Earlier this year, Eric Holder--along with Janet Reno and several other former officials from the Clinton Department of Justice--co-signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home. The brief argued that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right, not an individual one, and asserted that belief in the collective right had been the consistent policy of the U.S. Department of Justice since the FDR administration. A brief filed by some other former DOJ officials (including several Attorneys General, and Stuart Gerson, who was Acting Attorney General until Janet Reno was confirmed)took issue with the Reno-Holder brief's characterization of DOJ's viewpoint.
But at the least, the Reno-Holder brief accurately expressed the position of the Department of Justice when Janet Reno was Attorney General and Eric Holder was Deputy Attorney General. At the oral argument before the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Emerson, the Assistant U.S. Attorney told the panel that the Second Amendment was no barrier to gun confiscation, not even of the confiscation of guns from on-duty National Guardsmen.
As Deputy Attorney General, Holder was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" (cosmetically incorrect guns) by anyone under age of 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, national gun registration, and mandatory prison sentences for trivial offenses (e.g., giving your son an heirloom handgun for Christmas, if he were two weeks shy of his 21st birthday). He also promoted the factoid that "Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence"--a statistic is true only if one counts 18-year-old gangsters who shoot each other as "children."(Sources: Holder testimony before House Judiciary Committee, Subcommitee on Crime, May 27,1999; Holder Weekly Briefing, May 20, 2000. One of the bills that Holder endorsed is detailed in my 1999 Issue Paper "Unfair and Unconstitutional.")
After 9/11, he penned a Washington Post op-ed, "Keeping Guns Away From Terrorists" arguing that a new law should give "the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of every firearm sale." He also stated that prospective gun buyers should be checked against the secret "watch lists" compiled by various government entities. (In an Issue Paper on the watch list proposal, I quote a FBI spokesman stating that there is no cause to deny gun ownership to someone simply because she is on the FBI list.)
After the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the D.C. handgun ban and self-defense ban were unconstitutional in 2007, Holder complained that the decision "opens the door to more people having more access to guns and putting guns on the streets."
Holder played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez. The pretext for the paramilitary invasion of the six-year-old's home was that someone in his family might have been licensed to carry a handgun under Florida law. Although a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showed a federal agent dressed like a soldier and pointing a machine gun at the man who was holding the terrified child, Holder claimed that Gonzalez "was not taken at the point of a gun" and that the federal agents whom Holder had sent to capture Gonzalez had acted "very sensitively." If Mr. Holder believes that breaking down a door with a battering ram, pointing guns at children (not just Elian), and yelling "Get down, get down, we'll shoot" is example of acting "very sensitively," his judgment about the responsible use of firearms is not as acute as would be desirable for a cabinet officer who would be in charge of thousands and thousands of armed federal agents, many of them paramilitary agents with machine guns.
Eric Holder on firearms policy:
Obama sure didn't take long to piss on everyone who thought he'd bring actual reform.
Perhaps you think the FBI firebombed the house in Waco. I don't. I (and many others) think that David Koresh firebombed his own house rather than let the FBI enter. This less than peaceful act shows that the FBI was right to very afraid of Koresh. Their sin here was not to overestimate but rather to underestimate the viciousness of the "head of the household".
The reason Elian's father was his "only living parent" was because his mother died getting him to the United States.
I will note also that while gun control is a hot button topic here, Instapundit is dinging Holder for being a hawk on the drug war. I doubt its the start of a winning freedom coalition to stop Holder, but its interesting.
because we have a president-elect who has showed total disrespect for our 2nd amendment rights.
It's just another example of the frightening problem with unnecessarily aggressive paramilitary police tactics that Radley Balko highlights so excellently in his CATO policy paper Overkill.
Technically, we have a president-elect who lied about how much respect he had for our 2nd amendment rights. Granted, informed voters would have known he was lying, but I have to think that the lies must have fooled at least SOME people.
Now that he's won the election, apparently the mask is starting to come off.
A bit like waiting for David Koresh to go on his morning jog. But, I wonder if the TV people would arranged covereage for a grocery trip or a jogger?
Why would President-elect Obama possibly hire a gent such as Mr. Holder? Solidarity within the "community?" Sheer spite? Lack of judgement?
Just askin'.
