It was clear from the start that gun ownership is an individual right, not a collective right, courts just ignored this, until 2008.
If liberal aquaintances want to argue about collective rights, just point out that the Bill Of Rights deals only with individual rights, period.
Giving credit where due, John Roberts was the swing vote in the 5-4 Heller decision that changed the course of gun ownership in America.
It is time for the congress to issue a law removing short barreled rifles and sound suppressors from the firearms act.
I'll meet your Roberts comment, and raise you - a big THANK YOU TO TED KENNEDY for possibly preventing a 4-5 loss in Heller, the ascent of the Collective Model, and the eviscerstion of the 2nd Amendment.
Oh, and possibly Dobbs/Roe's repeal, too.
Stick with me.
The Lifeguard of Chappaquiddick is largely responsible for the destruction of Robert Bork's SCOTUS candidacy. That slot was occupied by Justice Anthony Kennedy ultimately.
Justice Kennedy was a squish. But he DID side with the majority in Heller. That's big.
Ah, but what if Bork hadn't been Borked. Well...the truth is... Bork MAY have voted against Heller.
In Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Bork referred to the language of the Second Amendment as “somewhat ambiguous[].” In the same passage, he stated that “The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government.”[4] While it is clear that Bork was opposed to gun control on policy grounds, it is not clear that he agreed that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right. In fact, Bork’s skepticism regarding the gun lobby’s advocacy of individual rights under the Second Amendment (shared by former Chief Justice Warren Burger) may have been the reason the National Rifle Association chose to remain neutral during Bork’s 1987 confirmation hearings. Moreover, Bork might have been reluctant to overrule (or distinguish into irrelevance) the arguably contrary precedent in United States v. Miller[5], which is what the majority in Heller did. It appears that Bork construed Miller the same way Justice Stevens’ dissent in Heller did: as ruling that the Second Amendment confers a collective, not an individual, right. The way he put it in Slouching Towards Gomorrah (12 years before Heller) was: “The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm.”
By blocking Bork and paving the way for Kennedy, Uncle Ted very possibly helped save the legality of the Individual Model.
It gets better.
Bork died in 2012 during Obama, thus guaranteeing a leftist nutjob tipping the scales to a 5-4 liberal SCOTUS until Ruth Buzzy Ginsberg died. That is a LOT of bad rulings.
It also means no Kavanaugh, and no 6-3 margin for Dobbs, Bruen, or EPA.
So Ted, you magnificent bastard, wherever you are, thank you for being a friend of the NRA.