Originally Posted by
1journeyman
http:///forum/post/2970177
Wow... the Iraqi sun insult again... ouch. It hurt even worse this time... Bionic, any chance you'll ever participate in a civil discussion without trying to personally insult people?
You are wrong, btw.
Article 1, section 8 allowed Congress to provide Letters of Marques to "Privateers".
There are no restrictions listed as to how big of a warship the private citizen could maintain to perform as a Privateer. Thus, a private citizen could in fact have owned a Battleship and been employed by the Congress of the Founding Fathers.
It's not meant as an insult. It's just so far out there, it's just amazing you would make a statement like that.
Where are you coming up with these battleships? Where does it state in Article 1 that it allows private citizens to own battleships? Where are these unlimited restrictions you describe? I assume you're looking at the conditions of this Letter of Marque. You do realize that Congress would have to issue this letter to a 'Privateer' before that individual, or group of individuals, had the authority to operate a vessel under the conditions of the Letter of Marque. You make it sound like I could go commandeer the USS Enterprise and use against anyone I choose. CONGRESS has to give you the authority to own that battleship. The last time Congress used this since the War of 1812, was when they let a group of citizens operate the airship Resolute, to patrol the seas for submarines during the Second World War.
The Letters of Marque were intended as a measure for nations to retaliate against another foreign party that committed some offense under the laws of nations against the assets or citizens of the issuing nation, and has usually been used to authorize private parties to raid and capture merchant shipping of an enemy nation. Kind of a '--- for tat'. It allowed these 'mercenaries' to go beyond the borders of their enemies to search, seize, or destroy an enemy's vessel or fleet.
The Letters of Marque were intended to be used to avoid issuing a full declaration of war against an enemy or someone threatening our nation. Pretty extreme measure if you ask me. So your reasoning is if Congress would use some 'mercinary' to go play pirate for the US, they would certainly have no problem with Joe Citizen owning an AK-47 or Uzi? Our Founding Fathers probably never fathomed that something as deadly as an assault weapon could ever be built. It would be interesting to know what the Framers of the Constitution would've thought if they could see the type of destruction an assault weapon can cause on another human being. If they could, I imagine you'd have a totally different meaning to the phrase 'the right to bear arms'.
