Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw) Guest Blogger
I have discussed the Second Amendment and the difficulties I have in allowing citizens to own semi-automatic weapons and large capacity clips of ammunition in the past, but Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a recent Fox News interview, just took my concern over semi-automatic weapons and shot it down.. with a shoulder firing rocket!
“Referring to the recent shooting in Aurora, CO, host Chris Wallace asked the Supreme Court Justice about gun control, and whether the Second Amendment allows for any limitations to gun rights. Scalia admitted there could be, such as “frighting” (carrying a big ax just to scare people), but they would still have to be determined with an 18th-Century perspective in mind. According to his originalism, if a weapon can be hand-held, though, it probably still falls under the right to “bear arms”:
WALLACE: What about… a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute?
SCALIA: We’ll see. Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.
WALLACE: How do you decide that if you’re a textualist?
SCALIA: Very carefully.” Think Progress
OK. I get it now. Under Justice Scalia’s originalist reading of the Constitution, he might not allow you to carry a big Axe around to frighten people, but a shoulder firing rocket launcher might be legal! At what point do we decide that public safety just might trump a radical reading of the Constitution? This is the same justice that opined in the District of Columbia v. Heller case that reasonable restrictions to the Second Amendment might be allowed by the Court. Heller
Maybe Justice Scalia needs to see the photos of the carnage a semi-automatic weapon or a shoulder fired rocket launcher can create. Under this thinking, RPG’s might be legal for all citizens to own and carry. Grenades can be hand-held and therefore under Justice Scalia’s warped sense of thinking, they too might be legal for citizens to carry. Do we draw the limit at briefcase nukes that can be carried in one’s hand?
Obviously the theory that Justice Scalia is promoting can be carried to extreme and hilarious lengths. The real scary part is that Justice Scalia doesn’t understand how hilarious and dangerous his concepts are in the real world. I am also confused why Scalia is allowed by Chief Justice Roberts to go on Fox News and opine about issues that just may end up in front of the Supreme Court. Isn’t this interview evidence that Justice Scalia has already made up his mind on the issue of other portable weapons?
What do you think of these comments by Justice Scalia and does his concept of originalism go too far? Since Justice Scalia thinks that these kind of weapons may be legal, is it too far-fetched to wonder if the current crop of right-wing Militia’s are free to purchase these kind of weapons, even if they hope to use them against the government?
Additional Reference: Prof. Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago
leejcaroll
Are you saying the DEMS never filibustered? Are you saying that Harry Reed is a Saint for not allowing a budget vote in over 3 years? What about all of the legislation passed by the House Harry Reed is holding up? Obama got his bailout and we can see that it didn’t work. He got Obamacare and most Democrats up for re-election don’t even want to talk about. Reed won’t allow the Senate to vote on its repeal. I wonder WHY? Why don’t you address the projected DEBT not deficit in 10 years and then as a percentage pf our GDP? Then go out and tell current students that things will be alright and make to sure they know where you live in 10 years so they can thank you personally.
Okay he could have gotten what he wanted with a republican congress that would filibuster and refuse to vote on his policies (oh wait that is what has been happening) There is no point in reiterating there was no “supercongress”, you cannot hear anything but your own voice, and that of Beck, Limbaugh, Fox, etc. Have you had your mind deafness checked out by a doctor?
leejcaroll
If you want to calculate the months Obama had a super majority in congress that is fine. Regardless, Obama could have gotten what he wanted and what he wanted has increased our debt over 4 trillion dollars. The CBO has said it will take about 10 years for our deficit to be under control but they fail to mention or discuss how much our debt will increase during that time. When interest rates are over 20% in 2020 I will keep your posts for viewing along with all of your buddies on this blog.
bettykath and firefly,
I do think that Justice Scalia is bought and paid for, but he is pretty out in the open with it. What other justice besides Thomas frequently takes gifts from conservative groups and joins in there discussions. Also, I can’t remember a sitting Justice who made so many public pronouncements about what is legal and not legal. firefly, if Scalia can claim that rocket launchers are legal for citizens to carry under the 2nd amendment, outlawing abortion is a snap!
