Supreme Court says Americans have right to guns

[random n00b]

And by "same", I mean "completely different".

[Colrom]

The way to reduce gun violence isn't to restrict the rights of gun ownership, its to set limits on the manufacturing of guns and fine companies when their products are used in violent crime.

there ya go, make the company responsible for the actions of other people. so, what happens when someone commits a crime with a butter knife?

 

taks

 

Or a chemical?

 

Or a virus?

 

Really the point would be that you might want to restrict the manufacture and common ownership of the things that seem most dangerous first - and worry about the butter knives a bit later.

[Laozi]

It wouldn't work, we have to pretend people aren't really specialized primates and they don't need to be protected from themselves, its like a law or something. I dunno, I see where things take a jump in logic most probably aren't willing to make. We make people take on extra responsibilities to drive a car or own a handgun or in a lot of states to get married, I think we could do something similar, take on a bit more responsibility and such and such

Edited July 1, 2008 by Laozi

[Guard Dog]

Here is a pretty good and level headed (like most things printed by the Wall Street Journal) take on the debate. I completely agree with the four points they bring up. The big fear of reasonable gun restrictions has always been that it would be the first step in a sequence of events that lead to armed men kicking down your door and confiscating your legally owned firearms. The SCOTUS has taken that off the table so as I stated earlier we can see some common sense restrictions without fear of the domino effect.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1214782836...in_commentaries

Edited July 1, 2008 by Guard Dog

[Aram]

Or it means they may give them back someday after kicking your door in for them.

[Laozi]

nah, not with a 5-4 decision, I didn't read the dissenting opinion but I can imagine what it says.

[Guard Dog]

The thing that disturbs me most about the 4 liberals on the court are in one weeks time they granted constitutional rights to foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields and at the same time tried to deny American citizens a right that is spelled out in black and white on the very document that sets down the foremost law of the land. John Paul Stevens even stated outright that the Constitution does not grant any abolute right. Scary stuff. That is why I absolutely will not vote for Obama. He would put more of Stevens, Breyer, Souter, and Ginsberg on the court. God help us all if they ever gained a clear majority.

[Laozi]

well due process is seen more as a right where as gun ownership seems more like a privilege

 

 

plus it falls to how american soldiers will be treated in the future

Edited July 1, 2008 by Laozi

[Laozi]

double post

Edited July 1, 2008 by Laozi

[Walsingham]

The thing that disturbs me most about the 4 liberals on the court are in one weeks time they granted constitutional rights to foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields and at the same time tried to deny American citizens a right that is spelled out in black and white on the very document that sets down the foremost law of the land. John Paul Stevens even stated outright that the Constitution does not grant any abolute right. Scary stuff. That is why I absolutely will not vote for Obama. He would put more of Stevens, Breyer, Souter, and Ginsberg on the court. God help us all if they ever gained a clear majority.

 

 

I strongly oppose any loadinng of the Supreme Court. Why does every appointment have to be an attempt to crowbar the system?

[Guard Dog]

I strongly oppose any loadinng of the Supreme Court. Why does every appointment have to be an attempt to crowbar the system?

 

The President will pick judicial appointees whose philosophy matches their own. That is just how it's done. As a rule Liberals prefer judges who interperet the law as tool to empower the state over the individual, Conservatives prefer judges who see the law as a limit on the power of the state.

[Laozi]

Except when overruling a state court to make a conservative president or something....

[Guard Dog]

Except when overruling a state court to make a conservative president or something....

 

I don't know if I would trot that one out Laz. The violation of Article 2 of the constitution by the Florida Supreme Court in it's recount decision was so heinious that it was stuck down by a vote of 7-2. And remember, the SCOTUS was much more liberal in 2000. If even liberal regulars such as Stevens and Souter think the lower court went too far you can bet it was true. The 5-4 decision held that the Florida State Constituiton required the electors to be chosen by X date and there was insufficient time for any other remedy to be employed before that date. That is what ended the recount. I strongly disagree with the majority on that point. The electors could have been chosen within 24 hours. That left several days IIRC for the individual counties to conduct a recount. As a point of law they were probably right, but in practical application recounts could be done fairly quickly.

 

And history has since shown it would not have mattered anyway. In all of the recounts conducted by the Miami Herald and other news agencies, Bush won every time. Anyway, I don't want to dig those skeletons back up so I'll drop it here.

