Firearms freedom act - a state's rights test case

ArgyleAdams · Aug 28, 2013

Kid@Heart, I still don't think I agree with you exactly, but I'm very impressed with the way you conduct yourself.

Also, you mean to tell me that there are actually members who don't post in the middle of the night, or at work? :winkkiss:

Stomper · Aug 28, 2013

HEY?! Some of us don't need a lot of sleep... Or direct sunlight.

Misterbill · Aug 30, 2013

Read the secession documents of the confederate states.

Seriously, go READ them. Then come back and tell me that the Civil War was primarily about other causes than slavery. Those other causes, while they existed, were distant 10th place finishers compared to the primary issue, as clearly stated by most of the secession declarations.

Example from SC:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation."

They are talking about the refusal of northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. And the acts by many Northern juries to use Jury Nullification when Federal courts prosecuted people under it.

Note that in the case of SC, as with many of the other confederate states, slavery is FIRST among their listed grievances.

I didn't know, because no one bothered to point out to me, that this was the case until fairly recently. But it certainly shreds the credibility of people who have made a career of claiming the CW was about "State's Rights," Assuming you're not talking SOLELY about the right to secede, a right not mentioned anywhere in the constitution.

I believe in the 9th and 10th amendments. I consider myself a Constitutionalist. But don't let the apologists fool you. My ancestors, who were wealthy slave owners on one side of the family, left the union because they were worried about their "property" (humans held in bondage) and the prospect that our "peculiar institution," was doomed by modernity.

8ball · Sep 1, 2013

Back on the topic of the Montana lawsuit and the Firearms Freedom Acts, I don't understand why Gary Marbut and the MSSA put so much effort into promulgating this in multiple states when their legal case was so obviously weak to start with. I don't think I have seen a single legal expert who thought these acts had any chance in court. It's settled law as others have noted.

If that's the case, why not put your efforts into something constructive for 2A rights? They could have done a lot of grass roots organizing on other 2A topics instead of pursuing this futile quest.

Stomper · Sep 1, 2013

8ball said:
If that's the case, why not put your efforts into something constructive for 2A rights? They could have done a lot of grass roots organizing on other 2A topics instead of pursuing this futile quest.