[extropy-chat] Guns

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:
> 
> It's far from simple.
> Why don't you tell me how you can own fully automatic rifles in
> California?

It is simple: California is in violation of the US Constitution, and
cases are proceeding through the courts right now. It will take a few
years, but things will get straightened out eventually. States like
California currently justify their banning of automatic rifles under an
odd interpretation of the decision in the 1939 case of US v Miller,
which involved a rum-runner arrested shortly after the end of
Prohibition with an allegedly short shotgun (a violation of the newly
minted NFA of 1934, a law passed to give the revinuers something to
do). Miller was the beginning of the militia interpretation of the 2nd
amendment. Problems with the Miller decision, though: Miller's lawyers
never showed at the SCOTUS for the trial, they figured that since
they'd won at every level below the SCOTUS that their case was sewn up.
They did not count on the federal prosecutors lying three times in
their arguments before the court.

> It may be your constitutional right to own guns, but the govt gets to
> decide what guns you are allowed, and what you aren't.

Actually, this is not true. The BATF does not restrain your ability to
own any model of gun you want. Its only constitutional authority is to
tax. The NFA of 1934 was not a ban on automatic firearms, it was a tax
bill. There is a $200 tax on transfers of automatic weapons and
silencers. Any non-felon can buy one if they pay the tax and do the
paperwork. I've owned automatic firearms, and silencers, as a matter of
fact. The BATF TRIES to regulate everything, both military style and
non-military style weapons, and when you contest them on one side, they
claim that Miller gives them authority on that side because of the
militia argument, then when you contest them on the other, they claim
an entirely DIFFERENT and opposite interpretation of Miller.


> Your rights would not be in breach of the constitution if they only
> allowed you flintlock muskets.

Uh, no, even in Miller the court recognised that the people, as members
of the unorganized militia
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/311.html), have a justified
reason to have access to military style weapons. The only way that
Miller lost his case to the feds was that the feds lied and claimed
that sawed off shotguns had never been used by any military unit in
history, when they were actually widely used in trench warfare in WWI,
just 21 years prior.

Since the federal law says all of the people are members of the
militia, and anti-gunners claim that the militia clause limits gun
ownership to the militia, then the only legally unrestricted guns
should be so-called 'assault weapons'.

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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