A sticking point to my view is that Bork (lauded here as 'hero to the conservatives') is not in favor of individual gun ownership, says the reasons that anyone would even want to are questionable (anyone with specific quotes, please share them here about Bork's position on this because I've read it several times but not lately, so have no ready links as I write this)...while Miers actually defends the 2nd Amendment, moreorless in our traditional understanding of the individual's right to (own and) bear arms.
It's a very important distinction here as to who is conservative and in what context.
You said it better there than anyone. Liberals and Conservatives have suddenly taken new meanings in the media today and I would like to know where the heck they get off? Stop changing our names d@mnit!
The truth is -- and one would hardly know it from the mass media -- that since the Supreme Court's unanimous Miller decision in 1939, all federal appeals courts, whether dominated by liberals or conservatives, have agreed that the Second Amendment does not confer gun rights on individuals. The NRA view, opposed even by such right-wing judges as Robert Bork, has been consistently rejected.
The Second Amendment, the bete noire of the gun gestapo, states that ``a well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'' It is the core of the constitutional argument against gun control, long held to secure the right of individuals to own (buy, sell, keep, and carry) firearms. Judge Bork, however, doesn't think so.
Discussing the carnage of violent crime, Judge Bork rejects gun control as an effective means of reducing it. ``Gun control,'' he writes, ``shifts the equation in favor of the criminal,'' and he's right, as he often is. But when he gets on to the constitutionality of gun control, he's simply wrong, as he usually isn't.
In a footnote on page 166, Judge Bork writes that ``the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm. The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose.''
http://www.users.fast.net/~behanna/bork.html