Is the Obama Administration serious about enforcing our gun laws?
It is now beyond doubt that the Administration is determined to say as little as possible about the plague of gun violence that inflicts death and injury on 300 Americans every day. When forced to comment on proposals to strengthen our anemic federal gun laws, the President and his representatives typically fall back on the gun lobby's canard, "We don't need new gun laws. We need to enforce the laws on the books."
Last year, for example, when President Obama was asked by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation whether he plans to ask Congress to enact an assault weapon ban to address the torrent of guns flowing from American gun dealers to Mexican drug cartels, the President replied, "I think the main thing we need is better enforcement."
There is no question that we need to devote far more resources to enforcing federal gun laws. But it is a transparent fallacy to argue that deficiencies in enforcing current laws justify inaction to strengthen those laws.
According to the "just enforce current laws" argument, we should, for instance, tolerate the "gun show loophole" in federal law that allows criminals to buy guns from private sellers at gun shows without background checks, because we can always hire more federal agents to track down the criminals after they get the guns. Doesn't it make more sense to require background checks to block gun sales to criminals in the first place?
There also now is reason to doubt the sincerity of the Obama Administration's asserted commitment to better enforcement. It is indefensible, for example, that the President has been in office for eighteen months without appointing a permanent Director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency responsible for enforcement of our nation's gun laws.
In June, Brady Center President Paul Helmke wrote to President Obama, urging him to nominate a Director for ATF. After the press began to notice the Administration's inaction, rumors of an impending appointment began to circulate, with Al Kamen of the Washington Post reporting yesterday that the Administration may be on the verge of nominating the current Special Agent in Charge of ATF's Chicago office. But the question remains: How could the Obama Administration allow such a vital position to be unfilled for so long?
Incredibly, ATF has not had a permanent Director since 2006. President George W. Bush at least sent a nominee to Congress, but a vote on his candidate, Michael Sullivan, was reportedly blocked by then-Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), an NRA Board Member who apparently took issue with ATF's treatment of gun dealers during Sullivan's term as Acting ATF Director. The Bureau has had a succession of Interim and Acting Directors, with the last Acting Director occupying that position so long that he exhausted the statutory time limit on his tenure.
As the Brady Center points out in its new report, Leadership Vacuum, the ATF vacancy is particularly conspicuous, since 83% of the appointments that require Senate approval have been confirmed or nominated since President Obama took office. The Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Administration has been nominated and confirmed, but no one has even been nominated for the job of running the agency responsible for fighting gun trafficking.
This is a serious matter. In the words of James Pasco, a former ATF Assistant Director, "I am absolutely confident that because of the lack of a confirmed director, crimes are being committed and innocent people are dying." How can the Administration continue to maintain it has a policy to fight gun violence by improving enforcement of current law, when it has been willing to allow the federal gun enforcement agency to remain leaderless? How can it say that it is "doing all that we can" -- as Secretary of State Clinton claimed -- to curb the arming of Mexican cartels with guns trafficked from American gun shops?
A headless ATF is but the latest symptom of a paralyzing disease -- the Obama Administration's fear of the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association long has dedicated itself to the ATF's destruction -- even stooping, during the Clinton Administration, to calling ATF agents "jack-booted government thugs." It is easy to imagine the express or implied threats being made by the gun lobby and its friends in Congress to oppose any nominee for Director who will aggressively pursue the corrupt gun dealers who aid and abet gun trafficking. As Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote about the Administration's ATF inaction, "it's the kind of situation that makes you wonder if good governance has taken a holiday."
The urgency of a strong ATF Director grows every day, as the gun lobby pushes its latest legislative abomination, a bill that would further weaken ATF's existing enforcement powers, that carries the Orwellian name "ATF Reform and Firearms Modernization Act." The bill (S.941/H.R. 2296) would make it virtually impossible for ATF to revoke the licenses of law-breaking gun dealers. If names attached to legislation had to pass a "truth-in-advertising" test, the bill would be called the "ATF Deform and Destruction Act."
It is bad enough to witness President Obama resorting to the "enforcement fallacy" to justify his failure to support strengthening our gun laws. It is beyond the pale that his Administration would be so fearful of the gun lobby that it would leave ATF without a leader and stand silently as the gun lobby pushes legislation to emasculate the agency for decades to come.
For more information, see Dennis Henigan's Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy (Potomac Books 2009)
Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed.
This interpretation is diametrically opposed to the view that says the amendment affirms the right of private individuals to have firearms. The ACLU, HCI, and others reject this, arguing that the amendment only affirms the right of the states to maintain militias or, today, the National Guard. These competing interpretations It is more likely, though, that those who interpret the Second Amendment to preclude an individual right to own guns are driven by their political agenda. Whichever the case, they do themselves no credit when they tell us that a simple, elegant sentence means the opposite of what it clearly says. The supreme court decisions appear to be political motivated and probaly will be more clarifications in the future.
in 1990, the Supreme Court held that the federal government possesses complete power over the National Guard. The Guard is the third part of the United States Army, along with the regular Army and Army Reserve. The Framers` independent "well regulated militia" remains as they intended, America`s armed citizenry
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Emerson. In Emerson, the Appeals court devoted dozens of pages of its decision to studying the Second Amendment’s history and text. It began by examining the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939), which individual rights opponents claim supports the notion of the Second Amendment protecting only a “collective right” of a state to maintain a militia. The Fifth Circuit disagreed. “We conclude that Miller does not support the collective rights or sophisticated collective rights approach to the Second Amendment.”
Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to end this threat to the Second Amendment. The act begins with findings that go to the heart of the matter: "Congress finds the following: (1) The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (2) The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of individuals, including those who are not members of a militia or engaged in military service or training, to keep and bear arms."
Do you know what the word "preclude" means? Based on your previous stance on the Second, I am betting you don't. Here, this may help: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/preclude
The SCUS has held that the 2nd amendment supports an individual right to keep and bear arms, that was not what Heller was about,the 5-4 was in relation to the D.C. gun ban,try reading the opinions in the case.
The 2nd Amendment states
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security
of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed.
Remove the prepositional phrases and you have
A well regulated militia, being necessary, the right
shall not be infringed.
Then remove the adverb phrases
A militia, the right shall not be infringed.
By the rules of English when a series of nouns are separated in a sentence by commas the commas can be replaced by the word "and" and thus we have
A militia and the right shall not be infringed.
Also by the rules of English when a series of nouns are separated by "and" and share the verb phrase the sentence can be re-written as multiple sentences such as
A militia shall not be infringed.
The right shall not be infringed.
Then if you add the prepositional phrases and adverb phrase back in you have
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security
of a free state shall not be infringed.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
I do the examination as above since many people seem to have problems reading and understanding the English of the 2nd Amendment.
The first 13 words are an absolute phrase (nominative absolute). This grammatical construct takes the form of an object which is not the subject of the sentence and a participial phrase. The remaining 14 words comprise the clause of the sentence.
Absolute phrases are non-restrictive and exist outside the grammar of the clause of the sentence. They do not act adjectively and do not create, modify, or limit the subject of the clause. Instead, they act adverbially through the verb and predicate of the sentence, providing background information about the action of the clause.
In this case the subject of the clause is "the right" which is modified to show it belongs to "the people" and then renamed as being that of "keep(ing) and bear(ing) arms".
The action of the clause is the prohibition against infringement.
Therefore, the first 13 words do not create, modify, or limit the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Instead, they give one reason why the right is not to be infringed.
The right to keep and bear arms is not dependent on participation in a militia.
This interpretation is diametrically opposed to the view that says the amendment affirms the right of private individuals to have firearms. The ACLU, HCI, and others reject this, arguing that the amendment only affirms the right of the states to maintain militias or, today, the National Guard. These competing interpretations
A Well-Organized and Armed Militia
"For a people who are free and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. It is, therefore, incumbent on us at every meeting [of Congress] to revise the condition of the militia and to ask ourselves if it is prepared to repel a powerful enemy at every point of our territories exposed to invasion... Congress alone have power to produce a uniform state of preparation in this great organ of defense. The interests which they so deeply feel in their own and their country's security will present this as among the most important objects of their deliberation."
Thomas Jefferson: 8th Annual Message, 1808. ME 3:482
"[The] governor [is] constitutionally the commander of the militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms." --Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811.
was in relation to the DC gun ban. From the decision in Heller.........
Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed.
http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/HellerOpinion.pdf
-In this case, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police protection even in the presence of a restraining order. Here's some backstory:
"In 1999, Gonzales obtained a restraining order against her estranged husband Simon, which limited his access to their children. On June 22, 1999, Simon abducted their three daughters. Though the Castle Rock police department disputes some of the details of what happened next, the two sides are in basic agreement: After her daughters' abduction, Gonzales repeatedly phoned the police for assistance. Officers visited the home. Believing Simon to be non-violent and, arguably, in compliance with the limited access granted by the restraining order, the police did nothing.
The next morning, Simon committed "suicide by cop." He shot a gun repeatedly through a police station window and was killed by returned fire. The murdered bodies of Leslie, 7, Katheryn, 9 and Rebecca, 10 were found in Simon's pickup truck."
Ruling: There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties; it tells the state to let the people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.); (No duty to protect) = Rule 12(b)(6) Motion to Dismiss;Cf. Reciprocial obligations.
I thought the threads about Heller and guns concerned the Second amendment. Fortunately, now I know it's actually about the 9th. Man, it's a good thing we only have 27 amendments because I get the impression that the gun, uh, enthusiasts are going to invoke all of them as supporting their right to hold on to their thundersticks. Can't wait to see how the Fifth and the Twentieth amendments protect the nonmilitary right to own bang bangs.
