[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

And how can you insure that this will always be so?

"No, it's not the same issue"

How is it not the same issue? If the issue is "sometimes it's OK to limit freedoms in the interest of saving lives" than what's the difference?

You were comparing guns to seat belts. One is a Bill of Rights issue. The other isn't

"Restrictions are bad if they create legal precedents which can be used to expand the power to restrict"

Can you name a single law that can't be potentially expanded? If expandability makes a law bad, then all laws are bad.

In the instances where the Constitution enumerates a power given to the government, that power is unlimited. That power is absolutely expandable so long as it doesn't drift (expand) into areas not enumerated as governmental power or are constitutionally limited or denied to government. If laws fall in an area limited by the Constitution, they cannot expand outside of that constitutional scope. If laws are prohibited by the Constitution, they are bad laws.

If laws that are allowed by the Constitution can be "interpreted" in ways that facilitate the creation of laws which are actually limited or denied by the Constitution, those interpretations erode the Constitution and set precedents for further erosion and eventual destruction of the Constitution.

If laws such as seat belt law are used as interpretive examples that justify limiting specifically constitutionally guarantied rights (such as the Second Amendment) such interpretation erodes the Constitution.

Examples of laws that unconstitutionally limit freedom as a result of "interpreting" existing law ("good" or "bad" law) are way, way, too numerous to list, even to research and find. The federal regulatory agencies, for instance, and their thousands and thousands of regulations which all stem from an "interpretation" that the federal Congress has the power or right to delegate its authority of regulation to unelected agencies. Nowhere in the Constitution is there such a delegatory power granted to Congress. The Constitution specifically entrusts legislation to Congress itself, to the elected representatives of the people, not to unaccountable, unelected agencies, and worse, to agencies that have legislative, executive, and judicial power such as the federal regulatory agencies have. And all that has mushroomed from early precedents, especially under the FDR New Deal administration's creation of several of these agencies including, for example, agency actions that led to the freedom busting Supreme Court's expansion of the Commerce Clause.

The meaning of "commerce" was expanded from merely the trade of goods (as was defined during the founding era) to include the production or manufacture of them. And the original meaning of the clause's wording "among the several States," was defined as commerce occurring across State lines, and was mostly meant to prevent States from impeding commerce between them such as when States imposed tariffs on goods from other States. The regulation of purely intrastate commerce, (occurring within the State) was left to the States themselves.

That all was expanded to mean any trade, production, or manufacture which in the aggregate might have a "substantial effect" on [the expanded definition of] "commerce," and whether it occurs within a State or across State lines. Which, actually, affects in some way most human activity in our country. And that expanded interpretation has resulted in many important Court decisions which would not have been possible under the original meaning of the Commerce Clause and has, in itself, given the federal government an almost unlimited power to regulate most aspects of our lives if and when it chooses to do so. If we add to that other such interpretations of different parts of the Constitution along with the many thousands of regulations imposed on us by the hundreds of federal regulatory agencies, there isn't much, due to its expanded power, that the federal government can't regulate if it wants, and if it appoints enough Progressive judges to approve.


"how can you insure that this will always be so?"

I can't. What I can be sure of, is that bump stocks can be used to slaughter huge numbers of people in no time. So we can worry about hypotheticals (which sound like something that someone wearing a tin foil hat would say), or we can respond to things that actually happen.[/QUOTE]

Yes, what has actually happened, while we have been gradually conditioned to want the federal government to "do something" about every crisis and public emotional trauma, is that we have been encumbered by thousands of regulations, many of which most of us are unaware, which, in fact if not in total practice, has created a basically unlimited government waiting for enough crises to convince us that the latent total power it actually has garnered due to the erosion of constitutional limitations, must be implemented--to make our lives better and secure and free from emotional trauma, of course. And when that happens, there will no longer be a constitutional guaranty that the agenda of those in power can be prevented from doing things to us we don't like. When government has unlimited power and demonstrates its use of that power, history shows that such a government is ripe for the taking by some ego-maniacal, narcissistic, Stalin, Hitler, Caesar, Kim il whatever, or becomes one that imposes the worst of "democracy" in which collective groups rule over minorities, especially the minority of actual producers. In either case, the wealth and security of its citizens diminishes or is lost. But while things are still good, that seems unlikely. The slowly but gradually rising temperature of the water that baths them in good times is not noticed until it's too hot and too late to escape, or until its time for one of those persistent revolutions that human societies resort to when the rulers go too far. And yeah, they vote in dictatorships. The ballot as a last resort may not cut it.

Yeah, let's do the bump stock regulation. Hey, it wasn't as if there weren't mass shootings without its use. Hey, it's not as if those simple hand guns that we think are OK aren't used to kill way more people than bump stocks and semi-automatic weapons do. Oh, right, the really bad weapons kill more at once than the nice handguns do at once. No doubt, after we somehow eliminate public ownership of the heavy duty bad stuff and limit the people to acceptable hand guns, there will be no more cries demanding we do something about the overall larger gun violence that those handguns in the hands of bad guys wreak.

Yeah, right.

It ain't really, ultimately, about the danger of big guns vs. little ones. It's about transforming how we are governed. Guns, in the hands of common folks can get in the way of that transformation. Not necessarily, but possibly, if enough folks are of the mind to resist.