LAT: Man kills 2 Edison co-workers before turning gun on self

[ellisonz]

113. Legislation such as these in question always involve trade-offs.

People often perceive the police in relation to OWS as having some new power. They do not, they are simply enforcing powers they already have and are granted by the Constitution as set forth by the Government of the United States of America. The complaints of the NRA and its allies are fundamentally no different than those of the OWS who resent having existing governmental powers enforced to full effect. I do not believe that the holding of the Second Amendment as being above other fundamental rights such as those granted by the First and Ninth Amendments in these regard is a consistent interpretation of the Constitution.

There are those in the Gungeon who have maintained that there is no right to public safety, to the service of government, or its agents, and I find this view to be an abomination to the spirit in which the Constitution was set forth in opposition to the singularity of the Articles of Confederacy which was a relaxed form of Federal Government. Yes, we have individual rights, but they are offset by the persistence of such civic rights as part of the great social contract that underpins the our form of government.

To the oft quoted Benjamin Franklin, I reply with the words of John Adams: "Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it." - Thoughts on Government (1776)

Unfortunately, John Adams wish to interpret the foundation of our government as being the absence of fear from government has not been well-headed. Similar principles, were also enunciated by James Madison in Federalist Paper #51 in stating: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." (1788)

This is what is meant by checks and balances, that they must not allow fear to become the foundation of our government, and the spreading of unreasonable amounts of arms to individuals not participatory in the militia of the citizenry is exactly that: the fermentation of campaigns of assassination and insurrection. We have had our revolution and the Founders never intended for there to be another; such beliefs are sheer mystification of the Constitution. I do not believe that in any way the Founding Fathers conceived the individual right to bear arms as being separated from service in the Militia, and a "well regulated" one at that. I point to Justice John Paul Stevens dissent to the ruling in Heller, and specifically to several key passages in which the superior scholarship of Stevens clearly outshines the politically motivated decision of the majority of the court.

I. "To Keep and Bear Arms"

Although the Court’s discussion of these words treats them as two “phrases”—as if they read “to keep” and “to bear”—they describe a unitary right: to possess arms if needed for military purposes and to use them in conjunction with military activities.

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This reading is confirmed by the fact that the clause protects only one right, rather than two. It does not describe a right “to keep arms” and a separate right “to bear arms.” Rather, the single right that it does describe is both a duty and a right to have arms available and ready for military service, and to use them for military purposes when necessary.13 Different language surely would have been used to protect nonmilitary use and possession of weapons from regulation if such an intent had played any role in the drafting of the Amendment.

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Indeed, not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court’s overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment as “elevat[ing] above all other interests” “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD.html

The ruling in Heller is in clear conflict with both the intent and the text of the Constitution. It is a decision no less flawed than that of Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson in elevating a right of one group against another and subsequent courts are very likely to strike down Heller as both those cases were. Might does not make right, the Government can and should make regulations of up to the total infringement of such a right which is possessed by the citizenry, including the forbidding of the use of handguns and, machine guns such as those described in the previous Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and further regulations to protect the liberty of the citizenry from treason and factionalism.