As I wrote Thursday here Tom Faranda’s Folly: Today’s 2nd Amendment Supreme Court decision on handguns, “I have no interest in guns … but I do have an interest in the constitiution.”
I sent the above posting around to a small email group I correspond with, and the only gun owner on the list (an ardent Democrat) wrote back “guns don’t kill people. Republican court appointees kill people.” If anyone can explain what the heck that means, by all means post a comment or email me. Oh, and by the way, two of the four dissenting justices, who were quite happy with an ordanance clearly in violation of the second amendment, were republican president appointees.
I personally wouldn’t at all mind allowing local jurisdictions to ban handgun ownership, if that’s what the local elected representatives decided was the consensus view in their own locales. The problem is, any reasonable view of the second amendment and it’s historical understanding, must lead to the conclusion that a ban on handgun ownership is prohibited by the second amendment. The answer? Amend the constitution to allow for more local jurisdiction regarding guns.
But that’s too much effort for the elitists who believe the way to get what they want is through the federal court system, by judicial fiat, rather then democratically. And it’s worked for them time and again; the recent 5-4 decision overturning precedent, as well as the executive and legislative branches of geovernment, giving habeas corpus rights to non-citizen illegal combatant terrorists is a classic example.
But I digress. Here are are the NY Times and Washington Post editorials on the matter.
I must say, even by NY Times standards, their re-writing of history and judicial precedent is breathtaking, as they attempt to impose their morality. Hit the link to read the whole sorry essay.
Editorial – Editorial – Supreme Court Ruling on Gun Rights – Editorial – NYTimes.com
And here’s the Washington Post, who opposed the court decision, but at least on somewhat rational grounds –
Handguns Supreme – washingtonpost.com
…Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, concluded that the amendment guarantees a right to bear arms for private use, such as self-defense, although nowhere is that explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
But even granting his expansive view, a modest understanding of the judicial function would not have led to the outright cancellation of the District’s laws. Every constitutional right — whether the right of free speech or the right to be free from intrusive searches and seizures — is subject to limitation or regulation. Having overturned precedent and established a new standard, the court could and should have heeded the suggestion of the Bush administration that it send the case back to the lower court with guidelines about how gun control laws should be legally scrutinized. The District’s outright ban on handguns may not have survived such scrutiny, but at least the District would have had a chance to defend its laws, …
The Wall Street Journal was a model of rationality. Excerpts below, but read the whole thing –
The 2008 Supreme Court term ended with a bang yesterday as the Justices issued their most important ruling ever in upholding an individual right to bear arms. The dismaying surprise is that the Second Amendment came within a single vote of becoming a dead Constitutional letter.
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In writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia follows the Silberman Constitutional roadmap in finding that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” is an individual right. The alternative view – argued by the District of Columbia – is that the Second Amendment is merely a collective right for individuals who belong to a government militia.
Justice Scalia shreds the collective interpretation as a matter of both common law and Constitutional history. He writes that the Founders, as well as nearly all Constitutional scholars over the decades, believed in the individual right. Many Supreme Court opinions invoke the Founders, but this one is refreshing in its resort to first American principles and its affirmation of a basic liberty. It’s not too much to say that Heller is every bit as important to the Second Amendment as Near v. Minnesota (prior restraint) or N.Y. Times v. Sullivan (libel) are to the First Amendment.
Which makes it all the more troubling that no less than four Justices were willing to explain this right away. These are the same four liberal Justices who routinely invoke the “right to privacy” – which is nowhere in the text of the Constitution – as a justification for asserting various social rights. Yet in his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argues that a right to bear arms that is plainly in the text adheres to an individual only if he is sanctioned by government.
Lastly, Ann Althouse is a constitutional law professor at the University of Wisconsin, with a popular blog that I read and sometimes quote. Here are her thoughts, with quotes from the majority and dissenting opinions. Worth taking some time to read if you are at all interested in this issue.
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