A Thought About Education

"I study war and politics,

so my sons can study business and finance,

and their sons can study

art and music."

--attributed to John Adams

It's the American dream, isn't it? A generation hard-pressed responds so the generation behind it can make money and provide wholesome leisure for its own successors. It doesn't work out so neatly, of course. In our own recent history, the "Greatest Generation" fought the Nazis and began to provide a materialistic world for the "boomers," my own contemporaries, but we knew plenty of conflict ourselves, and our kids, "gen-x," and the "millenniums" certainly don't seem to have been able to achieve much as artists.

However, recently, the high school and middle school near the library where I work posted a selection of paintings, drawings, photos, and a few sculptures around the branch. Some of them are very good. I don't see any future professional artists among them, but it's early days yet, as they say, and any one of these students might actually make a living from art.

What's of interest to me is the amount of work the youngsters actually accomplished with their posters and plaster. Clearly, many of them were interested in what they were doing. Often, we think of our progeny as alienated and uninterested in their education, but here is evidence to the contrary.

How do we reconcile the image of teenagers sleeping or snickering their way through school with what I've just described? I think it's a matter of the kids doing what's actually of interest to them. This tends to vindicate John Dewey, who a century ago claimed schools should find out what kids want to know and draw that from them, rather than try to pound knowledge into them.

But that's exactly what our modern education system is trying to do! We bemoan the perceived lack of scientists and engineers in our land, and try to rectify the situation by force-feeding high schoolers into math and science classes, whether they want to be there or not, whether they have any aptitude in that direction or not. I wouldn't say for an instant that learning algebra, geometry, trigonometry, chemistry and physics isn't valuable, but why put all our kids through it? The results are before our eyes - kids graduating from school with only the vaguest idea of what they were supposed to learn, and for whom the whole experience was boring or hateful. Is it any wonder that such kids become adults who show no interest in further education?

We have de-emphasized the very things our kids would actually pour some effort into and thrown them all into classes most of them find irrelevant and uninteresting. We need to pay attention to John Adams and help our kids investigate what they really want to know.

Cui Bono

That's Latin, boys and girls, and it means, "Who benefits." The ancient Romans used the phrase and so does every good detective. It's a question that's worth asking whenever there's a proposal for a change in public policy.

Today's Colorado Springs Gazette contains a column on the editorial page headlined, "Colorado: Forget Obamacare health benefits exchange." The first paragraph of the article reads as follows.

"Obamacare is unpopular, unwieldy, expensive, arguably unconstitutional, and a prime target for repeal. It requires the states to do much of the federal government's dirty work. Right now, the federal government is paying states $1 million to plan health insurance exchanges designed (to) limit the kinds of health insurance policies available to state residents."

Let me parse this paragraph just a bit. The writers contend that Obamacare, as they like to call it, is unpopular. It seems to me that public opinion polling shows a majority of the population favors the program. It's not an overwhelming majority, I'll concede, but we do believe in majority rule in this country. Perhaps they're relying on the premise that if they say something often enough it will become true. They then say the program is unwieldy and expensive. My impression is that it's just in the planning phase, as they admit a little further on in their diatribe. How would they know it's unwieldy and expensive if it hasn't been put into effect yet?

Obamacare is arguably unconstitutional. Its Constitutionality will be decided by the Supreme Court, however, not by newspaper columnists whose expertise and motivation are very dubious. More on that later.

Exactly what "dirty work" are they complaining about? Trying to be sure all Americans can receive medical care when they're sick? Well, I never. . . .

The federal government is spending $1 million dollars to plan exchanges? Suddenly I'm reminded of Doctor Evil in the Austin Powers movies, diabolically trying to extort that sum from the United Nations, only to be told that nowadays $1 million is not really so much money. Actually, even if you say it's $50 million for the fifty states that comes to about sixteen cents for every man woman and child in the country. I'm not for an instant advocating wasting that amount of money, or any money for that matter, but hey, lets keep a sense of proportion here.