Doesn't matter, the BATF was handling their own video recording, in hopes of getting some good footage. Pity the way all the tapes came out blank...
Seriously, they not only could have staged a raid when Koresh was out getting groceries or something, they could have simply accepted his invitation to come by peacefully, which was issued when the Davidians discovered a raid was in the works. You know, instead of accellerating their plans for an armed confrontation once the element of surprise was lost?
Perhaps the most damning revelation to come out later, (There's a lot of competition.) was that the BATF had no contingency plan for the Davidians greeting them peacefully; It was going to be a full out, armed assault, guns blazing, even if the Davidians had played proper little sheeple, lying on the floor in the approved posture for an armed government assault.
Yeah, geez. Give 'em a chance to rape us with their hammer, and then they'll pick up the sickle.
That Reno is not rotting in a jail cell is proof enough that it's bye bye freedom in the US. Just wait until Comrade Chavez orders the extradition of Exxon Execs, and Holder sends a few hundred storm troopers to round them up, and, ooops, a firefight breaks out....
I don't see how that changes anything. Is there a legal principle that can be articulated to apply to this?
Gun owners should be nervous about Holder, but corrupt Obama administration officials have nothing to worry about.
Obama's "mandate" is not very robust. He's just a smoother-talking, better-looking version of Hillary Clinton who opposed global military interventionism before he was for it. The only reason he got elected is that Bush sold out on so many of the principles he ran on in 2000, too many of the Republicans who should have challenged him just followed along like ducklings, and the GOP nomination dropped bizarrely into the lap of a very weak candidate.
The Washington City Paper article by Stephanie Mencimer is at http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=12207
My quotation is at http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2002/02-10-23.htm
Is this coming from a legal blog? Unbelievable... Weren't there numerous court decisons, appeals etc before the government had to do something to enforce these decisions? The family holding the child against his only living parent's wishes was not holed up in that house alone, there was a whole community of people resisting and the local law enforcement agency declined to cooperate with the federal government. In any crown control problem, the law enforcement agencies act with overwhelming force to avoid confrontation.
In any case, without any broken bones or bloody noses, it is a bit too much to call this use of excessive force.
If the same thing happened to an American father, who would be called the kidnappers? I guess I need to add Dave Kopel to the list of people who cannot be trusted to give a level headed analysis.
It's not really their say. The guys who set this thing up put it in the Top Ten of most important issues. The person who swears to defend the Constitution should pay appropriate respect.
Alleging excessive force is easy; all it takes is a keyboard and a blog on which to post the claim. Proving it is altogether different; that requires actual evidence. Finding the cases that adjudicated the claims and found them baseless is quite easy too.
I'm not sure what the Obama administration will do. But it's pretty well universally understood that Heller, while welcome to supporters of the right to bear arms, could easily turn out be very limited in effect. The administration has a substantial influence over how that plays out. And Obama's choices for key positions would seem to offer a glimpse of where he'll try to go.
"In any case, without any broken bones or bloody noses, it is a bit too much to call this use of excessive force."
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Obama was never interested in protecting or even acknowledging 2nd Amendment rights. He's an ubertechnocrat and in this case the experts (the police) like their monopoly on armed force.
Great idea! Base your argument on a single inflammatory photo, and completely ignore the actual findings by actual courts based on actual evidence, which indicate that the force actually used was actually reasonable, under the actual circumstances.
I think most people have no further patience for relitigating the 60s. And I think most people are similarly uninterested in relitigating Janet Reno, Waco, and Elian Gonzalez. But making a fuss about those things will be a great way for the GOP to remind the country that it's terribly out-of-touch with what most people are concerned about right now.
Also, as far as gun rights, this is an awkward moment, politically. A bunch of bad things have happened, all in the last few weeks. Like this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
So strictly from the perspective of the currents news climate, this is the wrong moment to try to convince the public that it's a good thing that Americans own so many guns. And that we should be afraid of attempts to regulate them.
"After being informed of the decision, Marisleysis said to a Justice Department community relations officer, "You think we just have cameras in the house? If people try to come in, they could be hurt.""
The picture is irrelevant. The Elian case was decided correctly by the courts and his removal from the custody of his Miami relatives was done in a manner that protected the lives of federal agents while not seriously endangering those who were threatening violent resistance to a lawful and just court order.
