10/11 on KGO 810

[Sgt Raven]

Wednesday
10/11
10:00 Saul Cornell, The Second Amendment and Gun Control

Bill, Mike, etc some of you should call in so we get our side on the air.

[bwiese]

Perhaps I can sneak out of the office but I have a meeting tomorrow - and when you call into KGO talk, you have to stay on hold for ages...

I'll see what I can do. I'd also have to take time to listen before responding...

[Veritas_223]

Dang, I have meetings from 10AM to 1PM...Do you know if they are streaming it?

[Sgt Raven]

Ronn Owens is a gun grabber although he tries to say he isn't.
Below is a link and part of the web page about this book.

From here http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/ConstitutionalLaw/?view=usa&ci=9780195147865

A Well-Regulated Militia
The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America
Saul Cornell

Description
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong.
Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century.
A Well-Regulated Militia not only restores the lost meaning of the original Second Amendment, but it provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns. For anyone interested in understanding the great American gun debate, this is a must read.

Here is some of Cornell's writings here: http://www.secondamendmentcenter.org/debate1.asp


SAUL CORNELL: Anyone who enters into this contentious issue is amazed by the power of historical arguments and symbols in contemporary public discourse on guns. It would be hard to imagine groups favoring an expansive reading of the First Amendment using an eighteenth century printing press the way Charlton Heston has used a musket at the NRA’s conventions. The furor over Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America, a book that argued that Americans in the founding era did not own many guns or have much ability with them, nicely illustrates this point. Bellesiles challenged a mythology that many people hold sacred. It turns out that Arming America and the myth were each caricatures of reality. There clearly was a perception that there were not enough military-style weapons to arm the militia. Americans in the Revolutionary era were more worried that government would fail to arm the people than that government would actively disarm the people.

[Sgt Raven]

And more see the bottom..........

SAUL CORNELL: There is tremendous ferment in the field of Second Amendment scholarship and jurisprudence. Most, but certainly not all, scholars and judges think that the controlling precedent, U.S. v. Miller, favors a militia-based view of the amendment. This interpretation is often described as the collective-rights view, but I don’t think it makes sense to continue to talk about two camps in this debate. There are now at least three models for understanding the Second Amendment. Some view it as an individual right, others as a collective right, and some have rejected both of these views and have embraced a third view that might best be described as a civic right.

The individual-rights view comes in at least two radically different forms: an expansive individual-rights view and a limited individual-rights view. For supporters of the expansive individual-rights view, the Second Amendment should be treated in much the same way that we treat freedom of speech. This would subject gun laws to ‘strict scrutiny’ by courts and might undermine some, but certainly not all, existing gun laws. For these scholars, guns and words are identical from a constitutional perspective. For those who favor the limited individual-rights model, private ownership of guns would be protected as an individual right, but would be subjected to the much less stringent “rational basis” test.

The limited collective-rights view, often described as the militia or states’ rights view, obviously poses no serious barrier to government regulation of firearms, so long as such regulation does not disarm the militia. The more expansive notion of the collective-rights view, one held by the whole people, not individuals, has not attracted much scholarly support nor has it generated coherent theory for how gun laws ought to be evaluated by judges.

For those scholars who have grown frustrated with the “either/or” quality of the debate, the concept of a civic right provides a new paradigm for thinking about the right to bear arms. To understand a civic right, one might turn to the analogy between the militia and the jury. Citizens have an obligation to serve on the jury, which both protects liberty and is an essential institution of republican society. Citizens also have the right to bear arms, so that they can meet their obligation to participate in a well-regulated militia. The right protected by the Second Amendment is an odd amalgam of a right and an obligation. If citizens were properly trained and their weapons were approved by the government, properly registered, and stored safely, they would then be entitled to full Second Amendment protection.

[Sgt Raven]

Dang, I have meetings from 10AM to 1PM...Do you know if they are streaming it?

Check here http://www.kgoam810.com/home.asp
I think they have "pod" casts too.

[rkt88edmo]

The right protected by the Second Amendment is an odd amalgam of a right and an obligation. If citizens were properly trained and their weapons were approved by the government, properly registered, and stored safely, they would then be entitled to full Second Amendment protection.

ridiculous - especially when you compare it to the jury analogy.

[luvtolean]

Very much an anti-gunner.

The show is irritating.

[luvtolean]

Now he's arguing that "people" doesn't applied to all people. :rolleyes:

[edwardm]

Cornell is off-base 100%. His concept of "Civic Duty" only fits into a compulsory service model. And at least Jefferson was inherently against compulsory service (conscripts being inferior to a citizen militia in defense of their homeland).

He's also ignoring the 14th Amendment ratification debates, which are loaded with background information (as well as showing that the intent of the 14th Am. was to apply all the individual rights in the Bill of Rights to the states).

[luvtolean]

The moderator is doing a good job, but this guy gets more and more anti-gun as the show goes on.

Anyone who believes this guy is fair and impartial to both sides (as the mod says) is a moron...

[detmeng]

same ol gun grabber dribble. I really liked the caller from Sunnyvale, was that anyone here on the forum? I really didn't expect a balanced argument anyways from Ron Owens. Nothing there, move on.

[luvtolean]

I've got a work call in 5 mins, or I'd call in. Man, I'm pissed.

[6172crew]

You didnt think Ron Owens was going to give us a fair shake did you?

This is the same guy who ripped into Bill Simon because Bill wasnt in favor of a gay(homosexual) holiday.

He also cut off mailman when he called in with a legit question about semi-auto rifle receivers.

Ron has a mic and a agenda....elitist.;)

[luvtolean]

Oh yeah, Saul is extremely elitist.

He keeps mentioning "raising the price of doing business" needs to be driven up to keep them out of the hands of crooks.

[rkt88edmo]

Oh yeah, Saul is extremely elitist.

He keeps mentioning "raising the price of doing business" needs to be driven up to keep them out of the hands of crooks.

Which is interesting, because in the big blurb above it talks about the "roots of gun control" and I wonder if it goes into the racial discrimination reasons, because that parlays into his argument today - not all criminals are poor, and not all citizens who have the right to protect themselves are "rich".

[luvtolean]

They flamed up a guy calling in to talk about the right to self defense, when earlier in the show, Saul spent time talking about there not being a right to it.

Of course, what he doesn't mention, is that the courts consistently rule the government does not have the duty to defend you personally. They just provide police as a service.