"Designed to limit the kinds of health insurance policies available. . ." Like the columnists, I'm in favor of free choice. The difficulty is that the market itself usually limits the variety of products and services available. When there is a multiplicity of choices beyond about four, the market drives the overpriced and shoddy out of business. But in the meantime, some people make choices that turn out to be contrary to their own best interests. Normally this isn't so bad, but in the case of health insurance one bad decision could bankrupt a person or worse, preclude needed care. I wonder, and I think with good reason, if the insurers don't deliberately make their policies so confusing that even well-informed folks can find themselves buying coverage they don't need and lacking what they do need.

I'm not a particular fan of "Obamacare." It seems needlessly confusing to me, but I believe the complications were the result of the attempt to placate the Republicans in Congress who are now adamantly against the measure for the reasons they insisted be included in it!

Now about the writers of this article and the organizations they represent. John R. Graham is the "Director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Institute in San Francisco." Linda Gorman is "Director of the Health Care Policy Center at the Independence Institute in Golden." A quick visit to the Internet sites for these two organizations reveals that Mr. Graham was awarded a bachelor's degree in economics and holds a masters degree in business administration. Ms. Gorman likewise is an economist. Neither person has any medical credentials.

They are affiliated respectively with the Pacific Institute and the Independence Institute. A visit to the websites of the two "think tanks" clearly shows they are committed to an unregulated free market state and are working to remove as much of the societal "safety net" as they can. I could not find any information concerning who funds these organizations, but the Pacific Institute does say it is allied with other organizations with innocuous names, including the Cato Institute and the Hispanic American Center for Economic Growth. They all cite one another as authorities to lend credence to their own "findings."

In the parlance of the 1930's and '40's, these look like front organizations to me, sounding wholesome enough, but masking the real power behind them.

Who benefits? I don't know, but the Pacific Institute does say it accepts donations from corporations. Could those corporations include purveyors of health care insurance?

This Day in History

It's April 12, and one hundred fifty years ago today forces of the breakaway nation, the Confederate States of America, opened fire on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston South Carolina. The cannonade lasted one day and the garrison in the fort surrendered. There were no human fatalities. One horse was killed.

There are two other things to commemorate on this day. One hundred years ago today the first non-stop "aeroplane" flight between London and Paris took place. And fifty years ago today Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.

My purpose today, however, is to discuss the Confederacy and the beginning of the Civil War. I suppose from a narrow perspective the attack on Sumter was a success for the Confederate States. The fort was taken, after all, and there was no longer a US Army presence at the mouth of Charleston harbor. Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government undoubtedly felt that no sovereign government could abide a foreign fort in such a place, and removing it would pave the way for British and French trade with the newborn nation.

But the attack was really a calamity for the country as a whole and for the south in particular. The attack allowed President Lincoln to rally the north as nothing else could have. Enormous demonstrations took place in almost every northern city. Volunteers flocked to the stars and stripes. Even though the military action tipped Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee into the southern camp, it was still a disaster. By 1865, about 600,000 American men had died in the armies the attack had spurred into existence. Of the dead, about 250,000 were white southerners and another 100,000 were black men, mostly from the south. The southern lands were devastated, buildings destroyed, railroads torn up, animals killed, and capital spent or stolen.

And it really needn't have happened. What would the Confederacy have lost by doing nothing? If they sought legitimacy by shelling Fort Sumter, they could have achieved the same thing by just letting some time pass. Every college sophomore taking a political science course knows that one of the factors making a government legitimate is lasting for a long time. If they wanted to be sure of trade with Europe, that was ruined by the attack, not assured by it. And the three states that joined them after Sumter was blasted by cannon fire would have come over in short order anyway.

In short, the decision to attack Sumter was a blunder of huge proportions. We should be very glad they made such a mistake or we might have two nations now where one is enough.

Ironies

Here in Colorado Springs, Doug Bruce, described as an anti-tax activist, the man who crafted something called the "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" that is often cited as having crippled state government, was indicted for income tax evasion and arrested last week. As we all agree, Mr. Bruce is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It's a straw in the wind though, isn't it?

I say this because news reports claim that two Tea Party activists also have been caught having not filed tax returns for several years.

