10 Thoughts on the 2d Amendment by Laurence Vance

[Rusty Bolts]

Fiddle town,
Your examples are interesting and well thought out. However, the vast majority of them refer to restrictions on speech by legal entities, not citizens. A business is not a citizen and therefore does not enjoy all of the rights granted to citizens, nor should it.

Rusty Bolts

[Renaissance Redneck]

Standard by what you said, but you've grossly over simplified the matter and are therefore inaccurate. In many cases cited any "harm" is speculative or merely potential.

The issue actually IS quite simple; it's only our fearless leaders and (in many, but not all, cases) a complicit Supreme Court that have made it so convoluted in an attempt to purposefully chip away at our liberty. Given more time, I think I can make a logical argument to support my stance. But, I fear I've highjacked this thread enough already!

I have a comprehensive response to fiddletown prepared in my head, but I'll save it for my own thread (lest I be accused of a blatant highjack! Which I may already have done, BTW! Sorry OP.)

I'll just end with this; while I would not accuse fiddletown of being an anti-gunner, he's using their playbook in this discussion. Those are arguments we need to win. I'll argue them another time.

We can agree to disagree. A copout? Maybe it is (for now, anyway). Cheers!

EDIT: Or, if anyone wishes, I'd be happy to stay with this tangent and keep picking it apart. I think I have a pretty good argument that the gov unconstitutionally treats some rights as superior to others.

[chainsaw]

However, the vast majority of them refer to restrictions on speech by legal entities, not citizens. A business is not a citizen and therefore does not enjoy all of the rights granted to citizens, nor should it.

So you are suggesting that if multiple people (*) band together as a corporation, they lose their free speech rights when talking about corporate matters? After all, in the end the speaking is done by a person, when they stand at the podium announcing the quarterly results, or when they e-mail the artwork of the label of their new prescription drug to printer who makes the labels.

Case in point to demonstrate that speech is performed by a person, not by a corporation: If I advertise my new snake oil ointment, and claim that it cures warts, the FDA will throw me in jail. I can't weasel my way out of going to jail by claiming that it was just the corporation "Chainsaw's Snake Oil Patent Medicine, Inc" doing the speaking, and that the federal marshals are free to imprison the corporation, as long as they leave me alone.

(*) Footnote: Please leave citizens out of the discussion. The rights listed in the 1st and 2nd amendment apply to everyone, now just citizens. Matter-of-fact, the word "citizen" doesn't even appear in the bill of rights; the word used instead is "people". Yes, I understand that there are xenophobes who would prefer if immigrants had fewer rights, but their opinion is not reflected in the text.

[fiddletown]

...Your examples are interesting and well thought out. However, the vast majority of them refer to restrictions on speech by legal entities, not citizens. A business is not a citizen and therefore does not enjoy all of the rights granted to citizens, nor should it....

Wrong.

The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations under many circumstances are considered "artificial persons" and are entitled to the rights afforded natural persons. In addition, businesses conducted as sole proprietorships or partnerships are indistinguishable from the person or person who own the business. Sole proprietorships and partnerships are not separate entities; the owner or owners are the business.

Furthermore, nothing in the First Amendment excludes commercial speech from its protection.

...I'll just end with this; while I would not accuse fiddletown of being an anti-gunner, he's using their playbook in this discussion. Those are arguments we need to win. I'll argue them another time...

Twaddle and nonsense. If we hope to win anything, we need to understand how things work in real life. You might not like how things work in the real world, but the real world doesn't care.

...I think I have a pretty good argument that the gov unconstitutionally treats some rights as superior to others.

So what? In the real world unless you can get the Supreme Court to go along those arguments are meaningless.

[chainsaw]

The issue actually IS quite simple; it's only our fearless leaders and (in many, but not all, cases) a complicit Supreme Court that have made it so convoluted in an attempt to purposefully chip away at our liberty. Given more time, I think I can make a logical argument to support my stance. But, I fear I've highjacked this thread enough already!

Your stance seems to be that some or all of the cases fiddletown has listed are unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, with that argument, you not only wrap yourself in a logical contradiction, you even attack a much more fundamental level of the constitution.

The society of the US is based on the rule of law. The law has a well-ordered system for defining exactly what the law is, and what it means. The ultima ratio of that system is the supreme court. If the supreme court rules that you can't advertise "Chainsaw's snake oil cures warts" (unless you can prove to the FDA's satisfaction that it does), then this is what the constitution and the law mean. Or to be more concrete for this specific example: The supreme court has said that the constitutional protection of free speech does not extend to advertising medical products, and that a ban on false statements about drugs is not unconstitutional.

In a nutshell, what it comes down to is this. The supreme court is always right (*). The constitution is set up that way, and that was confirmed in Marbury as far as laws go. If you claim that the supreme court is "chipping away at constitutional rights", that shows a deep lack of understanding of what the constitution means. Namely: The constitution means exactly what the supreme court says, no more and no less.

For gun people, that can be good news and bad news. We were all elated when Heller and MacDonald happened. But if we give the supreme court credit when it issues good news, we also need to be logically consistent when it issues bad news, or no news. A specific example: At this point, we do not know whether there is a constitutional right (derived from the 2nd amendment) to carry a concealed gun in public. The fact that the court has refused to rule on several concealed-carry cases recently (Woolard, Kachalsky, Drake) only tells us that the question is unclear.

(*) Footnote: The supreme court can be shown to be wrong, but only by itself: When the court itself reverses an earlier decision, than the earlier decision must have been wrong, but the new decision is right. So by only looking at recent decisions, you are guaranteed to be correct. Unfortunately, cases like Cruikshank and the Slaughterhouse cases still stand.

If you don't like the conclusion the supreme court reaches about what the constitution means, you have various forms of recourse. You can campaign to elect different politicians, in the hope that they appoint different justices. You can file court cases, in the (pretty vain) hope that the reach the supreme court and cause the court to reverse itself. You can use violence to overthrow our government, and change the constitution to your liking. There is a cute saying about "soap, ballot, jury and ammo box". But simply stating that the supreme court acts unconstitutionally is illogical, as it is a subtle form of the Epimenides paradox.