You don't like Holder on gun rights, fair enough, but keep this honest. Ditto Waco, though that case is more complicated.
This same "explanation" crops up quite often in different times and places and contexts, and I'm not buying it.
Seriously Kopel, whatever point you may have had is completely lost by this claim (and I read the Barry Law Review piece. It's even less convincing). So you don't care when 18 year olds die. This is where you draw the line. Things are great. The gangbangers are 18, people. Move along, nothing to see here. Guns are off the f-ing charts that's how cool they are.
Now, coming back for some serious reading after getting bored by progressive triumphalism in some blogs and media obsession with cabinet tea leaves, I find -- to my great regret -- that the National Review has apparently colonized the Volokhs. The post above is full of inflammatory language ("gunpoint kidnapping" to describe a [quite possibly improper] law enforcement action], throwaway insults (dismissing youthful firearms victims as 'gangsters', as if you had to be a gang member to be shot), and bizarre scenarios (giving your not-quite-21 year old an heirloom weapon and going to jail).
I'm quite open to serious arguments both about prudent firearms policy, and about the right way to intepret the 2A -- but this post contributed nothing to either. Sorry, much more of this, and other interested but non-kool-aid-drinking readers are simply not going to come back.
The Jukebox has gained self-awareness. Behold: the argument against interest. There will truly be no stopping him now. If a picture's only worth a thousand words, it has no chance against the newly empowered JBGgernaut.
Mukasey Collapsed while speaking at the Federalist Society dinner this evening.
Like this: And this:And this:
And this:
Holder and Reno may have been able to find better ways to deal with Elian, but that wasn't the only point DK made. (And while he used robust adjectives and verbs, I think his point was to counterpoint a willingness to use firearms and violence to further government but then to deny firearms to people to use for their own legitmate purposes.)
Their position taken in Heller was about as far out as you could get. That should be the most concerning.
Moreover, if he truly believes that returning Elian was wrong, he should direct his vitriol towards the CA11, not the DOJ charged with enforcing the orders. Unless he thinks that the DOJ had some authority to refuse to carry out that order, in which case, I see no reason that Holder cannot use that same authority to refuse to carry out Heller.
Of course, I think that's absurd, law enforcement is bound to effect court orders whether they like them or not. That is a major component of a basic system of law and order which is either lost on DK (not likely) or he's willing to throw under a bus to make a partisan rhetorical point (perhaps). I'm open to other explanations as well.
jackboots, machine guns, and scuttle helmets-- need to storm DC Council and force them to rescind their unconstitutional attempts at violating residents' civil rights. That's the system, right Oren?Holder and Reno may have been able to find better ways to deal with Elian, but that wasn't the only point DK made. (And while he used robust adjectives and verbs, I think his point was to counterpoint a willingness to use firearms and violence to further government but then to deny firearms to people to use for their own legitmate purposes.)
Huh? People focused on the last paragraph because it's the kind of thing you would expect to see on a website that caters towards to fringe crackpots, not on a website that gets so many visitors because of its insightful legal analysis.
The defining characteristic of government is a monopoly on the use of force except for immediate self-defense. David Kopel, whose bio says he is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Colorado, surely knows this. Why would he write something so devoid of legal analysis?
No, the district court should find those laws to be unconstitutional and issue an injunction against their continued enforcement.
In the almost unimaginable event that DC LEOs continue to arrest the citizens for violations of laws that have already been struck down, then we can discuss sending in the Federal Marshals to effect the court's orders.
I am confident the answer is no, which makes the post even more inexplicable.
So why don't you give us some legal analysis. Instead of the personal attacks. Seriously cough up. Contribute. Be productive. This "oh I'm so disappointed" tactic is worthless. It might work if you were his mother and he was four. But since you're not his mother and he's not four, maybe you could, like, hold yourself to your own standard? Or maybe you could just go away.
As usual, you're making inscrutable statements that I'm not nearly clever enough to decode. Hopefully there are people here who are picking up your wavelength, but I'm not part of that group.
Now you're comparing me to Glenn Reynolds? You were being less incivil when you called me a jackass.
There are lots of reasons why your comparison is asinine, but here's one. You gave this many examples of knives doing damage because they were in the hands of people who were truly "children" (i.e., younger than a teenager): zero. Whereas I cited two recent examples of an 8-year old using a gun to kill people (himself, in one instance). Can you show us the news story about the 8-year old who stabbed himself to death? Extra credit if it happened in the last few weeks.
