Posted on 11/22/2008 9:11:13 PM PST by nickcarraway
Edited on 11/24/2008 9:11:50 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Of conservatives' few victories this year, the most cherished came when the Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. Now, however, a distinguished conservative jurist argues that the court's ruling was mistaken and had the principal flaws of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 abortion ruling that conservatives execrate as judicial overreaching. Both rulings, says J. Harvie Wilkinson, suddenly recognized a judicially enforceable right grounded in "an ambiguous constitutional text."
“And oh by the way, ‘people’ as ‘people’ do not have the right to own firearms. They are rightless as regards the ownership of firearms. So somehow we arrive at this magickal wonderland, in which the People as States man up and arm themselves to the teeth, but the people as merely ‘people’ are simultaneously disarmed, and nobody has a right even to possess a weapon in the teeth of State and federal law.”
I seem to remember reading somewhere that legal documents are supposed to have something called “internal consistency,” and unless a word is explicitly redifined, it has to mean the same thing as it did before.
If the Constitution says, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble,” and “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” it must be referring to the selfsame “people” in other parts of the document. Therefore, there is no way the introductory phrase about militias can be considered a qualifier, since the language of the second clause must be interpreted exactly the same way as similar language in the rest of the document.
The idea that life does not begin at conception is an absurdity. In fact, the act of carrying a child until it is ready to enter the world is by it's nature evidence of the most fragile time of that "life".
Kill a baby in the womb is okay....but kill that same child at age one year...and you'll go to jail for life.
So, what's the difference...The doctor commits "the act" in the first case. YOU commit the act in the second place. Hence, Abortion "Doctors".....BELONG IN JAIL.
I agree. I was simply expounding Ginzburg's position, and the position liberals have taken ever since Miller.
Or actually, since Presser in 1886, since that was the original attempt to separate "people" from "militia" by lawyerly argle-bargle.
Harvey Wilkerson?
Nope, not a chance!
>>>>>Kill a baby in the womb is okay....but kill that same child at age one year...and you’ll go to jail for life.<<<<<
Yet then there is Scott Peterson being convicted for the murder of his wife and **unborn child***.
That seems contradictory to California’s abortion laws.
http://www.textfiles.com/politics/GUNS/2nd_amen.gfw
“The Bill of Rights should be modified only with extreme reluctance but
America has an extreme crisis of gunfire. And impatience to deal with
it can cause less than scrupulous readings in the Constitution.
Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it
was 200 years ago, when the requirements of self-defense and food-
gathering made gun ownership almost universal. But whatever the right
is, there it is.
The National Rifle Association is perhaps correct and certainly is
plausible in its “strong” reading of the Second Amendment protection
of private gun ownership. Therefore gun control advocates who want
to square their policy preferences with the Constitution should squarely
face the need to deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the
embarrassing amendment.”
I agree....There are a lot more cases....like accidents where a pregnant mother and child are both killed. That child is recognized also...in a court of law.
George Will is a sock puppet. The Second Amendment gives us the right to own guns so we can overthrow our government. I also interpret IIA to give us the right to form a militia made up of normal citizens, so we can be fully prepared to fight if need be.
Its only confusing if you continue to try infringing on a plain right which shall not be infringed.
Existing criminal law handles gun control better than gun control laws do.
Comparing Heller to Roe -- spare me.
What “newfound right” is he talking about? The Heller case is not analogous to Roe, or Miranda, or even Marbury. Heller argued that the second amendment means what it says. There are no emanations from penumbras and sweet mysteries of life in the Heller case. What’s sad is that 4 of 5 Supreme Court Justices were willing to take the simple concept behind, “ . . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed . . .” and pervert it for their own politics.
They don’t even understand how close they came to disposing of the entire body of citizens’ rights enumerated (and frequently ignored) by government across the country. What good is a right of people if people means only the state in which they reside? We are chattels in the face of such. We would be nothing more than objects to be used to further causes of those sympathetic to power.
George’s facial expression has not changed in 20 years.
the RIGHT of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed doesn't look ambiguous to me nor does it look ambiguous to tens of millions of gun owners. The ONLY people that its meaning is somehow ambiguous are people looking to take our guns in order to establish a new dictatorship in their warped view of utopia.
George Will is too cute, by half! Too much of his life has been spent in DC!!
Er... no. George must not have read the Heller decision. The Dissent used Brady campaign agitprop, bad stats, and prior case law to try and prop up it's gun ban "logic". The Majority opinion used historical evidence and Founding intent.
"Shall not be infringed" is about as unambiguous as it gets...
Actually read Miller. It says that the arms protected by 2nd Amendment are those in common use by the Armed Forces. It is actually the lower courts that stated it allowed the restriction of all weapons. In other words in accordance with Miller as ruled the restrictions on military weapons is not allowed.
I would have to assume it is because Mr. Will is, unfathomably, somehow in favor of its conclusions even if the logic is dismally flawed.
Be that as it may, the Obama administration is clearly the most anti-gun ever. All gunowners should consider joining at least one group: the NRA can be reached at 1-877-NRA-2000; Gunowners of America's telephone number is 1-703-321-8585; the Second Amendment Foundation number is 1-800-426-4302.
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