Obama's statement on the ruling

[Ter]

Well, what is it? It hasn't been posted here.

[bluestateguy]

1. I'd like to see it too

Every bill that he has signed (the Wicker amendment, the Coburn amendment, etc.) having to do with guns has been a bill to expand gun rights. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I was hoping that even if it was for political expediency, he could become a pro-gun president.

[Ter]

3. He had to have made a statement on this ruling, it's too big not to have

I think deep down he's for strict gun-control, as his past record as a State Senator shows. However, he's far too intelligent to openly back gun-control during midterm election like Bill Clinton foolishly did in 1994.

[onehandle]

2. I would assume that he believes that Gore won and that SCOTUS stole it.

Our 5-4 court is the most partisan right-wing court in history.

[Ter]

5. And in this case, I agree with the court

Right-wing? Sure. But this is one issue I agree with them on. Libertarians also are pro-gun. It's only liberals who support gun-control, and that should change.

[PavePusher]

7. The issue is actually not at all clear-cut along party lines. n/t

[Ter]

9. I did not talk about party lines

I said liberals, right-wing, and libertarians. Sure, Republicans in NYC support gun-control. But they aren't exactly right-wingers. Same thing with Democrats in Montana and Idaho, they aren't exactly liberals, they are moderate. Generally, those who are liberal favor gun-control, while those who are conservative generally oppose it. Sure, there can be unique cases, but not the majority.

[benEzra]

11. How about liberals in Vermont?

Since Vermont has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation, with much more firearms freedom than most red states.

Or how about liberals in Minnesota? Or liberals in Oregon?

Meanwhile, a lot of conservative states have stricter gun laws than the national average, which is a legacy of the Jim Crow era. My own state of NC, 13th strictest in the nation, comes to mind.

[PavePusher]

23. My bad, you are correct.

I was not paying attention to your terminology. Sorry 'bout that.

[TheWraith]

26. Actually it's not even liberals.

It's a core group of authoritarian types within the left. Howard Dean is pro-gun. So is Russ Feingold. Kirsten Gillibrand. Hell, John F. Kennedy.

[Ter]

27. Dean reversed his stance when he ran for president

And now supports the AWB. Gillibrand has done the same when she became Senator, trying to avoid a challenge from that opportunist Carolyn McCarthy. Dunno about Feingold, but you're right about JFK.

[TheWraith]

31. And before he ran for president, Dean was endorsed by the NRA eight times.

So yeah, forgive me if I'm not quite so sure about his "Come to Brady" moment. As for Gillibrand, she made noise about working with Bloomberg on gun trafficking--which I've got no problem with if they're actually working on gun trafficking and not just harassing gun shows--and then she dropped it.

JFK was a lifetime member of the NRA.

[Travis Coates]

33. Kirsten Gillibrand

Is not pro gun she flip flopped as soon as she took Hillary's senate seat.

She is hot though

[Ter]

34. You think so?

I can think of a lot better looking politicians.

[Travis Coates]

35. Actually I wanted to see how long it took for me to be labeled misogynist NT

[Ter]

36. Nah, you are not at all

I just don't think she stands out like some other politicians.

[SteveM]

6. Gore would have won had he shut his mouth about the AWB....

Hell, he didn't even carry his home state. Had he opposed the AWB and other gun-control measures, no amount of hanging chads and disputed ballots would have prevented him from taking Florida. But he chose to engage in prohibition and culture war.

[Zoeisright]

10. Wow. That's really dumb.

This thread is great for updating my lists.

[jazzhound]

12. Actually, it's extremely dumb of you to attack the

intellectual prowess of Steve M. --- who has proven the depth of his knowledge and strength of his reasoning over and over again on this board. You really need to practice what you preach in your sig line.

You are quite naive and uneducated to so clearly underestimate the number of single-issue (gun rights) voters across the country. You do know that "W" defeated Ann Richards in the Texas Govs. race by a narrow margin, right? And that Richards twice voted against concealed carry? This of course doesn't prove that Miss Ann's position on gun control cost her the Govs. seat, but smart money understands that it's an awfully strong bet.

