Ayn Rand on Gun Control


syrakusos

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The least this old fart should have done was die with dignity...how dare he defend himself from the teen thugs!

A 65-year-old man who was knocked off his bicycle by three teenagers on a Pennsylvania trail shot two of them, killing one, police said according to reports.
The
Reading Eagle newspaper said
the wounded teen, 16, was taken to hospital and the third, age 15, was taken in for questioning and was later sent to a youth center.
The paper said the mother of the slain boy, 16, asked officials not to release his name until she had been able to tell other members of the family what happened.
The incident happened on the Thun Trail near a bridge over the Schuylkill River, between Reading and West Reading around noon Wednesday.
According to WGAL.com
, police said the boys knocked the man off his bicycle in an apparent robbery attempt.
Story: Okla. mom won't face charges for shooting intruder
"There was one juvenile who was shot and is deceased [and] another juvenile who was shot and is in surgery," Police Chief Jed Habecker said,
according to a report by the WFMZ-TV station
.
According to police, the 65-year-old was riding his bicycle when the teens knocked him to the ground, the station said.
Police said two teens then assaulted the man, who drew his gun and shot them.
The man was released by police after they consulted with District Attorney John Adams late Wednesday, WFMZ reported.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46143485/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/#

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Here is a question: When Dagny shot the guard for not being able to make up his mind, did her gun have a silencer?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes--or the other guards would have been alerted. Note, silencers on revolvers do not work, except in the movies or on TV. You need a semi-automatic pistol.

--Brant

Except in the case of a small number of revolvers and revolver carbines specially designed to work with silencers. In most cases semi-automatic is preferred.

Dennis

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Here is a question: When Dagny shot the guard for not being able to make up his mind, did her gun have a silencer?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes--or the other guards would have been alerted. Note, silencers on revolvers do not work, except in the movies or on TV. You need a semi-automatic pistol.

--Brant

Except in the case of a small number of revolvers and revolver carbines specially designed to work with silencers. In most cases semi-automatic is preferred.

Dennis

I'd be curious of an example of a revolver made to work with a silencer. The only reason I can think of for going to the bother is retention of spent cartridges for which only the bad guys would care about in today's USA world.

--Brant

edit: I found it with Google--I didn't think it would be searchable--silly me

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Here is a question: When Dagny shot the guard for not being able to make up his mind, did her gun have a silencer?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes--or the other guards would have been alerted. Note, silencers on revolvers do not work, except in the movies or on TV. You need a semi-automatic pistol.

--Brant

Except in the case of a small number of revolvers and revolver carbines specially designed to work with silencers. In most cases semi-automatic is preferred.

Dennis

I'd be curious of an example of a revolver made to work with a silencer. The only reason I can think of for going to the bother is retention of spent cartridges for which only the bad guys would care about in today's USA world.

--Brant

edit: I found it with Google--I didn't think it would be searchable--silly me

http://www.gods-inc.de/macavity/IsleOfShadows/weapons/Castech/sr_Wr09.html

revrifleetrevpistolknighthy9.jpg

As you said cartidge retention - with rapid fire capability was the intention. No biggie now days with

.458 SOCOM and casing catchers.

Dennis

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Here is a question: When Dagny shot the guard for not being able to make up his mind, did her gun have a silencer?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes--or the other guards would have been alerted. Note, silencers on revolvers do not work, except in the movies or on TV. You need a semi-automatic pistol.

--Brant

Except in the case of a small number of revolvers and revolver carbines specially designed to work with silencers. In most cases semi-automatic is preferred.

Dennis

I'd be curious of an example of a revolver made to work with a silencer. The only reason I can think of for going to the bother is retention of spent cartridges for which only the bad guys would care about in today's USA world.

--Brant

edit: I found it with Google--I didn't think it would be searchable--silly me

http://www.gods-inc....ch/sr_Wr09.html

revrifleetrevpistolknighthy9.jpg

As you said cartidge retention - with rapid fire capability was the intention. No biggie now days with

.458 SOCOM and casing catchers.

Dennis

Does AS mention the specific weapon Dagny used in shooting the guard?

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Here is a question: When Dagny shot the guard for not being able to make up his mind, did her gun have a silencer?

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yes--or the other guards would have been alerted. Note, silencers on revolvers do not work, except in the movies or on TV. You need a semi-automatic pistol.

