Why is George Zimmerman allowed to roam free tonight?

Trophy Husband wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

We are a sick, morally diseased society.

No. The acts of a few shouldn't be an indictment on the moral fiber of an entire society. This is an overreaction.

Honestly, I think you're both right, confusing though that it.

Society isn't monolithic, yet parts of it are morally diseased.

Paleocon wrote:

His attorney is playing up that he is a "responsible gun owner" and "longtime member of the NRA".

He is not doing us any favors.

Jeez.

The NRA isn't doing you guys any favors. They're the ones behind Stand Your Ground laws and expanding concealed carry.

You have a problem when your primary--the only?--firearms lobby group has, well, gone crazy.

OG_slinger wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

His attorney is playing up that he is a "responsible gun owner" and "longtime member of the NRA".

He is not doing us any favors.

Jeez.

The NRA isn't doing you guys any favors. They're the ones behind Stand Your Ground laws and expanding concealed carry.

You have a problem when your primary--the only?--firearms lobby group has, well, gone crazy.

Sigh. true.

Paleocon wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

His attorney is playing up that he is a "responsible gun owner" and "longtime member of the NRA".

He is not doing us any favors.

Jeez.

The NRA isn't doing you guys any favors. They're the ones behind Stand Your Ground laws and expanding concealed carry.

You have a problem when your primary--the only?--firearms lobby group has, well, gone crazy.

Sigh. true.

I'd sign up for the National Paleogun Association, which has the same beer-and-meat rules as the church but with more target shooting.

Kraint wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

His attorney is playing up that he is a "responsible gun owner" and "longtime member of the NRA".

He is not doing us any favors.

Jeez.

The NRA isn't doing you guys any favors. They're the ones behind Stand Your Ground laws and expanding concealed carry.

You have a problem when your primary--the only?--firearms lobby group has, well, gone crazy.

Sigh. true.

I'd sign up for the National Paleogun Association, which has the same beer-and-meat rules as the church but with more target shooting.

Sorry. Invite only.

Beer, Brats, and Brownings.

I cannot tell if the NRA has gotten bolder in the past 20 years or simply crazy. You have the Supreme Court overturning a precedent of 200 years that the 2nd amendment does not preserve individual rights to own or carry firearms. Innumerable state and city bans have been repealed on those grounds. Major federal gun control measures have been allowed to lapse (Brady, and the auto weapon bans). The ATF budget has been cut in key areas, with even more cuts proposed for FY 2013.

And then they promote loopholes for criminal homicides. The logical tie between upholding the right to possess and own guns, and a shield for killers astounds me. I can only conclude similar pushes to promote spring guns and landmines as the next logical step in "home defense."

Kukri as secret ring?

boogle wrote:

Kukri as secret ring?

Shhh!! Jeez.

KingGorilla wrote:

I cannot tell if the NRA has gotten bolder in the past 20 years or simply crazy. You have the Supreme Court overturning a precedent of 200 years that the 2nd amendment does not preserve individual rights to own or carry firearms.

Which 200 year old court case started that?

We are a sick, morally diseased society.

Well, that may be true, but I don't think you can easily use this incident as very strong evidence, since it's pretty clear that the society as a whole is reacting very poorly to what happened, and is likely to try to imprison the man for a long period of time.

To indict the whole society, you need very strong evidence, and while these high-profile murders take up a great deal of our head space and attention because of the media, and thus feel much more important to us than they really warrant, they're actually very uncommon. It's the people around you that matter, not the insane whackjob three states away -- suddenly, he feels like everyone's neighbor, but before the weird media spectacle thing, the incident would have been noted, and punished, and people would not have changed their worldviews much, because it is one remote guy, in some remote place, in a very, very large country.

KingGorilla wrote:

Major federal gun control measures have been allowed to lapse (Brady, and the auto weapon bans).

When did the federal auto weapons laws change? This is the first I've heard of it.

Jonman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

His attorney is playing up that he is a "responsible gun owner" and "longtime member of the NRA".

He is not doing us any favors.

Jeez.

Everyone's a careful driver right up until the first time they plow through a crowd of nuns.

Jeez, Jonman. That was ONE TIME. How long am I going have to talk about that?

Nuns don't kill people. People kill people.

I want to have sex with this comment and watch it give birth to a litter of tiny puns. Puns who'd then go on to kill people.

