From Fred to Phil.
Namely, Fred Thompson makes it clear he opposes the Justice Department’s brief in Heller.
The Fred Thompson for President, South Carolina bus tour reached Spartanburg today, where the Law & Order TV star candidate fielded questions at Papa’s Breakfast Nook from Charlotte, N.C.’s WBT-AM radio talk show host Jeff Katz.
Asked his opinion of the Second Amendment and the Solicitor General’s request that the DC Circuit Court remand the appeal back to the trial court for “fact-finding”, the lawyer turned Senator from Tennessee said the Bush Administration was “overlawyering” and stated that he opposed remand and that the case should move forward to the U.S. Supreme Court.
h/t: NRO’s The Corner. Go Fred, Go!
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What is really going on here is that the BATFE wants the case remanded so that “reasonable restrictions” on “inherently dangerous” weapons can remain in place in the event that the Supreme Court rules against DC.
What are we talking about here? Machine guns. There was a part of the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act that got slipped in very late at night by an unrecorded voice vote by NJ Rep. Hughes, which outlaws civilian ownership of full auto weapons that weren’t on the NFA list (i.e. registered as being transferrable to qualified civilians) as of May 19, 1986. This appears in law as Title 18, Section 922(o). This case, if the Circuit Court decision is upheld, will outlaw the practice of banning entire classes of weapons as being unconstitutional. It will be specifically enforceable against the federal government (since Congress controls DC and it “lives” there), and IMHO any case brought in opposition to Section 922(o) would result in that odious part of the law being repealed. Result: anyone living in an NFA state would be able to buy a brand-spanking-new M4, M16, M2, Tommy Gun, etc. There would be literally hundreds of thousands sold within a couple of years, millions over the next decade, and the BATFE can’t stomach that idea.
THAT is what is going on here, and I congratulate Fred Thompson for understanding that and for speaking out against it.