OnTheRange

2nd Amendment seems so straight forward

2009-07-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

From The Wall Street Journal July 18, 2009

Second Amendment Confidential
Sotomayor takes the Fifth on gun rights.

Those watching Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings this week didn't learn much about what she really thinks about judging. But they were treated to an Abbott and Costello legal moment on Thursday between the judge and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham. In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision in D.C. v. Heller recognizing an individual right to bear arms, Mr. Graham wondered what template Judge Sotomayor would use to determine whether that "fundamental right" also applies to the states?

"The rule of law," Judge Sotomayor answered.

So "isn't the rule of law, when it comes to what you consider to be a fundamental right, your opinion as to what is fundamental . . .?" Senator Graham asked. Or "is there sort of a legal cookbook that you can go to and say this is a fundamental right, A, and B is not?"

No, the judge replied, no cookbook, but you hire judges "for the purpose of understanding whether they respect law, whether they respect precedent." Who's on first?

That wasn't the only answer by Judge Sotomayor that was clear as mud during the hearings, but her circular tautology on gun rights is notable because of cases in lower courts that could reach the Supreme Court. Heller dealt with a Washington, D.C. statute and thus federal law. Now making their way to the Court are cases about whether the right to bear arms also applies to the 50 states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If it doesn't, then Heller is a hollow shell.

In the Second Circuit's decision in Maloney v. Cuomo, a three-judge panel including Judge Sotomayor ruled that the right to bear arms did not apply to New York's ban on a martial arts weapon called chuka sticks. Though the decision came after Heller, the court ruled that because the Supreme Court had not addressed whether the Second Amendment applied to the states, it was bound by precedent saying it was not.

Both the Ninth and Seventh Circuits have heard cases similar to Maloney v. Cuomo on state incorporation. The Seventh Circuit allowed the city's gun regulations to stand in NRA v. Chicago, while in April the Ninth Circuit ruled in Nordyke, et al., v. King that the Second Amendment does apply to state and local governments.

The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted in part to address the rights of freed slaves to carry a weapon against the efforts of some Southern states to proscribe that right. Coming as the right to bear arms does in the Bill of Rights only after the freedom of speech, we think there's little doubt the Founders considered the Second Amendment "fundamental" enough to apply everywhere.

Judge Sotomayor has said that it would be appropriate to recuse herself from any rehearing of Maloney v. Cuomo by the Supreme Court, but this week she stopped short of promising to do so. Our guess, based on her history, is that she'll vote like the Court's four liberals who dissented in Heller and say gun rights don't apply to the states.

Obama in Charge??? What would happen to firearms?

2008-03-26T08:35:00.001-07:00

"[C]ivilizational war is real, even if political leaders and polite punditry must call it by another name."
— Robert D. Kaplan in the December 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly
It's an amazing time to be alive in America. We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first frontrunning freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.
We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender.
Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.
The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him.
Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts.
Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton.
Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.
Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.
Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America. But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial "beauty."
Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong Il, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists — something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on "the rich."
How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!" but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" — hijacked — Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois, he refused to vote against a statewide ban — ban — on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.
The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of "bringing America together" means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.
But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and — yes — they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton.
It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let's first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.
Mr. Blackwell, a fellow at the American Civil Rights Union and the Family Research Council, is a columnist for The New York Sun, and a contributing editor for Townhall.com.

WHY CHL????

2008-02-15T11:51:00.001-08:00

Another Massacre At A "Gun Free Zone" College Campus

Feb 15 2008 12:00AM

http://sayanythingblog.com/index.php

One gun, one person trained how to use it and willing to do so could have stopped most of this:

DEKALB, Ill. - Another person shot when a gunman opened fire at a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University has died, bringing the toll to seven, including the gunman, a coroner said Friday. Investigators and school officials did not immediately know why the man indiscriminately fired into the crowd with a shotgun and two handguns Thursday, wounding 15 people and sending panicked students fleeing for the exits before killing himself.
“We have no motive and I have no way of knowing what the motive was,” University Police Chief Donald Grady said.
At one time I was very against arming teachers or allowing qualified students to carry on campus. I’m not any more. These maniacs go to those schools KNOWING that their’s will be the only gun there - until police arrive. And that can take minutes.
If you know anything about guns, or ever fire on a range, take any semi-automatic pistol with, say, two extra loaded magazines, and see how long it will take you to fire every single round in those magazines. It doesn’t take but a few seconds. Then imagine firing into a crowded room filled with unarmed people.
Like shooting fish in a barrel.
This one, like some others before him, even stopped to reload. One gun. That’s all it would have taken. But that campus, like all the others, is a “gun free zone”.
To everyone except the killer.

Fred Thompon on Gun Control

2007-09-18T19:54:00.001-07:00

Allowing concealed carry could have limited VA Tech massacre How is it that one man with two handguns could reload time & time again, and go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.
Virginia allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens.
The statistics are clear. Communities that recognize and grant Second Amendment rights to responsible adults have a significantly lower incidence of violent crime than those that do not. Incarcerated criminals tell criminologists that they consider local gun laws when they decide what sort of crime they will commit, and where they will do so.
But Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus. Those "Gun-free Zone" signs don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people.

Hillary on Guns

2007-09-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

License and register all handgun sales Hillary Rodham Clinton offered her support for a legislative proposal to license hand guns. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer, would require anyone who wants to purchase a gun to obtain a state-issued photo gun license. “I stand in support of this common sense legislation to license everyone who wishes to purchase a gun,” Clinton said. “I also believe that every new handgun sale or transfer should be registered in a national registry, such as Chuck is proposing.”
Source: CNN.com Jun 2, 2000

This is insane. You have to stand in line, get photographed, background checked, blood-typed, fingerprinted, DNA'd, first-borned, arm and legged, etc in order to purchase a legal item, which you are legally permitted to purchase???

Tough gun control keeps guns out of wrong hands I think it does once again urge us to think hard about what we can do to make sure that we keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals and mentally unbalanced people. I hope we will come together as a nation and do whatever it takes to keep guns away from people who have no business with them.
Source: Press Release Jul 31, 1999

ATF Form 4473 covers everything she pontificates about here.

Gun control protects our children We will not make progress on a sensible gun control agenda unless the entire American public gets behind it. It is really important for each of you [kids] to make sure you stay away from guns. If you have guns in your home, tell your parents to keep them away from you and your friends and your little brothers and sisters.
Source: Forum at South Side Middle School in Nassau County Jul 15, 1999

You just can't legislate morality, try as she might.

Lock up guns; store ammo separately If you own a gun... make sure it’s locked up and stored without the ammunition. In fact, make it stored where the ammunition is stored separately. We’ve made some progress in the last several years with the Brady Bill and some of the bans on assault weapons, but we have a lot of work to do.
Source: ABC’s “Good Morning America” Jun 4, 1999

Few things are as worthless when needed as an unloaded firearm. I would hate to have to ask someone breaking into my home to please wait 2 minutes while I unlock the 2 safes to get the gun from one and the ammo from another.

No one wants to see guns in the hands of the wrong people, or in the hands of children not properly trained in their handling. Again, you cannot legislate morality. Ted Kennedy has killed more people than any gun in our shop.