Malor wrote:
We are a sick, morally diseased society.

Well, that may be true, but I don't think you can easily use this incident as very strong evidence, since it's pretty clear that the society as a whole is reacting very poorly to what happened, and is likely to try to imprison the man for a long period of time.

To indict the whole society, you need very strong evidence, and while these high-profile murders take up a great deal of our head space and attention because of the media, and thus feel much more important to us than they really warrant, they're actually very uncommon. It's the people around you that matter, not the insane whackjob three states away -- suddenly, he feels like everyone's neighbor, but before the weird media spectacle thing, the incident would have been noted, and punished, and people would not have changed their worldviews much, because it is one remote guy, in some remote place, in a very, very large country.

I guess what I am seeing both in and out of the press is this whole hunkering down mentality of paranoid anti-community. I get the ethic of American rugged individualism, but what seems much more common in my experience is an overall feeling among predominantly conservative white folks that the government "no longer belongs to them" because there are too many people of color with political power. As a result, they increasingly take to different degrees of doomsday prepping. And in extreme cases, they get "fed up" at their perceived loss of racial privilege and lash out and violently exert their will by confronting (while armed) teenagers playing the their music too loud or chasing down and murdering some kid wearing a hoodie.

This is what I mean by sickness.

CannibalCrowley wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Major federal gun control measures have been allowed to lapse (Brady, and the auto weapon bans).

When did the federal auto weapons laws change? This is the first I've heard of it.

It didn't, he's confusing it with the semiautomatic assault weapons law.

CannibalCrowley wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Major federal gun control measures have been allowed to lapse (Brady, and the auto weapon bans).

When did the federal auto weapons laws change? This is the first I've heard of it.

The Brady Bill, handgun regs was an emergency bill passed under Reagan. The Assault ban was in 94 when the bill was up for renewal.

Much like the discussions surrounding the taxes. These bills were passed with a shelf life, and were up for renewal every decade. Brady and the 94 amendments were allowed to lapse in 2004.

EDIT: In that same time, the Treasury and ATF began issuing quite a number of permits for machine gun ownership. It is quite a cottage industry now.

And to answer Quintin up thread. The 2nd amendment was passed in an environment where all 13 colonies had their own armed forces, and militia system. The understanding being that the federal government cannot and should not interfere with the state regulation of its own police, militia, etc. The Civil War was still fought largely by the Confederacy and Union conscripting state militias. VMI was, and is a STATE military school. Stonewall Jackson attended and taught there.

The Supreme Court in 2008 and 2010 overturned handgun bans in Washington DC and Chicago respectively. The 5-4 decisions for the first time in history asserted that the 2nd amendment conferred to individuals a right to keep arms, regardless of the state or city's own regulations. Through the 14th amendment, the court completely reversed the meaning of the 2nd amendment to strip the state's of their constitutional right to regulate militia and arms in their own borders.

It also was just one of many instances of that court proving that DC is a second rate city in federal eyes. The locally elected officials are mere window dressing.

Wasn't the Brady Bill under Clinton?

Yeah, my bad, it was introduced first under Reagan, names for Jim Brady who was left disabled when John Hinkley tried to kill Reagan.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
CannibalCrowley wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

Major federal gun control measures have been allowed to lapse (Brady, and the auto weapon bans).

When did the federal auto weapons laws change? This is the first I've heard of it.

It didn't, he's confusing it with the semiautomatic assault weapons law.

Oh, the Black = Evil law. I always end up disappointed when people start making claims that auto weapons laws have changed.

KingGorilla wrote:

In that same time, the Treasury and ATF began issuing quite a number of permits for machine gun ownership. It is quite a cottage industry now.

But the number of automatic weapons available to law abiding private citizens has not changed. The consequence of such makes legal automatic weapons highly valuable and to some an investment vehicle.

KingGorilla wrote:

The Supreme Court in 2008 and 2010 overturned handgun bans in Washington DC and Chicago respectively. The 5-4 decisions for the first time in history asserted that the 2nd amendment conferred to individuals a right to keep arms, regardless of the state or city's own regulations. Through the 14th amendment, the court completely reversed the meaning of the 2nd amendment to strip the state's of their constitutional right to regulate militia and arms in their own borders.

It also was just one of many instances of that court proving that DC is a second rate city in federal eyes. The locally elected officials are mere window dressing.

