Am 14 empowers The Federal Government to homogenize the "Priviledges and immunities" across citizens.
I agree. Necessary and proper to the homogenization process is the ability to enforce anti-racist, anti-sexist laws. No need to drag in the commerce clause, and distort it, to provide a means for enforcing such laws.
It also clarifies that what Congress defines as Debt - by Constitutional law... is Debt and Congress can then authorize spending on it. That's clarification of plenary spending authority. No it is not UNLIMITED nor have I ever claimed it is. But it is plenary.
Ah-- but now you've provided a caveat. With the caveat I accept your reasoning. You write, "...what Congress defines as Debt -- by Constititutional law -- is debt..." but if something Congress defines as debt comes as the result of an UNCONSTITUTIONAL law, then there is no valid expenditure. What it does not say is that Congress has an unlimited authority to define as "debt" anything it wants to spend taxpayer dollars to buy. There is still a separation between the ability to allocate funds and the ability to spend them. Congress may appropriate for almost anything, but it is constrained to pass Constitutional laws when it comes to expenditure.
Now as for "buying exceptions" to the goverment - nope. In fact its the opposite. Regulatory
Due Process - precisely because it costs LESS than a full lawsuit - expands the appeals process more broadly. And if you feel you have a strong enough and valuable enough case, you can go beyond that process IF YOU SO CHOOSE TO. No difference.
No -- it costs more than a typical lawsuit to drag a government agency into a real federal court where you have access to your full set of constitutional rights. Poorer people, obviously, can't afford to do this -- so only rich people have access to their rights. This effectively redefines rights as privileges and creates a proteced class, the wealthy, who have better treatment before the law. Now you're starting to see one of the many problems with regulation via bureaucracy -- not only is it arbitrary, it is unfairly arbitrary. For an example, witness how BP could simply put the regulators in its pocket before the Gulf oil spill last year.
Now as to guns - no they require pre-emptive offence, because shooting after you have beein harmed doesn't prevent the harm.
Shooting after a threat has been identified, but before one has received actual harm, is not "pre-emptive offense." It is self defense. Ditto for merely showing the weapon to the threatening agent so that it decides to pack up its threat and go away.
And when compared to the circumstances where it INCREASES the likelihood of harm to the owner, there is a NET NEGATIVE risk outcome.
What utter dreck, Degs. An armed person will win in over the unarmed in a fight, plain and simple. Whether he was right or wrong to do so, Zimmerman proved this. In that street fight, with its outcome, would you rather have been the person with the gun or without it? (He also blows a major hole in your "21-foot" rule, but we can debate that in some other thread).
Just as the "crimes of assault" are not documented as such - neither are "defensive use of guns".
Some defensive uses of guns are not documented -- many are. I can give you lists of at least one hundred such incidents, documented in reputable news sources and verified by police, that happen each year.
And given the research on how the willingness to use violence increases ones propensity to it - as well as all the anecdotal evidence (not the least of which our own Lapcat here) and the FBI data on "rape defense"... the preponderance of statistical evidence is that these are primarily assaults.
Simply untrue.
That's not enough to invoke Alito's Dangerous and Unusual exception to McDonald... but better research can do this
No, it cannot. No matter how much you try to warp the decision in this way, that phrase can never be used to ban guns in common use -- that's what the rulings themselves say. Not even a good effort on your part.
Now there are "hundreds" of documented defensive uses of firearms annually. There are also "hundreds
of thousands" of firearms injuries annually
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5002a1.htm That's a risk/reward ratio well in favor of the "dangerous" side.
Firearms injuries? Really? You're going to have to do better than that, because compared to other consumer products, firearms have an essentially spotless safety record.
And the injury and domestic violence and domestic injury rates associated with handgun ownership are incontrovertible. Because you cannot pretend that someone who was shot, was not shot.
But that doesn't lead to your seeming conclusion. Domestic violence rates, themselves, don't go up as a result of gun ownership. Shootings during domestic violence rates may -- but that isn't the same thing. The mere possession of a gun does not lead to one spouse abusing another.
Yes you can. the data on this is clear. and as you do have a higher injury rate. and that means that the harm exceeds the benefit. And that meets the McDonald and Heller exceptions.
Not in real life, only in Degsland. And you can document that people who don't own cars have fewer car wrecks than people who do, but that doesn't mean owning cars is illegitimate. Whether you like it or not, our society has chosen, and put into its laws, to accept a higher level of risk that is concomitant with a higher level of freedom. Further, your reasoning was just applied in the case in Maryland -- and the federal court struck down the portion of Maryland's law requiring those desiring a concealed carry permit to show a reason for doing so.
Yes people who own cars are also more likely to be injured by them. Hence ownership, usage and even production of them is LICENSED AND REGULATED AND RESTRICTED
Ownership of cars is not, however, a right. Ownership of guns is.
\BTW, Singapore, France, Germany, UK are all nice.
Singapore is nice, but don't spit on the sidewalk or you'll be caned. Draconian laws can make anyplace "nice." If I were to live overseas, I'd pic Switzerland, where I can buy a machine-gun over the counter (and where there is almost no violent crime).
