Tuesday, September 9, 2014

The Gun owner to Black Civil rights movement analogy has gone a bit too far...

It seems that someone glommed onto this section of the US Code,  18 U.S. Code §241, with the idea that it would apply to "the Second Amendment Right".

As if events post-Heller-McDonald haven't shown it was a bad idea to skirt the constitution and reinterpret the Second Amendment so that something which is the subject and deemed "necessary to the security of the free state" is no longer considered to be of any significance.

But, anyway, 10 minutes in a law library with enough legal research skills would show using this provision, 18 U.S. Code §241, to be silly.  After all, it's in a section titled:

18 U.S. Code Chapter 13 - CIVIL RIGHTS


The federal rights which 18 U.S.C. § 241 aims to protect are the following:
  • the right of an arrested person to a trial to resolve the question of his/her guilt;
  • the right of a person charged with a crime to a trial to resolve the question of his/her guilt;
  • the right to testify at a trial;
  • the right to be free from unlawful violence committed under color of state law;
  • the right to travel freely within any of the states of the United States;
  • the right to be provided service in a restaurant or other places of public accommodation without considering the person’s race; the right to worship as a person pleases;
  • the right to vote; and
  • the right to inform federal officials when there has been a violation of federal law.
Note that owning a gun is not part of this list.

Some people found this on findlaw, but didn't bother with looking at the notes, authorities, or caselaw.  With the caselaw putting this seriously in the camp of the black civil rights movement:  United States v. Johnson, 390 U.S. 563 (1968).

Anyway, you are better off going with Cornell's Legal Information Institute's version of this than Findlaw's text since LII gives more useful information for someone who has no idea of what they are doing.  It cites to this under the authorities:
24 CFR - Housing and Urban Development
24 CFR Part 573 - LOAN GUARANTEE RECOVERY FUND
Another mistake people who have no idea of how the law works make is to assume that because something SOUNDS like it may be applicable--it is applicable.

No.  One needs to actually read the law and look at how it is applied before making an uneducated legal opinion.

But, seeing that this comes from Adam Kokesh and Alex Jones.  I'll leave you with Andrew Neil's comment about Jones ("We have an idiot on the programme"):


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