Having just paid a large tax bill myself, I'm feeling a couple of emotions about Mr. Bruce and the other people who do not feel obligated to chip in what they are legally obligated to pay. I'm resentful, of course. Who wouldn't be? I'm jealous too. I'd rather take my wife to Hawaii for a vacation than help out Uncle Sam. Let someone else carry the ball for a while. I've been paying taxes for going on fifty years now, and what do I have to show for it? Oh, yeah, my mother lived the last year of her life in a rather nice nursing home on Uncle's dime. I can feel a measure of pride in the auto makers and banks I helped bailout a year or two ago. (I know, they've paid back most or all of it and still had enough money to reward richly the executives who nearly drove them out of business.)

CNN reported this morning, by the way, that executives at American corporations averaged a 12% increase in income last year while ordinary working people eked out a living with an average income increase of 2.1%. But I thank the Lord for them, every time I have to pay a fee to get some of my own money from an ATM or get a rate increase on my health insurance. They are creating wealth, if only for themselves.

A respondent to a post on another blog claimed we should not resent those who make so much money. The stockholders of the companies they run are the ones who could cut their pay or fire them, and the fact that this doesn't happen very often must mean the stockholders are satisfied with management and the size of the dividends they receive.

Ironically, John Kenneth Galbraith addressed this point fifty years ago, saying that corporate executives almost always come to be more interested in feathering their own nests than in the welfare of the stockholders or the public. They get away with it because most stockholders aren't paying close attention to what's going on.

I looked at a documentary movie last week. It's called "Casino Jack" and it's about the lobbying business conducted by Jack Abramoff and other young men in a hurry during the last thirty years. The title comes from Abramoff's notorious bilking of Indian tribes during the 1990's. Abramoff accepted enormous fees from a Louisiana tribe to lobby against a casino license for another tribe in Texas they thought would cut into their lucrative business, then exacted more very large fees from the Texas tribe to lobby for a casino on their tribal lands. It reminds me of Milo Minderbinder in "Catch 22" who signed a contract with the American military to bomb a bridge and with the German military to defend the same bridge. In the end he profited outrageously by merely signing his name twice, since the two armies went ahead and actually did the bombing and defending themselves.

In fact, Abramoff and his associates were privately contemptuous of their clients, calling them morons and monkeys in their emails. Abramoff ended up as a convicted felon, but I wonder how much of his ill-gotten gains he has managed to hide.

Here's my advice to all these people. Take some of your money and try to buy a really small camel. When your time on this earth is up, you'll be glad if you have the tiniest one available.

Alternatively, you could try to obtain a needle with a super-sized eye.

Sunday Morning Musings

Lately I've been thinking about . . . Alexander Hamilton. Hasn't everyone?

Hamilton, whose handsome visage graces every ten dollar bill, was President George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury during the first formative years of Constitutional government here in the good old USA. His great contribution to the national fabric was a financial plan to get the new nation started.

Unlike Thomas Jefferson, who soon became his primary antagonist in the Washington cabinet, Hamilton believed that the future of America lay in manufacturing and commerce rather than agriculture. In this he saw the future more clearly than did Jefferson.

What makes me think of Hamilton, however, is another aspect of his plan, his idea of taking over the debt left by the Articles of Confederation government and the state debts. He would retire all the bonds issued by all of them by selling new bonds. Now, you might think this sounds like financial sleight-of-hand, or even some sort of Ponzi scheme, but Hamilton's rationale was very simple. The new government needed the support of wealthy people in the country if it was going to last. By issuing those new bonds and selling them to the richer folks the government would in effect be buying their support. They would have a vested interest in the success of the new government. In fact, Hamilton argued, a public debt was a necessity, and the bigger the debt the better.

Nowadays, no one would argue for a higher public debt. The debate in Washington right now is how to keep the debt from getting bigger. I submit, however, that we shouldn't lose sight of Hamilton's proposition: the government must have the support of wealthier people. And the way to make sure we have that support is to . . . tax them.

As it is now, neither corporations nor individuals in what has been called the "One Percent" are being taxed at anything like the rate they were even one generation ago. The result is a culture of cupidity and an irresponsibility on the part of many in this segment of the population that's just appalling and outrageous. A Sixty Minutes profile of a corporate CEO just last Sunday contained a straight-faced assertion that of course his company shifts its cash reserves to tax havens in the Bahamas and Switzerland. How many Americans, I wondered, remain unemployed because the money that could have been used to hire them has departed the country. And if anyone argues that we should reduce our income tax rates to keep that money here I'd just reply, "Who do you think has to fund the military, Medicare, and all the other things the government does if the people who have profited so much from America don't kick in a fair share?"