[SteveM]

15. Thanks for your kind words. nt

[jazzhound]

18. You're very welcome -- you have *earned* them. NT

[benEzra]

13. Hardly.

Promising to outlaw the most popular civilian rifles in the United States was a really dumb move, and Gore lost at least three swing states on that issue---including Florida, which would not even have been close enough to recount had the gun issue not have been one of the major issues of the campaign in that state. Heck, the official margin in FL was less than the number of registered shooters at the one NW Florida shooting range I belonged to, and our population was nothing compared to the peninsula.

You just don't waltz into most states, promise to enact the most sweeping gun bans in history, and then expect gun-owning Dems and indies to obediently support you anyway. That message might fly in Dianne Feinstein's hometown, but not in most blue-leaning swing states. Fortunately, the party had mostly figured that out by 2006, and the new-bans zealots were mostly marginalized by 2008.

[SteveM]

14. Please read Clinton's book. You can update him, too, if you like. nt

[Ter]

17. Which book?

Has he taken blame for 1994 yet?

[SteveM]

29. I can't remember the name of it, but it was his biography...

He admitted to not taking the advice of Rep. Jack Brooks (D) of Texas who strongly advised him not to sign the AWB because it would cost the Democrats dearly. It did. Clinton also was of the opinion that Gore could have won the presidency had he not voted for the AWB in a tie-breaker.

[X_Digger]

32. benEzra quoted it at least once..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=203973

From President Clinton's autobiography My Life, on the 1994 debacle:

"Just before the House vote (on the crime bill), Speaker Tom Foley and majority leader Dick Gephardt had made a last-ditch appeal to me to remove the assault weapons ban from the bill. They argued that many Democrats who represented closely divided districts had already...defied the NRA once on the Brady bill vote. They said that if we made them walk the plank again on the assault weapons ban, the overall bill might not pass, and that if it did, many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in November. Jack Brooks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman from Texas, told me the same thing...Jack was convinced that if we didn't drop the ban, the NRA would beat a lot of Democrats by terrifying gun owners....Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong. The price...would be heavy casualties among its defenders." (Pages 611-612)

"On November 8, we got the living daylights beat out of us, losing eight Senate races and fifty-four House seats, the largest defeat for our party since 1946....The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century. Jack Brooks had supported the NRA for years and had led the fight against the assault weapons ban in the House, but as chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had voted for the overall crime bill even after the ban was put into it. The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you're out. The gun lobby claimed to have defeated nineteen of the twenty-four members on its hit list. They did at least that much damage...." (Pages 629-630)

"One Saturday morning, I went to a diner in Manchester full of men who were deer hunters and NRA members. In impromptu remarks, I told them that I knew they had defeated their Democratic congressman, Dick Swett, in 1994 because he voted for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. Several of them nodded in agreement." (Page 699)

--William J. Clinton, My Life

[Ter]

16. The ban list people are amusing

Disagree with someone on one issue? Horrors, put them on the ignore list.

[57_TomCat]

37. I used to be a TN resident.

Al Gore was my Senator. Al Gore was the deciding vote FOR the AWB. I was living in FL then. I am a registered democrat and I have not missed a presidential vote in over thirty years. I voted against Al Gore for that one issue. I believe it cost him the presidency and I am glad.

[onehandle]

20. LOL!

Yeah. Guns 'lost' Florida for Gore.

Lemme pick something...

Gore would have won had he shut his mouth about the Environment.

Yeah, that's it.

So many reasons that Gore 'lost' Florida.

[SteveM]

30. I'll take Bill Clinton's analysis; you can have whatever you want. nt

[slackmaster]

8. Not even close.

Our 5-4 court is the most partisan right-wing court in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Reorganization_Bill_of_1937

[onehandle]

19. You're right. '4 of 5 most conservative justices since 1937 on Current Court'

Our right-wing corporate ass-kissing injustice of a court could be more right-wing and partisan than it is.

And it is severely right-wing and partisan.