--Brant

Except in the case of a small number of revolvers and revolver carbines specially designed to work with silencers. In most cases semi-automatic is preferred.

Dennis

I'd be curious of an example of a revolver made to work with a silencer. The only reason I can think of for going to the bother is retention of spent cartridges for which only the bad guys would care about in today's USA world.

--Brant

edit: I found it with Google--I didn't think it would be searchable--silly me

http://www.gods-inc....ch/sr_Wr09.html

revrifleetrevpistolknighthy9.jpg

As you said cartidge retention - with rapid fire capability was the intention. No biggie now days with

.458 SOCOM and casing catchers.

Dennis

Does AS mention the specific weapon Dagny used in shooting the guard?

It was common in movie magic to have silenced revolvers. In reality at the time AS was written sub-sonic .22 or .32 semi-auto

were the state of the art from the WWII era. Peikoff during a radio show made it clear he thought semi-auto handguns should

not be allowed to be owned by citizens for self defense [a Luddite putting self defense into the prior to 1890's technology]. Hard

to say what Rand intended but I suspect she was thinking revolver when in fact that wouldn't work well.

Dennis

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This gentleman is very persuasive and he points out some excellent points in this article:

Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, intellectual property, and property rights. His most recent books are Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (2011), The Case against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover Press, 2009) and Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property (Oxford Press, 2008).

The Second Amendment imposes no limitations on states.

The study of constitutional law is divided neatly into two categories. The first category concerns the protection of an overlapping set of individual liberties, dealing with property, contract, religion, and speech. The second category addresses the broad array of structural protections whose implementation is thought to indirectly protect those liberties.

One key structural element of the American Constitution involves the design of a two-tier federalist system that distributes government powers between the national government and the states. How should a libertarian, whose natural instincts tend toward lower levels of government activity, think about the way in which federal systems can either strengthen or undermine the constitutional protection of individual liberties?

In dealing with this issue, it has often been asserted that libertarians are all too fond of states' rights. Consider this critical outburst from Andrew Sullivan’s blog:

A real libertarian should be just as concerned about a State government's infringement of individual liberty as the Federal government's. There should be no distinction. Period. Instead, for some strange reason, American libertarians always rail against Federal power and champion the cause of unfettered State power. Why do you think American libertarians historically champion the cause of unfettered State power in the name of "individual liberty"?

http://www.hoover.or.../article/106796

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Hank Holzer has overstated states' rights relative to individual rights, but I forget in regard to what. I think Rand brought a European and female sensibility to the issue of self defense and an armed citizenry. She was not raised in an American culture--she adopted it, imperfectly. What if all those German and Polish and French Jews had been armed to the teeth with various guns and munitions? Would there have been a Holocaust? When I went to live in New Jersey in 1968 I was in violation of legally transporting my .357 into the state. Once it was in my home, it was legal. In 1971 I drove it illegally out of the state and back in illegally on a Greyhound bus through the Port Authority--also illegal--then on home. I drove it out again illegally in 1995. Don't ask me about the states in between. Still own it. Colt stopped manufacturing the Python a few years ago--list price 1600 bucks--I brought it for 120 in Tucson on my return from Vietnam in 1967. You don't want to live with your Elloi neighbors in New Jersey when the thugs start stomping up and down the street you live on.

--Brant

I noticed the property taxes in my old Park Ridge residence popped 25% in one year to--in the case of my old home--over $10,000. One reason I left, I didn't want to pay $3600 in 1995. I wonder if this happened state-wide

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Hank Holzer has overstated states' rights relative to individual rights, but I forget in regard to what. I think Rand brought a European and female sensibility to the issue of self defense and an armed citizenry. She was not raised in an American culture--she adopted it, imperfectly. What if all those German and Polish and French Jews had been armed to the teeth with various guns and munitions? Would there have been a Holocaust? When I went to live in New Jersey in 1968 I was in violation of legally transporting my .357 into the state. Once it was in my home, it was legal. In 1971 I drove it illegally out of the state and back in illegally on a Greyhound bus through the Port Authority--also illegal--then on home. I drove it out again illegally in 1995. Don't ask me about the states in between. Still own it. Colt stopped manufacturing the Python a few years ago--list price 1600 bucks--I brought it for 120 in Tucson on my return from Vietnam in 1967. You don't want to live with your Elloi neighbors in New Jersey when the thugs start stomping up and down the street you live on.

--Brant

I noticed the property taxes in my old Park Ridge residence popped 25% in one year to--in the case of my old home--over $10,000. One reason I left, I didn't want to pay $3600 in 1995. I wonder if this happened state-wide

Brant:

It did in New Jersey.

When I closed on my house in Setauket on the North shore of LI. in 1989, the property taxes were over $7,000.00, I asked them if they planned on collecting the money with a small company of government thugs?

The closing attorney did not find it funny because he saw I was serious.

Adam

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Hank Holzer has overstated states' rights relative to individual rights, but I forget in regard to what. I think Rand brought a European and female sensibility to the issue of self defense and an armed citizenry. She was not raised in an American culture--she adopted it, imperfectly. What if all those German and Polish and French Jews had been armed to the teeth with various guns and munitions? Would there have been a Holocaust? When I went to live in New Jersey in 1968 I was in violation of legally transporting my .357 into the state. Once it was in my home, it was legal. In 1971 I drove it illegally out of the state and back in illegally on a Greyhound bus through the Port Authority--also illegal--then on home. I drove it out again illegally in 1995. Don't ask me about the states in between. Still own it. Colt stopped manufacturing the Python a few years ago--list price 1600 bucks--I brought it for 120 in Tucson on my return from Vietnam in 1967. You don't want to live with your Elloi neighbors in New Jersey when the thugs start stomping up and down the street you live on.

--Brant

I noticed the property taxes in my old Park Ridge residence popped 25% in one year to--in the case of my old home--over $10,000. One reason I left, I didn't want to pay $3600 in 1995. I wonder if this happened state-wide

Brant:

It did in New Jersey.

When I closed on my house in Setauket on the North shore of LI. in 1989, the property taxes were over $7,000.00, I asked them if they planned on collecting the money with a small company of government thugs?

The closing attorney did not find it funny because he saw I was serious.

Adam

Back then, as high as NJ property taxes were, they were higher in NY. The attornies are not needed, but are required by law in NJ, and now I see, NY.

--Brant

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As Andew Wilkow mentions often the Supreme Court has no authority to decide when the Constition is incorporated and when it is not incorporated at their abritrary whim. If the 2nd Amendment is to mean anything it must be an individual right across state lines - just like freedom of speech. Unreasonable restrictions like in NJ, NY, CA, IL, Washington DC and many others are an affront to the constitution - period. We live in a post-consitutional period where the meaning has been papered around.

Dennis

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Dennis, historically, the considerations are always in the direction opposite to the one you assume now. In other words, it is not that the Supreme Court recently decided that the Second Amendment is (or is not) incorporated to the states, but, rather, that this is the last of the rights not so decided. Always before, the assumption was that the federal Bill of Rights limited the federal government, while the state governments enjoyed other (more; different) powers.

The best example I can give is religion. Despite the First Amendment, about a dozen states had religious restrictions on voting, jury duty, elected office, etc. The last test case was in 1995 from Charleston, South Carolina. But realize that the southern states had copied their constitutions from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts after the War Between the States. As late as 1839, Massachusetts was collecting taxes for the Congregational Church. The federal government did not have those powers, because of the Bill of Rights. However, the states did.

Over the decades of the 19th and 20th centuries, more and more restrictions on the federal government ("individual rights") were incorporated to the states. Torture to obtain confessions was another example. The federal government could not do that under the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments, but states could and did. Then, those Amendments were incorporated to the states.

Supreme Court decisions might seem whimsical. They may even be so - as in the case of granting the rights of personhood to corporations: a mere footnote in passing. But generally the Court never acts on whim, always justifies its rulings with citations of fact and law, and gives great weight to the consequences of its opinions, dissents, and concurrences.

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... generally the Court never acts on whim, always justifies its rulings with citations of fact and law, and gives great weight to the consequences of its opinions, dissents, and concurrences.

You have a great deal more faith in the court than I do.

I see at least 5 of them as 3rd world political hacks with little understanding of or respect for the constitution.

This low quality translates all the way down through the disfuctional legal system.

Dennis

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The SPOTUS has been part and parcel of the Washington cesspool since it buckled under to the attempted packing of the Court by FDR. The intellectual pretensions continued for decades, but have greatly faded. I hope some backbone appears regarding Obamacare as it did respecting the 2nd Amendment.

