U.S. v. Miller comment

Mikeb302000 has a post up about U.S. v. Miller. Comments are moderated so I’m putting my comment (with a couple minor grammar edits) here for safe keeping and better visibility:



Shotguns having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length were not well known as being used by the militia and military. Hence because Miller lawyer was not there to present such evidence he lost.


If Miller had been charged with not registering and paying a tax on a machine gun then he probably would have won. This is because it is well known that “possession or use” of machine guns have a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.

Share

9 thoughts on “U.S. v. Miller comment

  1. His responce:
    “Isn’t saying that Miller would have come out differently if there had been a defense the same as if I question Heller for some reason or other. Do you guys only accept the Supreme Court’s opinions when they suit your agenda?”

    Rather Ironic, as he claims we pick-and-choose Judgments when it best suits us…but he pretends the Miller decision was only about the right to own ALL GUNS, not just military vs. Non-Military.

    Honestly I think Mike is well aware of his irony, circular logic, logical fallacies, and blatant lies, I think he just gets off on drawing comments to his blog. (He used to blog about other things, and his occasional gun posts could only best be described as misinformed).

  2. While your post presents the information and accurately at that, MikeB really does not care about the facts of the situation. Rather, he has been desperately attempting to paint the Supreme Court decisions concerning the Second Amendment as somehow supporting the collectivist interpretation, even though the most-recent decision obviously points to individual-right support.

    Regarding Miller, MikeB does not really care that the firearm was illegal for civilian consumption without a proper tax stamp or not, and when he removes that valuable piece of context from the equation, Miller obviously indicates that ownership of firearms is not an individual right. Sure, that stance is completely illogical, and the court decided no such thing, but that is the case MikeB is trying to make.

    I do not know if MikeB is aware of his intentional misinformation and ignorance or not, but I do know I will no longer feed his trolling tendencies. He is not interested in debate, just a forum to spread his particular lies, and I certainly will not provide him that forum.

  3. I wouldn’t think too hard about Miller, or you’ll need a straitjacket.

  4. Joe, Thanks for cross-posting your comment here and linking back to my site.

    The little bit I’ve learned about the Miller opinion has truly peaked my curiosity. I don’t think too many Supreme Court actions generate such completely opposite reactions. It’s fascinating that both sides of the argument cite this one for support of their ideas.

    I really don’t understand why so many of the pro-gun crowd, you may be an exception, but so many react badly to the very mention of a collective interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. It’s as if they’re personally offended. They resort to name-calling and personal attacks. I don’t understand this because hasn’t this question, collective or individual, been at the very heart of the discussion since the beginning? Haven’t there been intelligent and well-intentioned men arguing on both sides of this one since the beginning?

    Anyway, in spite of what you may have heard from my detractors, I don’t edit or manipulate comments in any way. I delete only those which fail to respect my new commenting policy. And prior to doing that, I asked the commenters to stay within those guidelines many times. When that failed, when the personal attacks became too persistent, I started moderating.

  5. It’s not so much a personal affront as it is incredulity that any educated, intelligent fellow American could hold the belief that there is a “collective right” to a common right–speaking in terms of how it is understood by the other side. (The use of the term “other side” give me pause, since I am in fact referring to the people with which I share this country.)

    A collective right is something otherwise associated with property in Marxist doctrine, translated more accurately as government-owned property. A common right is not tangible property, and I can imagine no means by I which I could share it; if I chose not to exercise it, I don’t forever lose it nor does the state consequently absorb additional powers.

    The thinking in U.S. v. Miller appears to be that the Constitution grants some sort of power to determine which arms are suitable for use by a militia–yet the words remain invisible–but most importantly it (following Congress) assumes that those rights not yet exercised by the states or the people become, by default, federal powers. The Tenth Amendment clearly indicates that this is not the case; the NFA of 1934 is not an amendment to the Constitution, nor would such an amendment nullify the preexisting right, the right to arms being inseparable from the indivisible atom of a right to defend one’s life.

    To argue that the federal government has the power to prohibit arms based on an arbitrary determination of utility simply leaves them with the task of declaring that no arms are suitable; at that point, it is clear that the Second Amendment’s directive against infringement has been violated (that’s understatement–I’m trying not to gag here), and this is what happened to the illegal DC gun prohibition.

  6. Mikeb302000,

    The collective rights view didn’t come into being until early in the 20th Century. See my post on the whole collective/individual rights debate.

    I frequently post comments here that I leave on anti-gun sites because I’ve had them get lost in the bit-bucket so many times. It wasn’t you in particular, just a stereotype applied to you.

  7. Joe, Thanks for that link to your 2006 post including the happy update after Heller.

    All I can say is I’ve got lot to learn about all this.

  8. You are welcome.

    And yes, there is a lot to learn. Sometimes long-time gun owner rights activists forget that we may have spent 10 (15 in my case) years studying all this stuff and it takes a while for others to “absorb” the material. Concepts that are “blindingly obvious” to us are not that clear to others that don’t have all the data from years of study.

Comments are closed.