Re: Silveira DENIED Certiorari

Stephan Rothstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 
> The Lone Weasel wrote:
>> Stephan Rothstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
>> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 
>>>The Lone Weasel wrote:

>>>>You're hysterical, so just remember the gunlobby lied to
>>>>you when it said you have a personal gun right under the
>>>>Second Amendment.  They just wanted your money.  The gun 
>>>>manufacturers just wanted you to buy new guns.
>>>
>>>Actually, I think you are the one getting hysterical here.
>>>You would have us believe that the phrase "the people"
>>>means something different in one amendment than it does in
>>>the others. 

>> No I wouldn't.
> 
> yes you would. 

No, I wouldn't.  I think CJ Rehnquist has it pretty well on 
the term, "people."

Read this, don't just mouth off.

[begin excerpt]

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall 
issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or 
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be 
searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That text, by contrast with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, 
extends its reach only to "the people." Contrary to the 
suggestion of amici curiae that the Framers used this phrase 
"simply to avoid [an] awkward rhetorical redundancy," Brief 
for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 
12, n. 4, "the people" seems to have been a term of art 
employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble 
declares that the Constitution is ordained and established 
by "the People of the United States." The Second Amendment 
protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," 
and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain 
rights and powers are retained by and reserved to "the 
people." See also U. S. Const., Amdt. 1 ("Congress shall 
make no law ...  abridging ... the right of the people 
peaceably to assemble") (emphasis added); Art. I, section 2, 
cl.  I ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of 
Members chosen every second Year by the People of the 
several States") (emphasis added).  While this textual 
exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that "the 
people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First 
and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are 
reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a 
class of persons who are part of a national community or who 
have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this 
country to be considered part of that community.

UNITED STATES v. VERDUGO-URQUIDEZ, 494 US 259 (1990)

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

[end excerpt]

"A class of persons who are part of a national community" is 
not an individual person.  That's the Chief Justice of the US 
Supreme Court, an arch conservative, and I agree with him on 
this point.

> The Fourth Amendment says the right of the
> people to be secure and you agree that it is an individual
> right. 

Not really.

> So how can the right of the people in the Second
> Amendment mean a different group? 

See above.

>>>You would also have us believe that in the
>>>middle of a list of rights reserved to the people and
>>>limits on the government, they through in a right for the
>>>states. 
>>
>> Well, the Tenth Amendment also reserves to the states such
>> powers as the internal police, by which you have gun
>> rights in the first place.  And two of those original
>> amendments had to do with House apportionment in the
>> states and salaries for members of congress - the former
>> was rejected by the people, the latter ratified in 1992 as
>> the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.  Also, the Third Amendment
>> originally protected just house owners, not everybody,
>> from having to quarter soldiers in peacetime.
> 
> The Third Amendment provided an individual right as much as
> the Second Amendment does. It protects any individual with
> a house and the Second protects any individual with a gun.

Oh, so now you have to have a gun to enjoy the right?  

You realize how stupid that is, right Schleppin?

> As for the Tenth, I will point out that it pertains to both
> the states and to the individuals. 

Reserved powers.  I thought you boys said only states could 
have powers, while only people could have rights?

Well, which is it?

> But since you bring it
> up, I will point out that my gun rights come as much from
> the Tenth Amendment as the Second. 

Your gun rights come from the states power of internal 
police, a power reserved for them under the Tenth Amendment.

You don't have any personal gun right under the Second 
Amendment, and because you may already have a state gun right 
it's very easy for the gunlobby to lie to you about that.

> It clearly states that
> the Federal Government cannot regulate or decide anything
> about my guns since nothing in the Constitution gives them
> the right to regulate any of my personal possessions. 

Wrong.

> Even
> the 9th circuit says so in their recent decision on fully
> automatic weapons. 

The 9th Circuit said Congress can't use the Commerce Clause 
to bust a guy for making his own machine guns, assuming they 
haven't traveled in or affected interstate commerce.  The 
Commerce Clause is how Congress regulates guns now, but it's 
a limited power.

If you had a personal right to have guns under the Second 
Amendment Congress could just regulate gun all day long.  

Consider yourself lucky to be wrong. 

> The 27th is not a part of the bill of rights and has
> nothing to do with rights, even if it was proposed at the
> same time. 

Thank you.

> That may be why it was not passed back then and
> waited so long to be rediscovered. The Founding Fathers
> knew that it did not belong with the Bill of Rights. 

The state legislatures made that decision.  Here's the Second 
Amendment as it was sent to the states:

Article the second. . . No law, varying the compensation for 
the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take 
effect, until an election of Representatives shall have 
intervened.

http://www.constitution.org/bor/amd_cong.htm

http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/bill_of_
rights.html

> And I have no idea how you can claim a proposed amendment
> was rejected by the people. It can be ratified by the state
> legislature without any vote, so it must have been turned
> down by the state legislatures. 

You just have no idea.

__________________


It was, in many ways, a David versus Goliath battle. The 
anti-Proposition B forces had very little money to spend on 
advertising (under $300,000) and the NRA poured several 
million dollars worth of advertising into the state's media 
markets to promote the measure. One couldn't turn on the 
radio anywhere in the state during the spring of 1999 
without hearing a pro-Proposition B ad. The same could not 
be said for ads opposing the measure, which were seldom 
heard outside of St. Louis and Kansas City. Considering the 
conservative reputation of the state and the huge 
advertising money disparity, the measure was expected to 
pass easily.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Prop B 
celebration. On April 6, 1999, Proposition B was defeated --
which shocked the measure's proponents who had expected an 
overwhelming victory. It was defeated by a fairly narrow 
margin of about 44,000 votes out of a total of 1.3 million. 
Opponents of right to carry legislature claim the defeat of 
the measure in an "off-cycle" election shows Missourians do 
not support such laws and contend that the margin of defeat 
in a much higher turnout election (such as a general 
election in November) would be much greater --especially if 
opponents had a larger advertising budget. Proponents of 
right to carry claim they won 104 of Missouri's 114 
counties, so their views represent the true "hearts of 
souls" of Missourians. Of course, the 10 counties that voted 
against the measure (including, by the way, my own sparsely 
populated rural county) have a combined population much 
greater than that of the combined population of the 104 that 
favored it but that doesn't seem to make much difference to 
those who often use this geographic argument to claim they 
"really" won in April of 1999. 


Does the NRA Mistrust Democracy?

By Thomas Spencer



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The Lone Weasel