[Laozi]

Oh, I was just kidding, I've fully accepted that Bush won the election fairly as far as the Electoral College goes

 

 

I mean if Gore could have at least carried his home state it would have been a non-issue

Edited July 1, 2008 by Laozi

[Enoch]

Here is a pretty good and level headed (like most things printed by the Wall Street Journal) take on the debate. I completely agree with the four points they bring up. The big fear of reasonable gun restrictions has always been that it would be the first step in a sequence of events that lead to armed men kicking down your door and confiscating your legally owned firearms. The SCOTUS has taken that off the table so as I stated earlier we can see some common sense restrictions without fear of the domino effect.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1214782836...in_commentaries

I agree, although I am of the personal opinion that anyone who seriously feared outright compensation was guided by a touch more paranoia than sense, and that said individuals are unlikely to be assuaged by a single court decision.

 

The concern with Scalia's opinion in Heller is that it's a bit loaded. The only rationales for reasonable restrictions that he uses as examples are historic ones-- i.e., restrictions that it can be established were applied to the rights of British and/or Colonial citizens in the 18th century. This is all in dicta (parts of the decision not essential to the outcome of this particular dispute, meaning that it isn't binding precedent, but can be informative of later decisions), but I suspect that when the first post-Heller challenge to a restriction falling short of an outright ban makes its way back to the SCOTUS, Scalia will argue that the only valid exceptions are historic ones, which could potentially kill a lot of (IMO) necessary restrictions.

 

The thing that disturbs me most about the 4 liberals on the court are in one weeks time they granted constitutional rights to foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields and at the same time tried to deny American citizens a right that is spelled out in black and white on the very document that sets down the foremost law of the land. John Paul Stevens even stated outright that the Constitution does not grant any abolute right. Scary stuff. That is why I absolutely will not vote for Obama. He would put more of Stevens, Breyer, Souter, and Ginsberg on the court. God help us all if they ever gained a clear majority.

Nitpick: The Court didn't give rights to "foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields"-- it gave rights to foreign nationals residing in the custody of the U.S. Government. They didn't have the protection of American law until America arrested them and threw them in a cell.

Edited July 1, 2008 by Enoch

[mkreku]

The thing that disturbs me most about the 4 liberals on the court are in one weeks time they granted constitutional rights to foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields and at the same time tried to deny American citizens a right that is spelled out in black and white on the very document that sets down the foremost law of the land.

Are you, in the same sentence, saying that it's a bad thing that prisoners in Guantanamo has gotten the rights to a fair trial and that it's somehow equal to the attempt of someone that tries to lower gun related deaths in the US..?

 

I seriously doubt that anyone would try to stop everyone in the US from owning 50 private semi-automatic rifles out of spite.

[Guard Dog]

Nitpick: The Court didn't give rights to "foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields"-- it gave rights to foreign nationals residing in the custody of the U.S. Government. They didn't have the protection of American law until America arrested them and threw them in a cell.

 

Fair enough. Let me throw this one at you then, if the same decision was made in 1944 what effect would it have had on all the German POWs in Arizona, or Japanese POWs in Texas? They were protected by the Geneva Convention that is true but it does not allow a POW to legally challenge their custody. Does that still hold true now? Has the Court granted protections that supersede Geneva?

 

Here is my analysis. The Geneva Convention applies to uniformed service members of signatory nations. Ex-Taliban soldiers who were identified as Tajik or Pashtun were treated as POWs and all have been released I believe despite the fact that Afghanistan was not a signatory. Prisoners at Gitmo were all known AQ or foreign (not Tajik or Pashtun or Iraqi) fighters captured on the battle field. Since they are not the soldiers of any nation they could be called mercenaries or spies and enjoy no protections under Geneva. In other words, the US would have been in our rights to simply shoot them. Here is what I'm getting at, by inserting itself onto the battlefield the Court has granted rights to those never protected by Geneva and discouraged the practice of capturing such people alive in the process. They have either encouraged a Take-No-Prisoners stance or given the US a heck of a good reason to simply turn the custody of such prisoners over to nations that have no qualms about savage treatment.

 

I realize this is OT and I'm not trying to provoke a debate. I'm just curious what your take is.

[Enoch]

This is way outside my area of expertise, but I'll take a pass:

 

By extending Habeus rights to the prisoners, the Court is saying that they must have some kind of due process by which they can question their captivity. That doesn't necessarily mean they get all the process rights that an American criminal suspect does-- they get the level of process that is "due" to them as befits their station. The Geneva Convention defines that level of process with regard to captured enemy soldiers. As there is no treaty defining the level of process due to captive stateless fighters, U.S. executive authorities (DoD command, the military JAG corps, and certain parts of DoJ) and Congress have to work something out, and the courts have the right to say whether it is sufficient or not.

