35 years of gun sales, showing gun control's unintended consequences

[Surf Fishing Guru]

22. Re: "my unanimous decision trumps yours"

jimmy the one said:

Only weapons that have a reasonable relationship to the effectiveness of a well-regulated militia under the Second Amendment are free from government regulation.

That holding summary (which came from where?) mentions the important distinction; the decision and holding was focused on the type of weapon and its usefulness in battle. Nothing in Miller discusses Miller's or Layton's lack of association with any militia organization and that condition being determinate in the Court's denial of 2ndA protection for their possession of the shotgun.

jimmy the one said:

With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such {militia} forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view

That is only a statement that the object of the 2nd Amendment was to preserve the general militia principle. This another place where the McReynolds leans heavily on Aymette. That sentence from Miller does not support any interpretation making the right recognized and secured by the 2ndA conditioned on, or qualified by, a citizen's militia association.

jimmy the one said:

Above decision was bolstered by a Dept of Justice amicus brief to 1938/39 scotus re miller:

Holy selective chop quoting Batman!

How in Trump's butthole do you think SCOTUS is "bolstered" by a Southern District of Florida case? I get why the Solicitor General included the quote, but what an exaggeration by you!

Why didn't you quote the government, in its summary of its argument unequivocally affirming SCOTUS precedent (Cruikshank / Presser) that the "Second Amendment does not grant to the people the right to keep and bear arms, but merely recognizes the prior existence of that right and prohibits its infringement by Congress"?

To further apply the Cruikshank / Presser reasoning and to challenge your (and the Solicitor General's) "militia right" theory, how can a right that isn't granted by the 2nd Amendment and exists and is possessed by the citizen without any dependence upon the Constitution, be conditioned on or qualified by a structure (the Art I, §8 organized militia) that is itself, entirely dependent on the 2nd Amendment for its existence?

I ask that because the government goes on to contradict Cruikshank and Persser and yes, does argue "the very language of the Second Amendment discloses that this right has reference only to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people as members of the state militia or other similar military organization provided for by law" . . . But of course SCOTUS never acknowledged that argument, let alone sustained it in Miller because that would have reversed / overruled Cruikshank and Presser on that point.

It seems to me all the Miller Court took from the US government's brief is Aymette's explanations which informed the Court on how to treat the sawed-off shotgun, "in the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use" of that type of arm had militia usefulness or could be useful in the common defense.

jimmy the one said:

It has been 8 decades since the supreme court ruled on the proper interpretation. The 1939 Miller decision which was unanimous 8-0 ruling it was a militia based right.

No, it's been 13 years since the SCOTUS reasserted Miller, reaffirmed the individual right and slapped the lower federal courts back into the constitutional fold.

The "militia based right" you speak of was the very sad and desperate resurrection of a racist discriminatory theory of the rebel states that was inserted in the federal courts for the singular reason of dismissing and ignoring SCOTUS in Miller, to avoid striking down gun control by enforcing the 2nd Amendment.

Those collective right theories (the "militia right" and "state's right" interpretations) came into being in the federal courts AFTER Miller. Those interpretations were conjured into existence in the federal courts in Cases v. U.S., 131 F.2d 916 (1st Cir. 1942) and U.S. v. Tot, 131 F.2d 261 (3rd Cir. 1942) respectively.

jimmy the one said:

One would think that if the supreme court truly thought it was an individual right, as gun nuts spin miller, that at least one of the justices would've objected to the wording above, arguing that 'whoa, future generations will think we thought it was a militia based right', but not one objected.

Probably because nobody but anti-constitution authoritarians would ever read Miller to speak to the status of the citizens bringing the case. Miller doesn't say Miller and Layton had no 2nd Amendment rights . . . The Court only said a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" was not shown to be a type of arm that is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

If you want to read a correct assessment of what Miller REALLY demands, the First Circuit actually gave it to us in Cases v US, the decision that gave us the "militia right". Cases used the most hyperbolic and terrifying (but on principle true) interpretation, to argue dismissing SCOTUS and to justify ignoring what this court recognizes Miller demands the court do:

Cases v. U.S., 131 F.2d 916 (1st Cir. 1942) -- paragraph breaks added:

". . . the rule of the Miller case, if intended to be comprehensive and complete would seem to be already outdated, in spite of the fact that it was formulated only three and a half years ago, because of the well known fact that in the so called "Commando Units" some sort of military use seems to have been found for almost any modern lethal weapon. In view of this, if the rule of the Miller case is general and complete, the result would follow that, under present day conditions, the federal government would be empowered only to regulate the possession or use of weapons such as a flintlock musket or a matchlock harquebus.

But to hold that the Second Amendment limits the federal government to regulations concerning only weapons which can be classed as antiques or curiosities,--almost any other might bear some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia unit of the present day,--is in effect to hold that the limitation of the Second Amendment is absolute.

Another objection to the rule of the Miller case as a full and general statement is that according to it Congress would be prevented by the Second Amendment from regulating the possession or use by private persons not present or prospective members of any military unit, of distinctly military arms, such as machine guns, trench mortars, anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, . . .

https://guncite.com/court/fed/131f2d916.html

I would love to deeply examine the 1st Circuit's reasoning for its final determination (after the ellipsis in my quote above). By all means, I beg you to go read what I purposefully chopped off and come back and try to defend the genesis of the "militia right" in the federal courts of the USA.

That is where your beloved militia right began, that is where the travesty began and begat 66 years of legal perversion and rights infringement -- until Heller finally put a stake in it.

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