Hysteria from the New York Times doesn’t really surprise me anymore, but this is beyond the pale. So much PSH that I really think I need to go take another shower. Sometimes I think they’re really just a bunch of conservatives with wicked senses of humor. “Let’s see how riled up we can get the base, boys!! WOOHOO!!” Observe:
Thirty-thousand Americans are killed by guns every year — on the job, walking to school, at the shopping mall. The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law.
You know, I was standing in line at an Orange Julius a few years back when this evil gun walked into the mall and started plugging .45 rounds into the skulls of little girls at Limited Too. It was horrible. Almost as bad as that time I was sitting in my cubicle at work and I opened the CD tray on my computer to take out my Kenny G album and there was a gun that snuck in there and started shooting at me from inside the DX2-66! Damn those little gun gremlins!
I think it’s enlightening that the New York Times would describe the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution as “wrongheaded and dangerous”. Progressive should be synonymous with “backwards”. Like … progressing backwards, which is exactly what these assholes want.
In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the right to service in a “militia.” The ruling will give gun-rights advocates a powerful new legal tool to try to strike down gun-control laws across the nation.
That’s about the biggest hunk of denial I’ve ever seen. The New York Times doesn’t need additional advertisers, they need a staff of therapists and some barf bags.
This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life.
It sends a strong message that the citizens of this country don’t like to be fucked with. I for one LOVE the fact that other countries might look at us and hold up their nose in shock. As for “diminishing our standing in the world”? Come on. Who’s out there? Who are we diminishing our standing with? The European Union? Pakistan? Egypt? India? Countries where people live in dung huts and their primary concern is malaria and Aids shouldn’t give a rats ass about what we decide to do with our boomsticks. Cuba? Venezuela? Does the NYT believe that Chavez is going to like us less because of this? No. Crap like this scares socialists because it’s un-socialist. That’s a good, good thing.
Oh, it hurts our standing in countries like Britain? Mind you, as a thief in London you have more rights than the homeowner you encounter when you break in through a skylight window and bash him over the head with a lead pipe. After all, if he fights back, he’s inciting violence and aggravating an already volatile situation. Can’t have that!
There already is a national glut of firearms: estimates run between 193 million and 250 million guns. The harm they do is constantly on heartbreaking display. Thirty-three dead last year in the shootings at Virginia Tech (LIBERTY NOTE: GUN FREE ZONE!). Six killed this year at Northern Illinois University (LIBERTY NOTE: GUN FREE ZONE!).
On Wednesday, as the court was getting ready to release its decision, a worker in a Kentucky plastics plant shot his supervisor, four co-workers and himself to death.
A worker? I thought the gun killed everyone? From what I’ve read, in Kentucky businesses can prohibit firearms from being brought to work. According to reports, this shooter got in an argument over a cell phone and safety equipment. Took a break, brought back a .45, shot people. Reloaded. Shot more people. Then did us all a favor and offed himself. That’s illegal, and I’m certain if the court ruled the other way on Heller that this individual would’ve done it anyway, and he wouldn’t have been part of the militia. Go figure.
Cities and states have tried to stanch the killing with gun-control laws. The District of Columbia, which has one of the nation’s highest crime rates, banned the possession of nearly all handguns and required that other firearms be stored unloaded and disassembled, or bound with a trigger lock.
OBSERVE: DC - highest crime rate. Bans everything … makes one think, doesn’t it? Clearly this doesn’t work, but guns are bad so let’s keep doing it!
Overturning that law, the court’s 5-to-4 decision says that individuals have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for self-defense. But that’s a sharp reversal for the court: as early as 1939, it made clear that the Second Amendment only protects the right of people to carry guns for military use in a militia.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Where’s the editorial board? Heh.
In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens was right when he said that the court has now established “a new constitutional right” that creates a “dramatic upheaval in the law.”
About time.
Even if there were a constitutional right to possess guns for nonmilitary uses
“Even if the Constitution DOES say what it says …”
constitutional rights are not absolute.
“They should STILL be banned!”
The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but that does not mean that laws cannot prohibit some spoken words, like threats to commit imminent violent acts. In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer argued soundly that whatever right gun owners have to unimpeded gun use is outweighed by the District of Columbia’s “compelling” public-safety interests.
Proving he’s a moron. If he was concerned about “compelling” public safety interests, he’d have argued that politicians in that town be sent back to the slimy little swamp-caverns from which they crawled out of along with the rest of DC’s insects, worms and leeches. How is it a “compelling” public safety issue when you’ve banned ALL GUNS and you STILL have one of the highest crime rates in the nation?
In this month’s case recognizing the habeas corpus rights of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Justice Scalia wrote in dissent that the decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” Those words apply with far more force to his opinion in this District of Columbia case.
Well, in theory, even the thug who wants to rape and slaughter you is technically an American. At least until you defend yourself with the utmost lethality in order to protect your own life, that is.
The gun lobby will now trumpet this ruling as an end to virtually all gun restrictions, anywhere, at all times. That must not happen. And today’s decision still provides strong basis for saying it should not.
I don’t think the gun lobby has argued that people should have no gun restrictions anywhere, at any time. It *would* be nice, however, to be able to have a piece of property in your own home that doesn’t need to be kept disassembled and locked up - rendered completely and totally useless, of course. It’s just a matter of time before your average green liberal dumbass attempts to draft legislation that only allows you to drive your SUV during certain hours of the day in order to save mother gaia. Otherwise, it must be locked in your garage with the wheels off and the keys must be locked away separately!
If the ruling is held to apply to the states, and not just to the District of Columbia — which is not certain — there will still be considerable dispute about what it means for other less-sweeping gun laws. Judges may end up deciding these on a law-by-law basis.
It’s certain. Gun bans are dropping like flies and they should - they’re clearly unconstitutional.
Supporters of gun control must fight in court to ensure that registration requirements and background-check rules, and laws against bulk sales of handguns — a major source of guns used in crimes — are all upheld.
But they won’t. Too busy getting their clock cleaned and smarting over this whole “militia” thing like the NYT. Their own disbelief that the majority of Americans believe the 2nd guarantees an individual right is currently trumping their ability to argue ANYTHING to the contrary. They can’t. When you spend years on one argument, and in one day that entire argument is stuffed into a shredder, you don’t really have a leg to stand on.
The court left room for gun-control advocates to fight back. It made clear that there were gun restrictions that it was not calling into question, including bans on gun possession by felons and the mentally ill, or in “sensitive places” like schools and government buildings.
Virtually guaranteeing that we’ll continue to see mass school shootings in gun free zones. Just because Heller didn’t call them into question, doesn’t mean they won’t be throttled eventually …
And by the way … nobody was advocating that mentally ill and felons get guns. Show me where the NRA was hoping that would be the case?
That last part is the final indignity of the decision: when the justices go to work at the Supreme Court, guns will still be banned. When most Americans show up at their own jobs, they will not have that protection.
Oh, there will be more Americans with protection, just not the kind the NYT envisions - Police teams showing up 10 minutes after a shooting in order to document what happened to all the unarmed folks that had their brains blown out by someone who wasn’t legally allowed to carry anyway.
This audaciously harmful decision, which hands the far right a victory it has sought for decades, is a powerful reminder of why voters need to have the Supreme Court firmly in mind when they vote for the president this fall.
Audaciously harmful to what? Socialism? ‘Kay then.
Senator John McCain has said he would appoint justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — both of whom supported this decision. If the court is allowed to tip even further to the far right, there will be even more damage done to the rights and the safety of Americans.
Dude … don’t even get me started on McCain …
UPDATE: Another most excellent fisking of the same piece!