Instead, the money they don't ship overseas goes to fund political puppets who preach tax reduction as a panacea for all our national problems.

And now a quick note about the Red Sox. Can this team possibly be as bad as it has shown so far? They're getting almost no offense from Youkilis, Crawford, Ellsbury and Saltalamacchia. The pitching has just been awful.

I think the batters will straighten out. The pitching is much more troublesome. If it doesn't show a lot of improvement real soon it could be a long long summer in Red Sox nation.

Lincoln and Roosevelt

A couple of years ago some conservative wrote an article claiming that John and Robert Kennedy would be Republicans if they were living today. The argument was based on President Kennedy's tax cut law of 1962, his willingness to take America to the brink of war over Russian missiles in Cuba, and (presumably) Robert Kennedy's doubts about the efficacy of welfare payments.

It's nonsense of course. Kennedy's tax cut was broad-based, whereas, for example, the cuts made by President Bush and the Republican Congress of 2003 were heavily weighted in favor of rich people. Kennedy's speeches, especially his inaugural, were rather bellicose, but privately he called himself, "the most peace-at-any-price president of the century." He negotiated a limited test ban treaty with the USSR, and, just before his murder, was signalling his intention to wind down the commitment to South Vietnam.

Bobby Kennedy certainly felt that sending a welfare check to indigent people and then ignoring them was debilitating, but thought the key to helping them lay in providing employment opportunities at realistic wages.

A better question for my conservative friends is: would Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt have been Democrats if they were living today? I think there are very good reasons to say yes.

Lincoln is best remembered today for guiding the country through the abominable Civil War, and for abolishing slavery. He should be recalled too as a proponent of economic protectionism and of a transcontinental railroad.

He admitted that he didn't know much about economic policy and was just adhering to Whig and Republican Party orthodoxy. The high tariff he espoused, opposed by the Democrats of his day, would make foreign imports more expensive, thus making American goods more competitive. In modern parlance, protectionism would keep jobs from being "outsourced" to countries with lower prevailing wages. Modern Republicans and Democrats favor the free trade position Lincoln would have been against, though the Democrats nowadays hedge their support for free trade with calls for economic and environmental protection in foreign lands. On balance, modern Democrats seem closer to Lincoln's position than do modern Republicans.

Lincoln believed that a transcontinental railroad was essential to American unity and progress. He approved of lavish government subsidies to get the road built. In fact, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies did extremely well building the railroads, gaining both monetary stipends from the government and land grants they could then sell to private citizens. Call it a government bailout if you want. (The UP was bilked out of much of the profits by its own board of directors, but that's another story.) So Lincoln favored government spending as a means to desired ends.

Theodore Roosevelt was a president who pioneered activities previous executives had avoided or shunned. In 1902, for example, he took it upon himself to mediate a coal strike that, if unsettled, would have left the country cold and dark through the winter. Roosevelt expected the union to be intransigent and the owners to be amenable, and was surprised when just the opposite happened. The union president asked for a ten cent an hour pay hike and union certification, but said he would surrender representation rights if his rank and file got their raise. The owners just dug their heels in and said no to every proposal. The president found himself holding their feet to the fire to get a deal, when he had expected he'd have to get tough with the union.

TR, as he preferred to be called, could be very decisive in foreign affairs, particularly when an American interest was directly involved. I'm thinking of the Panama Canal here. Roosevelt badly wanted a canal, but the Colombian government made what he thought were exorbitant demands for the right to dig it. When a rebellion occurred in Panama, then part of Colombia, he dispatched gunboats to prevent Colombian forces from suppressing the rebels, then made a quick deal with a self-appointed Panamanian, gaining permission to build the canal. The deal was actually made in a New York City hotel room. "While others dithered, I acted," he said.

This same President Roosevelt took it upon himself to act as an "honest broker" between Russia and Japan a year later. The treaty he mediated, finalized at Portsmouth New Hampshire, concluded the Russo-Japanese War. TR was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (Unfortunately, the treaty dissatisfied many Japanese militants and caused a lingering fury against America.)

