[William Terrell]

Constitutional law CAN use common sense. Common sense says that when the constitution says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" that it means that people have a right to keep and bear arms.

Whose common sense? It is common sense for tyrannts to remove guns that could threaten their rule.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Whose common sense? It is common sense for tyrannts to remove guns that could threaten their rule.

My point is that common sense is merely a tool. It is all in how it is used. Ann presumes that "commn sense" can only be applied to outcomes (or at least that is what she argues). My point is that "common sense" can be applied to the interpretation of the constitution itself, which I believe yields a strict constructionist outcome.

That is why in my post I talked about using common sense in READING the words of the constitution, and accepting that it means what it says.

Another way to say that is to say that a reasonable intelligent person, without specialized training, reading the constitution, will understand what the government isn't allowed to do. It is a document written for the common person, to be interpreted by common-sense means, not by tortured intellectualist logic.