Welcome to this issue of the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter.  This is the monthly communication from my Web site at www.SaveTheGuns.com.  Thank you for reading this month's issue and for passing it on to a friend.

There has been much talk about the Parker V District of Columbia case.  But most pro-gunners do not have the patience or free time available to read and absorb the seventy-five (75) page Parker decision by the United States District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

As of this writing, the name of the case has changed to District of Columbia V Heller and has been appealed to the United States Supreme Court.  It has not been determined yet if it will be heard as of this writing.  The Supreme Court of the United States will decide on November 9th whether or not they will hear the Heller case or let the Parker case stand.

I have the full Parker decision available now online if you care to read it.  If not, then...

                                                                                                                        Read on...

SaveTheGuns.com Quotes of the Month

"As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality..." (emphasis mine)
Article III Massachusetts State Constitution

"I was pleased to announce that the City of New York filed a lawsuit against two dozen major gun manufacturers and distributors. This is an industry which profits from the suffering of innocent people. The lawsuit is intended to end the free pass that the gun industry has enjoyed for a very long time, which has resulted in too many avoidable deaths."
Mayor Rudy Guiliani Source: NYC.gov press release, "Lawsuit" Jun 26, 2000

"Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts. These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people."
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2002 while signing a law in Massachusetts to permanently ban many semi-auto firearms as Governor of Massachusetts.

"It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind.  Concessions are nothing but a new form of war."
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), First Leader of the Soviet Union

"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country."
Daniel Webster  (1782-1852), US Senator

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."
Charles Eliot Norton  (1827-1908) American scholar

SaveTheGuns.com Gun Safety Tip of the Month

November's gun safety tip of the month should really be common sense.  I apologize if any of my readers have tried this, but it's incredibly reckless and frankly it is a witless thing to try.

A member of a gun club in Massachusetts inserted a .357 magnum cartridge into a .45 ACP semi-auto pistol and tried to see if it would fire correctly.  Well, it seems that he found out pretty quickly how stupid it was.  A piece of the pistol's slide broke off during the discharge and hit him in the forehead sending him off to the local hospital to close up the gash.

Never use ammunition in any firearm that its not intended for!

Please contribute this month if you have not done so before.

NRA Membership Recruiter Corner

http://membership.nrahq.org/default.asp?campaignid=XR017807

As you may already know, SaveTheGuns.com is one of thousands of NRA Membership Recruiters across America.  As an NRA Recruiter, I'm officially a subcontractor for the National Rifle Association of America and not an employee.

I make a small commission whenever you join, renew or give an NRA Membership as a gift.  Please use the link above for all your NRA Membership needs.  If your NRA Membership expires within four months, I encourage you to renew your membership early using my convenient link that lands right on the appropriate page at the National Rifle Association.

I have written a Web page with more information on membership in the National Rifle Association.  It has a list of benefits as well as membership options and prices.  For your convenience the above NRA Membership link is there as well.

http://www.savetheguns.com/nra_membership.htm

P.S.  Remember, my link goes directly to the NRA Membership check out page.  Using my special link is a lot more convenient than trying to find the page yourself.

As of this issue of the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter, I've recruited 141 NRA Members through this link.

I want to be one of the top NRA Recruiters for the nine (9) state northeast district of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Please use my convenient links for all your NRA membership needs and pass it around to others.

Contributions to SaveTheGuns.com

Please use the following convenient link to securely use a credit card online to give SaveTheGuns.com a voluntary contribution:

http://www.amazon.com/paypage/P3GXU3PIEM5ST1

To write me a personal check, it's almost as easy!

Write out a personal check made payable to Marc H. Richardson.  Sign it and put it into a stamped envelope addressed to:

Marc H. Richardson
P.O. Box 424
Shapleigh, ME 04076-0424

My contributors have kept this informative Web site going for more than seven years.  Become a contributor today... please?  Active contributors are the only thing keeping www.SaveTheGuns.com online.

Thank you very much for your support!

$95.00 in contributions were received since the last issue.  Thanks Shlomo, Joe, Art and Matt!  The thousands of new gun owners getting essential gun safety tips every month thank you as well!