Ranking the Politics of Supreme Court Justices
Four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are on the bench today
http://politics.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/05/12/ranking-the-politics-of-supreme-court-justices.html

[one-eyed fat man]

21. Then the wise Latina should please you.

Last year, during the confirmation hearings when asked about the Heller decision, Justice Sotomayor went so far as to point out that "one of my godchildren is a member of the NRA. And I have friends who hunt. I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller." According to Sotomayor, "I understand that how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans."

But, as the McDonald decision demonstrates, she didn't understand it to be protected by the Constitution.

I still think Justice Thomas' opinion basing the protection on the "Privileges and Immunities" clause of the 14th amendment is the soundest basis for the decision. The Slaughterhouse cases and Cruikshank in particular are a travesty.

In my opinion, the States should not be able restrict a citizen's right that has already been specifically enumerated and protected by the Federal Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

[onehandle]

22. Citing Thomas.

laugh out loud.

[one-eyed fat man]

24. Doctrinaire ideologue

that you have shown yourself to be you discount the man's words before you have read them. Laugh all you want. You have made your opinions of those who fail to occupy the same lofty strata as your ivory tower abundantly clear in numerous posts here

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf

Its 240 pages if you count the concurrences and the dissents. I have read them all. I read all the briefs too. And while I freely admit to my position, I read the opposing briefs and the dissenting opinions likely even more carefully than the ones with which I agree.

The misuse of gun, along with many other things is a problem You vociferously espouse only one solution, ban them all. You don't question the practicality, you don't appear to much care if door to door searches or shredding the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments would be required to achieve your Utopian gun free paradise. You see no solution except taking guns away from those who are not yet causing trouble and you refuse to countenance that those criminals who already have them are unlikely to give them to you.

Scream like a gut-shot chipmunk about the damn Bush "No-fly list" until someone wants to use it to deny gun purchases and suddenly it's the greatest innovation since soft-serve ice cream.

Doubtless, you believe that the Mexican cartels really have some secret handshake that lets them buy Bulgarian RPGs, North Korean grenades or Chinese machineguns at an East Texas gunshow. How will you feel when they start bring those across the border? Tell me you can't find all the cocaine, marijuana, or any drug you want within 10 minutes of your ivory tower there in Atlanta?

Ask the guy you buy your dope from how fast he can find you a gun and how much it'll cost. Let me know how you make out.

[Euromutt]

25. I don't agree with Thomas most of the time, but I'll grant him that he's consistent

Unlike, say, Scalia, who is a "strict constructionist" only as long as it suits his personal agenda. I rather bridled at Thomas' uttered opinion that the establishment clause by itself wouldn't have prevented states from imposing their own state religion, until I then read his additional comment that the Fourteenth Amendment invalidated that. I have to respect his opinion that the "privileges and immunities" clause means exactly what it says (namely that the states cannot infringe upon the individual liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights) and that the SCOTUS' ruling in the Slaughterhouse cases was therefore wrong, and that the decision of subsequent incarnations of the Court not to overturn that ruling is thus also wrong.

[one-eyed fat man]

38. P&I clause

I also feel the Privileges and Immunities clause is really the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment and that Cruikshank and the rest of the Slaughterhouse cases are just flat wrong. Like him or hate him, Thomas has outlined in the clearest terms the most cogent reasons why the almost meaningless construction given this Privileges and Immunities provision in "Slaughterhouse" was wrong the day it was decided and today stands indefensible.

Neither Justice Alito for the plurality, nor Justices Stevens or Breyer in dissent, even attempted to impeach Justice Thomas’ analysis, which now stands uncontradicted in the Supreme Court Reports. Decades of academic research that has lead to a remarkable consensus among constitutional scholars that The Slaughter-House Cases was wrongly decided have now been vindicated. Certainly many of them are astounded that it was Justice Thomas who did it.

[proteus_lives]

28. They made a good decision this time.

[SteveM]

4. He should realize that gun-control is no longer part of his "base"...

Perhaps the upper reaches of the DNC still pump gun-control gas, but that is hardly a "base." (Frankly, I'm no longer sure what his base is.) At a minimum he should agree to uphold and abide by the ruling. Lord knows, he needs all the help he can get.