--Brant

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... generally the Court never acts on whim, always justifies its rulings with citations of fact and law, and gives great weight to the consequences of its opinions, dissents, and concurrences.

You have a great deal more faith in the court than I do.

I see at least 5 of them as 3rd world political hacks with little understanding of or respect for the constitution.

This low quality translates all the way down through the disfuctional legal system.

Dennis

The Supreme Court has been highly politicized since John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801. Marshall functioned as a Federalist shill and greatly expanded the powers of the Supreme Court beyond anything authorized by the Constitution. The Jeffersonians disliked the Supreme Court and hated Marshall -- for good reason.

There have been some good justices, of course, but the game was essentially over by 1936, when Chief Justice Roberts delivered the majority decision in U.S. v. Butler. Roberts expressly endorsed the broad interpretation of the "general welfare" clause that had been defended by Alexander Hamilton. In opposition to James Madison, who maintained that the reference to the "general welfare" in Article I, Section 8 did nothing more than state the purpose of the enumerated powers, and was therefore limited to those expressly delegated powers, Hamilton argued that the "general welfare" should be construed as a separate and distinct power -- in other words, that Congress could constitutionally pass any legislation, including taxes, that it regards as conducive to the general welfare.

Madison had the much stronger theoretical case -- e.g., there would have been no need for the Framers to have included the enumerated powers at all, if they had intended to grand indefinite discretionary powers to Congress -- but theory doesn't count for zilch in the unending quest of governments to expand their power.

Chief Justice Roberts mentioned Hamilton by name when he sanctioned the broad construction of the general welfare clause. Moreover, as the Wiki article correctly points out:

Shortly after Butler, in Helvering v. Davis,[15] the Supreme Court interpreted the clause even more expansively, conferring upon Congress a plenary power to impose taxes and to spend money for the general welfare subject almost entirely to its own discretion. Even more recently, the Court has included the power to indirectly coerce the states into adopting national standards by threatening to withhold federal funds in South Dakota v. Dole.[16] To date, the Hamiltonian view of the General Welfare Clause predominates in case law.

The Supreme Court decisions in Butler and in Helvering v. Davis effectively nullified the enumerated powers listed in Article I, Section 8, and turned the notion of a constitutionally limited government into a joke. Nowadays, it is pretty much a matter of which political party can dominate the Supreme Court. That institution is as political as it gets. At times it will issue decisions favorable to liberty, but more often than not its decisions will have the opposite effect.

Ghs

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In dealing with this issue, it has often been asserted that libertarians are all too fond of states' rights. Consider this critical outburst from Andrew Sullivan’s blog:

A real libertarian should be just as concerned about a State government's infringement of individual liberty as the Federal government's. There should be no distinction. Period. Instead, for some strange reason, American libertarians always rail against Federal power and champion the cause of unfettered State power. Why do you think American libertarians historically champion the cause of unfettered State power in the name of "individual liberty"?

http://www.hoover.or.../article/106796

Sullivan is full of it. No libertarian has ever defended "unfettered State power," in contrast to Federal power. Rather, in the Jeffersonian approach, and as stated by Madison in The Federalist Papers, states rights were an essential feature -- indeed, the most important feature -- of the separation of powers embodied in the U.S. Constitution. The idea here, as I discussed in my 1996 lecture on the rights of resistance and revolution (recently uploaded by Cato), was to introduce conflict and competition between the state and federal governments, and thereby restrain the power of both.

This is what Madison and Jefferson had mind when, in their Virginia and Kentucky Resolves (1798), they defended the right of states to nullify federal laws . These resolutions were written in the wake of the atrocious Alien and Sedition Acts, passed during the administration of John Adams. State supreme courts, according to the Jeffersonians, should have the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional.

The fly in the ointment here was slavery. When later states righters, such as John C. Calhoun, linked their defense of states right to slavery, as a means of keeping the federal government from interfering with that "peculiar institution," the notion of states rights became irreparably tarnished. Thus did slavery, in addition to its massive injustice, render a fairly libertarian approach to limiting the powers of government virtually impossible.

Ghs

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My grandfather testified before Congress in support of FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court and was criticized in quoting or referring to Madison to that effect--one of two reasons I know he decided to write the biography. I do not know what that testimony actually was. He was a New Dealer. I suspect it was not in regard to what George has referenced, but went deeper into the adoption of the Constitution itself ending the confederation of states.