 

I doubt that it gives much incentive to avoid taking prisoners. If these guys are as dangerous as they think they are, the gov't should be able to meet the evidentiary burden required to detain them. If they're not, they should be let go. Shooting them is a non-starter-- I haven't looked it up, but I have to imagine that there are pretty serious criminal penalties in the UCMJ for killing an enemy who is trying to surrender (whether he's a uniformed soldier or not).

 

As for the possibility of handing them over to a more vindictive regime, that is a bit of a hole in the current protections. Ideally, this hole would be solved via some sort of Geneva-like treaty on non-state combatants so that we can be confident that the standards for detention and treatment will be consistent regardless of who the jailor is. But the absence of a treaty to that effect is not a particularly good justification for the continuation of the current policy (the Courts can't solve all problems, and the one that they were presented in this case is a more serious one). Personally, I think there's strong legal reasoning behind the argument that handing a prisoner over to a regime that is you know will torture and/or detain indefinitely without appeal is just a bad as doing the torture/detention yourself. But taking action based on that theory has got to be quite difficult (and depends on statutes I have not read).

[Gfted1]

(AP) The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, U.S. gun owners use the weapons on themselves.

 

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

There was nothing unique about that year - gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years.

 

In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.

 

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

 

Studies also have shown that homes in which a suicide occurred were three to five times more likely to have a gun present than households that did not experience a suicide, even after accounting for other risk factors.

 

In a 5-4 decision, the high court on Thursday struck down a handgun ban enacted in the District of Columbia in 1976 and rejected requirements that firearms have trigger locks or be kept disassembled. The ruling left intact the district's licensing restrictions for gun owners.

 

The district has allowed shotguns and rifles to be kept in homes if they are registered, kept unloaded and taken apart or equipped with trigger locks.

 

The American Public Health Association, the American Association of Suicidology and two other groups filed a legal brief supporting the district's ban. The brief challenged arguments that if a gun is not available, suicidal people will just kill themselves using other means.

 

More than 90 percent of suicide attempts using guns are successful, while the success rate for jumping from high places was 34 percent. The success rate for drug overdose was 2 percent, the brief said, citing studies.

 

"Other methods are not as lethal," said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

 

The high court's majority opinion made no mention of suicide. But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer used the word 14 times in voicing concern about the impact of striking down the handgun ban.

 

"If a resident has a handgun in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a handgun in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence," Breyer wrote.

 

Researchers in other fields have raised questions about the public-health findings on guns.

 

Gary Kleck, a researcher at Florida State University's College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, estimates there are more than 1 million incidents each year in which firearms are used to prevent an actual or threatened criminal attack.

 

Public-health experts have said the telephone survey methodology Kleck used likely resulted in an overestimate.

 

 

Veeeery interesting (see bold). So, does the fact that only 40% of gun deaths are the result of homicide help sooth some of you inflamed Euro's? See, we're not all cowboys!

 

I wonder if Europes much touted gun crime statisitics also include suicide. That could really change the whole perspective.

 

EDIT: Linky

Edited July 1, 2008 by Gfted1

[Aram]

Even not counting the suicides, the numbers are pretty bad.

[Gfted1]

Just think though, if we ban suicide we can prevent 17,050 gun deaths a year!

Edited July 1, 2008 by Gfted1

[mkreku]

The suicide rate is in all countries death statistics. In Sweden (which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world) mostly middle-age people shoot themselves. Younger people prefer to sleep on train tracks.

[Walsingham]

The suicide rate is in all countries death statistics. In Sweden (which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world) mostly middle-age people shoot themselves. Younger people prefer to sleep on train tracks.

 

Getting hit by a train is a really weird way to go. You just get hosed out and put in bags. Bloody awful.

[Laozi]

Like a poem

 

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

 

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

[Walsingham]

Like a poem

 

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

 

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

 

I was learning today about operational analysis. Apparently it had its roots mainly in the World Wars, and particularly the RAF. One of the things they recommended was cutting out a lot of the gunners from the bombers. They pointed out that the gunners did sweet FA, and only meant more men died on each downed plane. The other thing they did which was clever was recommend armnouring against the areas noted for getting patched on return runs. They reasoned any areas hit on planes which made it back weren't important!