And here's another reason why your comparison is asinine: knives have many practical and essential uses in an ordinary household. Knives are used on a daily basis for food preparation, and are indispensable for this purpose. On the other hand, most households don't use guns for food preparation (unless you live in a place like Wasilla, I guess). Running a household devoid of knives is fundamentally more challenging than running a household devoid of guns (unless you live in a place like Baghdad, I guess).
By the way, nuclear weapons don't kill people. People do. If you could go to nukes.com and order a small nuclear device that would put you in a better position to defend your family compound in, say, Waco, then shouldn't you be able to do so? After all, it's a kind of "arms," right? And which part of 2A says it's only talking about "arms" that use gunpowder rather than plutonium?
Remember, if suitcase nukes are outlawed, then only outlaws will have suitcase nukes.
That was already done, when Oren asked this question:
I notice no one has answered.
Good idea. Maybe you can do your part by answering Oren's question.
Quite true. Libs are used to that tactic working. Just look at the Supreme Court and Justice Kennedy.
Michael Masinter in the comments above already gave references to the relevant court cases that examined the question of whether the Elian Gonzales operation was lawful or not. That would presumably be a starting point for someone who is truly interested in the legal issues surrounding the case rather than regurgitating talking points heard on 1990s talk radio. If the court decided incorrectly, it would be important and interesting to hear why. Nobody has offered such an explanation, though.
I expect more from the VC. What's next, tales of the Obama recession that started on 11/5/08?
Kopel if you want to channel Rush wait till he's gone.
Heller had not been decided when Mr. Holder filed the amicus brief, how did expressing his view of the second amendment as a collective right, which he viewed as the law of the land at the time, dis the constitution?
By this logic, no one can ever file a contentious amicus brief in a constitutional law case, because they run the risk of dissing the constitution.
It's also quite revealing that you think arguing a principle of constitutional law EX-ANTE is dissing the constitution. Doesn't that kind of, er, dis the first amendment?
I do worry when the next AG was diametrically on the wrong side of an enumerated right in the bill of rights.
Would you support an Attorney General who wrote an Amicus brief stating that the First Amendment guarantee of free speech didn't apply to the internet because bloggers aren't "the people" or the founders didn't envision the rapid fire capability of webservers?
I would certainly expect that John Yoo's writings would raise some eyebrows should he be in consideration for AG in the future.
-Gene
Believe me I'm going to be calling both my Senators (Murray and Cantwell) and telling them to push hard for gun control, I might even cut them a check to get on their radar. I can't wait. While I'm at it I'm going to let them know that 1$ a gallon gas tax isn't high enough, after all I was paying $2 more a gallon just a few months ago, $3 is the minumum gas tax I'll accept, after the carbon tax of course.
(Also -- and I'm asking out of pretty deep ignorance here -- were there a lot of plausible AG picks who were bigger on 2nd-Amendment rights? My sense is that the kind of people who end up as AGs tend to skew more in favor of gun control.)
No, no more than if McCain picked an AG who had spent his career trying to overturn Roe v. Wade. A lot of people in this country believe abortion is murder, after all, but who would settle for limiting people's reproductive freedoms as much as possible.
So strictly from the perspective of the currents news climate, this is the wrong moment to try to convince the public that it's a good thing that Americans own so many guns. And that we should be afraid of attempts to regulate them.
The issue is not that Americans own so many guns, the issue in two of the articles you cite is negligent discharge. In the first article you cite (father shooting daughter), the father had a previous instance of a negligent discharge. The article also notes that the father indicated "he had both a license and a permit to carry concealed weapons." We see if that in fact is the case.
The same for the second case (boy shot in head while firing machine-gun). The article states "it is legal in Massachusetts for children to fire a weapon if they have permission from a parent or legal guardian and are supervised by a properly certified and licensed instructor."
There are legitimate reasons to own firearms. None of those reasons reduce the necessity to handle firearms safely, which in the case of two of the incidents you report, was not performed. In the other cases, if Americans believe that more regulation would help prevent those sorts of fatalities, it would be interesting to know the content of those proposed regulations.