(Irving Brant took me to visit the Jefferson Memorial in 1960 and told me he was responsible for the famous inscription around the inside of the rotunda. He suggested it to his friend Sec. of the Interior Ickes who wanted a good one. He did those things in those days, like personally lobbying Roosevelt for the appointment of Rutledge to the Supreme Court in 1943.)

--Brant

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In his TED talk, The Myth of Violence, Steven Pinker addressess the problematic of 'preemptive violence':

From the transcript:

http://dotsub.com/vi...wTranscript/eng

[Steven Pinker]: More recently, Thomas Schelling gives the analogy of a homeowner who hears a rustling in the basement. Being a good American, he has a pistol in the nightstand, pulls out his gun, and walks down the stairs. And what does he see but a burglar with a gun in his hand. Now, each one of them is thinking, "I don't really want to kill that guy, but he's about to kill me. Maybe I had better shoot him, before he shoots me, especially since, even if he doesn't want to kill me, he's probably worrying right now that I might kill him before he kills me." And so on. Hunter-gatherer peoples explicitly go through this train of thought, and will often raid their neighbors out of fear of being raided first. Now, one way of dealing with this problem is by deterrence. You don't strike first, but you have a publicly announced policy that you will retaliate savagely if you are invaded. The only thing is that it's liable to having its bluff called, and therefore can only work if it's credible. To make it credible, you must avenge all insults and settle all scores, which leads to the cycles of bloody vendetta. Life becomes an episode of "The Sopranos."

http://video.google....959887856210325

Schelling is one of those technocrats who analyzes every problem in terms of bargaining and strategic reasoning, while taking no account of the moral issues involved.

If you walk downstairs at night and find an armed burglar, then you shoot the SOB before he shoots you. Why the hell would a burglar arm himself with a weapon, if he didn't plan to use it?

Of course, if you miss or wound the burglar, and he heads to the door in an effort to escape, this doesn't mean that you should shoot him in the back as he flees -- though even this might be justifiable in some cases, depending on the circumstances and context (e.g., if he shoots at you as he flees).

As John Locke pointed out in his Second Treatise of Government, if a burglar invades your home, you have a right to kill that burglar, even if you don't know whether he is armed or not. The reasonable presumption is that someone who invades your home -- and thus clearly displays a flagrant disregard for your rights -- is also willing to kill you, should he deem that necessary. The victim cannot be expected to read the burglar's mind, so he must infer the burglar's intent from his actions. If the victim makes an honest error, if the burglar merely wanted to steal and had no intention to harm anyone, then the burglar, not his victim, should bear the consequences of the misunderstanding. He is the one who precipitated the misunderstanding, after all.

Ghs

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A good article on this issue from Capitalism magazine:

Gun Control and The Right to Self-defense

Adam Mossoff

As stated, the gun control debate should be addressed as a debate over man's rights. A man's right to own a gun is based on his right to self-defense.

Given the prior acceptance of an individual's right to his life and his corollary right to self-defense, the conclusion that weapons should be privately owned follows logically.

Given the principle of self-defense as the moral sanction of owning weapons, one can now distinguish between two general types of weapons: (i) those capable of very limited destruction, and (ii) those capable of mass destruction.

As such, weapons of mass destruction do not meet the requirements for self-defense.

Beyond the modicum of gun control that would naturally exist to keep weapons of mass destruction out of private hands, I do not believe that there even would be consideration of the massive regulations and restrictions we are now faced with today.

But would questions of waiting periods, national registration, or background checks arise in a rational society?... It is the function of the government to define the legal conditions for when self-defense can be invoked as a sanction of the private use of force, as well as to ensure that weapons are not obtained by criminals. In this vein, I think both registration and background checks would be legitimate laws in a rational, free society

A reasonable case can be made against ownership of WMDs, such as nuclear weapons. After all, WMDs cannot be specifically targeted and used without killing many innocent people.

The problem is that the same argument can be made against the ownership of WMDs by governments. A government can no more use a WMD without killing large numbers of innocent people than an individual citizen can. So why is it okay for a government -- which, in the final analysis, is nothing more than an institution comprised of individuals -- to own WMDs?

