2013 Supreme Court Term

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jim and Joe were at a show in NH. Joe spotted a Club Gun. His C&R had expired due to ATF dopes. Joe paid for it, Jim bought it on his C&R. When my his C&R came in, we transferred it. What would that ruling be?

Personally I would think that would be a straw sale as Jim bought it “for” Joe. Even though they don’t do a 4473 to me it seems to fit the requirements, Jim wasn’t buying it for himself but at the behest of Joe.
 
Jim and Joe were at a show in NH. Joe spotted a Club Gun. His C&R had expired due to ATF dopes. Joe paid for it, Jim bought it on his C&R. When my his C&R came in, we transferred it. What would that ruling be?

Personally I would think that would be a straw sale as Jim bought it “for” Joe. Even though they don’t do a 4473 to me it seems to fit the requirements, Jim wasn’t buying it for himself but at the behest of Joe.

Per this ruling that sounds like a straw purchase to me. Load of bs tho.
 
Jim and Joe were at a show in NH. Joe spotted a Club Gun. His C&R had expired due to ATF dopes. Joe paid for it, Jim bought it on his C&R. When my his C&R came in, we transferred it. What would that ruling be?

Personally I would think that would be a straw sale as Jim bought it “for” Joe. Even though they don’t do a 4473 to me it seems to fit the requirements, Jim wasn’t buying it for himself but at the behest of Joe.

If you don't do the 4473, you can't violate either of the laws covering this. Which is more stupid but it's the net effect of using perjury statutes to enforce prohibitions on straw purchases.
 
"Well you see, he complied with the laws intent, but our esteemed legislations were too inept to actually pass a coherent, properly structured sentence, and he did violate the grammatically incorrect law. Guilty!"
Or, alternatively, "He followed the text of the law as written, but no the intent, guilty!". This is the logic the SJC used when it declared the possession of ammo on school grounds is a crime, even though 269-10j requires the dangerous weapon to be "on ones person".
 
My question is, if I buy a gun, take it to the range, shoot it, don't like it, and sell it to my buddy a week later is that now considered a straw purchase?
 
I disagree as the 4 members majority general just reads whatever they need to satisfy their agenda as demonstrated in Heller and Macdonald. There was no "textualism" to be found but rather whole-cloth fabrication of history.

This decision came as it did "because gun".

I agree. Say "gun" and an automatic 4 votes against us with only one swing vote needed.
 
My question is, if I buy a gun, take it to the range, shoot it, don't like it, and sell it to my buddy a week later is that now considered a straw purchase?

No. Abramski's conviction turned on the fact that his uncle paid him before he purchased the gun with a check that said Glock in the memo field.
 
Agreed, you didn't "buy it for someone" you bought it intending to keep it, you didn't like it and decided to sell it. Again what is to prevent you from lying saying you did intend to keep it but decided to sell it because you didn't like it? Yes as jar said Abramski had a paper trail.
 
Or, alternatively, "He followed the text of the law as written, but no the intent, guilty!". This is the logic the SJC used when it declared the possession of ammo on school grounds is a crime, even though 269-10j requires the dangerous weapon to be "on ones person".

Yep. Which is exactly why we don't actually live under a rule of law. Anything you do, regardless of any law, statute, regulation, or otherwise, can be turned into a crime or violation at the whim of a government employee (cop, prosecutor, judge, etc).
 
I was listening to Bloomberg Radio (I know, I know, but they usually have good investing discussions) and they were discussing the Straw man decision. It was pretty objective until they had a 'Law' professor from University of California who started out ok and then went on a rant about how this is a blow to the NRA's many suits that are trying to "overturn bans on Assault Weapons, hi-capacity magazines and other 'excessive' gun rights"... even though I should have expected this from professor I almost started yelling at the radio... the guy actually said 'excessive gun rights'. Not surprisingly it went down hill from there and I turned Patriot Radio back on.
 
I disagree as the 4 members majority generally just reads whatever they need to satisfy their agenda as demonstrated in Heller and Macdonald. There was no "textualism" to be found but rather whole-cloth fabrication of history.

This decision came as it did "because gun".
Er...what?

Did you mean to say "5 member majority" or "4 member minority"?

Keep in mind Textualism is Scalia's statutory interpretation philosophy; history, intent, purpose, etc. is generally the more liberal method headed up by Breyer and used by Kagan in the opinion of the court.
 
Last edited:
The majority argument seems to be if we overturned his conviction it would undermine our laws, so we wont over turn it. It pays no attention to the fact that maybe these laws are wrong and need to be reworked or discarded.
I would agree with that.

It's the courts job to interpret the law, not worry about the result--even more so when it comes to statutes that can simply go back to the legislature for a fix if the decision has the effect of creating a loophole, as the majority seemed so concerned about.
 
Er...what?

Did you mean to say "5 member majority" or "4 member minority"?

Keep in mind Textualism is Scalia's statutory interpretation philosophy; history, intent, purpose, etc. is generally the more liberal method headed up by Breyer and used by Kagan in the opinion of the court.
4 members of THIS majority (5) were the minority in Heller. Kennedy was on the other side of Heller, but the wrong side of this one.

Your point about Scalia supports mine that one cannot draw lines of textualism or intent to explain this given past behavior or it would leave the justices on opposite sides of their more recent decision.

Further, "congressional intent" was to catch people trying to catch PP's trying to buy guns - that was not accomplished here.

So, there we are, back to the original reason this was decided as it was: "because gun".
 
Last edited:
It's the courts job to interpret the law, not worry about the result--even more so when it comes to statutes that can simply go back to the legislature for a fix if the decision has the effect of creating a loophole, as the majority seemed so concerned about.
I disagree again, their function is to interpret the law - their moral and ethical obligation is justice.

They are a blunt instrument to achieve justice, but if we allow them to lose sight of that and become a grinding machine that kills without conscience because it conforms to their legal logic, then we have failed as a society.

The structure of their decision making is supposed to make it such that it errors on the side of freeing the guilty so that the innocent man cannot be persecuted.

Therein lies the explanation of how it has come to be so frequently that the court must decide between maintaining its legal "logic" and meting out an unjust decision for the individual in front of them or justice.

It no longer errors on our side - it has shifted so far toward the agenda of the state that it now errors on the side of accomplishing the current desire of the state rather than even the "intent" of the legislature who wrote the law in the first place.
 
Last edited:
So, there we are, back to the original reason this was decided as it was: "because gun".

If "because gun" then "Why Heller", "Why MacDonald"?

"Because Kennedy".

This is the right decision about a bad law. Like the OJ verdict was the right verdict for the murdering son of a bitch.


ETA: The first not guilty verdict.
 
Last edited:
If "because gun" then "Why Heller", "Why MacDonald"?

"Because Kennedy".
There is actually a clear answer to that which is that Kennedy wasn't actually on our side in Heller and that Scalia's embrace of "Reasonable restrictions" was a deal with the devil (Kennedy) to get him to agree.

Scalia opened a hole and Kennedy just drove a bus through it to invalidate the protections that incorporation DO provide, but the courts now refuse to respect.

This was actually a theory espoused on NPR by their SCOTUS watcher... Not mine. Though it makes sense to me and explains a great deal.

So, much as with progressives generally, as long as you can write the laws to protect the elite, they don't care how labyrinthinian and oppressive they are - in fact, the more the better because those well connected and financially independent can buy their way through them...
 
Your point about Scalia supports mine that one cannot draw lines of textualism or intent to explain this given past behavior or it would leave the justices on opposite sides of their more recent decision.
Agreed, which is why I can't figure out why you contested my point in #209. There's no way anyone who reasonably read the court's decision could have thought the majority was using a texualist philosophy to interpret the statute at issue.

I disagree again, their function is to interpret the law - their moral and ethical obligation is justice.

They are a blunt instrument to achieve justice, but if we allow them to lose sight of that and become a grinding machine that kills without conscience because it conforms to their legal logic, then we have failed as a society.
I'm sure they would argue their legal logic is the instrument to reach their moral and ethical obligation to justice. Your argument is a good one, but in practice means little.
The structure of their decision making is supposed to make it such that it errors on the side of freeing the guilty so that the innocent man cannot be persecuted.
Hence, Scalia's chiding of the majority on eschewing the rule of lenity.

Therein lies the explanation of how it has come to be so frequently that the court must decide between maintaining its legal "logic" and meting out an unjust decision for the individual in front of them or justice.

It no longer errors on our side - it has shifted so far toward the agenda of the state that it now errors on the side of accomplishing the current desire of the state rather than even the "intent" of the legislature who wrote the law in the first place.
Again, provided that 1) the legislative intent can even be discerned, and 2) you agree that intent is a valid basis for statutory interpretation.

Legislative intent, particularly given modern politics, can be impossible to ascertain. There was one example a few years back when a bill was passed and politicians on either side of the aisle claimed conflicting purposes for the law. Additionally, the reason statutory purpose/intent is such a dirty phrase in the more conservative and libertarian legal circles is due to the fact we hold citizens to be responsible for knowing the law. Therefore, it doesn't matter what the legislators thought they were doing, but what they actually passed. Additionally, statutory purpose and intent gives judges far more leeway surreptitiously reason-back decisions.

Unlike you, I stop short of asserting that happened here. The reason is because I think if one were to use statutory purpose and intent with all it's flaws, one still could have reached the majority's decision without interjecting their own personal policy preferences. Correlation does not always equal causation, and I believe that's the case here with the court's traditional 5-4 split in this case. The result was using the statutory construction and interpretation methods generally favored to each wing of the court, that just happened to lead them to so-called liberal and conservative results.
 
We should start a new thread called 2014 Supreme Court Term at this point. The 2013 term (which ends in may 2014) is done for.

Nothing left to see here at this point. It's now probably time to close this thread. All the 2A-related petitions have been either denied or decided.

We can start a new 2014 SCOTUS thread when the first petition of the next term gets filed.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom