Gun Political Issues Megathread. (Control for or Against?)
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bintananth
behind a desk
The SC can rule in completely unpredictable ways. Take Bostock v. Clayton County, Goergia.
Gorsuch, a Trump Appointee, wrote the majority opinion saying that the word "sex" in the Civil Rights act is broad enough to include gender identity and sexual orientation on list of things an employer can't take into consideration when making employment decisions.
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth by Religious conservatives about how they'd been "betrayed" after that ruling.
LindyAF
Well-known member
I mean “sometimes Republicans pick a bad SC nominee and he fucks us” isn’t exactly woooo so random. That’s happened a shit ton, arguably more times than not in the recent past. Stevens, Souter, Connors, Kennedy, Roberts...
Could well happen again here, if that’s what you mean, but that’s hardly “completely unpredictable.”
Could well happen again here, if that’s what you mean, but that’s hardly “completely unpredictable.”
LindyAF
Well-known member
Just going off past probabilities, IMO it’s pretty likely that at least one of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett turns out to be a bad pick who screws us over. Or that on any given issue at least one of them is unreliable.
Obviously I’m hoping not, but IMO relying on the courts is a mistake.
Obviously I’m hoping not, but IMO relying on the courts is a mistake.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
The reason is literally "You would not have had the problem if they were the opposite sex and no other differences were present". It's a matter of these things being logically implied by not being allowed to discriminate based on sex, because they're problems solely because of "mismatching" sex-related properties, which the Civil Rights Act was intended to stop to begin with.
You would not have a problem with Adam being with Bob if Adam were instead Eve and there were no other changes, therefor the Civil Rights Act covers it because your problem is specifically based on the sex of the subject. This is the problem with blindly expecting textualists to support your positions, the literal meaning of words is not always on your side. And with originalists, there's plenty to point to in law that still won't support your positions!
...Really, proper legal reasoning isn't going to satisfy anyone because the legal system is a big patchwork of competing influences that makes every possible way of reading it consistently run into at least one thing it disagrees with any given major political group.
bintananth
behind a desk
I meant "completely unpredictable" in the sense that legal scholors who follow the SC generally have some idea of which way the court is going to rule on a particular case but every once in awhile you get a "Where the hell did that come from?" ruling which confuses even them.
bintananth
behind a desk
If I remember the ruling correctly he also points out that his opinion is effectively the unintended consequence of a Southern Racist getting sex added to list of reasons you can't discriminate to the bill which became the Civil Rights Act in an attempt to scupper the whole thing.
Kavanaugh I think is the least likely one to fuck us over. Being falsly accused of rape under oath with the person who went after you getting off scot free dispite an increasing amount of evidence that she lied once again under oath tends to sour you on the left. The dems made an enemy for life on that one.
LindyAF
Well-known member
Eh, I hope so but he seemed the least solid from a judicial ideology perspective, pre-nomination, as at least IIRC of the three he was the one most toward judicial conservatism rather than originalism.
All three have aspects of them that are encouraging and aspects that are warning signs, and I'm not sure which ones will prove to be relevant.
LindyAF
Well-known member
This reasoning is ridiculous, as "originalism" is always defined as basing their interpretation on the "original public meaning." The idea that the original public meaning of the civil rights act was understood as legalizing homosexual marriage or mandating treating trans-identified males as women is laughable. Of note, no judge claiming to rule based on original public meaning ruled in favor of declaring restrictions on homosexual marriage in violation of the Civil Rights Act, and doing so would additionally be inherently nonsensical as federal law similarly did not recognize homosexual marriage, and both DOMA and the tax code being more recent than the Civil Rights Act, would overrule it. The judges who did rule in favor of declaring failure to recognize homosexual marriage as unconstitutional did so for reasons of constitutional vagaries, emanations, and penumbras, and for desire for praise and favorable treatment in progressive-written history, as is usual in cases such as this.
Textualism is similarly generally defined as "ordinary meaning," that they "look at the statutory structure and hear the words as they would sound in the mind of a skilled, objectively reasonable user of words." There is no ordinary, skilled, or objective interpretation of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex as legalizing homosexual marriage or as mandating treatment of trans-identified males as women. There is only the sort of contrived nonsense as in your example. No ordinary person reading the law and objectively taking the plain meaning without political motivation would arrive at that conclusion.
LindyAF
Well-known member
Back on the subject of guns, the ATF has renewed it's attempts to enact de facto legislation that pistols equipped with a brace are short barreled rifles via proposed rule ATF 2021R-08. This would criminalize firearms that are commonly used by millions of law abiding gun owners for a variety of recreational and defensive purposes, which the ATF has previously explicitly stated are legally, and for which the ATF has only cited two crimes being committed with.
If you are writing your own comment, make sure to write ATF 2021R-08 in your comment, as comments that do not use that phrase may be discarded. If you do own a stabilizing brace I'm not sure whether or not you should mention that in the comment regarding personal impact, because the comment does have to have your name attached to be read IIRC. Comments are now open here.
GOA has a pre-prepared comment here, that you can make any additions you'd like to, if you're so inclined.
If you are writing your own comment, make sure to write ATF 2021R-08 in your comment, as comments that do not use that phrase may be discarded. If you do own a stabilizing brace I'm not sure whether or not you should mention that in the comment regarding personal impact, because the comment does have to have your name attached to be read IIRC. Comments are now open here.
GOA has a pre-prepared comment here, that you can make any additions you'd like to, if you're so inclined.
That's the difference between originalism and textualism. Originalism is original time public meaning of the statute. Textualism is original time public meaning of the words of the statute. Originalism cares about what was intended by the author, textualism only cares what the author wrote. Gorbachev is a committed textualist, so you ended up with a textualist ruling. (Along with a pretty good argument that one can't apply basic originalism because the section's author didn't intend for the law to pass).
As for which judge is most reliable, I'd go Gorsuch then Barrett, with Kavanaugh a maybe. There's some good discussion by court watchers on the Volokh Conspiracy, and Josh Blackman, a Con Law professor IIRC, is alway skeptical of Kavanaugh.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
This would be the part that's important. You cannot uphold the forbiddance of state discrimination based on sex while retaining mandating the sex of participants in a government-backed contract of the secular legal categorization of marriage. It is not the bald-faced meaning as understood by the time, but it is the literal meaning of those words, even at the time. It just took decades for somebody to take that logical conclusion of the structure to the bench.
How is forbidding homosexual participating in the irrelious state institution of marriage not discriminating based on sex? What is the problem apart from the sex of the participants? Explain how it isn't a matter of the sex of the participants. The issues are a wide variety of surrounding cultural norms that have zero presence in the relevant law. And since the section was an admitted poison pill, you can't go originalist, because the intent was for the bill to not be passed!
The transgender part is the far more obvious matter of a male proclaiming to be and behaving similarly to a woman being treated differently from a female being... Well, treating them differently for similar behavior on the basis of sex. Within the space where discrimination is criminalized, you cannot treat them differently if they are behaving similarly, and so transgender persons making attempts at "passing" as the other sex must be treated the same for matters discrimination is forbidden in.
Stay on topic
Please continue talk about Bostock here.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
As I understand/read things (could be wrong), comments require the 'ATF 2021R-08' be referenced and have a name and mailing address included to qualify for official review/potential-response.
Which is kind of a shitty level of self-exposure to put people under for anything publicly-available on the internet. But it is what it is.
I'm poking at a lengthier comment to make and would encourage others to do the same (since, last I checked, there is somewhat of a dearth of 'fuck you fedboys' pathos being expressed so hitting the other side of the spectrum seems worthwhile), but the GOA's prepared statement isn't bad for a starter and general-purpose expression of disfavor.
Don't just copy the GOA's though, or they don't need extra time to del with your response. Try to make it as different and unique as possible, and leave out profanity.
bintananth
behind a desk
I like to think that most cops are good people doing a thankless job. They usually don't make the news unless they've screwed up in some newsworthy way. You're never going to hear about the ones who do stuff like giving a homeless man her lunch instead of a citation unless you happen to know the homeless man and he feels like sharing the story.
Except you do hear about them, people just don't pay attention to it on a national level most of the time.
I used to believe most cops were good people like you do, and I think it is a rather thankless job many times.
However, like with many things, the Wu Flu exposed the corruption of America's LEO agencies.
Now...now I think for every good cop in the force, we have a dozen officers more loyal to their paycheck than the Constitution, a few using it as a stepping stone to more power, and few using it so they can legally act as bullies.
And that's before you get to the Federal level, where the shady shit the FBI has been linked to just keeps growing.
This is part of why I have accepted we live in a banana republic now, because the facades have all come off over the last year or so.
The FBI didn't become shady it started that way and stayed that way.