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The
Below Comments Relate to this Newslink:
Licenses to exercise constitutional rights
Submitted by:
Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com
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A commenter on a recent thread suggested that, if the government can require licenses or permits to possess a gun — even licenses that are available to all people who have Second Amendment rights — then the government would have a similar power as to other rights, such as the right to speak. Another commenter suggested that the difference in treatment between guns and speech stems simply from an unprincipled gun exception from “ordinary constitutional law.” (I use the term “licenses” and “permits” interchangeably here.)
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Comment by:
neilevan
(5/16/2015)
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“The Constitution of these United States is the supreme law of the land. Any law that is repugnant to the Constitution is null and void of law.” (Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US 137)
“An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.” (Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425)
“No state shall convert a liberty into a privilege, license it, and attach a fee to it.” (Murdock vs. Pennsylvania, 319 US 105)
“If the state converts a liberty into a privilege, the citizen can engage in the right with impunity.” (Shuttlesworth vs. Birmingham, Ala., 373 US 262) |
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QUOTES
TO REMEMBER |
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. — Alexis de Tocqueville |
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