegal firearms were recovered in D.C., a 13% increase over 2005." Crime rose significantly after the gun ban went into effect. In the five years before the 1976 ban, the murder rate fell to 27 from 37 per 100,000. In the five years after it went into effect, the murder rate rose to 35. In fact, while murder rates have varied over time, during the 30 years since the ban, the murder rate has only once fallen below what it was in 1976.

    This comports with my own personal experience. In almost 14 years as prosecutor and as head of the Homicide Unit of the Wayne County (Detroit) Prosecutor's Office, I never saw anyone charged with murder who had a license to legally carry a concealed weapon. Most people who want to possess guns are law-abiding and present no threat to others. Rather than the availability of weapons, my experience is that gun violence is driven by culture, police presence (or lack of same), and failures in the supervision of parolees and probationers.

    Not only does history demonstrate that the Second Amendment is an individual right, but experience demonstrates that the broad ban on gun ownership in the District of Columbia has led to precisely the opposite effect from what was intended. For legal and historical reasons, and for the safety of the residents of our nation's capital, the Supreme Court should affirm an individual right to keep and bear arms.

    Mr. Cox is the attorney general of Michigan.
    A cunning linguist...

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    God/dess Will's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Melonie View Post
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7104800.stm

    (snip)"
    US Supreme Court ponders gun law
    This one is for you Melonie

    A cunning linguist...

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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    ^^^ good one !

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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    I just want to say that I heard on NPR that a number of people camped out overnight outside the supreme court bldg before a recent ruling in order to gain access to the limited number of public seats in the courtroom.

    I dunno, but for some reason, that gave me the teeniest bit of hope for the future of our country. Like....thank god, there are some people who actually do care about this stuff!

    I want to do that one day....That's gotta be an interesting crowd, dontcha think?
    "Doc still loved true things, but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress." - John Steinbeck, Cannery Row


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    God/dess Will's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    I just want to say that I heard on NPR that a number of people camped out overnight outside the supreme court bldg before a recent ruling in order to gain access to the limited number of public seats in the courtroom.

    I dunno, but for some reason, that gave me the teeniest bit of hope for the future of our country. Like....thank god, there are some people who actually do care about this stuff!

    I want to do that one day....That's gotta be an interesting crowd, dontcha think?
    For sure! I hope they are not camped out there only to get in and dissrupt the court be they pro or anti.
    A cunning linguist...

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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    ^No, they just wanted to watch the proceedings. To be there for an important ruling--witness to history, etc....
    "Doc still loved true things, but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress." - John Steinbeck, Cannery Row


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    God/dess Will's Avatar
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    Default Re: now here's a supreme court case I can't wait to watch ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Nicolina View Post
    ^No, they just wanted to watch the proceedings. To be there for an important ruling--witness to history, etc....
    That's great, I would like to do that some day myself then. Thanx
    A cunning linguist...

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