Near the end of his presidency, Roosevelt very quietly threatened war against Germany to protect the Monroe Doctrine. The Germans backed down. But in the seven and one-half years TR occupied the oval office the American military hardly fired a shot in anger.

People today remember his adage, "Walk softly and carry a big stick." It's too bad we emphasize the stick and neglect to walk softly.

Roosevelt was known as the conservation president. Proclaiming national monuments and fish and wildlife refuges, Roosevelt paved the way for "scientific management" of the public lands. He also took what were admittedly baby steps to end the awful suppression of black Americans a hundred years ago, notably inviting Booker T. Washington to a White House dinner.

Now just ask yourself. Two activist presidents, both intent on protecting American workers from cheap foreign competition, both willing to spend money to further broader American interests. Both willing to use force, but willing to stake their presidencies on peace-making. What party would they belong to?

The Second Amendment

In 2008 and again in 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not a collective one. Both in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, the court struck down ordinances that limited an individual's liberty to possess firearms within a residence.

You might think that would end the matter. Not being an attorney myself, I think I'm really not qualified to examine all the ramifications of the decisions, but I do know there's always another aspect to a decision that must be decided, even after what appears to be a definitive resolution of a controversy.

Here are some legal decisions made by inferior courts since the two landmark cases mentioned earlier were decided. I might just say here that the court was sharply divided in these decisions, justices going so far as to make very critical comments about one another in their written opinions.

My source here is the Wikipedia article on the amendment.

Since Heller, the federal courts have ruled on many Second Amendment challenges to convictions and gun control laws.^[151][152] The following are post-Heller cases, divided by Circuit, along with summary notes:

First Circuit

• United States v. Rene E., 583 F.3d 8 (1st Cir. 2009) - On August 31, 2009, the First Circuit affirmed the conviction of a juvenile for the illegal possession of a handgun as a juvenile, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(x)(2)(A) and 18 U.S.C. § 5032, rejecting the defendant's argument that the federal law violated his Second Amendment rights under Heller. The court cited "the existence of a longstanding tradition of prohibiting juveniles from both receiving and possessing handguns" and observed "the federal ban on juvenile possession of handguns is part of a longstanding practice of prohibiting certain classes of individuals from possessing firearms — those whose possession poses a particular danger to the public."^[153]

Second Circuit

• Maloney v. Cuomo, 554 F.3d 56 (2d Cir. 2009) - On January 28, 2009, the Second Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to state and local governments. Also, New York was ruled to have a "rational basis" for banning possession of nunchaku.^[154][155] On June 29, 2010, under the name Maloney v. Rice, the Supreme Court vacated this decision and remanded this case in light of McDonald v. Chicago.^[156]

Third Circuit

• United States v. Lewis (3d Cir. 2008) - On July 3, 2008, the Third Circuit upheld, against a Second Amendment challenge, a federal law prohibiting possession of firearms with obliterated serial numbers.^[157]
• United States v. Walters (3d Cir. 2008) - On July 15, 2008, the Third Circuit upheld, against a Second Amendment challenge, a federal law that prohibits possession of firearms within 1,000 feet of a school zone and so denied a request to dismiss an indictment of Rupert Walters.^[158]

Fourth Circuit

• United States v. Hall, 551 F.3d 257 (4th Cir. 2009) - On August 4, 2008, the Fourth Circuit upheld as constitutional the prohibition of possession of a concealed weapon without a permit.^[159]

• United States v. Chester, (4th Cir. 2010) - On December 30, 2010, the Fourth Circuit vacated William Chester's conviction for possession of a firearm after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9).^[160] The court found that the district court erred in perfunctorily relying on Heller's exception for "presumptively lawful" gun regulations made in accordance with "longstanding prohibitions".^[161]

Fifth Circuit

• United States v. Dorosan, 350 Fed. Appx. 874 (5th Cir. 2009) - On June 30, 2008, the Fifth Circuit upheld 39 C.F.R. 232.1(l), which bans weapons on postal property, sustaining restrictions on guns outside the home, specifically in private vehicles parked in employee parking lots of government facilities, despite Second Amendment claims that were dismissed. The employee's Second Amendment rights were not infringed since the employee could have instead parked across the street in a public parking lot, instead of on government property.^[162][163]