What are "reproductive freedoms"? The freedom not to have sperm meet egg? I'm inclined to think that only a fairly small fraction of those who oppose availability of abortion would then take that so far as to oppose all useful forms of contraception. Or are you conflating "reproductive freedom" into "sexual freedom"? After all, homosexual sex has nothing to do with reproduction.
I guess it all depends on whose oxen are being gored. Relative to what I regard as my critical personal freedoms I see Mr Holder as less of an evil than Rep Waxman and what I presume the Obama administration's attitude toward my operation of powerful hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles for fun.
What are "reproductive freedoms"? The freedom not to have sperm meet egg? I'm inclined to think that only a fairly small fraction of those who oppose availability of abortion would then take that so far as to oppose all useful forms of contraception. Or are you conflating "reproductive freedom" into "sexual freedom"? After all, homosexual sex has nothing to do with reproduction.
I guess it all depends on whose oxen are being gored. Relative to what I regard as my critical personal freedoms I see Mr Holder as less of an evil than Rep Waxman and what I presume the Obama administration's attitude toward my operation of powerful hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles for fun.
My favorite lie of his was in the Gonzalez affair, when he said they didn't change their original plan to seize the boy peacefully when they sent the jackbooted thugs in... because they still did it "just before dawn" as they originally planned. What abject scum this man is.
I swear to God, the last seven words virtually every lawyer will hear on judgement day are, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Sure: If the losing side had awful enough arguments for ignoring an explicitly guaranteed constitutional right, then not only does being on that side disqualify you to be AG, the fact that it was ONLY 5-4 serves as an indictment of 4 Supreme court Justices. Holder wasn't arguing in the Heller case for 'reasonable regulation', he was arguing for the complete extinction of a civil liberty exercised and treasured by tens of millions. There's a lot of support in this country for some gun control, (Just like there is for some censorship...) but not very much for the ultimate degree of it Holder and the Heller minority wanted.
for pete's sake. more kids die in the bathtub and backyard pools then from guns.
neither a bathtub nor a pool is a right mentioned in the constitution, unlike gun ownership.
now is NOT the time to start spouting about the right to bathtubs and backyard pools. ban bathtubs from the home (kids can take showers) and backyard pools, and you will save more kids' lives than by banning guns. not to mention that it is a lot easier to ban pools (easy to detect) and bathttubs, then it is to ban guns. and no constitutional issues.
do it for the children!
If the DOJ's position is that the decision is unconstitutional then it has authority - in fact, responsibility, under the President's oath to "...preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," to ignore it.
Under the separation of powers, the courts have no power to bind the Executive; the Congress may remove a President for failing to respect a court order but that's a power of Congress.
The elder Gonzales should have gotten an open invitation to flee to the US and claim custody - here, or anywhere else in the western world, but not cuba or any other dictatorship - and until then, custody would default to his closest relatives.
I don't know the legal principle involved - not like this kind of case comes up often - but that is the argument I would have made. It is the only principled stand for the young Gonzales' life - to live as a free man and not a slave to the state.
As Tribe wrote in the New York Times:
Except that in this context, being an "informed voter" by your definition would have to be a person who did NOT rely on the mainstream media, who did their best to "provide context" to the record he had on the subject... by ignoring it when they could or reprinting his campaign press releases on the subject instead.
More bluntly, if you listen to and trust the MSM, you are not an informed voter. Not to mention a fool.
"Thanks, Serenity Now."
Ditto. Would that you had more influence, and were around in 1975.
First you can denigrate the Swift Boat group all you want, the fact remains that these are people who served with kerry in Vietnam and expressed their views of the man and his "accomplishments."
Second, it might be worth noting that while these incidents were going on 50+ million gun owners did NOT misuse their firearms. I fail to understand why you and the facist left think that it is appropriate to punish me for the errors of others.
Two of the cases cited were clearly parental msiconduct and the parents should be punished to the full extent of the law for endangering their children. In all likelyhood those children would have had serious injuries in any event even absent firearsm.
The other two incidents are clearly disfunctional families and the firearm merely provided a tool to execute crimes that would have occured sooner or later anyway. In a democracy we do not supervise people, or at least in the democracy our Founders created. But the left would have that change.
