Correct me if I'm wrong

[DolphinFan]

The difference is that the other side claims you're wrong - they believe they are right as much as you believe you are right.

So, we have a conflict of opinion. Someone has to determine who is right. That someone is the courts. Well, we've been in courts since Heller, trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong. It also happens that the courts often say the other side is right.

Now, we say courts are wrong because they are not interpreting the Constitution correctly. The other side says that the courts are right, and they have a piece of paper, the ruling, to prove it. Since the courts happen to be the entity that decides right and wrong, the other side is right and we are wrong.

See, it's a game. The way to play the game is not to deny how the system works, but to play the same way the other side plays - stack the courts with the judges that will go out of their way to say we are right.

This is exactly what's happening as we speak - Trump is appointing a bunch of judges and my only regret is that he isn't appointing more mindless ideological drones the way the other side does. I am certainly fed up with playing fair against those who would fling poo at us.

I completely agree with your post.

[A-J]

EVERY right is subject to reasonable restriction. This is down the line. All of them. Read the constitution any way you want, you and I probably read it the same way, but that doesn't mean restrictions on rights can't exist.

Actually this is incorrect. All of the gun laws are designed to limit your exercise of the your 2nd Amendment rights. No machine guns. No cannons. No armor piercing rounds. No "high capacity" magazines. You cannot have these items because the government said so.

Contrast that to all the other so called restrictions, where you are punished for abusing your rights. The greatest example is falsely yelling "fire" in a theater to cause panic. Your freedom of speech is in no way restricted when you get prosecuted for causing a panic, because you broke the law by inciting the panic. Applying the gun law methodology to this would mean the government bans you from using the word "fire" because someone somewhere falsely used it in a theater and caused a mass panic.

[rootuser]

Keep in mind though that the "restrictions" on rights that get cited by gun control advocates are not analogous whatsoever to proposed Second Amendment restrictions. They are not restrictions but penalties for causing a harm with your civil liberty. They also only apply to certain people at certain times, and not at others, and certainly not the public at large.

Libel and/or defamation is most frequency cited by people who don't understand the Constitution or the case law. In fact those are never preemptive, and never applied to the total population. That body of code and case law define sanction that can only be applied to a specific individual -- and after a harm has been proven and adjudicated in a court of law as caused by the individual.

When I was an L.A. on the Hill years ago, I had the SEC portfolio in my office. Restrictions on what persons and companies making public equity or debt offerings can say, just like what drug makers can say, involve an small circumscribed and very narrowly defined group of people and only under very specific limited circumstances. A private equity firm taking part in making an offering of "XYZ Widgets Inc" to the public can't say "XYZ Widgets Inc stock will double in a year" but the other 99.9% of the population can say that. ABC pharmaceuticals can't say "our pill with Unobtanium cures cancer," but 99% of the public can say "Unobtanium cures cancer" without sanction or restriction. Those business operate under business license anyway, they are at will relinquished some rights to participate in a certain business field. if I sign a contract (an at will act) that allows my employer to search me, even if they are a government entity, this is not at all the same issue as whether I can be searched on the street by a police officer with no reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

Even Assembly 'limits" are not at all analogous to gun control for reasons that can be shown. The case law on that shows jurisdictions can temporarily delay certain assemblies in certain places, but it cannot assert the right to stop them.

In contrast virtually all the gun control a laws being proposed (with the exception of the area background checks and NICS results applied only to adjudicated persons), apply to the universe of Americans and virtually all apply with those Americans have committed no adjudicated harm -- definitely not analogous to other Bill of Rights "restrictions" bandied in conversation.

E.g. "may issue" has no precedent or analogy in "restrictions" on other bill of rights rights. Neither do proposed assault rifle bans, magazine bans, and dozens of other efforts.

So the issue is not any supposed limit on other Bill of Rights Freedoms. you and I should use our brains in any discussion and deny them as false analogies that they are. The issue is Heller. Heller says "reasonable." Fine. We all know that is a barn door, a well greased slippery slope. Heller was a partisan vote that would have resulted in legal total bans if there had been one more justice on the left. So this fight even in terms of constitutional law law, remains poltical, not constitutional law theory, because the legal turns and interpretations are derived from purely partisan election and confirmation of justices results.

I agree with you, but the finer determination always gets us in trouble. People just don't think that way en masse. We can get into the debates and ultimately I think you are right, but we can't sell that to everyone.

We have to admit, Heller was a double-edge sword. Reasonable is now built into the case law. Period.

Our message needs to be "reasonable" does not include any outright bans and MUST allow people to exercise their rights. We do NOT want a straight litmus test because that will close in on us fast, but we need to make it clear we won't accept denial of rights to anyone (once again, without reasonable cause).

