How to cancel your NRA membership

[vvvvvvv]

I have to agree with glocktogo,why would anyone want to cancel their NRA membership. I honestly believe that without NRA we would have already lost most of our gun rights.

We did lose many gun rights with their help in 1934 and 1968.

We also lost an opportunity in McDonald for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to be considered an immunity of being a United States citizen. The NRA, as they have in other cases, supported going the Due Process route. According to Heller, McDonald, and the NRA through their support, the only gun right that is protected by the Second Amendment is the right to own a handgun for self defense within the home.

I wrote this last night, but decided that it was good enough to post on my blog, so I posted it there first.

(I apologize for previously referring to the Privileges OR Immunities clause as "Privileges AND Immunities". I went to public-k skool. You'll see why I apologize later.)

Prior to the introduction of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights applied only to the Federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment brought about the idea of "incorporation" of the Bill of Rights against the States.

Purists, that is those who believe that the Fourteenth Amendment (and others) is an absurdity, argue that the Fourteenth Amendment itself is against the idea that the founding fathers had for our Constitution.

A key phrase to keep in mind from the Constitution is "in order to form a more perfect union". This is the founding fathers admitting that the Constitution, as written, is not a perfect document but rather the best that could be fathomed at the time, and is also why a reasonable process to amend the Constitution as necessary was laid out in Article V. The War of Northern Aggression brought to light that maybe it was necessary to incorporate the Bill of Rights against the states.

The Fourteenth Amendment offered us two paths to incorporate the Bill of Rights. Path One is through the Privileges or Immunities clause, which reads "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States". Path Two is through the Due Process clause, which reads "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

The Slaughter-House cases effectively gutted the ability of the Privileges or Immunities clause to provide a path for incorporation of any Rights against the states. In Slaughter-House, the Court held that the Privileges or Immunities clause only applied to those Rights "which owe their existence to the Federal government, its National character, its Constitution, or its laws". Therefore, post-Slaughter-House, you would have to consider the right to keep and bear arms a Right granted by the government rather than a natural right in order to be able to argue for incorporation under the Privileges or Immunities clause. I'm not so sure that most here (including I) would like to take a position in that direction.

However, "Virtually no serious modern scholar-left, right, and center- thinks that this [interpretation] is a plausible reading of the Amendment" (Amar, Substance and Method in the Year 2000, 28 Pepperdine L. Rev. 601, 631, n. 178 (2001), p. 8 of plurality opinion). But even with multiple citations such as the one in the previous sentence, Justice Alito went on to say "We see no need to reconsider that interpretation here. For many decades, the question of the rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against state infringement has been analyzed under the Due Process Clause of that Amendment and not under the Privileges or Immunities Clause. We therefore decline to disturb the Slaughter-House holding."

In other words, while scholars have a consensus that Slaughter-House is extremely flawed and should be revisited, we don't want to touch it. My thinking is that this may have been a compromise to get Justice Kennedy to vote in favor of incorporation. At least Justice Thomas had some balls.

To not revisit Slaughter-House is kind of disturbing because Slaughter-House arguably did not directly involve any Right enumerated in the Constitution.

Due Process does not incorporate a Right based on the fact that it is enumerated in the Constitution, but rather that it is required by the very definition of "Due Process" which may change over time depending on who is seated in the Supreme Court. Due Process is not the route that you want any Right incorporated, but unfortunately it is available as the most narrow path toward incorporation. Even Justice Frankfurter went so far as to say in Rochin v. California that only those Rights enumerated which would "shock the conscience" if not incorporated against the states should be incorporated.

So, judging by your wording in your third paragraph, do you believe that the right to keep and bear arms is a Privilege, and thus a Right that is granted by the Constitution, rather than a natural right of man? That is the only way that the Privileges or Immunities clause would apply without revisiting Slaughter-House as suggested by Justice Thomas.

