Question re "Infringe"

[Cool 'Horn Luke]

I’m of the opinion the government has been executing plans to destabilize our country for decades. This goes into anything from prescription drugs and hoping they get another school shooter to paid crisis actors.

Hell, that's easier now than ever before. With all of these people on anti-depressants, they most times don't even have to "pick" somebody, they just do it all on their own.

 

[Sam7sf]

Hell, that's easier now than ever before. With all of these people on anti-depressants, they most times don't even have to "pick" somebody, they just do it all on their own.

Exactly why it’s a well thought out plan

 

[vmax]

You do realize it used to be that way? But, kids weren't shooting up schools and crybaby snowflakes didn't kill their coworkers. But, then the government got involved.....

I absolutely do know that.

Ive seen the adds for guns in sears catalogs.

I've not seen an old add for a full auto but I bet it was possible or you could probably make your own legally at one time.

 

[Sam7sf]

I remember as a kid seeing guns sold in Kroger/Fred Myers.

 

[vmax]

I’m of the opinion the government has been executing plans to destabilize our country for decades. This goes into anything from prescription drugs and hoping they get another school shooter to paid crisis actors.

I am quite sure of it. So many false flag shootings with unanswered questions
And they seem to be right when they want to push gun control
But False Flags have been going on for hundreds years, used to start wars even

 

[benenglish]

I've not seen an old add for a full auto

Just fyi -

 

[vmax]

Just fyi -

View attachment 369543

I knew there had to be some!

 

[BigRed]

Just fyi -

View attachment 369543

Mail ordered straight to your home.

That was back before American society became dominated by a bunch of pansies longing to be enslaved.

 

[Big Dipper]

You can indeed yell fire in a theater.

However, you should be held responsible for any damages caused by doing so.

It is a property rights issue, not a "free speech" issue.

And you can libel and slander people, you can incite riots as well.

So called “infringements” of 1a are NOT prior restrictions, but penalties and sanctions for the improper, dangerous or damaging use of the freedom of speech.

That should be the case with firearms as well. No prior “infringement“, merely severe sanctions for improper use!

 

[etmo]

There are many 'laws' and more 'regulations' on this or that re guns, carry, mag capacity, etc... and just as many lawsuits/efforts to counter the anti-gun enactments.

What I'm wondering is -

Has there ever been any legal effort, directed solely towards what is at the core of the Second Amendment...

"Shall Not Be Infringed"

In my thinking, every law/regulation is an Unconstitutional infringement... and every effort to resist them just bites at whatever pops up, like playing wac-a-mole. I get that they're trying every way possible to get around the barn, and maybe the best we can do is keep wacking at them because otherwise it would mean burning down the barn... which is actually their objective, imo, by tiring us out piecemeal, which they wont, but it does raise my questions.

Is there a way to take this fight directly to the source?
Has it been tried before?

Thanks -

I start here with most people (so you're in good company): Remember that the 2A was written in 1792. So what you think the definition of "infringement" is may be different from what it meant then, and what matters is what that word meant when the 2A was written. This doctrine is called "originalism", and SCOTUS today is the most originalist Court since before WW2 (but still a long way from where we'd like it to be).

In 1792, "to infringe" meant "to break". Nowadays, we tend to think "infringe" means something like "encroach" or "any little tiny thing" but back then, this was not the case. It meant breaking.

So going only on the meaning of "infringe" (which we would never do in Constitutional law, but this is your scenario), all gun laws would be OK under the 2A as long as they don't break your right to keep and bear arms. Can I burden your RKBA? Yes, because burden is not breaking. Can I cause you some hassles in buying guns and ammo? Yes, because hassles are not breaking. Can I etc, etc, etc -- yes, as long as it's not breaking.

SCOTUS never had to deal with the 2A for over a century. Guns allowed us to be free from the tyranny of the British, they protected us from the wildnerness, they put food on our tables. No politician was stupid enough to pass anything but the most trivial gun laws (in 1796 Boston you couldn't store large amounts of powder near the city center, that sort of thing) back in the time around the founding of this nation.

But enough time passes, and people forget, and society changes. Cities became large, and densely populated. Food could be purchased from a store, and hunting grounds were sometimes far away from cities, so who had guns?

The case mentioned much earlier in this thread, Miller, is a train wreck, and probably not worth reading. Miller died before his case came up to SCOTUS, so his lawyer didn't even bother going to SCOTUS, the governments lawyer was the only lawyer who showed up! Not exactly the kind of treatment you'd like your 2A rights to receive.
So when the government said that a short-barreled shotgun was not protected by the 2A, nobody was there to argue with them. The case even touched on military use, well gosh, if the military used short-barreled shotguns then they would have to be protected by the 2A, but the military doesn't use those things, do they?

Turns out MPs used them quite regularly at that time in our nation's history, but again, our side wasn't there to tell the government these things, so we lost Miller, and a ton of crappy anti-gun laws were allowed to exist, all because Miller was a joke of a case.

Another 100 years later or so, we finally got another 2A case, Heller. By then, so much bad gun law was on the books all around the nation that SCOTUS was too afraid to upset the applecart. The anti-2A people were screaming that blood would run in the gutters, and all our children would die in a hail of lead. Heller saved our right to keep and bear arms from being totally snuffed out, and it also put Miller in its place -- a tiny box labeled "do not open". Heller created a partial standard for evaluating anti-gun laws, but it was the first "scholarly look at the 2A" decision in this nation's history. It obviously was not going to be complete or final, just like our first 1A decision didn't settle every 1A controversy.

So Miller is now the red-headed stepchild of 2A jurisprudence, and about a decade after Heller we finally get a "real" 2A decision from SCOTUS -- Bruen. Bruen says, "If it was an anti-gun law in 1796, then you can have it now. Otherwise, f()ck off."

Bruen is truly a momentous decision. Our grandchildren will still be dealing with the fallout from Bruen, and we will all be dead before all the dust settles, that's how massive a decision it is.

Probably put you to sleep, my apologies, I'll stop there, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.