Explain the confiscation of firearms in the city of New Orleans, in the state of Louisiana, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Explain the confiscation of firearms in the Virgin Islands, ordered by the governor in preparation of hurricane Irma. These are both situations in which police were ordered to go door to door and confiscate firearms, even threatening their legal owners with death if they did not comply.
But their are limits to those restrictions. Banning ownership of protected classes of firearms exceeds the allowable restrictions. Here you present evidence that government is indeed willing to pass laws to restrict rights in excess of those allowable restrictions. True, but they can't just regulate in violation of Constitutional protections. They are also free to create laws that are ineffective, unenforceable and unnecessary, but I'd prefer that they didn't. Not entirely true, given recent legislation on the Left Coast, where mere allegations of mental illness is enough to have the police seize someone's firearms, and under the Lautenberg Amendment, merely being accused of a crime with a restraining order sworn against you can cause you to lose your 2A rights and have guns seized. Of course with malum prohibitum laws like the bans of firearms that the courts themselves admit are "commonly used for lawful purposes" by law abiding citizens (does that phrase sound familiar), owning those firearms is a crime, and the state has given themselves the power to confiscate them. Owning guns that are commonly used for lawful purposes by law abiding citizens isn't a crime, and is a protected right, in about 90% of the states. The fact that it is a crime in the rest demonstrates that "they" are indeed coming for our gunnrights, and in the process taking guns away from citizens. The regulations in Connecticut, New York, California and Maryland require law abiding gun owners to give up firearms in common use for lawful purposes. Some regulations due indeed take away rights and the guns protected by those rights.
The firearm owners protection act was used to roll back various restrictions implemented by previous legislation. In fact it subjected firearms to less regulation, and greater legal protections for their owners. Which was never stated, even by the author, as being related to matters of interstate commerce. Rather it was a poison pill amendment attached to the firearm owners protection act out of spite for the fact that public support for firearm-related rights and freedoms was increasing rather than decreasing. Beyond such, in the entire seventy five year period in which this supposed authority existed, it is not possible to find anything except one single example? An example related exclusively to an already strictly-regulated class of firearms, of which there were so few to begin with, of which every one was already registered? Where was this supposed authority in every other case? Why was it never used to prohibit the private ownership of handguns in response to their use by criminals? Indeed they did not. No firearms have been returned to their rightful owners in the Virgin Islands. As for New Orleans, law enforcement refused to return any firearms to their rightful owners, unless they could provide proof of ownership. Law enforcement originally claimed they possessed no confiscated firearms to return. The NRA had to take the entire law enforcement agency to court and have the court force the firearms to be returned to their rightful owners. The law enforcement of the city of New Orleans agreed to return the firearms, but only if the NRA agreed to not subject them to any lawsuits. When the firearms were returned, they were rusted to the point of being unserviceable, and reduced to nothing more than scrap metal as a result of improper storage in a high-humidity environment.
If said power did exist, and since they are willing to claim that we have an "epidemic" of gun violence, why wouldn't a state of emergency with "necessary" firearm confiscations be a natural consequence?
I do not think the Op is a student of any government history or the understanding that our Constitution was written to limit government powers and not citizen. Government never takes one drink from the well and feels satisfied, as it stands now our own government can not quantify all the laws that regulate citizen. We have lost our way.
Your habeas corpus rights no longer apply and once you are under arrest your guns can be confiscated.
No such statement was ever made. Rather it was being pointed out that your supposed example does not state what it is claimed by yourself as stating. Only after they were essentially destroyed due to the conditions in which they were stored. Which is not relevant to the discussion.
The above is irrelevant to the discussion currently taking place. The Wickard case did nothing of which is being stated by yourself pertaining to the matter of firearms. It did not authorize the national firearms act which preceded it, nor bestow the federal government with authority to regulate and/or restrict the ownership of common firearms under the standard of regulating interstate commerce. If this supposed authority existed, the federal government would have used it to prohibit the ownership of handguns entirely in response to their criminal misuse. They would have justified their actions by claiming that the approximate thirty thousand deaths attributed to them each year through homicides and suicides interfered with interstate commerce, and thus fell under their authority to do such. But this has not happened. In the seventy five years since Wickard was ruled upon, not a single administration has ever attempted to undertake such an endeavor. The only logical conclusion available is that they understand that such authority simply does not exist.
Look it up son. Wickard gives the power to the federal government to restrict firearms. Even TD believes this as does every other pro gun person. You are the only one that does not get it. And that is fine with me
It is your argument and yours alone. Cite it yourself. Then why has it not actually done such? Why has it, for seventy five years now, refused to even attempt prohibiting the ownership of handguns under any circumstances, when their mere existence is so closely tied to approximately thirty thousand deaths every single year in the united states? What possible reason could the federal government have for not exercising this supposed authority, that supposedly exists? Does it simply not care how many individuals die in a given year? Then actually cite those who agree with such.
Wickard allowed the federal government to assume a power not enumerated nor intended by the Framers. It was a bad decision, extending a power not intended to allow the federal government to restrict firearms in any way to now include intrastate transactions that do not in any way, much less "materially", affect interstate commerce. Then again, you've stated that you believe that the Commerce Clause allows the gpfederal government to regulate private tomato gardens.
Then if the federal government has not taken such a course of action, despite possessing the authority to do such, it apparently does not care. Approximately thirty thousand deaths every single year, one school shooting after another, etc. apparently even this is not enough to move the federal government to exercise its supposed authority on the matter, and simply outlaw handguns in their entirety. Apparently there is no standard sufficient enough to motivate the federal government to exercise this authority, as they simply do not care how many individuals die in a given year.