And I'm not the guy who howls about prevarications -- that's evidently the mission in life of some of the cut and paste artists who post the same phrases ad nauseum (no, that's not another fallacy for you to fail to understand). Therefore, I won't emphasize the numerous qualifying phrases, such as "for these purposes," Breyer uses to make consistent his specialized argument in his Heller dissent. I'm reconciled to what he said and how he said it, so it's all good to me. Same with Stevens, and all the other many judges and rulings through the years with which I agree. YOU true believers can split the hairs and find the agreements with your positions that they didn't really say...as I'm sure you will.
In the meantime, I'm going to bone up on the 22nd amendment -- I'm certain it somehow legalizes guns, too.
The 9-0 idea, as far as I can tell comes from blogs like Left Coast Conservative:
"This is the idea that the 5-4 decision in Heller narrowly affirmed that the 2nd Amendment confers and individual right to bear arms.
But this is NOT true. All nine justices agreed that the 2nd Amendment confers and individual right to keep and bear arms. The 5-4 decision was to overturn the Washington, D.C. handgun ban as an unacceptable infringement on the 2nd Amendment."
Then comes the quotation a gun enthusiast law expert posted. Breyer's dissent DOES indeed say that, but THEN he says:
"Although I adopt for present purposes the majority’s position that the Second Amendment embodies a general CONCERN about self-defense, I shall not assume that the Amendment contains a specific untouchable right to keep guns in the house to shoot burglars. The majority, which presents evidence in favor of the former proposition, does not, because it CANNOT, convincingly show that the Second Amendment seeks to maintain the latter in pristine, unregulated form.
To the contrary, colonial history itself offers important examples of the kinds of gun regulation that citizens would then have thought compatible with the “right to keep and bear arms,” ... And those examples include substantial regulation of firearms ...including regulations that imposed obstacles to the use of firearms for the protection of the home."
8-2?
Who said anything about "discretionary", not that you don't know you are trying desperately to obfuscate the issue?
If citations from the Supreme Court decision, and lower court decisions, and links thereto, have failed to clear this up for you, then let me try again.
The police are under no legal obligation to protect you, as an individal. In plain English (and I know what difficulty you self-proclaimed geniuses have with plain English), it means if a criminal kills you, especially after you have called 911, and patiently waited fot 8 to 22 minutes (on average) for the police to save you, only to have them arrive just in time to stuff you into a body-bag, your estate cannot sue them..................because they are not liable for your protection.
If you are still confused, take a course in English.
Subsequent gun, uh, enthusiast clarifications seemed be that because crimes happen in nanoseconds, only having a private arsenal provides safety, because no cops can appear in time to help, and besides they have no obligation to come anyway, so there. My most sarcastic restatements of the gun, uh, enthusiast position were embraced as the true description of the way things are.
Furthermore, I learned that in Heller, the SCOTUS voted 9-0 in favor of the so-called individual right. This is odd to me, since I remember a 5-4 decision. In addition, I just read Justice Breyer's article, "On Handguns and the Law" in which he says (emphasis mine):
"The dissenters (OF WHICH I WAS ONE) focused on the words a 'well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.' IN OUR VIEW, that language identifies THE AMENDMENT'S MAJOR UNDERLYING VALUE. ITS PURPOSE IS TO ENSURE THE MAINTENANCE OF THE 'WELL REGULATED MILITIA' THAT IT MENTIONS." (NY Review of Books (August 18) 56.13: 18).
But maybe Justice Breyer changed his mind when he wrote his book.
Maybe the vote was 8-1.
Or maybe some of those enthusiasts who say my interpretations derived from text I quote are prevarications should examine more closely the distinction between text-based interpretation and prevarication.
Too bad they are also consistently wrong...
From Justice Breyer's dissent:
The Amendment protects an “individual” right—i.e., one that is separately possessed, and may be separately enforced, by each person on whom it is conferred. See, e.g., ante, at 22 (opinion of the Court); ante, at 1 (STEVENS, J., dissenting).
" It's futile to convince 'sociopaths' "
If you were familiar with the meaning of the word, and not just regurgitating it because you heard it somewhere, you would know how ridiculous, and offensive it is.
Comment flagged for boorish and loutish content.
As usual, you misstate what has been said. It was a 5-4 decision as to whether or not DC's laws violated the Second Amendment. All 9 Justices stated that the Second deals with an individual right. We have quoted the pertanent sections of the dissents proving this several times in the past.
Your own supporters(in spirit only, not finacially...obviously) here on your own blog should certainly convince Obama that the "vast majority of Americans" support gutting the 2A to your satisfaction, right?
I mean, come on. The BOR has no preamble? The NRA has bought off the SCOTUS, the Congress, the Administration, the FBI, the Census, all dotgov websites, and Starbucks for crying out loud, right?
And who can forget about Kellie's "mall law" or Jade's comment about filing down the firing pin?
Honest question, Paul...We have documented evidence that you specifically contacted Kelli and asked her to come here and defend you(ya, we got the emails), do you really think that was a wise move?
checkmate
Nearly lasted a full hour before back to normal.
When did this email turn up? Never saw it on the blogs.
Then why did the Brady Bunch enthusiastically endorse Obama???
Couldn't be his voting record in the Senate which the NRA warned about, huh?