I'm not sure what reaction most people would have to your pet label for *GASP* mentioning when a politican who wants your trust has been involved in some pretty unconsionable acts. I bet you won't be tut-tutting about people wanting to "relitigate the '00s" if a future repuiblican tries to appoint Dick Cheney to a cabinet position.
Of course. And I'm sure that certain people in certain newsrooms will ensure that such news climates occur that are favorable to gun control policy positions that they just accidentally happen to support.
I will however grant you that none of the kids in your links bayonetted themselves to death. Proof positive that the assault weapons ban is protecting us even now!
Auto bailout achieved!
And let's not forget the thousands of children that lose their lives every year to those horrible plastic shopping bags. Where is our federal government in banning those?
The argument of 'look at all these stories of where innocent people died because of guns' is incredibly dishonest and nothing more than empty hype. These arguments take the whole thing out of context - both from all of the other ways that significantly more people meet an untimely end, and from the significantly more cases where firearms are used in a productive manner. I personally find that once you put these 'factoids' in context, most people tend to shy away from gun control.
300? Well, we can all be assurred it won't occur this very moment.
What we positively know is Holder's and Obama's history when it comes to contra 2nd Amend. initiatives. What we positively know, as exampled in the primary post herein, is that that history includes facile assumptions and arrogations, in turn reflective of more exercised and more sophistical assumptions and arrogations by a variety of jurists.
What we can reasonably and responsibly assume is that Obama learned from some of Clinton's mistakes (e.g., gays in the military immediately upon assuming office) and is much more likely to persue a gradual and gradually eroding set of initiatives rather than any immediately divisive set of initiatives.
I.e. I'm not reassurred in the least.
Hey... no fair linking gun control to Obama with secret code language!
Does the executive have the power to gore your ox as well? If Obama confiscates all your guns, and the courts order the return (see Nagin's asshattery) does he have the authority to ignore them because his view of the constitution is at odds with the courts?
Would anyone really want to live in a constitutional system that places that kind of power with the executive, knowing full well that it will be used both by executives that you agree with and ones that you don't agree with?
If he actually argued that the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right, he wasn't just on the wrong side of a relatively close Supreme Court case. All 9 of them accepted that the right is an individual one. The collective right theory has no credibility anymore.
What if I support the position that the DOJ is obligated to give effect to the binding rulings of Art III courts without prejudice? That is to say, I believe that Reno and Holder had the duty to return Elian to his father even if they disagreed with it.
That's funny, funny stuff. Because before the election the Obama supporters here scoffed at the very idea that anyone in the Democratic party was seriously interested in killing off gun rights. We were told that only paranoid right-wing nuts would even suggest such a thing. That in the unlikely event it were ever attempted, Bill Of Rights defenders such as your own good selves would stand side by side with us in opposition.
And now all of a sudden it's "well of course we Dems want to outlaw gun ownership"!
I'd tell you that you are nuts. The other branches of government do not exist to act out the courts whims.
And of course, the Clinton administation got the court ruling it sought. It's not like they were ever taking the "gee, we have no interest in this but we have to do what the courts tell us" attitude which you attribute to them.
Does that sound productive?
You are assuming that we don't have the authority to ignore Obama when he tries to do something unconstitutional.
The persistent failing of the left is that it sees the world as made up of the three branches of government. The people are merely passive clay to be molded as those three branches see fit.
We will have the right to keep and bear arms regardless of what the courts or the executive or the legislature say.
I know I plan to start disobeying all laws passed pursuant to Wickard starting today!
And also shooting jack-booted thugs for America!
How about swimming pools? Little kids drown in swimming pools all the time, much more often than they shoot themselves with their parents guns. Should we fill in all the swimming pools with concrete? Erect fences around all lakes, rivers, streams, oceans? After all, its for the children. There isnt even an amendment granting the right to construct a swimming pool in one's backyard.
I think the dems' point on this issue combines the two responses I predicted plus the usual suffix.
Smart people: "Your guy lied about gun control".
Dems. "So? And what do you want guns for anyway? Too late, chump."
So, supposing that I believe that the Federal government has no power to ban the personal consumption of cocaine (a plausible legal argument, given that an amendment was required to effect prohibition). Does that mean I have the authority to ignore the DEA when they come to break down my door?