My understanding is that precedent is established by a court case and decision. So when you said 200 years of precedent, I figured you meant a particular court decision. Can you have precedent without a court case to establish it?

Paleocon wrote:
Malor wrote:
We are a sick, morally diseased society.

Well, that may be true, but I don't think you can easily use this incident as very strong evidence, since it's pretty clear that the society as a whole is reacting very poorly to what happened, and is likely to try to imprison the man for a long period of time.

To indict the whole society, you need very strong evidence, and while these high-profile murders take up a great deal of our head space and attention because of the media, and thus feel much more important to us than they really warrant, they're actually very uncommon. It's the people around you that matter, not the insane whackjob three states away -- suddenly, he feels like everyone's neighbor, but before the weird media spectacle thing, the incident would have been noted, and punished, and people would not have changed their worldviews much, because it is one remote guy, in some remote place, in a very, very large country.

I guess what I am seeing both in and out of the press is this whole hunkering down mentality of paranoid anti-community. I get the ethic of American rugged individualism, but what seems much more common in my experience is an overall feeling among predominantly conservative white folks that the government "no longer belongs to them" because there are too many people of color with political power. As a result, they increasingly take to different degrees of doomsday prepping. And in extreme cases, they get "fed up" at their perceived loss of racial privilege and lash out and violently exert their will by confronting (while armed) teenagers playing the their music too loud or chasing down and murdering some kid wearing a hoodie.

This is what I mean by sickness.

Do you have any evidence that white vs black violence is skyrocketing? Because I'm seeing quite the opposite. The New Century Foundation did a study a few years back looking at violent crime statistics by race. Blacks are more than 2.5 times more likely than whites to be convicted of hate crimes and commit 85 percent of all interracial crimes.

http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofc...

None of this is to excuse the centuries of oppression by whites or deny the existence of modern day white racism. But let's at least face facts when it comes to violent interracial crime.

jdzappa wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Malor wrote:
We are a sick, morally diseased society.

Well, that may be true, but I don't think you can easily use this incident as very strong evidence, since it's pretty clear that the society as a whole is reacting very poorly to what happened, and is likely to try to imprison the man for a long period of time.

To indict the whole society, you need very strong evidence, and while these high-profile murders take up a great deal of our head space and attention because of the media, and thus feel much more important to us than they really warrant, they're actually very uncommon. It's the people around you that matter, not the insane whackjob three states away -- suddenly, he feels like everyone's neighbor, but before the weird media spectacle thing, the incident would have been noted, and punished, and people would not have changed their worldviews much, because it is one remote guy, in some remote place, in a very, very large country.

I guess what I am seeing both in and out of the press is this whole hunkering down mentality of paranoid anti-community. I get the ethic of American rugged individualism, but what seems much more common in my experience is an overall feeling among predominantly conservative white folks that the government "no longer belongs to them" because there are too many people of color with political power. As a result, they increasingly take to different degrees of doomsday prepping. And in extreme cases, they get "fed up" at their perceived loss of racial privilege and lash out and violently exert their will by confronting (while armed) teenagers playing the their music too loud or chasing down and murdering some kid wearing a hoodie.

This is what I mean by sickness.

Do you have any evidence that white vs black violence is skyrocketing? Because I'm seeing quite the opposite. The New Century Foundation did a study a few years back looking at violent crime statistics by race. Blacks are more than 2.5 times more likely than whites to be convicted of hate crimes and commit 85 percent of all interracial crimes.

http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofc...

None of this is to excuse the centuries of oppression by whites or deny the existence of modern day white racism. But let's at least face facts when it comes to violent interracial crime.

It's hard to use conviction rates as a statistic for this kind of thing. Not that there's a better statistic you can use, but without at least doing some kind of compensation for wealth (i.e. can afford a better lawyer) I'm not really comfortable taking that at face value.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

My understanding is that precedent is established by a court case and decision. So when you said 200 years of precedent, I figured you meant a particular court decision. Can you have precedent without a court case to establish it?

From what I've seen, until there's a real test of a law in court, what you have is the opinions of judges and the authors of the law. But what's your point here? Are you arguing that the individual right was at one point, 200 years ago, the dominant one? Because I've not seen that argument plausibly supported. It always fails on the plain-language relationship of bearing arms to militia membership. We have an understanding today that is completely different from that of the Founders, because we have no living memory of the militia system and it's obligations, dangers and political accommodations.

The Constitutional authors did not mention self-defense, or hunting, in the Constitution, even though they could easily have done so (and were urged to do so in at least the latter case by some delegates). This was pointed out in the dissent to the recent decision. That was the first time in American history that the Supreme Court had separated the right of the people to bear arms from the group obligation of militia service. That's ahistorical, since the two could not be separated at the time the Constitution was put together, or for over a century later, and the militia system was made to disappear through political sleight of hand (to avoid massive payoffs of militia members required by law, as I understand it, it was established that everyone was technically a member of the militia, so even if the funding and the system went away, no one would have to be paid to muster out.) The right was interpreted as allowing citizens to bear arms for military purposes. But of course, if everyone is part of a militia, isn't that de facto an individual right, in effect? I think that kind of thinking is what changed the interpretation; that and our bizarre fascination with gun culture.

It's a change that puts us squarely in line with tribal political systems, and I believe reflects a distrust of government and one's fellow men that will not produce anything good as a result. Many people advocate that unrestricted carry will reduce crime, but then, why are most regions in the world where that occurs highly dangerous? As usual, something else is going on, and we're going to get the short end of the stick, I feel.

Robear wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

My understanding is that precedent is established by a court case and decision. So when you said 200 years of precedent, I figured you meant a particular court decision. Can you have precedent without a court case to establish it?

From what I've seen, until there's a real test of a law in court, what you have is the opinions of judges and the authors of the law. But what's your point here? Are you arguing that the individual right was at one point, 200 years ago, the dominant one? Because I've not seen that argument plausibly supported. It always fails on the plain-language relationship of bearing arms to militia membership. We have an understanding today that is completely different from that of the Founders, because we have no living memory of the militia system and it's obligations, dangers and political accommodations.

The Constitutional authors did not mention self-defense, or hunting, in the Constitution, even though they could easily have done so (and were urged to do so in at least the latter case by some delegates). This was pointed out in the dissent to the recent decision. That was the first time in American history that the Supreme Court had separated the right of the people to bear arms from the group obligation of militia service. That's ahistorical, since the two could not be separated at the time the Constitution was put together, or for over a century later, and the militia system was made to disappear through political sleight of hand (to avoid massive payoffs of militia members required by law, as I understand it, it was established that everyone was technically a member of the militia, so even if the funding and the system went away, no one would have to be paid to muster out.) The right was interpreted as allowing citizens to bear arms for military purposes. But of course, if everyone is part of a militia, isn't that de facto an individual right, in effect? I think that kind of thinking is what changed the interpretation; that and our bizarre fascination with gun culture.

It's a change that puts us squarely in line with tribal political systems, and I believe reflects a distrust of government and one's fellow men that will not produce anything good as a result. Many people advocate that unrestricted carry will reduce crime, but then, why are most regions in the world where that occurs highly dangerous? As usual, something else is going on, and we're going to get the short end of the stick, I feel.

Yes, I'm arguing that. It has been the dominant one during that period and confirmed, as you know, in the 5-4 decision. Even the case most often pointed to as proving the state's right vs individual right, US v Miller (for example, the ACLU points to this case as for why it does not support an individual right), never sided with the state's right interpretation. But if there's actual precedence from 200 years ago, I don't know about it and that's why I asked.

But I know we've been round this way before. It's my position that outdated aspects of the constitution need to be changed, not ignored.

Well, it looks like the legal precedent comes from 1875 in related form, and stood for what, 125 years? Before that, both positions, individual and collective, were argued, but usually the collective right prevailed in opinions (it was not really considered a Federal issue until after the Civil War). I think it's a mistake to say that the individual one held sway before 1875, but it was certainly argued in legal circles if current references are to be trusted.

But both John Brown was a big supporter of individual gun ownership rights; so were the Ku Klux Klan - they won a case based on the Federal rights not applying in US v Cruikshank in 1875, after a massacre of 70 blacks with the intent to keep them from arming themselves. (That is, the Second Amendment was not held to apply to state laws.) Presser V Illinois in 1886 went the collective rights route. Miller v. Texas, the Bill of Rights does not protect an individual right to bear arms under state law. Robertson v Baldwin, 1897, laws regulating concealed carry don't violate an individual right to bear arms.

