From: "John Hurst", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To stand on the past as predicate to the present, then it stands that
>no public official can possibly preclude the exercise of a right by merely
>stating that they possess the power of office to do as they darned well
please.
>If the past is to lend credence to the present, then the present must
>reflect the valid decisions of the past, and not the corrupt, and
irresolute
>distinctions which have lead to the morass of your current predicament.
ET,
The present regime use precedent when it suits them, for example in
Erskine
May's Parliamentary Practice to establish the Constitution, powers and
privileges
of Parliament;
".. The popular character of (Saxon) institutions was subverted, for a
time, by the Norman conquest; but the people of England were Saxons by
birth, in language and in spirit, and gradually recovered their ancient
share in the councils of the state. Step by step the legislature has assumed
its
present form and character; and after many changes, its constitution is now
defined by " The clear and written law, the deep trod footmarks of ancient
custom..."".
This is fair enough, but the corresponding rights of individuals are
conveniently forgotten by the Home Office "as a matter of policy" ;
"The right to keep and bear arms can claim an ancestry stretching for well
over a millennium. The antiquity of the right is so great that it is all but
impossible to document its actual beginning. It is fairly clear that its
origin lay in the customs of Germanic tribes, under which arms bearing was a
right and a duty of free men; in fact, the ceremony for giving freedom to a
slave required that the former slave be presented with the armament of a
free man. He then acquired the duty to serve in an equivalent of a citizen
army.
These customs were brought into England by the earliest Saxons. The first
mention of the citizen army, or the "fyrd" is found in documents dating to
690 A.D., but scholars have concluded that the duty to serve in such with
personal armament "is older than our oldest records." (Not knowing of the
earlier records, 18th century legal historians including the great
Blackstone attributed the origin of the English system to Alfred the Great,
who ruled in the late 9th century A.D.)".
Historical Bases of the Right To Keep and Bear Arms by David T. Hardy.
Regards, John Hurst.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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