• United States v. Bledsoe, 334 Fed. Appx. 771 (5th Cir. 2009) - The Fifth Circuit affirmed the decision of a U.S. District Court decision in Texas, upholding 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6), which prohibits "straw purchases." A "straw purchase" occurs when someone eligible to purchase a firearm buys one for an ineligible person. Additionally, the court rejected the request for a strict scrutiny standard of review.^[159]

• United States v. Scroggins, 551 F.3d 257 (5th Cir. 2010) - On March 4, 2010, the Fifth Circuit affirmed the conviction of Ernie Scroggins for possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The court noted that it had, prior to Heller, identified the Second Amendment as providing an individual right to bear arms, and had already, likewise, determined that restrictions on felon ownership of firearms did not violate this right. Moreover, it observed that Heller did not affect the longstanding prohibition of firearm possession by felons.

Sixth Circuit

• Hamblen v. United States, 2009 FED App. 439P (6th Cir. 2009) - The Sixth Circuit affirmed a denial of the petitioner's motion to vacate convictions for possession of machine guns and possession of unregistered firearms, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1) and 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), respectively. The court observed that Heller explicitly excluded from Second Amendment protection any weapons "not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes." The court rejected the petitioner's argument that the federal restrictions were nevertheless unconstitutional, stating that, "whatever the individual right to keep and bear arms might entail, it does not authorize an unlicensed individual to possess unregistered machine guns for personal use."

Seventh Circuit

• United States v. Skoien, 587 F.3d 803 (7th Cir. 2009) - Steven Skoien, a Wisconsin man, convicted of two misdemeanor domestic violence convictions appealed his conviction based on the argument that the prohibition violated the individual rights to bear arms, as described in Heller. After initial favorable rulings in lower court based on a standard of intermediate scrutiny,^[164] on July 13, 2010, the Seventh Circuit, sitting en banc, ruled 10-1 against Skoien and reinstated his conviction for a gun violation citing the strong relation between the law in question and the government objective.^[164] Skoien was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for the gun violation and likely will be subject to a lifetime ban on gun ownership.^[165][166] Pro-gun editorials have sharply criticized this ruling as going too far with the enactment of a lifetime gun ban^[167] while editorials favoring gun regulations have praised the ruling as "a bucket of cold water thrown on the 'gun rights' celebration".^[168]

Eighth Circuit

• United States v. Perkins, 526 F.3d 1107 (8th Cir. 2008) - On September 23, 2008, the Eighth Circuit upheld 26 U.S.C. § 5841 which prohibits the receiving or possession of an unregistered firearm.^[159]

Ninth Circuit

• United States v. Heredia-Mendoza (9th Cir. 2008) - On November 18, 2008, the Ninth Circuit upheld 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A) which mandates stricter sentencing for use of a firearm during crimes of violence or drug trafficking. The court rejected the defendant's claim of unconstitutionality because the law criminalized possession of gun for self defense in the home.^[159]

• Nordyke v. King, 563 F.3d 439 (9th Cir. 2009) - On July 29, 2009, the Ninth Circuit decided to vacate both parts of an April 20 ruling in this case and to rehear this case en banc on September 24, 2009.^{[169][170][171][172]} That April 20 decision, by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, had ruled that the Second Amendment does apply to state and local governments, while also upholding anAlameda County, California ordinance which makes it a crime to bring, or possess, a gun or ammunition onto county property.^[173][174] After the en banc panel heard oral argument, the Ninth Circuit decided to delay ruling on the case until the Supreme Court decides if it will review any of three cases it has been asked to hear.^[175]

Tenth Circuit

• United States v. Artez, 290 Fed. Appx. 203 (10th Cir. 2008) - On August 29, 2008, the Tenth Circuit upheld the federal ban on possession of un-registered sawed-off shotguns.^[151]

Eleventh Circuit

• United States v. Boffil-Rivera (11th Cir. 2008) - On August 12, 2008, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled the prohibition of possession of firearms by persons illegally or unlawfully in the United States, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), to be constitutional. The court stated that "Heller casts no shadow on the statute on a facial challenge".^[151] The Eleventh Circuit later affirmed the jury's verdict.^[176]