Item of the Month

It's not gun related, but it is time to start thinking about winter again.  This 15" path electric snow shovel is $174.99 and has free shipping.  It's perfect for the walkway, runs on electricity and will save your back in the process.

Minuteman Monthly Newsletter Aiming Point

In the outside chance that you're not at all familiar with the Parker case, let me begin by giving you some background information.  The case began in 2004, a lower court judge said the plaintiffs did not have a constitutional right to own handguns in Washington D.C.. The plaintiffs include residents of high-crime neighborhoods who wanted the guns for protection.

They were seeking some relief from the 1976 handgun ban in Washington D.C..  It required residents to keep firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.  The law practically banned handguns and a resident needed a very hard to obtain license even to move a handgun from one room to another room within the home.

In the Parker case there were six appellants, Shelly Parker, Tracey Ambeau, Tom G. Palmer, and George Lyon who want to possess handguns in their respective homes for self-defense. Gillian St. Lawrence owns a registered shotgun, but wishes to keep it assembled and unhindered by a trigger lock or similar device. Finally, Dick Heller, who is a District of Columbia special police officer
permitted to carry a handgun on duty as a guard at the Federal Judicial Center, wishes to possess one at his home.

The Parker case that is now being appealed to the Supreme Court Of The United States (SCOTUS) has been changed to D.C. V Heller, who was the last appellant I mentioned, who is a D.C. special police officer.

Essentially, the appellants claim a right to possess what they describe as “functional firearms,” by which they mean ones that could be “readily accessible to be used effectively when necessary” for self-defense in the home. They are not asserting a right to carry such weapons outside their homes. Nor are they challenging the District’s authority per se to require the registration of firearms.

What happened was that the lower court case refused the appellant's wishes and the residents appealed to the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia.  The appellants were successful in the Parker Case.  They won and the higher court found that the District of Columbia's 1976 handgun ban was unconstitutional on Second Amendment grounds.  The finding basically said that the 1976 firearm ban in Washington D.C. did not jive with the Bill of Rights.  Of course we pro-gunners already knew that, but after thirty one years, somebody finally backed us up.

The full decision in the case is more than 75 pages in length.  The court came to the same conclusions that we in the pro-gun community have had for most of our lives.  That is that the Founding Fathers knew what they wrote and meant what they said.

I will not even attempt to post all seventy five pages of the Parker case here.  I will only cherry-pick a collection of paragraphs that I think are important to take note of.  If I posted the entire decision in this important case in this newsletter, I'm quite certain that almost no subscriber would benefit from it.  However, just in case you prefer to read the entire case, I have posted it online.

Below are a mere sampling of paragraphs from the Parker case.  They are not necessarily related to one another and should not be read as such.  These are not nearly the only interesting paragraphs in the full Parker decision.  If these excerpts prompt your interest, I encourage you to take the time and look at the full document to get a better grasp of where our cherished Second Amendment might be going.  Furthermore, you should take a moment to think about what might happen if the SCOTUS agrees to hear the D.C. v Heller case and they choose to reverse Parker and then it's open season on the right to keep and bear arms as we know it.  Think about it... open season on your gun rights in case of a SCOTUS reversal...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Excerpts From Parker

{Tenth Amendment} “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”—indicates that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of distinguishing between “the people,” on the one hand, and “the states,” on the other. The natural reading of “the right of the people” in the Second Amendment would accord with usage elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The District’s argument, on the other hand, asks us to read “the people” to mean some subset of individuals such as “the organized militia” or “the people who are engaged in militia service,” or perhaps not any individuals at all.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


