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Al Cook
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 December 2004
Posts: 12735
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| Posted: 30 July 2010 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | 1
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Well, there's no evidence that wouldn't be devastating to his case, anyway.
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 36470
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| Posted: 30 July 2010 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | 2
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Michael Abbey wrote:
Matt, I have presented evidence that many Founders supported my interpretation of the Second Amendment. Can you present any evidence, (beside the actual Amendment, which clearly the meaning is in dispute) that any Founder supports yours. |
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I think the Second Amendment is patently, painfully clear. The only people disputing it are the people who want to protect what they see is an inalienable, indisputable, god given and man affirmed right to bear arms. That right is often defended by proclaiming the second part of the Second Amendment divorced from the first. When asked about the first, you and people like you want to talk "intent", that somehow this near perfect document was muddled on a single amendment such that the framers didn't actually mean what they wrote. I'm of a mind that if they felt American citizens have a right to bear arms regardless of a "well regulated militia" then that's what they would have written. They would only have written the second half of the amendment and given it no context with the first. What do I have to support that? The Second Amendment itself.
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Al Cook
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 December 2004
Posts: 12735
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| Posted: 30 July 2010 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | 3
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It's the word 'right' that causes so much of the problem, and why that archaic Amendment needs to be revisited.
When it is recognized as a privilege, and that privilege only extends to certain types of gun, and for certain uses, and under carefully regulated controls - on users, sellers, and manufacturers - well, then we'll be getting somewhere...
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Michael Abbey
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 April 2007
Posts: 344
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 8:50am | IP Logged | 4
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Michael Abbey wrote:
Matt, I have presented evidence that many Founders supported my interpretation of the Second Amendment. Can you present any evidence, (beside the actual Amendment, which clearly the meaning is in dispute) that any Founder supports yours. |
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I think the Second Amendment is patently, painfully clear. The only people disputing it are the people who want to protect what they see is an inalienable, indisputable, god given and man affirmed right to bear arms. That right is often defended by proclaiming the second part of the Second Amendment divorced from the first. When asked about the first, you and people like you want to talk "intent", that somehow this near perfect document was muddled on a single amendment such that the framers didn't actually mean what they wrote. I'm of a mind that if they felt American citizens have a right to bear arms regardless of a "well regulated militia" then that's what they would have written. They would only have written the second half of the amendment and given it no context with the first. What do I have to support that? The Second Amendment itself. +++ I'll take that as a no.
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Michael Abbey
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 April 2007
Posts: 344
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 8:52am | IP Logged | 5
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Geoff and Matthew, I do want to respond to you, but don't have time to give a thoughtful reply at this time. Real life intrudes. I will try to do so tonight.
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Brad Krawchuk
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 June 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 5814
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 9:15am | IP Logged | 6
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I'll take that as a no.
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Michael, if you can take everything Matt wrote and write it off as a "no" to your question, then either you're just arguing for arguments sake or you've got serious reading comprehension problems.
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William McCormick
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 February 2006
Posts: 3297
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 9:34am | IP Logged | 7
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I'll take that as a no.
***************
Why would you need anything other than the amendment it self to prove what the amendment means? Why is it so hard to admit that an amendment written over 200 years ago, when there were no weapons like we have today, may have outlived it's usefulness?
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Matt Reed
Byrne Robotics Security
Robotmod
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 36470
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 9:49am | IP Logged | 8
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Take it however you wish. Ignoring the self-evident nature of the Second Amendment in order to bolster your claim that Americans have the inalienable right to own guns not matter what is par for the course. Enjoy.
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Paul Simpson Simpson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 07 April 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 939
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged | 9
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There is a simple solution to all this arguing. Amend the constitution. Get rid of the 2nd amendment in the way that was clearly laid out. I think this is preferable to the name calling and endless arguments about what the amendment means that always accompany this topic.
Edited by Paul Simpson Simpson on 31 July 2010 at 11:16am
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Matthew McCallum
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 July 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 2710
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | 10
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Michael,
I look forward to your thoughtful reply. In the meantime, a little more grist for the mill in the form of the Seventh Amendment:
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. (Emphasis mine)
Now, the inflation rate on $20 in 1913 compared to its value in 2010 is 2101.7 percent. That double sawbuck then is now the equivalent of $440.33. So I think the when the Constitution was written we can safely say that amount in question was north of $500 today.
So, should the Constitution be indexed to inflation, because the Founders were not farsighted enough to predict the impact of inflation over time and clearly that would be keeping with their original intent?
Should we just ignore the dollar values expressed in that Amendment because their context is no longer relevant to the larger concept?
Or should we hold fast to the language as written, and I can impanel a jury for my $20.01 civil suit against Wal-Mart, but not if my claim is $19.99?
And, to bring this back to the topic at hand, how does your rationale in addressing the current conditions impacting the Seventh Amendment relate to the current circumstances impacting the Second Amendment?
Edited by Matthew McCallum on 31 July 2010 at 1:28pm
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13062
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | 11
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It seems to me (and I hope Michael Penn can back me up on this) that the great irony when one invokes the "intention of the framers" as the appropriate standard for Judicial Review is that there is no language in the constitution that Judicial Review is, itself, constitutional. It was a creation of the Supreme Court.
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Yes -- and no. John Marshall's 1803 Marbury decision was a constitutional earthquake, for sure, but some of the most important of the Founders themselves set in motion the tectonic shifts, e.g., Hamilton in Federalist 78:
There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. [...] [T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 13062
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| Posted: 31 July 2010 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | 12
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The Seventh Amendment's Twenty Dollars Clause has been pretty much ignored. A great many speaking to the right of jury trial omit it entirely with an ellipsis. No work of scholarship addressed it until a Note in the Harvard Law Review in 2005.
There's no history to examine to determine the intent behind the Twenty Dollars Clause. One afternoon, in a closed door session on Madison's proposed constitutional amendments, the Senate added the Twenty Dollars Clause to what eventually became the Seventh Amendment. The earliest draft of the Amendment read: “And a trial by jury shall be preserved as usual in civil cases.” After the addition, the Senate's version now read: "In suits at common law, where the consideration exceeds twenty dollars the right of trial by jury shall be preserved" (quoting an earlier draft of the Twenty Dollars Clause). Other than these drafts, very little is known about the progress of the Amendment through Congress. In the debates leading up to the Amendment's adoption, no Framer or Amender argued for or against the Twenty Dollars Clause; no state submitted a proposed amendment with similar wording along with its ratification of the Constitution; nor did any contemporaneous state constitution provide for a civil jury conditioned on a minimum amount in controversy. Soon after ratifying the Amendment and sending it to the states, Congress passed the first Judiciary Act, which limited federal jurisdiction in diversity cases to those contesting at least five hundred dollars, so the Twenty Dollars Clause was mooted before it was ratified by the states.
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