Suppose in an alternate reality where Roe v. Wade wasn't decided, but I believed that the 14A protects a right to terminate early-term abortions. Do abortion doctors in this parallel world have the authority to ignore unconstitutional restraints on their rights?
I mean, ultimately, I could decide that any freedom that I hold dear is protected by the constitution and assert sweeping authority to ignore any instrument of the state that dares claim otherwise. Truly then, we are not a nation of laws.
Wow. A Bizarro me. I have truly Arrived (though as a non-Superman fan, I feel sort of unqualified to respond).
Anyway, Bizarro me, you're quite right (perhaps I should say "you is quite wrong," but that sort of thing would get tedious pretty fast, I think). If Bizarro Obama, over there in Bizarro America, won as part of a pro-life party, I don't think he's doing anything dishonest by appointing a pro-life AG. We still have a pro-life president in normal America; I don't know his AGs' views on abortion, but I'm willing to bet that Ashcroft, at least, was pro-life. Yes?
Slate Magazine
chatterbox
How About Reading That Elián Warrant?
Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2000, at 1:35 PM ET
Unlike many opinions flung about during the past few days, Tribe's does not seem to be colored by an ideological animus against the Clinton administration. Moreover, Tribe is a respected legal expert. In this instance, though, Tribe doesn't seem to have done his homework.
The Miami Herald has posted on its Web site a copy of the search warrant in question. (To read it, click here.) Contrary to what Tribe writes, it is "a warrant to seize the child." In what appears to be standard boilerplate, the warrant says that "there is now concealed a certain person or property, namely (describe the person or property)," at which point the following words have been inserted: "the person of Elian Gonzalez, date of birth December 8, 1993, a native and citizen of Cuba." The warrant goes on to say that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is authorized to search for Elián at the González home. The warrant is signed by U.S. magistrate Robert Dube.
The Herald has also posted various supporting documents submitted to the court when the INS was seeking the warrant. Chatterbox is no legal expert, but the documents seem to suggest that the court didn't act rashly when it granted the warrant. In this memorandum, for example, the INS points out that as of April 12, when the INS revoked Lázaro González's temporary custody of Elián (Elián was, and remains, an illegal alien), Lázaro's refusal to turn over Elián was in contravention of U.S. law. To wit:
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(b) provides that a warrant "may be issued under this rule to search for and seize any ... (4) person for whose arrest there is probable cause, or who is unlawfully restrained. [Italics Chatterbox's.] Lazaro Gonzalez's retention of the custody of Elian is unlawful because it is contrary to the INS order of April 12, 2000, and without the consent of Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
You can argue that the INS doesn't get to decide what U.S. law is, but you can't argue that a U.S. magistrate doesn't get to decide what U.S. law is. Dube, after reading this memo, approved the warrant.
http://www.slate.com/id/1005186/
Ah, I can see I'm wasting my time here. If you seriously think that legal doctrine adopted by dozens of SCOTUS judges over the course of decades is not, at the very minimum, debatable then we are lost. You are like the one guy on the highway that complains that everyone else is driving the wrong way.
I don't know who said that (I didn't). Now Obama certainly claimed that he, as president, didn't intend to further limit gun rights[1]. And as far as I know, that hasn't changed. What he has done is decide on an AG; that AG, like many people, has opinions on a variety of issues; on the specific issue of gun control, he, like most Democrats (and especially the Democrats most likely to become AG, I suspect), is in favor of it. But neither Holder nor Obama, as far as I know, has actually expressed any intention of taking away anyone's guns in the coming administration. If they pass a new gun-control law, or significantly change existing enforcement practices, then pro-gun rights types will certainly have a legitimate complaint.
[1] Also, to be fair, Obama pretty significantly misrepresented his earlier views on gun control. But, naughty as that is, it doesn't seem very relevant to this discussion.
I later realized that disarming the law abiding does not reduce crime, and leaves defenseless those who cannot count on the police being there when needed. Most gun control advocates that I have met disagree, and think that civilian gun ownership increases the chance of accident, crimes of passion, or the ever popular Hollywood meme of the homeowner's gun being used against her by a criminal. In part they believe these things because of limited experience, and because they do not know (or at least do not realize they know) civilians who are capable of using firearms safely, responsibly and competently, or whose circumstances require them to take steps for their personal safety.