The word “abortion” does NOT appear anywhere in the Constitution, so what makes Scalia think Congress or the president or the U.S. Supreme Court has ANY right or power to regulate or prohibit abortion?
Scalia is a dishonest Justice.
If the Framers had wanted to give Congress the power to regulate or forbid abortions, they would have included that power — in the Constitution — as one of the enumerated powers of Congress.
raff, you’re welcome.
I think Scalia missed the part of the argument re: the Bill of Rights that they weren’t needed b/c some rights are so basic and self-evident they needn’t be specified. There were many more than ten proposed.
Thanks for the update bettykath.
Back to Scalia.
Scalia: ‘What Can Obama Do to Me?’
By Reuters
30 July 12
upreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Sunday renewed his criticism of Chief Justice John Roberts’ reasoning in upholding President Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law and also said the Constitution undoubtedly permits some gun control.
The 76-year-old Scalia – a leading conservative on the court who has served as a justice since 1986 – also was asked whether he would time his retirement in order to let a conservative future president appoint a like-minded jurist.
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided when to retire,” Scalia told the “Fox News Sunday” program. “… My wife doesn’t want me hanging around the house – I know that.”
“Of course, I would not like to be replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything that I’ve tried to do for 25 years, 26 years, sure. I mean, I shouldn’t have to tell you that. Unless you think I’m a fool.”
Roberts, also a conservative, sided with the nine-member court’s four liberals in upholding the constitutionality of Obama’s healthcare law, considered the Democratic president’s signature domestic policy achievement.
Scalia joined in a sharply worded dissent on the day of the June 28 ruling and added to his criticism on Sunday.
A central provision of the law is the “individual mandate” that most Americans obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The ruling found that this penalty “may reasonably be characterized as a tax” and thus would be constitutionally permissible under the power of Congress to impose taxes.
“There is no way to regard this penalty as a tax. … In order to save the constitutionality, you cannot give the text a meaning it will not bear,” Scalia said.
“You don’t interpret a penalty to be a pig. It can’t be a pig.”
Supreme Court justices rarely give media interviews. Scalia is making the rounds to promote “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” a new book he co-wrote.
Scalia brushed off Obama’s comments aimed at the court regarding the healthcare law and a campaign finance ruling.
“What can he do to me? Or to any of us?” Scalia said. “We have life tenure and we have it precisely so that we will not be influenced by politics, by threats from anybody.”
He was asked “why you push people’s buttons every once in a while.” Scalia said, “It’s fun to push the buttons.”
Gun Control
Scalia wrote the high court’s 2008 ruling that a ban on handguns in the U.S. capital violated the right to bear arms enshrined in the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
In light of the July 20 massacre in which a gunman killed 12 moviegoers in Colorado, Scalia was asked whether legislatures could ban the sale of semiautomatic weapons.
He said the 2008 ruling stated that future cases will determine “what limitations upon the right to bear arms are permissible. Some undoubtedly are.”
Scalia – a proponent of the idea that the Constitution must be interpreted using the meaning of its text at the time it was written – cited “a tort called affrighting” that existed when the Second Amendment was drafted in the 18th century making it a misdemeanor to carry “a really horrible weapon just to scare people like a head ax.”
“So yes, there are some limitations that can be imposed,” he said. “I mean, obviously, the amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried. It’s to ‘keep and bear’ (arms). So, it doesn’t apply to cannons. But I suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to be … decided.”
Regarding the death penalty, Scalia said opponents want it struck under the ban on cruel and unusual punishment included in the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
“But it’s absolutely clear that the American people never voted to proscribe the death penalty,” he said. “They adopted a cruel and unusual punishment clause at the time when every state had the death penalty and every state continued to have it. Nobody thought that the Eighth Amendment prohibited it.”
