Summations Only

A link for those who haven't seen this yet...6 dead in 'calculated' shooting at backyard party in Pa.

Amusing. Obviously guns are more deadly than rat poison. But rat poison is not protected by the 2nd amendment. As much as I want to get rid of guns, I am not for having the government ignore the constitution in their zeal to make this a better place, because it would not be. YMMV.

That's fine. But surely a government as powerful as the US government that disregards the law with respect to even its own citizens ought to make you feel even more upset.I rely on the fact that our government has limits. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Most of us are not taking that position, and I certainly don't. In fact my opinion is that the Supreme Court has misinterpreted the 2nd Amendment in an historically extreme way. But that said, the rule of law here requires that the government follow the law until it is changed or reinterpreted. I don't want a powerful unchecked rogue government doing whatever is expedient.

Perhaps you are right. Let's look at some examples of constitutions that have been suspended so far this year and evaluate whether they make good examples. Which ones are those?

Of course it is a figure of speech. That's why I gave you a period of months over which to cite some examples. Apparently "suspended every day" is a gross exaggeration. "[T]his year" as I used it was not a figure of speech.It turns out that suspensions of constitutions are not very common, and that examples of such suspensions being a good idea are even rarer. Most of them are done by dictators and have little to recommend them as examples. What's your point?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Right Percy. But it turns out that constitutions are not regularly suspended, and that historically suspension of the governments are rarely done by democratically styled governments. These are all points that I made with ringo. Figure of speech or not, ringo's statement was an exaggeration of just how common it is to suspend the constitution. I've done that, Percy. Ringo managed to make a point about the figure of speech and I've already responded to that based on the list Ringo linked to. Ringo responded again, and I am content to leave it at that. Why isn't that enough for you?Ringo's point is that the executive branch should simply ignore the Supreme Court because it is common to suspend the constitution. Well, guess what?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Isn't the real question whether or not we should suspend the constitution? And by suspend what is meant here is the executive branch of the feds or states simply ignoring a Supreme Court ruling? Do I really have to argue why it is not stupid to not do such a thing?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The ways to accomplish such a reversal are three fold, amend the constitution, receive yet another Supreme Court ruling, or signing a treaty that adds some new feature to federal law. There are substantial obstacles to every single one of those techniques. Mostly that difficulty is a good idea, but the system is not perfect. Meaning that even if we did as asked, the result would be futile? Or that the call would be ignored? I'm not sure what you are getting at with your analogy. The constitution is not an obstacle to substantial and effective gun control measures that a majority of Americans are comfortable with. Unfortunately that does not seem to be enough to get anything enacted.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The US Constitution has explicit provisions for amending, and even the federal legislature in concert with the president do not have sufficient constitutional power to amend the constitution.We can contrast that to the situation in some other countries, where the legislature can amend the constitution, or where the actual rights of persons and powers of the government are as described in a legislative document and there is no actual constitution separate from state law.You do have a point that there are reasons why governments do not just go rogue and ignore the whole thing, but comparing the US to the situation that existed in Germany at the time of world war II fails because of the details that have been pointed out. I am not sure why you are insisting on that particular example rather than one of the others one your list of suspensions.I am also sure that there are situations where constitutional provisions were ignored and a leader simply made up his own rules contrary to what the constitution says. Arguably that would apply to Abraham Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus during the civil war. But your Germany example does not make your point.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I don't disagree.What you are saying is similar to what lots of folks say when the Supreme Court ruling is different from what they expect or like. My personal belief is that the Supreme Court 5-4 decision in DC v. Heller was incorrect. But the constitution tells us that the majority decision of the Supreme Court, on a matter of constitution law, is binding on the other two branches until either a new Supreme Court decision overrules it or until the constitution is amended. That principle is why states like North Carolina caved pretty much immediately when the Court ruled that they could not prevent gay marriage. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Ringo's original statement was (approximately) that having a government blindly following the constitution was stupid. Given that, what kind of example is Hitler anyway? Surely we are not talking about emulating Hitler.It's possible that I'm linking together things that ringo did not intend to link, but if you unlink those things, what the heck point remains? Surely within this country there is substantial opposition to gun control. I'm not sure we should assume that nobody would react badly to attempts by the government to impose gun control illegally and unconstitutionally given the ability to at least vote the bastids out the next time.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I think the point here, is that a poll saying X is a bad idea is an objection. Obviously a vote or survey answer saying I hate something counts as an objection. But if I vote for Clinton, that does not necessarily mean that I have any objection in particular to Sanders. A vote for Hilary certainly could not be said to be a repudiation of any particular policy Bernie pushes.Similarly, a vote that is not for Hitler does not show that you objected to any one single Hitler policy, and it is possible that such a vote is no more an indication of objection than is a vote for anchovies an indication that you object to Canadian bacon.

I don't think you have made a reasonable inference. Voting for a person, particular if he did not announce policy X ahead of time, is not evidence that people wanted policy X. But the inference you are making, namely that voting for the other candidate means disapproval of policy X is a far shakier argument. luCute. People who disagree with you are unreasonable. There is no reasonable opposing position.If your Google search confirmed your inference (rather than you conclusion), that is because your Google search turned up facts that you did not use in your argument. As for your conclusion, history tells us that your conclusion is correct and that there were complaints about Hitler's excesses regarding the constitution. But being correct is not a validation of your actual argument.Hitler did a bunch of bad stuff. It would be simplistic to count every vote against him in that election, as opposition to every bad thing he ended up doing. People vote for and against candidates for lots of reasons, only one of which might have to do with abusing the constitution. You cannot tell just from a cast vote how much the German folks loved or did not love their constitution without ruling out other concerns. Sometimes the choices are more similar to the choices between pizza toppings.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

If you look back you will see that I agreed with your inference regarding the poll. I continue to disagree that your poll results are analogous to the election voting for Hitler.Showing that an inference is correct requires showing a connection between the voting percentages for and against Hitler, and your conclusion because those relative percentages are the only thing you cited. Simply showing by any other means, that Germans were in opposition to Hitler's abuse of the constitution does not validate your reasoning. Such research simply validates your conclusion. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.