But they do not know they are wrong. I have no reason to think Eric Holder is any different. Perhaps naive, wrong headed, elitist, and willfully ignorant, but not insincere.
More generally, is there any AG candidate who would have had any chance of a really welcoming reception by Volokh Conspiracy commenters? I suspect not: my sense is that prosecutors and such tend not to be libertarians (and certainly not civil libertarians), for pretty unsurprising reasons. But I don't have any data or experience to back that up, so people should feel free to correct me.
what doesn't fit, however, is the rabid and unreasonable arguments about the 2nd amendment. it's almost as if, to those here, the 2nd is the ONLY part of the constitution. while I understand and appreciate those who wish to protect their right to keep and bear arms, a view which I share, by the way, I am a little flummoxed by the bold statements of such an apparently learned crowd. According to many here, the "individual right" guaranteed by the 2nd amendment is "obvious" and - shockingly - time honored.
this couldn't be further from the truth. the 2nd was seen as protecting a collective right tied to membership in militias for nearly 150 years by just about every court that addressed the question. in fact, before Heller, only two federal courts ever called it an individual right - both within the last 4 years (5th circuit in Emerson, DC circuit in Parker - which became Heller when it went up to the SCOTUS).
disagreeing with Holder on this issue is one thing. Calling it so obviously wrong, however, is completely disingenuous. His view was THE view for the majority of our country's judicial history (originalists beware!). it was only recently that courts began to take the view that "the people' refers to individuals rather than a collective body. WHY? perhaps because without that view, the 2nd amendment is effectively moot. that's because "the people" are now incapable of physically fighting back government tyrrany (A La Blackstone), and because militias are (outside of Kansas) a thing of the past.
I do not doubt the wisdom of Heller, and who knows, maybe Holder sees it too. then again, maybe Holder sees what I see - that Heller was not a "confirmation" of some long held right, but a dramatic reversal of the historical view of the second amendment.
doesn't anybody wonder why most state constitutions explicitly grant an individual right to keep and bear arms? perhaps that is the result of two (well founded) understandings; that firearm regulation is largely a matter of STATE law, and that the 2nd Amendment, as written, does NOT explicitly grant such an individual right.
Of course not, they exist to fulfill the will of the voters. There are, however, limits on what actions they can take in furtherance of those goals -- limits that are decided by courts pursuant to their power under Art III to decide cases and controversies arising under the Constitution of these United States.
I never meant to attribute that attitude towards them at all. I just meant to say that the ruling of an Art III court of competent jurisdiction to be absolutely binding on them, irrespective of their attitude towards that ruling.
There is no 14th amendment right to an abortion.
There is a 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms. It's written there in plain English in black and white.
No, you do not have any justification to say that the words "due process" in the 14th translate to "there is a right to abortion and gay marriage".
Yes, it is insane to pretend that the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" mean anything but what they say.
Why do totalitarianism lovers like you feel the need to call yourselves libertarians? Your use of language is straight out of 1984.
I'm not even slightly interested in "legal doctrine adopted by dozens of SCOTUS judges over the course of decades". I care about the law, which is something which the courts spend most of their time undermining.
A person who keeps insisting that we all bow down before the preposterous proclamations of a handful of bureaucrats as they say things which quite clearly are at odds with the Constitution is a person who is no friend of liberty.
Holder says "There is no right to KBA".
You don't see the perfect symmetry of the situation, do you?
Like today, we need more gun laws -- Anyone know why? It seems that other than the drug dealers fighting over territory in the inner cities and the drug wars on the border, the rest of the country seems to not fixing. Gun show loophole, just proves you haven't been to a gun show in the last 10 years.
Riddle me this, why can you define socialism as pushed by the Democrats thusly -- Raise taxes, fund socialism and gun control. anyone want to take shot, read 'Heller' for clues.
CCW issuance was supposed to do what to America? Anyone remember the leftists clichés?
It is a stupid idea which is also blatantly unconstitutional, you hater of liberty.
How intellectually dishonest do you have to be in order to conjure up all sorts of "rights" which are not in the constitution based on a two word phrase, while at the same time stubbornly refusing to admit the unmistakable reality of the 2nd amendment?
Let's call a spade a spade here. If you wanted to believe that there is a "right" in the Constitution to kill all the memebers of a certain ethnic group, you could justify that to yourself also. Because you start with you