🚀 go-pugleaf

awk@sequent.com (Dave Aucsmith) writes:
>marc@tanda.isis.org (Marc Thibault) writes:
>
>>        Sometimes it truly is a joy to be living north of the 49th. On
>>        a day when many of us are celebrating the recent saving of our
>>        Charter of Rights and Freedoms from being watered down by a
>>        venal bunch of self-interested politicians, I would like to
>>        ask two questions:
>
>>     1. Given that the NSA has classified secret codes as armament,
>>        doesn't your Second Amendment right to bear arms therefore
>>        also guarantee your right to use secret codes?
>
>	The right to bear arms does not extend to the right to posses
>	a surface to air missle.  The courts have ruled that the Second
>	Amendment can have reasonable restraints placed on it.  What
>	is reasonable is for a court to decide.

Actually, this is false. There have been no such rulings to my
knowledge. There has simply been an effort to out and out ignore the
second amendment. The last case that I know of that successfully
reached the supreme court was the Miller case in the 1930s, in which
it was ruled that since the guy claiming the right to own a sawed-off
shotgun hadn't shown up (their side literally did not appear), the
court would assume that the weapon was not a military one and thus
might not be covered. You heard that bit right, by the way -- the
ruling implied that it is military weaponry, and not sporting
weaponry, that is covered by the amendment. However, as all of this
has gone completely away from the original topic, I suggest those who
are interested take it up in talk.politics.guns instead.

--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
"They can have my RSA key when they pry it from my cold dead fingers."
Libertarian Party info: Phone 1-800-682-1776, E-Mail 345-5647@mcimail.com