Scalia also took issue with decades-old Supreme Court precedent, saying the Constitution does not provide Americans with a right to privacy, despite a landmark 1965 ruling finding that it does. That ruling helped pave the way for the court’s 1973 ruling legalizing abortion.
“There is no right to privacy – no generalized right to privacy,” Scalia said. “No one ever thought that the American people ever voted to prohibit limitations on abortion. I mean, there is nothing in the Constitution that says that.”
Scalia also was asked about his past criticism of rulings by Supreme Court colleagues in which he called them “folly” and “sheer applesauce.”
“I don’t know that I’m cantankerous,” he said. “I express myself vividly.”
And there Jim goes your complete argument. (thanks rafflaw)
lee,
don’t forget that a few of the Dems in the Senate were DINO’s or Blue Dog Dems.
Jim said: Jim1, July 30, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Obama had both houses of congress for two years.
Gee Jim, wrong again.
There was never a supermajority in the House as Romney claims. The balance at the start of the Congress was 2507 – 178, which is a Democratic share of only 69 percent, not 96. And, though there were 60 Democrats (or independents caucusing with the Democratic Party) elected, Al Franken was not sworn in until July 7, 2009, meaning that the Democrats did not have a Super Majority until that point. Further, Ted Kennedy was sick and not able to vote. It was not until after Kennedy’s death and replacement by Paul Kirk that the Democrats had a supermajority,which lasted from September 24, 2009 to February 4, 2015 – 19 weeks pregnant, not two years. http://projectfactcheck.wikispaces.com/Mitt+Romney
But has already been said, repeatedly, never let the facts get in the way of your positions.
“He has no business experience and that is why unemployment is still high and not coming down anytime soon. Chicago, his pride, has a terrible murder problem but has one of the toughest gun control laws in the country.”
Jim,
Here is your problem and that of many others who think like you: The inability to discuss things logically.
You say the President has no (A) business experience, which is true, but then you use that to explain (B) why unemployment is still high. B doesn’t follow from A. You use A to explain B, but there is no logical causality for that conclusion. That is why I made the point that the two most revered Republican Presidents of the Twentieth Century had no business experience and that factually most of our President’s have had no business experience.
Then with further illogical thought, to further muddle your thinking, you throw in the murder rate in Chicago (his pride?). Now since when did the murder rate in Chicago serve as a secondary reason for our country’s high unemployment rate and how is The President who never served as Mayor of Chicago responsible for that?
“I do however believe in operating under free enterprise and capitalism which is our heritage. Liberals like you don’t like this system and want to change it. I say why don’t you leave and go live somewhere else and see how long it takes before you are on your way back.”
You make assumptions about me not based on what I’ve written but based on your general feelings about “liberals”, which by the way are ill-informed and not at all how I would characterize my political beliefs. All “isms” are merely used to con people in to supporting the ascent to power of one faction, or another.
Be that as it may, you continue your illogical argumentation by making statements that are only true if you have the knowledge of society characteristic of a twelve-year old. There is neither mention of Capitalism, or “free enterprise” in our Constitution, which is good because the definitions of these economic ideas differ widely in the eyes of the beholder. For instance was it Capitalism or Socialism that motivated the Government to give away huge tracts of land to building the National Railroad System? However, I think such nuances would be lost on you. You then make a further untrue statement that “liberals don’t like this system and want to change it”. Liberals uniformly believe in our economic system, it is Socialists and others who want to change it. However, this is a distinction that is lost on you since you really exhibit little understanding of any economic theory more complex than those expressed on FOXnews.
As for my leaving this country, this is once again the smug stupidity of someone who considers themselves to be Conservative, but has little idea of what that means and no ability to think logically. The underlying assumption is somehow that Conservatives are patriots and that Liberals are not. The ignorance of our history in that assumption is monumental. For instance if
American Conservatives had their way we would have never been able to go to war against the Axis in WWII. The Conservatives were the traitors then and in fact Senator Prescott Bush and the Dulles Brothers helped Hitler rise to power. I’ll bet that you even voted for the draft dodgers Bush and Cheney, who were “so patriotic” that they were willing to let others die in a war that they fervently supported.
