“But the majority and minority justices demonstrated that there are powerful, detailed, historically grounded ‘originalist’ arguments for opposite understandings of what the Framers intended with that right to ‘keep and bear arms.’”
Why is Will bending over backwards like this? What an illogical sentence. As far as I know, the historical evidence overwhelmingly concurs that the Second Amendment was understood to provide such a right at the time of its ratification. What arguments could he possibly be talking about?
As for the leaving it up to the legislature thing, phooey! We allow state lawmakers to regulate pornography and incitements to violence, just like we will continue to allow them to regulate the gun ownership felons and the use and production of fissionable materials (which could be made into “arms” by private individuals). However, we will not sit idly while political speech is legislated against any more than we will allow guns to be banned for the general public simply because they are guns.
During the oral arguments over Heller, Justice Ginzburg showed the liberals' hand with her questions.
Their theory is that the Militia clause means that 2A only applies to the States, that the People as States have the right to keep Militia.
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.
And references to the Militia, and the Militia Acts, and their overflowing language about militiamen bringing their weapons with them (from whence? surely not from home?) are just ..... history. As in, Marxism's "dustbin" -- which George Orwell made immortal as the infamous "memory hole".
So Ginzburg reasoned, if the People do not have the right to own firearms, then D.C.'s law injured no right, did it? Since the right did not exist. Therefore, D.C.'s law was perfectly constitutional, as it injured no right.
Slick, huh? "This is not a screw job. You are screwed, but it is not a screw job because I say it is not a screw job. Twenty years, next case."
Ginzburg's resting point is that the government owns all the guns, all the rights and powers, and the People, none. The "government" becomes the People and displaces the People from sovereignty and the possession of sovereign rights, and the People become just ants for the government to step on, as it invincibly exercises all power and all right.