More anti-civil rights horse pucky in the House

[subdjoe]

thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.6257.IH:

If this link fails, look up HR 6257.

Put on the back burner for now. It will be a slam dunk to pass if the dems take the White House and retain both houses of Congress.

[The Big Dog]

Well if they don't pass it out for a floor vote by the end of this legislative year, then it's not going anywhere and would have to be re-introduced in the next Congress.

This is, in many ways, a re-statement of Rep. Carolyn McCarthy's (D-NY) HR 1022 which has been bottled up in the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security since it was introduced 16 months ago in the "first hundred days" that Speaker Pelosi used to crow about.

All kidding aside... there seems to be little stomach in the Congress for such measures these days. They've been proven time and again to piss off large blocs of voters and not really accomplish anything meaningful. And while some of the stooges of the left may crow that the NRA has lost it's political clout, Senator Obama's statements on the stump about firearms are far less strident than one might expect of someone that has his political mindset.

It's a third rail... they know it. And if Heller is decided in favor of an individual right and outright bans are given even a broad scrutiny, it's hard to see how this measure would pass muster.

[Mink]

Subdjoe, I couldn't access your link. Could you repost please?

[subdjoe]

give it a try now, Mink. Sorry about that.

One hint, if a link doesn't work, try a cut and paste to your browser. Usually works.

[subdjoe]

I picked this up off a national LEO forum. The thread it was on started with someone who wants to become a cop in CA asking about magazine capacity, and can cops have full cap. magazines instead of the lower cap. ones that honest citizens are restricted to. The thread rambled a bit, as they tend to do, but one cop posted this:

I'm missing the part of the Constitution and 2A that says weapons may be restricted from the public unsless specifically authorized by a separate law.



And how that implies a possible restriction on how many rounds you can carry in your cartridge box or whether citizens may be prevented from converting their flintlocks to caplocks unless a new law authorizes them to do so.



Or how the 1A only applies to the ink pen and manually set printing presses unless we pass a secondary law to include electronic and mass media.



The big thing I'm not getting is how "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" (it's in the first ten/Bill of Rights, mentions "the people", clearly says "right" and will almost certainly be upheld by the SCOTUS as an individual right in the coming week) can be restricted (shall not be infringed) in such a way as something which is a privilege may be restricted.



The meaning of the 2A as it's written is crystal clear. Even the grammar has been evaluated to thoroughly debunk the "collective rights" or militia=National Guard horse puckey, as the separation of that idea by the comma is quite significant to its meaning and indicates a separate thought which does not act as a qualifier for the following statement. Not to mention the words of the Founding Fathers themselves concerning the bearing of arms by the private individual. "The people" is quite ubiquitous in the Constitution, and has never been interpreted to mean "the state" under any circumstance.



Then there's the open-ended decision in Miller. In short, the decision was that if a weapon could be shown to have a military purpose it was protected under the 2A. Unfortunately, Mr. Miller died prior to the hearing and the SBS side of the argument was without representation in the court room, leaving the court to render a default, and inconclusive, decision.



In short, the MG and high-capacity magazines are probably the most protected items under the 2A if one is intellectually honest and takes a hard look at the 2A and what it was intended to accomplish. No further legislation is needed, nor are new laws proctecting modern equivalents. Unfortunately, our school system and other liberal institutions have been quite successful in indoctrinating many of us into the acceptance of incrementalism and reinterpretation. Not to mention that politics has become a career for many who rely on the frightened and uninformed to remain in office.