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Starbucks and the Supreme Court
Bob Barr has thoughts on both. Personally, I may buy a terribly overpriced cup of coffee, for the first time in my life.
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If one voluntarily self-disarms or conceals in Starbucks, then Brady et al. will have won without even having to put up a sign!
Sun Tzu would be proud...
In this case, normally thoughtful Barr is wrong.
I don't drink their stuff les because of the pric and more because of teh calorie content... But I never much cared for coffee anyhow.
I really can't stand that guy.
I had a starbucks coffee for $1.40 today and it was great stuff! I don't know why they have this reputation of being overpriced. Yeah they sell other stuff that costs more. So does every other fast food outlet. Yeah I paid probably 40 cents more for coffee there than elsewhere - and it was twice as good as coffee elsewhere. If low quality cheapness were a virtue, we'd all be carrying Hi-Point pistols.
The March 7, 2010 editon of The New York Times has a Bull's Eye news report on the growing grassroots movement for National Open Carry overtaking the NRA's sacred cow for National Reciprocity for Concealed Carry in popularity. The report is amazingly well balanced.
Back in September 2009 I anticipated this Open Carry movement would gain popularity in my blog posting "Applying Social Norms Theory and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to National Open Carry."
From the NYT Report: "Newer, more driven by grass-roots and the Internet than the N.R.A., open-carry groups are also less centralized, less predictable and often more confrontational in their push for gun rights."
That's exactly what it is going to take to win back "National Open Carry" as it once was lawfully exercised in the 1800s. The NRA is the bully against Open Carry. We don't need the NRA standing in our way to actual freedom (see. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Dred Scott case on the right of citizens "to carry arms wherever they went."
Stuffed shirt Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation said "“I’m all for open-carry laws but I don’t think flaunting it is very productive for our cause. It just scares people.”
If exercising your Second Amendment right to openly keep and bear arms in a lawful manner scares the timid folks in society then so be it. Let the timid folks find their own courage and bravado by acclimating them to the resurrected social norm of open carry.
Again, from NYT: "While the N.R.A. is almost always going to support the increased deregulation of guns, Professor Weisberg said, the organization keeps its distance from open-carry advocacy because it does not want to distract attention from its higher priority of promoting the right to carry concealed weapons."
I have proof positive that the NRA does NOT support Open Carry! because they refused to help me with my Second Amendment case for open carry in interstate travel from a U.S. merchant seaman's point of view in 2002.
I am now preparing a comparison analysis of current events in the United States and current events on the high seas concerning piracy as both scenarios have identical arguments. Arguments I have been pushing since 2002 but have been ignored, rebuffed, insulted, harassed, and threated by private citizens and federal law enforcement!
I am once again preparing another lawsuit for Second Amendment rights for American merchant seamen but this time, with all that I have learned since 2002 I am making this lawsuit an Admiralty/Maritime lawsuit which I should have done in 2002 but didn't know anything about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure back then. I am including civil rights claims, RICO Act claims and maritime treaty claims. I would include human rights claims but that would excessively expand the thickness of my lawsuit.
The day will come (if I win this lawsuit) when I can say, "I told you so" to everyone that disputed my advocacy for National Open Carry. And even if I don't win, National Open Carry will be resurrected by other means buy other people.
Oops! Typo: "National Open Carry will be resurrected by other means 'by' other people."
Don,
I think it will be within the next two years, we will have several circuits ruling on carry. Look for one in the 2nd, 7th and 9th to start things off. Possibly 3-4 in at the state level.
BIG QUESTION: If, by the Grace of God, SCOTUS does overturn The Slaughterhouse Cases and resurrects the Privileges and Immunities Clause in McDonald they will have to resolve the State Action Doctrine as to the question of enforcing constitutional rights against "Private Actors (i.e., gun-free zones at American or Transnational Corporations and small business establishments" called "The Horizontal Direct Effect Doctrine" of some European countries, notably Germany and Ireland, if I'm not mistaken.
See Stephen Gardbaum, The 'Horizontal Effect' of Constitutional Rights, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 102, pp. 388-459, 2003.
See also Stephen Gardbaum, Where the (State) Action Is, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 4, No. 4, October 2006.
And see Stephen Gardbaum, The Myth and the Reality of American Constitutional Exceptionalism, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 107, No. 3, 2008.
Compare Eric Engle, Third Party Effect of Fundamental Rights (Drittwirkung), Harvard University - Harvard Law School; Universität Bremen, Hanse Law Review, Vol 5, No. 2, pp. 165-173, 2009
The above articles are possibly building a foundation to overturn the State Action Doctrine to expand constitutional rights enforcement against Private Actors (i.e., no more small business companies or American or transnational corporations imposing gun-free zones on their property).
If SCOTUS overturns The Slaughterhouse Cases and resurrects the Privileges and Immunities Clause a whole new can of worms will be opened up for Tort, civil rights, constitutional rights, and maybe even human rights litigation.
What follows is perfect ammunition for National Open Carry through the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
Louis Fisher, Interpreting the Constitution: More than What the Supreme Court Say, Extensions: A Journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research Service and Studies Center (Library of Congress, Special Orders) (Fall 2008);
"It is a misconception to think that the protection of individual rights depends exclusively or even primarily on the courts. The struggle for rights generally comes from individuals who decide to oppose government abuse or challenge conventional legal doctrines, often at great cost to themselves." [Louis Fisher, The Constitution and 9/11: Recurring Threats to America’s Freedoms (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 1-28.]
...
No single institution, including the judiciary, has the final say on the meaning of the Constitution. A complex process of give and take and mutual respect among the branches permits the unelected Court to function safely and effectively in a democratic society. An open process enables political institutions and citizens to expose deficiencies, hold excesses in check, and build a consensus that can command public support. An open process leads to public participation and respect for the Constitution, giving it a legitimacy and vitality that could not be achieved under a system of judicial supremacy.
In 2008, Linda Greenhouse summed up 30 years of legal reporting for the New York Times. What she observed over that period was not a Supreme Court occupying a dominant position in deciding constitutional law, but rather a process in which justices engaged “in the ceaseless American dialogue about constitutional values.” Judicial rulings were not accepted as the “final voice” about a dispute. Elected leaders at the national and state level responded by trying to do indirectly what the Court had just said could not be done directly. The result was a “constitutional Ping-Pong match.” The Court, she cautioned, “can only do so much. It can lead, but the country does not necessarily follow.” The Court often found itself following nonjudicial decisions. It “ratifies or consolidates changes rather than propelling it.” As a result, justices “live in constant dialogue with other institutions, formal and informal.” Judicial rulings can collide with policies adopted by legitimate participants outside the Court. On those occasions “it is often the court that eventually retreats when it finds itself out of sync with the prevailing mood.” [Linda Greenhouse, “2,691 Decisions,” New York Times, July 13, 2008, WK 1,4.]
CONFIRMING:
Larry Kramer, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review, Oxford University Press, USA (June 10, 2004)
Actually, it isn't nearly as pricy as I remember it being - just avoid all those fancy concoctions..:-)