I've been reading all of this (naturally) and I have to say I didn't know we had a "bill of needs" in the US, I could swear it was a Bill of Rights.
One of those rights is the right to keep and bear arms to fulfill our duty as militia memebers (every abled-bodied male) to maintain the security of a free state by making sure we are well-[trained] (regulated in 18th century lingo).
Now are Obama's proposals reasonable?
NO, they are constitutionally unacceptable.
I don't care about Sandy Hook with regard to the guns used because all manner of arms have been used in school attacks from blunderbusses & Tomahawks(Pontaic Rebellion Massacre of 1764, 10 children killed, plus head master), to explosives (Bath House Massacre, Michigan 1927, 45 children killed, 58 other people wounded), to bolt action rifles (Texas Tower massacre 1966, 14 dead, 31 wounded), to shotguns (Columbine 1999, 13 dead, 21 injured), pistols (Virginia Tech, 32 dead, 17 injured), and finally semiauto rifle & pistols (Sandy Hook, 26 dead).
Clearly there have been a plethora of school attacks from before the US even existed. Therefore, stopping them is an excercise in extreme difficulty maybe even futility.
What these shooting teaches us (if we are willing to look) is that guns of one type or another are not the problem here since so many different types are used. The common theme in all of these attacks is the lack of proper defense against such attacks at the point of attack.
Sandy Hook is a direct result of the failure of the Mother (Nancy Lanza), the mental health care in the US (since Adam should have been forced into an institution), and the Gun Free Zone Act of 1995 that allows these nutjobs to just waltz into a school, business, or theator and kill with impunity.
That's the simple truth that the gun control crowd will not admit because it doesn't fit into their agenda.
I've seen people all over the net parrotting the bullshit line that "no one needs an assault weapon."
No one needs an abortion, no one needs to have a car, or a computer, or anime, or violent vidoe games, or drugs, or a whole slew of other things, so it's a strawman argument with no basis in fact and I reject it as a totally emotionally driven viewpoint that fails under constitutional scrutiny.
The Supreme Court of the US has made it very clear over the last 220+ years that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right, not a collective right based on militia service. Anyone peddling that lie needs to cease and desist spreading it and get educated on the issue.
Here are the most cited and relevant cases:
Presser vs Illinois:
“It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the states, and, in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the states cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question [the Second Amendment] out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.”
Now the next lie running around is that military arms can be banned. No, they cannot constitutionally be banned because the constitutional militia consists of the citizens of the United States at large as opposed to the
National Guard which is just another arm of the regular forces and thus what is known as a "select militia". The Supreme Court in US vs. Miller (1939) declared the following:
“The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. “A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.” And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time.”
The court defined what kinds of arms when it said that hunting weapons were not protected by the 2nd amendment because they were not useful for the common defense:
“…in the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a shotgun having a barrel of less that eighteen inches in length at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that is use could contribute to the common defense…”
The court also created a "litmus tes" in that case which clarified what the mission of the constitutional militia is (Article 1, Section 8: uphold the constitution and Bill of Rights, repel invasions, put down insurrections). Thus any weapon of a military nature useful for those pusposes are protected. An AR-15 with standard 20 or 30 round magazines definitely falls into that category, a musket does not (fires too slow), a nuclear weapon does not (too much damage), a tank does not (is crew served not an individual weapon), a rocket launcher does not (you don't RPG your own people), a machine gun (maybe), and on and on. The best quick test to determine what citizens in the US should own is to see what the police can have. If the cops have it, then the citizens should have it. Otherwise you are looking at a police state, no matter how benevolent it may be.
The efficacy of the actual militia of the US (all able-bodied males ages 17-45), was allowed to lapse because of political parties (primarily the pacifist movement of the 1890s in both the Democrat and Republican parties) and thus we now find ourselves in a quandry that shouldn't exist. Theodore Roosevelt tried to rectify this problem right away with the Militia Act of 1903, by creating the National Guard (his active militia) and the unorganized or inactive militia which was supposed to be required to train via the Department of Civilian Marksmanship.
However, in 2008 the Supreme Courst attempted to rectify the whole mess without nullifying existing gun laws, in DC vs. Heller.
Justice Scalia declared the following:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation
That ruling nullified the collective rights model entirely. IT IS DEAD!
Therefore, no new bans are constitutional, in fact, existing bans on certain shotguns, machine guns, and actual assault rifles could be challenged with this ruling since they do infringe on the 2nd amendment.
I don't get emotional about this issue in the knee-jerk sense. I get pissed, when I see so much bullshit being flung around by the main stream media and any poor fool who gets sucked into their lies.
This whole argument is so fucked up it drives me bonkers.
One one side we have the NRA and co. screaming that the government can't regulate gun owners. Yes, and no. The government cannot prohibit citizens from owning military weapons of use for the common defense. However, the government can (and should) make training through the CMP mandatory to purchase a paramilitary weapon since that is what it was created for in the first place.
One the other side, we have the hoplophobic gun control wackjobs who think they can rewrite the constitution because it will make them feel better. Their position is so weak and so filled with emotional hyperbole that it shouldn't even be considered for policy making. That people actually think banning anything will reduce violent crime is total bollucks and illogical at best.
Therefore, when I saw Obama standing up there using those children as a shield to drive his Edward Bernays style propaganda push this was the first thing that came to mind:
Obama's proposals are an infringement to the 2nd amendment, and since he took an oath to uphold the constitution and bill of rights, he should realize that he is very close to opening himself up for impeachment.
It's one thing to bypass congress to order the attacks on Libya, it is quite another to attempt to amend the constitution through executive fiat.