When we look at the Bill of Rights as a whole, the setting of the Second Amendment reinforces its individual nature. The Bill of Rights was almost entirely a declaration of individual rights, and the Second Amendment’s inclusion therein strongly indicates that it, too, was intended to protect personal liberty.  The collective right advocates ask us to imagine that the First Congress situated a sui generis states’ right among a catalogue of cherished individual liberties without comment. We believe the canon of construction known as noscitur a sociis applies here. Just as we would read an ambiguous statutory term in light of its context, we should read any supposed ambiguities in
the Second Amendment in light of its context. Every other provision of the Bill of Rights, excepting the Tenth, which speaks explicitly about the allocation of governmental power, protects rights enjoyed by citizens in their individual capacity. The Second Amendment would be an inexplicable aberration if it were not read to protect individual rights as well.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The District insists that the phrase “keep and bear Arms” should be read as purely military language, and thus indicative of a civic, rather than private, guarantee. The term “bear Arms”
is obviously susceptible to a military construction. But it is not accurate to construe it exclusively so.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


One authority cited by the District has attempted to equate “keep” with “keep up,” a term that had been used in phrases such as “keep up a standing army” or, as in the Articles of Confederation, “every state shall keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia . . . .” See Wills, supra, at 66. The argument that “keep” as used in “the right of the people to keep . . . Arms”
shares a military meaning with “keep up” as used in “every state shall keep up a well regulated militia” mocks usage, syntax, and common sense. Such outlandish views are likely advanced
because the plain meaning of “keep” strikes a mortal blow to the collective right theory.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


We think “keep” is a straightforward term that implies ownership or possession of a functioning weapon by an individual for private use. Emerson, 270 F.3d at 231 & n.31; accord Silveira, 328 F.3d at 573-74 (Kleinfeld, J.). The term “bear arms,” when viewed in isolation, might be thought ambiguous; it could have a military cast. But since “the people” and “keep” have obvious individual and private meanings, we think those words resolve any supposed ambiguity in the term “bear arms.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


[T]he Second Congress unambiguously required popular participation. The important point, of course, is that the popular nature of the militia is consistent with an individual right to keep
and bear arms: Preserving an individual right was the best way to ensure that the militia could serve when called.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The Amendment does not protect “the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms,” but rather “the right of the people.” The operative clause, properly read, protects the ownership and use of weaponry beyond that needed to preserve the state militias. Again, we point out that if the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to imagine that they would have chosen the language they did. We
therefore take it as an expression of the drafters’ view that the people possessed a natural right to keep and bear arms, and that the preservation of the militia was the right’s most salient political benefit—and thus the most appropriate to express in a political document.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The Federalists who dominated the First Congress offered the Second Amendment’s preamble to palliate Anti-federalist concerns about the continued existence of the popular militia. But neither the Federalists nor the Anti-federalists thought the federal government had the power to
disarm the people. This is evident from the ratification debates, where the Federalists relied on the existence of an armed populace to deflect Anti-federalist criticism that a strong federal
government would lead to oppression and tyranny. Anti-federalists acknowledged the argument, but insisted that an armed populace was not enough, and that the existence of a popular militia should also be guaranteed.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Anti-federalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The modern handgun—and for that matter the rifle and long-barreled shotgun—is undoubtedly quite improved over its colonial-era predecessor, but it is, after all, a lineal descendant of that founding-era weapon, and it passes Miller’s standards. Pistols certainly bear “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” They are also in “common use” today, and probably far more so than in 1789. Nevertheless, it has been suggested by some that only colonial-era firearms (e.g., single-shot pistols) are covered by the Second Amendment. But just as the First Amendment free speech clause covers modern communication devices unknown to the founding generation, e.g., radio and television, and the Fourth Amendment protects telephonic conversation from a “search,” the Second Amendment protects the possession of the modern-day equivalents of the colonial pistol.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Personal characteristics, such as insanity or felonious conduct, that make gun ownership dangerous to society also make someone unsuitable for service in the militia. Cf. D.C. Code § 49-401 (excluding “idiots, lunatics, common drunkards, vagabonds, paupers, and persons convicted of any infamous crime” from militia duty). On the other hand, it does not follow that a person who is unsuitable for militia service has no right to keep and bear arms. A physically disabled person, for instance, might not be able to participate in even the most rudimentary organized militia. But this person would still have the right to keep and bear arms, just as men over the age of forty-five and women would have that right, even though our nation has traditionally
excluded them from membership in the militia.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


D.C. Code § 7-2502.0218 prohibits the registration of a pistol not registered in the District by the applicant prior to 1976.19 The District contends that since it only bans one type of firearm, “residents still have access to hundreds more,” and thus its prohibition does not implicate the Second Amendment because it does not threaten total disarmament. We think that argument frivolous. It could be similarly contended that all firearms may be banned so long as sabers were permitted. Once it is determined—as we have done—that handguns are “Arms” referred to in the Second Amendment, it is not open to the District to ban them.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Finally, there is the District’s requirement under D.C. Code § 7-2507.02 that a registered firearm be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by trigger lock or similar device, unless such firearm is kept at [a] place of business, or while being used for lawful recreational purposes within the District of Columbia.” This provision bars Heller from lawfully using a handgun for self protection in the home because the statute allows only for use of a firearm during recreational activities. As appellants accurately point out, § 7-2507.02 would reduce a pistol to a useless hunk of “metal and springs.” Heller does not appear to challenge the requirement that a gun ordinarily be kept unloaded or even that a trigger lock be attached under some circumstances. He simply contends that he is entitled to the possession of a “functional” firearm to be employed in case of
a threat to life or limb. The District responds that, notwithstanding the broad language of the Code, a judge would likely give the statute a narrowing construction when confronted with a self-defense justification. That might be so, but judicial lenity cannot make up for the unreasonable restriction of a constitutional right. Section 7-2507.02, like the bar on carrying a pistol within the home, amounts to a complete prohibition on the lawful use of handguns for self-defense. As such, we hold it unconstitutional.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded. Since there are no material questions of fact in dispute, the district court is ordered to grant summary judgment to Heller consistent with the prayer for relief contained in appellants’ complaint.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I hope you enjoyed these excerpts from the Parker Case.  I hope you have a bit better understanding of the case and how important it is to continue to watch this case as the SCOTUS decides whether or not they wish to hear it or not.

At this writing, it's my opinion that the SCOTUS will decide not to hear the D.C. V Heller case, even though it is precisely why we have a Supreme Court in the first place.  The Founding Fathers envisioned a Supreme Court that would settle differences between lower courts as well as be the final word on how the Constitution applies to law.

In my humble opinion, the SCOTUS should hear the case and concur with the D.C. District Court of Appeals.  This would elevate the Heller Case to a precedent setting jewel in the crown of Second Amendment activists throughout the country.  Each and every gun control law in the country would have to be held up to the light emanating from the confirmed view that our right to keep and bear arms says what it means and means what it says.

If this happens, it could, over time give law abiding and honest gun owners some serious relief from both state and federal gun control schemes.  It could and probably would serve as a virtual razor-wire fence around the Second Amendment in future congresses and in state legislatures.

But I do not think the SCOTUS has the courage or the will to hear this important case.  I think that the Parker Case will stand.  I think that Washington D.C. residents will regain some form of rights to keep and bear arms under the most watchful and strict eyes of the Washington D.C. Police Department.

I'll leave you with one last thought.  If the SCOTUS hears the D.C. V Heller Case and reverses the Parker Case there will be an uproar from America's gun owners that has not been seen before.  If the SCOTUS tells America's firearm owners that they have no rights at all, it would create pandemonium in the gun owning community.  Tens of millions of gun owners who were sitting on their hands doing nothing at all, would suddenly become Second Amendment warriors.  Perhaps then 95% of America's gun owners would be active instead of 95% of them being inactive.  But then again, it could be too late by then.

JOIN OR REJOIN THE NRA TODAY

Closing Comments

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter.  I encourage you to pass it on.

You may use this newsletter as you see fit.  You may post it, blog it, print it, forward it and publish it.  The only thing I ask is that somewhere in your material, make sure the URL www.SaveTheGuns.com appears prominently.

Thanks,
Marc Richardson
Owner/Founder
www.SaveTheGuns.com

"Congress have no power to disarm the
militia. Their swords, and every other
terrible implement of the soldier, are the
birth-right of an American..."

Tench Coxe

To opt-out of further e-mails from www.SaveTheGuns.com 
simply reply with "Unsubscribe MMM" in the subject line.