Moreover, if -- as libertarians believe -- a government should have only those rights that have been delegated to it by citizens, and if no individual citizen can have the right to possess WMDs, then how can those citizens delegate a right to government (the right to possess WMDs) that they never had?

Ayn Rand insisted that all rights are ultimately the rights of individuals, that one does not gain special or new rights by being part of a collective. But it seems to me that some kind of collective right is involved in the claim that governments, but not individuals, may possess WMDs.

Ghs

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George:

Now that is an interesting argument. I have never seen it before.

Adam

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My grandfather testified before Congress in support of FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court and was criticized in quoting or referring to Madison to that effect--one of two reasons I know he decided to write the biography. I do not know what that testimony actually was. He was a New Dealer. I suspect it was not in regard to what George has referenced, but went deeper into the adoption of the Constitution itself ending the confederation of states.

(Irving Brant took me to visit the Jefferson Memorial in 1960 and told me he was responsible for the famous inscription around the inside of the rotunda. He suggested it to his friend Sec. of the Interior Ickes who wanted a good one. He did those things in those days, like personally lobbying Roosevelt for the appointment of Rutledge to the Supreme Court in 1943.)

--Brant

Madison was an elusive character. He began as a strong nationalist and, as such, cooperated with Hamilton in organizing the Constitutional Convention in 1787. During the Convention, Madison gave a speech in which he acknowledged that the purpose of the Convention was to establish a national government with powers even greater than the British Parliament, against which Americans had fought a revolution. Madison even agreed with Hamilton (in the Federalist Papers) that no limits on taxes should be imposed on Congress, as many critics of the Constitution had insisted.

Madison later sided with Jefferson against Hamilton on controversies like the federal assumption of state debts incurred during the war. This was used by Hamilton as a rationale to increase the taxing powers of the federal government and to centralize a great deal of financial clout in a central bank, i.e., the First Bank of the United States (1791) -- the Fed of its time, in effect.

During his presidency, however, Madison reverted to some of his earlier nationalistic leanings by endorsing some projects favored by Federalists but opposed by the Jeffersonian Republicans. Go figure. Irving Brant may have cited passages from the early or late Madison, but, even so, I cannot think of any Madisonian argument in favor of packing the Supreme Court. After all, Madison and Jefferson vigorously opposed the "midnight appointments" that were engineered by John Marshall (then secretary of state) at the conclusion of the Adams adminstration.

Marshall's decision in Marbury v. Madison, which effectively ruled against Madison, was a landmark decision in instituting the doctrine of judicial review, which is nowhere contained in the Constitution itself. If ever there was a case of packing the Supreme Court, it was the nomination of Marshall by John Adams. This, in addition to the creation of new federal judgeships, which were also packed with Federalists, was a purely political move designed to maintain Federalist control of the judiciary. From the Wiki article on Marshall :

Marshall was thrust into the office of Chief Justice in the wake of the presidential election of 1800. With the Federalists soundly defeated and about to lose both the executive and legislative branches to Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, President Adams and the lame duck Congress passed what came to be known as the Midnight Judges Act, which made sweeping changes to the federal judiciary, including a reduction in the number of Justices from six to five so as to deny Jefferson an appointment until two vacancies occurred.[28] As the incumbent Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth was in poor health, Adams first offered the seat to ex-Chief Justice John Jay, who declined on the grounds that the Court lacked "energy, weight, and dignity."[29] Jay's letter arrived on January 20, 1801, and as there was precious little time left, Adams surprised Marshall, who was with him at the time and able to accept the nomination immediately.[30] The Senate at first delayed, hoping that Adams would make a different choice, such as promoting Justice William Paterson of New Jersey. According to New Jersey Senator Jonathan Dayton, the Senate finally relented "lest another not so qualified, and more disgusting to the Bench, should be substituted, and because it appeared that this gentleman [Marshall] was not privy to his own nomination".[31] Marshall was confirmed by the Senate on January 27, 1801, and received his commission on January 31, 1801.

Ghs

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A good article on this issue from Capitalism magazine:

Gun Control and The Right to Self-defense

Adam Mossoff

As stated, the gun control debate should be addressed as a debate over man's rights. A man's right to own a gun is based on his right to self-defense.

Given the prior acceptance of an individual's right to his life and his corollary right to self-defense, the conclusion that weapons should be privately owned follows logically.

Given the principle of self-defense as the moral sanction of owning weapons, one can now distinguish between two general types of weapons: (i) those capable of very limited destruction, and (ii) those capable of mass destruction.

As such, weapons of mass destruction do not meet the requirements for self-defense.

Beyond the modicum of gun control that would naturally exist to keep weapons of mass destruction out of private hands, I do not believe that there even would be consideration of the massive regulations and restrictions we are now faced with today.

But would questions of waiting periods, national registration, or background checks arise in a rational society?... It is the function of the government to define the legal conditions for when self-defense can be invoked as a sanction of the private use of force, as well as to ensure that weapons are not obtained by criminals. In this vein, I think both registration and background checks would be legitimate laws in a rational, free society

A reasonable case can be made against ownership of WMDs, such as nuclear weapons. After all, WMDs cannot be specifically targeted and used without killing many innocent people.

The problem is that the same argument can be made against the ownership of WMDs by governments. A government can no more use a WMD without killing large numbers of innocent people than an individual citizen can. So why is it okay for a government -- which, in the final analysis, is nothing more than an institution comprised of individuals -- to own WMDs?

Moreover, if -- as libertarians believe -- a government should have only those rights that have been delegated to it by citizens, and if no individual citizen can have the right to possess WMDs, then how can those citizens delegate a right to government (the right to possess WMDs) that they never had?

Ayn Rand insisted that all rights are ultimately the rights of individuals, that one does not gain special or new rights by being part of a collective. But it seems to me that some kind of collective right is involved in the claim that governments, but not individuals, may possess WMDs.

Ghs

I think her idea is that the government is the agent of its citizens who are thus exercising their rights--the actual rights. Of course, this would be question begging. However, governments exist and they do things--they are agents of force and even Rand could only put lipstick on these pigs.

--Brant

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It's an interesting question whether the existence of judicial review was inevitable or not and what effect it had on the advancement of statism--speaking overall. What would the Court do aside from review that would affect balance of powers?

--Brant

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But it seems to me that some kind of collective right is involved in the claim that governments, but not individuals, may possess WMDs.

What is or is not a WoMD is context dependent. The biggest hydrogen bomb ever made can only be a tool if you are sitting on a deserted planet. If you are in an underground building a dime to turn a screw - which in turn causes a gas leak - is a WoMD. The MacGuyver in me and context tells me more than what some central planner might think as far as what individuals or governments should own. My grandpa and my relatives of his generation used dynamite on the farm all the time and thought nothing of it. 50 cents a stick at the local store. If arms are for securing liberty then they should at least include what infantry soldiers use and currently that is not even close to the case.

Dennis

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It's an interesting question whether the existence of judicial review was inevitable or not and what effect it had on the advancement of statism--speaking overall. What would the Court do aside from review that would affect balance of powers? --Brant

This is a complex issue, obviously.

My recollection of specifics may be a little rusty, but I don't think the doctrine of judicial review even came up during the Constitutional Convention -- or if it did come up, it never gained any traction. But Hamilton did discuss it in the Federalist Papers, defending it as an implied power -- Hamilton loved implied powers -- of the federal government. Hamilton's discussion was then cited by many later defenders of judicial review.

The problem here is that Hamilton, though a Convention delegate for a while, had no influence on the final document. During his one speech, he called for a president elected for life with the power to veto any and all state laws. In other words, he wanted to reduce the states to nothing more than administrative units of the federal government.

Hamilton's speech was greeted with complete silence. No one applauded or said a word -- from shock, probably. The Convention moved on to other business, and Hamilton left for New York shortly thereafter -- called away, he said, by pressing legal matters. He only returned in time to sign the finished document, while claiming, in effect, that half a loaf of a strong central government was better than none. Hamilton's defense of judicial review, which included the power to declare the unconstitutionality of state laws, was part of his grand scheme for a powerful national government.

As the Jeffersonians saw the matter, the chief role of the Supreme Court, in regard to the states, was to decide conflicts between the states themselves, e.g., over boundary disputes. They neither envisioned nor wanted a federal supreme court with the power of judicial review over state laws. Nor, for the most part, did they think that the Supreme Court should have the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional.

On this latter issue at least, I'm glad the Jeffersonians lost the debate, whatever its constitutionality may be. I never shared Jefferson's faith that the "people," as represented by Congress (especially the House), will usually do the right thing.

Ghs

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