[rootuser]

Actually this is incorrect. All of the gun laws are designed to limit your exercise of the your 2nd Amendment rights. No machine guns. No cannons. No armor piercing rounds. No "high capacity" magazines. You cannot have these items because the government said so.

Contrast that to all the other so called restrictions, where you are punished for abusing your rights. The greatest example is falsely yelling "fire" in a theater to cause panic. Your freedom of speech is in no way restricted when you get prosecuted for causing a panic, because you broke the law by inciting the panic. Applying the gun law methodology to this would mean the government bans you from using the word "fire" because someone somewhere falsely used it in a theater and caused a mass panic.

It is just a fact of the formation of our government. By forming our government, we distinctly allowed some restrictions on our god given rights in trade for the formation of a country that would have common goals and common ground. This pretty clear in the Preamble, including what the government is to insure.

Technically you could buy a cannon or build one. You could build a machine gun (not difficult). You COULD do it. You are then punished accordingly, just like yelling fire. No one stops you from yelling fire, and no one stops you from building a machine gun.

That said, I get your point. The government bans you from gun ownership after becoming a felon for example. HOWEVER, the same is true for voting in a lot of states. Felons lose the right to vote.

If we treated guns like voting we'd at least be even handed.

[GDC]

Technically you could buy a cannon or build one. You could build a machine gun (not difficult). You COULD do it. You are then punished accordingly, just like yelling fire. No one stops you from yelling fire, and no one stops you from building a machine gun.

wow I just spent 15 minutes writing a response to this and the forum software timed me out and I lost it.
'
in short your citing of yelling fire in a crowded theater is, I am sure, one of good will. Other people who oppose our civil rights and liberties like the gun control groups though throw it around in a way that is not good will.

The fact is issues like incitement to riot, incitement to panic, are more rarely prosecuted and more rarely still successfully prosecuted without an element of harm having occurred. Or have to be part of some kind of threat or menacing that have an intent element.

We can also say verbal threats are speech, but they are not really treated in common law or the courts as such.

On yelling fire vs building your own machine gun, there are lots of cases where speech that is in some circumstances subject to prosecution, and many cases where that exact same speech is totally legal. This is not the case with you or I building a machine gun.

Again I want to be careful with the analogies. yes there are some very rare and specific restrictions on Bill of Rights liberties, especially outside of the unique and systematic attack on the Second Amendment, but they are (thankfully)a lot less common than most people think.

[rplaw]

Shall not, in the legal world, should mean that what is proposed is forbidden by express language. It doesn't work that way because people have opinions and aren't afraid to cast them in stone for others to suffer under. That doesn't make it right, only what happens.

The "fire in a theater" analogy fails because it is not similar to gun restrictions. Falsely yelling "fire" means you get prosecuted AFTERWARD for causing harm. Gun restrictions mean your Rights are curtailed BEFORE any ability to use them occurs.

[rootuser]

wow I just spent 15 minutes writing a response to this and the forum software timed me out and I lost it.
'
in short your citing of yelling fire in a crowded theater is, I am sure, one of good will. Other people who oppose our civil rights and liberties like the gun control groups though throw it around in a way that is not good will.

The fact is issues like incitement to riot, incitement to panic, are more rarely prosecuted and more rarely still successfully prosecuted without an element of harm having occurred. Or have to be part of some kind of threat or menacing that have an intent element.

We can also say verbal threats are speech, but they are not really treated in common law or the courts as such.

On yelling fire vs building your own machine gun, there are lots of cases where speech that is in some circumstances subject to prosecution, and many cases where that exact same speech is totally legal. This is not the case with you or I building a machine gun.

Again I want to be careful with the analogies. yes there are some very rare and specific restrictions on Bill of Rights liberties, especially outside of the unique and systematic attack on the Second Amendment, but they are (thankfully)a lot less common than most people think.

I agree that the second amendment is the most burdened right of them all. No doubt. And yes, the burdens to rights do not apply equally.

You can always bear arms and deal with the consequences just like yelling fire.

When dealing with commercial sale of firearms things change and thus the pre-emptive prohibitions against 2A interests. Just the way it is. And until we start dealing in reality, we will continue to watch gun rights erode slowly.

[Jimi Jah]

SCOTUS ruled in Heller v DC that "reasonable restrictions" to the Second Amendment were legal/allowed.

Which really means they would rather not deal with this and send it all back to the states. The SCOTUS is done with gun laws, that's why they won't clarify Heller.

The SCOTUS is ok with 50 different interpretations (reasonable restrictions) to our basic rights.

Which means we don't really have any rights if the arbitrator of "reasonableness" says so, whom ever that is.

Rather than a republic, we are back to being ruled.