The “lack of will” of which you speak is really a more complex disagreement with those disastrous cuts that the House is insisting on in order to achieve a Pyrrhic political victory. There is no need though for me to go into it further since you have proven your inability to discuss anything logically, as I have just shown. This makes you typical of those who somehow believe that FOXNews is “fair and balanced”. Perhaps you might consider taking remedial work with a high school course in logic, since I think a college course in same would be too advanced for you at this point.
Jim,
you have repeatedly misstated the purpose of this article. Banning guns is not what this is about. It is about common sense restrictions and regulations narrowly aimed at preventing ill people from having guns and it seems that Justice Scalia is changing his mind from his opinion in the Heller case about common sense regulations.
Otteray Scribe
I am sorry for your loss. I do agree with you and others that we should ban certain types of weapons however without dealing with the people who commit crimes is wrong. I also am skeptical of our government because anything they try to do always has loopholes and any type of gun ban could lead to a complete gun ban which is the slippery slope. If banning guns worked then Chicago wouldn’t have a high murder rate. We need both!
Mike Spindell
You must be deaf and blind. I stated (He has no business experience and that is why unemployment is still high and not coming down anytime soon.) I only mentioned unemployment and that is all regards to business experience.
Money does not trump morality with me. I do however believe in operating under free enterprise and capitalism which is our heritage. Liberals like you don’t like this system and want to change it. I say why don’t you leave and go live somewhere else and see how long it takes before you are on your way back.
The real truth Mike is that our political leaders lack the will to do anything right. Take Harry Reed as an example. He should go ahead and bring the budgets the house passed up for a vote no matter what difficulty it puts on the Senators. All money bills originate in the house and therefore I agree with Boehner not to be coerced by the President. He should however vote on tax policy by itself. I support a strait up or down vote on letting the taxes expire for those making more than $250,000 and a strait up or down vote on those making less than $250,000.
What Mike said. Some of the greatest Presidents lacked business experience. Lincoln was a small town lawyer. Grant was a successful soldier and a terrible President. Teddy Roosevelt was born rich, was an adventurer and soldier who was not afraid of anything or anyone, but never ran a business. His cousin Franklin was also born into the Roosevelt fortune, but was a professional politician. Truman had tried running a clothing store but sucked as a businessman and had to file bankruptcy, but turned out to be one of the great ones, despite his poor showing as a businessman.
Eisenhower was a professional soldier. Ford was a professional politician. Reagan was a B movie actor who never ran a business in his life. George HW Bush was born into money, but was a Naval Aviator and a politician who never ran a private business. His son, the “Shrub” tried being a businessman and sports club owner, but sucked at both, not to mention great suckage as a President.
I have tried to find an example of a great businessman who later became even an average President, but cannot find one. According to the Wall Street Wire, “American presidents became bankrupt at a rate at least 20 times the national average. Most of their troubles came from real estate speculation, poor crop yields on the lands that they held, and botched and frequently highly risky business deals.” That did not keep those Presidents, one of whom was Lincoln, from being good, if not great, leaders of the country.
Jim,
A Rendition of Bush-Gore That’s Long Overdue
By Steve Kornacki 5/26/08
http://observer.com/2008/05/a-rendition-of-bushgore-thats-long-overdue/
Excerpt:
So maybe history isn’t always written by the winners.
In the fall of 2001, after George W. Bush mounted a pile of debris at ground zero and came up with one brilliant rejoinder to a skeptic’s taunt, the prevailing public attitude toward the previous year’s disputed election was: So what? The guy who was supposed to win won, and there was probably more than enough malfeasance to go around anyway.
Back in those days of ubiquitous American flag bumper stickers, a movie like Recount, director Jay Roach’s take on the 2000 Florida recount, would have been greeted with cries of disloyalty. The film, which made its HBO debut on Sunday night, presents what can accurately be labeled a Gore-friendly chronicle of the legal maneuverings that settled the election.
