Posted on 03/12/2007 6:51:05 AM PDT by shortstop
On Friday, a judge said what I have always believed, that the Second Amendment is an individual right.
It is the most significant civil rights ruling of my lifetime.
And it sets up an eventual Supreme Court fight in which the stakes will be the integrity of the Bill of Rights.
It has to do with the District of Columbia's gun ban. For 30 years the nation's most disarmed city has been the nation's most dangerous city, and a community which has complained of its cheated right of congressional representation has been entirely silent about its cheated right of firearms ownership.
Until now.
Six people, champions of liberty, challenged the gun ban in court. They lost in front of the district judge but appealed to the circuit court and Friday a three-judge panel came back with a landmark decision.
The judges decided that “the people” means the people and “the state” means the state. And that the Second Amendment, though archaically written, is neither incomprehensibly cast nor functionally outdated. Rather, it is – like its brother amendments – still and undeviatingly a bulwark of individual liberty.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, the code and compact of our Republic, and amid the confusion and intrigue of a modern and partisan day, it still holds.
And it continues to inform and mandate our understanding of and allegiance to liberty.
For years, those who would limit freedom have argued that the Second Amendment – with its guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms – is not directed at protecting the liberty of individuals, but of safeguarding an interest of the state. Its reference on one side of a couple of commas to “militia” has been argued as a trump to its reference on the other side of those commas to “the people.”
For years, those who would limit freedom have argued that the Second Amendment, completely unlike the amendments on either side of it, and contrary to the arguments of those who demanded a Bill of Rights, protected government, instead of protecting people from government. They have said that it establishes a state's right to have an army, a National Guard.
That view is wrong.
That is declared as a claim of liberty and is substantiated by the ruling in this case.
The Second Amendment – like the rest of the Bill of Rights – is meant to limit the power of government. It is meant to fence off areas of personal choice wherein the power of government is to play no part.
The fact that some argue against the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual right is reminiscent of those who sought to deny the similar application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the individual rights of African Americans. And just as the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s insisted on a liberty-based application of the Constitution, so too does the Second Amendment community today insist on a liberty-based application of that founding document.
This case is a milestone, but it is not a finish line.
This fight will not be won until the Supreme Court finds as the district circuit found. This case will hopefully provide the opportunity for such a finding to be delivered. Hopefully the Supreme Court will rule with reason and intelligence, as opposed to partisanship and division.
But the war is on, and an important battle has been won. These are historic times and the integrity of the Bill of Rights hangs in the balance.
If the Second Amendment stands, the Constitution stands. If the Second Amendment can be nullified, the Constitution is imperiled.
The eventual outcome is uncertain, but Friday's message is clear – there are judges who still honor the Constitution, and sometimes the right thing is done.
"He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;"
to
'He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the full Senate concurs;'
This ratification by voice vote in the dark of night with no quorum bull$hit has to end.
That includes the UN Charter.
No more multilateral "treaties," whose effective commitments change after ratification when other nations take exceptions. This would hose the treaties currently held at the UN.
Etc.
Not a bad list. There are bedwetters out there who would complain about dumping treaties, but I could certainly live with it.
My guess is that it was the poison pill in the Constitution without which the new government would have been hard pressed to borrow money in Europe.
When you say that the Supreme Court is "not a lock" in our favor, you couldn't have been more right.
There will be a question as to whether this is a "states rights" issue. Even the conservative members of the court will have to answer how they have the power to regulate state laws -- after all, they made that same argument back in 2003, with the Lawrence v. Texas decision.
If conservatives argue that the states can make whichever laws they want with regard to state sodomy laws and the Supreme Court has no legitimate right to interfere, then technically, they can make whatever gun laws they want.
The fundamental question lies in the age-old debate: Does the Bill of Rights apply to the states?
"Fundamental" is a word I am hoping the Supremes stay away from...
As for the Bill of Rights...Seems like a certain segment of the populace seems to like them as long as it is convienient for them...
The Second Amendment is needing a really fresh set of legs to argue on...The more we start to get caught up in the semantics of the issue, it must first be re-afirmed as an individual right...But even above that, and we have the Constitutiona and the Declaration of Independence to draw upon for reference...
That it is even above an individual right, it is an inalienable right bestowed upon by our creator...
You throw that fact into any argument, discussion, debate or decision on the issue and there is really no logical argument against it being so...At any level in the process...local, state or federal...
Once this "inalienable right" tact takes off...It'll have to go one of two ways...Either it is protected for all time, or we are going to have a big loss of freedom, and no effective way of protecting the other "inalienable rights"...
Remember its "fundamental" to the gun-control movement to bring the issue down to them and remove the morality of self-defense to create a system of government under the guise of its former self and remove any means of the people, its citizens to be empowered, but to only be subservient and needfull of an elected (elite) body to give them the cast off of entitlements and welfare oon the backs of what is left of the producers, for as long as that can last...After that I believe they have no plan...
I would just as soon avoid all of this and try to keep a conservative front to these liberal/socialist attacks on the foundation of our representative republic at all cost...
Otherwise, its just going to get really nasty...
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