So it's safe to say that once it hit the Supreme Court, it was *not* held to be an individual right until Heller v. DC.

Blacks are more than 2.5 times more likely than whites to be convicted of hate crimes and commit 85 percent of all interracial crimes.

Note the highlighting. And I suspect the 'commit 85% of' is also based on conviction rates. Which, if you're at all familiar with the judicial system and policing in this country, is extraordinarily heavily stacked against black people. The conviction rate of black defendants is much, much higher than that of whites.

As biased as the justice system is, it's very hard to tease out the actual underlying truths.

And, when that site leads off with:

Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.

then I know it's misusing data to misrepresent the truth of what's going on. 25%, 1 in 4, of the entire population of black males ends up doing prison time, and there is no way you can tell me that this is not systemic bias. When the numbers are that large, it's not the blacks, it's the system locking them up.

jdzappa wrote:

Do you have any evidence that white vs black violence is skyrocketing? Because I'm seeing quite the opposite. The New Century Foundation did a study a few years back looking at violent crime statistics by race. Blacks are more than 2.5 times more likely than whites to be convicted of hate crimes and commit 85 percent of all interracial crimes.

http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofc...

None of this is to excuse the centuries of oppression by whites or deny the existence of modern day white racism. But let's at least face facts when it comes to violent interracial crime.

Into the Mainstream

Jared Taylor, the man who heads the New Century Foundation* and edits its allied magazine American Renaissance, is a white nationalist who believes America should be "a self-consciously European, majority-white nation" which he argues was "the original conception of [the U.S.], and one that was almost universally accepted until the 1960s." The foundation and magazine, based in Oakton, Va., tirelessly advance pseudo-scientific theories linking IQ to race.

The foundation also puts on bi-annual conferences; the 2002 event was advertised like this: "In all parts of the world, whites are afraid to speak out in their own interests. The costs of 'diversity,' racial differences in IQ, the threat of non-white immigration — politicians and the media are afraid to discuss what these things mean for whites and their civilization."

Taylor also has noted approvingly that until 1967, "strong opposition to mixed marriage was enshrined in law" in 16 states. In "The Myth of Diversity," Taylor writes that "diversity" has led to civil rights claims by all kinds of groups he doesn't like. "Anyone who opposes the glorification of the alien, the subnormal, and the inferior can be denounced," he complains. "The metastasis of diversity is a fascinating story, but the disease began with race."

After 300 pages of attacking blacks and dismissing white racism, Taylor's 1992 book Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America notes that most Americans would not agree to use sterilization or forced abortion on those whom the society considers less fit. His solution? Make "welfare mothers" accept a "five-year implantable contraceptive."

Taylor is allied with Wayne Lutton, whom he thanks in his book and who is the editor of The Social Contract, a journal published by John Tanton's The Social Contract Press*. Taylor, Lutton and Richard Lynn are on the editorial board of The Occidental Quarterly, a journal where Sam Francis, top editor for the racist Council of Conservative Citizens*, serves as book review editor. The Occidental Quarterly's first issue featured a story by the late Keith Stimely, who was also an editor of the Journal of Historical Review, a notorious Holocaust denial publication.

Mistaking Poverty for Race

But Taylor is plainly, demonstrably wrong.

Taylor uses an incredibly simplistic analytical method that flatly ignores the fundamental conclusion of decades of serious criminology: Crime is intimately related to poverty. In fact, when multivariate statistical methods such as regression analysis are used, study after study has shown that race has little, if any, predictive power.

This basic fact is so well understood among scholars of criminal justice that the preface to Minnesota's official crime data reports carries this caveat: "Racial and ethnic data must be treated with caution. ... Existing research on crime has generally shown that racial or ethnic identity is not predictive of criminal behavior with data which has been controlled for social and economic factors."

When more sophisticated methodology is employed, socioeconomic factors including poverty, education, social status and urban residence account far better for criminal behavior than race. Above all, income counts.

It is precisely because being black in America is closely correlated with being poor, suffering from high unemployment and having low levels of education that the black community has relatively high crime rates.

In 1994, the same year that Taylor's data comes from, the poverty rate among blacks was three times that of whites. In addition, nearly 40 percent of black children grew up in poverty.

So while it is true, for instance, that blacks rob whites far more than vice versa, that is hardly a surprise — whites, after all, own nearly 10 times the wealth that blacks do on average. They also own far more businesses. Thus, it is only natural that any rational robber would select whites over blacks as victims.

Jayhawker is once again proving I shouldn't post in P&C. Instead of 2 sentence gut feelings like me, he posts actual sources.

Robear wrote:

Well, it looks like the legal precedent comes from 1875 in related form, and stood for what, 125 years? Before that, both positions, individual and collective, were argued, but usually the collective right prevailed in opinions (it was not really considered a Federal issue until after the Civil War). I think it's a mistake to say that the individual one held sway before 1875, but it was certainly argued in legal circles if current references are to be trusted.

But both John Brown was a big supporter of individual gun ownership rights; so were the Ku Klux Klan - they won a case based on the Federal rights not applying in US v Cruikshank in 1875, after a massacre of 70 blacks with the intent to keep them from arming themselves. (That is, the Second Amendment was not held to apply to state laws.) Presser V Illinois in 1886 went the collective rights route. Miller v. Texas, the Bill of Rights does not protect an individual right to bear arms under state law. Robertson v Baldwin, 1897, laws regulating concealed carry don't violate an individual right to bear arms.

So it's safe to say that once it hit the Supreme Court, it was *not* held to be an individual right until Heller v. DC.

See, I read these decisions and they seem pretty clear.

United States v. Cruikshank in 1875 held that constitutional protections only restricted actions of the federal government and that states were free to do as they pleased.

The First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting Congress from abridging the right to assemble and petition, was not intended to limit the action of the State governments in respect to their own citizens, but to operate upon the National Government alone. It left the authority of the States unimpaired, added nothing to the already existing powers of the United States, and guaranteed the continuance of the right only against Congressional interference. The people, for their protection in the enjoyment of it, must therefore look to the States, where the power for that purpose was originally placed.

It doesn't claim that the 2nd amendment is collective any more than it claims the 1st amendment is somehow a collective right.

Presser v Illinois reiterated this, though with the following inclusion:

It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the States, and in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government. But, as already stated, we think it clear that the sections under consideration do not have this effect.

These old cases hinge around the question of whether or not rights protected in the US constitution can be curtailed by the states. Back then, the answer was "yes", even for something as basic as the freedom of speech.

Robear wrote:

Well, it looks like the legal precedent comes from 1875 in related form, and stood for what, 125 years? Before that, both positions, individual and collective, were argued, but usually the collective right prevailed in opinions (it was not really considered a Federal issue until after the Civil War). I think it's a mistake to say that the individual one held sway before 1875, but it was certainly argued in legal circles if current references are to be trusted.

But both John Brown was a big supporter of individual gun ownership rights; so were the Ku Klux Klan - they won a case based on the Federal rights not applying in US v Cruikshank in 1875, after a massacre of 70 blacks with the intent to keep them from arming themselves. (That is, the Second Amendment was not held to apply to state laws.) Presser V Illinois in 1886 went the collective rights route. Miller v. Texas, the Bill of Rights does not protect an individual right to bear arms under state law. Robertson v Baldwin, 1897, laws regulating concealed carry don't violate an individual right to bear arms.

So it's safe to say that once it hit the Supreme Court, it was *not* held to be an individual right until Heller v. DC.

I know this is getting off-topic so I'll try and make it quick: something to remember about the idea of it as a collective right is that it wasn't just the Second Amendment that was not held to apply to state laws. The Bill of Rights itself was not held to apply against the states--Incorporation--until the 1920s. There's precedent for the collective view, but that precedent comes from a time when the Bill of Rights/14th Amendment themselves were understood differently. I think the issue is asking what the dominant view is of a right's individual vs. collective nature by looking to court rulings during a time when those rights only restrained the Federal government. tl;dr: basically, I don't think the question itself is valid in the first place because those courts were not grappling with the same question we're asking.

Maq wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

His attorney is playing up that he is a "responsible gun owner" and "longtime member of the NRA".

He is not doing us any favors.

Jeez.

Everyone's a careful driver right up until the first time they plow through a crowd of nuns.

Jeez, Jonman. That was ONE TIME. How long am I going have to talk about that?

Nuns don't kill people. People kill people.

I want to have sex with this comment and watch it give birth to a litter of tiny puns. Puns who'd then go on to kill people.

Puns don't kill people. People kill people.