From: "John Hurst", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>I presume that you are all aware of 'civil forfeiture'?
E.J.,
It is back, firstly in drug cases and now it is available to the
Courts for other offences too. As you no doubt know it breaches Chapter 29
of Magna Carta and Article 12 of the Bill of Rights;
" That all Grants and Promises of Fines and Forfeitures of particular
persons before Conviction are illegall and void".
So did the siezure of pistols, but the Home Office have told Steve that it
was all right <g>.
Funnily enough, the House of Commons library did not agree;
"The library has received a large number of enquiries, which appear to be
the result of campaigns among shooters opposing the new provisions on
firearms control. Because of the initial influx of such enquiries, I
prepared a section on the alleged constitutional implications of the then
Bill as part of our research paper which we published for its second reading
debate.
There are a numbers of variants of the message sent to members which contain
a reference to the Members oath of allegiance. I assume that the argument
put forward by shooters is along the following lines;
(1) The Bill of Rights 1689 requires all officers and ministers to serve the
Monarch according to its provisions.
(2) The Bill of Rights 1689 protects citizen's rights to bear arms and not
to have their property confiscated.
(3) Therefore Members who support this sessions legislation may be in breach
of their oath of allegiance.
The 1997 Act does not appear to refer at all to the 1689 Statute, and any
claims that the earlier statute has been impliedly amended or, indeed, that
Parliament has no power to make such amendments, would have to be matters
for the Courts if put before them.
It is perhaps of interest that, notwithstanding the apparently widespread
lobbying on Bill of Rights grounds, virtually no mention of this argument
was made during the Bill's passage through Parliament"
(Document Ref. 4321 97/3/14HA BKW/aor. 4th March 1997)
The briefing document referred to is Research Paper 96/102 dated 8th
November 1996. Page 75 quotes the case of Bowles v. Bank of England and
confirms that the Bill of Rights remains an operative statute.
Regards, John Hurst.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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