U.S. v. Emerson

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 01 Sep 2001 09:33:16 GMT

I Am Really Just a Tambourine

Good

Poetry

Makes the universe admit a

Secret:

"I am

Really just a tambourine,

Grab hold,

Play me

Against your warm

Thigh."

(The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, translations by Daniel Ladinsky)

From Quotes of the Day:

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score? -- Vince Lombardi

and:

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use. -- Wendell Johnson

and:

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph. -- Shirley Temple

Wolf DeVoon at Laissez Faire City Times - Law Framer of Last Resort - Mr. DeVoon is authoring The Freeman's Constitution at organic-law.com : "Justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty."

I respect very sincerely the prejudice of my fellow freemen, who are angrily contemptuous of all lawyers and law. No doubt they believe themselves able to compose their own contracts and corporate charters, unaided by advice of legal counsel. Not everyone is equally competent. Many need representation, especially in the event of a dispute. All of us need recourse to an impartial tribunal when shit comes to holler and tests our community's institutions. It is good that no one wants government. But the law is not government. Law is a profession, like medicine or engineering, and freemen need objective public justice, if they wish to enjoy their liberty and privacy. To some, it is a painful truth, that science is not arbitrary supposition. To others, it is intolerable to be legally answerable to a summons (i.e., to be called into court, either as a witness or defendant). The rule of law is not fun. It is a difficult duty that no one much enjoys, not even when you prevail over an adversary in court.

Vin Suprynowicz - From killings to cover-ups, rogue agency has no place in free nation - part of The Libertarian series. "Its few legitimate functions should be divested to other agencies, and the FBI should be closed -- its headquarters razed and converted into a park." Yes!

What are the FBI's legitimate functions? Maintaining a central index of the fingerprints of known felons (though I suspect the number of suspects thus apprehended is grossly exaggerated), chasing foreign spies, and doing background checks on prospective employees of secure federal facilities (though "We do FBI background checks on far too many people ... jobs that aren't really security-related" U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told me last week.)

Which of these legitimate functions could possibly lead a federal bureau to dispatch a military sniper to shoot an Idaho housewife through the throat as she stood holding her baby in her own kitchen? Which could lead it to dispatch agents to inject toxic gases in flammable suspension from armored vehicles into a Texas church full of women and children, leading to a fire which killed dozens of innocent citizens ... all over the invented suspicion that the church's leader might have failed to pay a $200 tax?

Vin Suprynowicz - The natives are restless - part of The Libertarian series. Tax riots have accomplished their goals in Tennessee and North Carolina. Good.

Don B. Kates at NRA-ILA - Gun Control=Gun Prohibition - explores the Brady Bunch'es oft-expressed opinion that people have no right to defend themselves, hence guns have no moral purpose. Bull. If you initiate force against my person, property, or family, your life is forfeit, no matter which fancy uniform or funny hat you're wearing. Sparing your life in that instance is an act of charity on my part.

In a free society, the only legitimate basis for law is controlling dangerous behavior, not imposing a minority moral vision on the majority. The great majority of Americans, whether gun owners or not, reject the anti-gun "moral vision" and accept self-defense as full justification for gun ownership by law-abiding, responsible adults. That is why gun control advocates generally soft-pedal their elitist "moral" agenda, blending it into false and misleading arguments about crime control.

NRA Institute for Legislative Action - Fact Sheet: Emerson v. U.S. - Back in February of 1999, Judge Sam R. Cummings ruled that the second amendment does indeed protect the individual right to keep and bear arms. More specifically, he found 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) to be unconstitutional. Hence, unless the Supreme Court overrules, a restraining order no longer deprives one of the right to keep and bear arms.

The structure of the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights proves that the right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than a collective one. The collective rights' idea that the Second Amendment can only be viewed in terms of state or federal power "ignores the implication that might be drawn from the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments: the citizenry itself can be viewed as an important third component of republican governance as far as it stands ready to defend republican liberty against the depredations of the other two structures, however futile that might appear as a practical matter." Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 YALE L.J. 637, 651 (1989).

...

It is absurd that a boilerplate state court divorce order can collaterally and automatically extinguish a law-abiding citizen's Second Amendment rights, particularly when neither the judge issuing the order, nor the parties nor their attorneys are aware of the federal criminal penalties arising from firearm possession after entry of the restraining order. That such a routine civil order has such extensive consequences totally attenuated from divorce proceedings makes the statute unconstitutional. There must be a limit to government regulation on lawful firearm possession. This statute exceeds that limit, and therefore it is unconstitutional.

You can find 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) by going to law2.house.gov/usc.htm, typing "18" in the "Title" box, "922" in the "Section" box, clicking "Search", then clicking on the one-line result. That takes you to the page for 18 USC Sec. 922 (a URL that I'm not sure is permanent). You can then use your browser's "Find" command to find (g) as a paragraph label, and then read through (8) and below. The relevant text is:

      (g) It shall be unlawful for any person -
        ...
        (8) who is subject to a court order that -
          (A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received
        actual notice, and at which such person had an opportunity to
        participate;
          (B) restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or
        threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such
        intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that
        would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily
        injury to the partner or child; and
          (C)(i) includes a finding that such person represents a
        credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner
        or child; or
          (ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted
        use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate
        partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause
        bodily injury; or
        (9) who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime
      of domestic violence,
    to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess
    in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive
    any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in
    interstate or foreign commerce.

Note that (9) was NOT found unconstitutional.

JSwat "is an extensible, standalone, graphical Java debugger front-end, written to use the Java Platform Debugger Architecture (JPDA) package provided by JavaSoft. The program is licensed under the GNU General Public License and thus is freely available in binary as well as source code form." I haven't tried it. [cafe]

Dave Winer's DaveNet - Connecting with Blogger - Dave waxes eloquent about Blogger's new XML-RPC interface, as well he should. Web services are alive and well and being produced today by small companies.

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair