[fight_truth_decay]

If the ''people'' were not to bear arms the amendment would have said:

''A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the militia to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.''
-To the Editor

[Gritty]

[SandRat]

2nd Amendment PING

[Dark Wing]

fyi

[Radio_Silence]

I could do without the SCOTUS review. I don’t think we’d get the votes due to Kennedy. Combine a ruling against 2A with the possibility of a dem controlled congress and presidency in ‘09 and I’d prefer to just take a pass.

Hard to believe that Republicans have had the presidency for 19 of the past 27 years and we cant get 5 pro-2A votes on the Supreme Court. Even harder to believe that we still debate this collective right BS.

[MrEdd]

On the other hand, maybe the people will define to the government the meaning of the second amendment.

[Lurker]

Once you recognize [gun ownership] as an individual right, then the work shifts to figuring out what type of regulation is permissible,” he says.

Exactly none.

L

[Raycpa]

“My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,” Tribe said in a recent New York Times interview.

A liberal professor is surprised his preconceptions about something are not supported by the facts? I assume before this he was content in having an opinion without any basis. These folks teach our young adults?

[Raycpa]

Which group of people were the Bill of Rights for again? I forget.

[facedown]

The meaning of the second amendment is a mystery only to lawyers for whom the meaning of the word “is” was equally mysterious.

[snowsislander]

In the past 20 years, several prominent legal scholars known for liberal views, including Professor Laurence Tribe ’66, have come to believe that the Second Amendment supports the individual-rights view. In the 2000 edition of his treatise “American Constitutional Law,” Tribe broke from the 1978 and 1988 editions by endorsing that view. Other liberal professors, including Akhil Reed Amar at Yale Law School and Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas at Austin, agree.

I am glad to see that Professor Tribe has endorsed the plain reading of the Second Amendment.

Now I would very much like to see the 1934 NFA and the 1968 GCA struck down as unconstitutional infringements on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

[EdReform]

"The Second Amendment is one of the clearest statements of right in the Constitution. We've had decades of sort of intellectual gymnastics to try to make those words not mean what they say."

-- Benjamin Wittes, legal affairs analyst and guest scholar, Brookings Institution

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

We will win!

('cuz we have the guns!)

Regards,
GtG

[CaptRon]

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Notice it doesn't say that a "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be established"

It recognizes an existing right, without which the militia could not exist. The militia is dependent on that right, the right is not dependent on having a militia.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Note to Harvard, Sandi Forman is no longer the president of the NRA. Her term expired earlier this year. She is the FORMER president of the NRA.

But then when has Harvard Law ever let a little think like the facts confuse them.

[neverdem]

I could do without the SCOTUS review. I don’t think we’d get the votes due to Kennedy. Combine a ruling against 2A with the possibility of a dem controlled congress and presidency in ‘09 and I’d prefer to just take a pass.

Parker v. Washington D.C. in HTML courtesy of zeugma.

We also note that at least three current members (and one former member) of the Supreme Court have read "bear Arms" in the Second Amendment to have meaning beyond mere soldiering: "Surely a most familiar meaning [of 'carries a firearm'] is, as the Constitution's Second Amendment ('keepand bear Arms') and Black's Law Dictionary . . . indicate: 'wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person." Muscarello v. United States, 524 U.S. 125, 143 (1998) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting, joined by Rehnquist, C.J., Scalia, J.,and Souter, J.) (emphasis in original). Based on the foregoing, we think the operative clause includes a private meaning for"bear Arms."

If Ginsburg and Souter maintain their previous opinions, that will be enough to give Kennedy what he needs to go with an originalist interpretation of the 2A.

[longtermmemmory]

The problem is elitists like this harvard professor (including some harvard grad republicans too I might add) seem to quietly favor “colective rights” in the second amendment.

[robertpaulsen]

“The courts have talked a lot about the Second Amendment but have always been nibbling around the periphery. There’s never really been ‘Let’s explain and elaborate on what it means.’”

Then I'll assume Ms. Froman has never read Judge Reinhardt's 70-page collective right opinion in Silveira v. Lockyer (2002) written in response to Judge Garwood's 33-page individual right opinion in U.S. v Emerson (2001).

Perhaps Ms. Froman meant the courts have never agreed on what it means. But if a 70-page and a 33-page opinion does not "explain and elaborate" what it means in the eyes of the court, then I don't know what does.

[NittanyLion]

Each side resorts to what Tushnet calls “a simplified version of constitutional analysis” to support its viewpoint, looking solely at the wording of the amendment and what the language meant in 1791 rather than at whether society has changed in the meantime and what judicial precedents offer guidance. In “virtually no other area in constitutional law” is analysis done that way, he says, although he’s not sure why.

Perhaps because liberals have been appointing judges who legislate from the bench, instead of interpret the Founders' intent?

[cbkaty]

Regardless of the ruling....by the Supremes...this is a God given right.....and will remain just that.

Whom among us is willing to put forth the proposition that challenges God?

[jdege]

f Parker is the long-awaited “clean” case, one reason may be that lawyers for the National Rifle Association—who helped steer the legal strategy of the plaintiffs and backed them financially—have learned from earlier defeats, and crafted the case to maximize the chances of Supreme Court review.

Stuff and nonsense. Parker is a "clean" case because the lawyers from CATO worked hard to make it such. The NRA has done everything possible to keep it from being heard - from trying to take over the case, to filing parallel cases that include stacks of irrelevant issues that seem to have been intentionally designed to give the courts a reason to dismiss on other grounds, to trying to get Congress to repeal the ban rendering the case moot. The NRA does, finally, seem to have gotten on board with Parker, but the streng6h of the case has nothing to do with the NRA.