Brady Bunch Opposes Alito, Water is Wet
The Brady Bunch released a presser opposing Alito’s nomination:
Judge Alito’s nomination poses serious dangers to the safety of our communities, our families, and our children, as evidenced by his troubling dissent in U.S. vs. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3rd Cir. 1996). In that case, Judge Alito argued that the federal machine gun ban amounted to an unconstitutional exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. Alito attempted to erect arbitrary hurdles to Congressional efforts to reduce the availability of machine guns to the criminal element.
[snip]
In June 2005, the Supreme Court issued its latest ruling on Congressional power under the Commerce Clause in Gonzales vs. Raich, rejecting the theory advanced in Judge Alito’s Rybar dissent. Six Justices, including Justice Scalia, sustained the application of federal drug laws to intrastate medical marijuana use. Based on this ruling, the Supreme Court vacated a 2-1 ruling in the Ninth Circuit that had declared the machine gun ban to be unconstitutional.
Nevermind that, at the time, Alito applied the most recent SCOTUS ruling on the matter and the other two justices disregarded it. More:
Machine guns are fully automatic weapons that have been heavily regulated since 1934. They fire continuously with one pull of the trigger and can discharge hundreds of rounds in seconds. In 1986, President Reagan signed a federal law banning the manufacture of machine guns for the civilian market and banning the transfer and possession of machine guns not lawfully possessed before May 19, 1986. These “grandfathered” machine guns remain subject to strict registration, possession, transfer, and taxation requirements.
Wow! Did the Brady Bunch, for once, correctly represent a Federal gun law? Too bad they spent so much time obfuscating supposed assault weapon with machine guns.
December 21st, 2005 at 1:40 pm
“Machine guns are fully automatic weapons that have been heavily regulated since 1934. They fire continuously with one pull of the trigger and can discharge hundreds of rounds in seconds. In 1986, President Reagan signed a federal law banning the manufacture of machine guns for the civilian market and banning the transfer and possession of machine guns not lawfully possessed before May 19, 1986. These “grandfathered” machine guns remain subject to strict registration, possession, transfer, and taxation requirements.”
That really sounds like something any of the various gun-bloggers might have written back when the assault weapon ban was expiring. I’m really, really suprised it came from the brady bunch.
I’m too shocked by their coherence to say anything…