As Justice Thomas pointed out on pp. 49-50 of his concurrence, "The record is scant that the public understood the Clause to make the Federal Government 'a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States' the Slaughter-House majority feared." Furthermore, Justice Swayne made clear in his dissent in Slaughter-House that "The citizen of a State has the same fundamental rights as a citizen of the United States, and also certain others, local in their character, arising from his relation to the State, and in addition, those which be long to the citizen of the United States, he being in that relation also. There may thus be a double citizenship, each having some rights peculiar to itself. It is only over those which belong to the citizen of the United States that the category here in question throws the shield of its protection." This is clearly the direction that we must go to overturn Slaughter-House and fully resuscitate the Privileges or Immunities clause. Justice Thomas made the first step for us; now we need a case (or two) that will consider his opinion as controlling from McDonald.

We can move on to Cruikshank, if you wish, which further neutered the ability of the Privileges or Immunities clause, especially since it held that the Second Amendment is not a Privilege of American citizenship. But if one studies Slaughter-House and Cruikshank, it comes to light that they centered on only one part of that clause: Privilege.

It seems to me that the operand is getting overlooked, which is OR. This means the Privileges and Immunities are independent of each other, which means they should be subject to separate scrutiny, as defined in the Fourteenth Amendment. Keep in mind that the Privileges and Immunities clause of Article IV has a much different and distinct function.

So, until we have a Court with the balls to confront Slaughter-House, Cruikshank, and other related precedents that consider the wrong operand and an incorrect (as politically correct for the time as it may be) viewpoint on what the Privileges or Immunities clause truly entails, we're likely going to be stuck fighting the Courts for every last detail of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and those details are subject to change on the whim of the Court thanks to the Due Process clause.

 

[Nraman]

I have to agree with glocktogo,why would anyone want to cancel their NRA membership. I honestly believe that without NRA we would have already lost most of our gun rights.

Absolutely!
It is impossible to please everybody; right here on this blog nobody agrees with anybody, but some expect a national organization to closely follow their personal opinion. Impossible.
They are not perfect, they don't do everything I want, when I want it and the way I want it.
Considering that there is nothing else even close to the NRA, they have my support.

 

[CamaroMan]

Absolutely!
It is impossible to please everybody; right here on this blog nobody agrees with anybody, but some expect a national organization to closely follow their personal opinion. Impossible.
They are not perfect, they don't do everything I want, when I want it and the way I want it.
Considering that there is nothing else even close to the NRA, they have my support.

I agree

 

[lump]

I get tired of them calling me telling me how bad Obama wants my guns and people like the evil holder guy are coming for them and if I don't donate now - they will surely win.
Or those DVD's they sent me. "We're sending you a DVD to you to have." I let it sit for a few weeks before I open it and read the fine print that says if you don't mail the DVD back in X days, they bill my credit card and start mailing me more. WTF?!

To me they should be like car insurance. Here is my base pay - keep my protected. If I'm in an accident (Bills start coming up and legal fee's add up) I'll pay my deductible. Otherwise STFU and leave me alone with all of this anti-gun fear mongering BS.

 

[338Shooter]

How did they get your credit card info? They also can't require you to pay them or send it back if it was unsolicited IIRC.

 

[flatwins]

I have to agree with glocktogo,why would anyone want to cancel their NRA membership. I honestly believe that without NRA we would have already lost most of our gun rights.

This is my stance on the NRA too. I'm not crazy about everything they do but they are our strongest voice in Washington. Besides, my membership gets me a discount for Red Castle and I truly enjoy that place.

 

[lump]

How did they get your credit card info? They also can't require you to pay them or send it back if it was unsolicited IIRC.

I signed up with the NRA with a credit card. I bet in some fine print some where they snuck it in.

 

[DirtyDawg]

The NRA only compromises our rights away....that's the problem with them. You either defend the Constitution as written as a whole, or, you're part of the problem that's taking this nation down a path of self destruction.

 

[dcoop46]

Gun Owners of America.

 

[1911user]

I signed up with the NRA with a credit card. I bet in some fine print some where they snuck it in.

Dispute the charge(s) with your credit card company. The scum-suckers count on people not knowing their rights about unsolicited mail. If it happens often enough, they lose their precious credit card machine and their business dies..... :finger:

I know it's a 3rd party sending the stuff, but the NRA endorses them, gives them names/addresses, and takes their money.....