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Dave Spaulding, Clint Smith make it to the BIG TIME!!!

3K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  Snake45 
#1 ·
It doesn't get any more respectible than being cited in a brief before the USSC. Here is the wordage from the DC Brief in Heller:
Although there are competing views today, just as in 1976, the Council acted based on plainly reasonable grounds. It adopted a focused statute that continues to allow private home possession of shotguns and rifles, which some gun rights' proponents contend are actually the weapons of choice for home defense. Dave Spaulding, Shotguns for Home Defense: Here's How to Choose and Use the Most Effective Tool for Stopping an Attack, Guns & Ammo, Sept. 2006, at 42; Clint Smith, Home Defense, Guns Mag., July 2005, at 50 (preferring rifles).
Of course, what the DC brief doesn't mention is that both Clint and Dave were likely referring to loaded and assembled shotguns and rifles, as opposed to disassembled long guns. But, it goes to show that words do matter...
 
#2 ·
Not very bright, as the gentlemen in question will, no doubt, be writing rebuttals, using the same articles, for the Pro-2nd Team.

Stupid is as stupid does. Unlike using quotes from dead people, living ones get upaet when you try to spin their words. :shock:
 
#5 ·
I Seem to Remember...

...that Mas Ayoob had a passage from an article he had written thrown back at him during testimony one time.

In a field as contentious as this, it's good to remember that what we write may well be taken out of context at an inopportune moment. While both Spaulding and Smith are no doubt capable of putting those quotes into proper context, I find it hard to believe that SCOTUS will give them the opportunity.
 
#6 ·
Well, I'm no lawyer. It seems to me that "for every brief there's an equal and opposite brief." We'd have to ask Marty about that. While I doubt they'd get to perform in front of the Supremes, I imagine that opposing counsel -- assuming they do their homework -- will cite counter and opposing information from the same sources quoted by the enemy.

That's often done in a field as contentious as this -- and with this amount of lead time.

Besides, is Heller's theory based on home defense?

Your point is well taken about care in what we write. Regardless of the number of weasel words one uses or how carefully we phrase our argument, there will always be someone to take it out of context.

Rich
 
#7 ·
I am not sure how it works at the USSC level, but typically, the person who brings the legal action submits the first brief, in this case, DC is that person, as they appealed the DC Circuit. Then, the other side gets a chance to read the brief and respond in kind, after which the original person gets a clean up brief, to address any questions the other side raised, but not to bring up new material.

Then the Supremes read the briefs before oral argument, and form their questions for the parties in oral argument from the briefs, from the other amicus curai (sp) briefs, along with any research done by the Supremes law clerks.

In this case, I am about 99.9% positive that Mssrs. Smith and Spaulding will be contacted by the Heller attorneys. They (Smith and Spaulding) will have a chance to submit written comments regarding the articles they wrote, and those written comments can then be cited by the Heller attorneys.

Fun stuff...
 
#8 ·
DC's law bans even possession of handguns not registered there before 1977, and keeping an assembled rifle or shotgun in one's home. Perhaps the Smith/Spaulding cites are intended to prove that handguns are not needed for home defense, but it would seem they would then be admitting that, one, guns of SOME kind ARE effective for home defense, and, two, that such use has nothing to do with militia service. They'd probably have to eat their "not assembled" portion of the law, too, in the attempt to salvage the handgun ban.

It seems a very strange cite for the other side to make.
 
#9 ·
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~ said:
I Seem to Remember ... that Mas Ayoob had a passage from an article he had written thrown back at him during testimony one time.
My own recollections are that this occurred to Mas on more than one occasion, once of which incidents has been discussed extensively both in this Forum and in TGZ.

Not for nuthin', but I was once similarly cited in an Amicus brief filed by Dave Kopel a dozen or so years back… oddly (and embarrassingly), it was a grind-it-out "round-up" piece I did for Shooting Industry, otherwise notably only as being the very first anything I ever did on a PC after my Epson QX-10 went up in a puff of blue smoke two weeks shy of it's tenth birthday! Didn't even have a compatible printer yet, so it was sent in on a 5¼-inch floppy… it was at that point I began to see the possibilities of the digital age! (Only it wasn't referred to as "digital" yet.)
 
#10 ·
Never underestimate Br'er Mas. I once asked him, in a mock prosecutorial tone, why, if he was so concerned with safety and survival, he smoked. I don't remember his exact answer, but he had one--and it was fast and clever and good, too.
 
#12 ·
Re: So...

spwenger said:
...did he convince you to take up smoking to enhance your own safety and survival? :)
Too late. :oops:

Like Norm MacDonald, I started smoking young "because I thought it would make me look cool. And gosh-darn it, it did."
 
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