But it is also fact-friendly. There was never really any doubt that more Floridians went to the polls on Election Day 2000 to vote for Al Gore than for Bush. The “butterfly ballot”—designed, as Bush partisans like to note, by a Democratic election official—siphoned around 15,000 Gore votes to Pat Buchanan, and hundreds of black voters were denied ballots after being incorrectly branded felons and purged from the rolls. Bush’s official winning margin in the state, of course, was 537 votes.
This is only a moral argument, though. Recount reminds us that even if you forget about the Buchanan votes and disenfranchised voters, the facts still point to a probable Gore victory in Florida.
The key to a Gore win would have been a full statewide recount (by hand) of every uncounted ballot—both undervotes (ballots from which no vote was registered by machine) and overvotes (where multiple votes were registered). Gore, after initially requesting recounts in only four counties, ultimately persuaded the state’s Supreme Court to order a statewide recount. This is the order that the U.S. Supreme Court eventually invalidated, ending the statewide recount and handing the election to Bush.
Gore, fixated as he was on dimpled and hanging chads, had only been seeking a recount of undervotes, and as it turns out, this would have been insufficient to reverse Bush’s advantage—the conclusion of a media consortium that reviewed the disputed ballots in 2001. But here’s the catch: the Circuit Court judge who was overseeing the recount has since stated that he was inclined to demand that overvotes also be considered by county officials and that he had scheduled a meeting on the subject on the very day that the Supreme Court cut off the recount. The same media consortium also concluded that—under any ballot-counting standard—Gore would have prevailed in a statewide recount that considered overvotes.
All of this makes the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that much more galling. The court killed the recount on the grounds that it violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, since different counties were using different standards to count ballots. Fair enough. But in the same breath the court also gave the state of Florida just two hours—the December 12 deadline previously imposed by the Florida Supreme Court—to devise a standard and to conduct a recount. What’s worse, this came two days after the court had issued a stay, suspending the in-progress recount so that arguments could be heard. Had the court allowed even two days for a recount, Gore would very likely have won the presidency, since we now know that the overvotes probably would have been considered and that he would have prevailed under any counting standard that included overvotes.
*****
Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush
But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots
By Dan Keating and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 12, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html
Excerpt:
In all likelihood, George W. Bush still would have won Florida and the presidency last year if either of two limited recounts — one requested by Al Gore, the other ordered by the Florida Supreme Court — had been completed, according to a study commissioned by The Washington Post and other news organizations.
But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins.
The study showed that if the two limited recounts had not been short-circuited — the first by Florida county and state election officials and the second by the U.S. Supreme Court — Bush would have held his lead over Gore, with margins ranging from 225 to 493 votes, depending on the standard. But the study also found that whether dimples are counted or amore restrictive standard is used, a statewide tally favored Gore by 60 to 171 votes.
Gore’s narrow margin in the statewide count was the result of a windfall in overvotes. Those ballots — on which a voter may have marked a candidate’s name and also written it in — were rejected by machines as a double vote on Election Day and most also would not have been included in either of the limited recounts.
The study by The Post and other media groups, an unprecedented effort that involved examining 175,010 ballots in 67 counties, underscores what began to be apparent as soon as the polls closed in the nation’s third most populous state Nov. 7, 2000: that no one can say with certainty who actually won Florida. Under every scenario used in the study, the winning margin remains less than 500 votes out of almost 6 million cast.
HenMan, my wife’s uncle was shot twice in the thigh by a Nambu machine gun. It was not an accident. He was wading ashore from his landing craft onto the beach at Iwo Jima. He was a Marine, and just passed away recently.
Jim, several years ago there was an incident on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was a hunting lodge, and a guy propped his shotgun up against the wall while he took off his muddy boots. Another person came in and slammed the door. The shotgun fell over, discharged, and gut-shot a four-year-old little girl. I know about this incident because the child died in my son’s arms in the helicopter.
It was the father’s fault for not emptying his shotgun first, but nevertheless his small daughter was killed by a gun he thought was “safe.”