Posted on 11/20/2007 10:14:54 AM PST by ctdonath2
After a hiatus of 68 years, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to rule on the meaning of the Second Amendment — the hotly contested part of the Constitution that guarantees “a right to keep and bear arms.” Not since 1939 has the Court heard a case directly testing the Amendment’s scope — and there is a debate about whether it actually decided anything in that earlier ruling. In a sense, the Court may well be writing on a clean slate if it, in the end, decides the ultimate question: does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to have a gun for private use, or does it only guarantee a collective right to have guns in an organized military force such as a state National Guard unit?
The city of Washington’s appeal (District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290) is expected to be heard in March — slightly more than a year after the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the right is a personal one, at least to have a gun for self-defense in one’s own home.
The Justices chose to write out for themselves the question(s) they will undertake to answer. Both sides had urged the Court to hear the city’s case, but they had disagreed over how to frame the Second Amendment issue.
Here is the way the Court phrased the granted issue:
“Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”
It was stated during the floor debates leading up to the amendment ratification.
You're looking at the wording of the Amendment from today's perspective while those who have studied the issue are putting the 2nd Amendment as written and applied in the context of that day. The militia part was added simply as one possible use for the necessity of an armed population but whether that was needed or not it didn't preclude what they and most of us today considered to be a sacred right to keep and bear arms.
Even before the Bill of Rights was added and Constitution written that was considered a given in American life. How do you think the Revolutionary War was won, nearly the entire civilian population had guns.
If Ginsberg is pro-2A, then the whole thing ought to be a slam dunk in favor of the individual rights argument.
Bald faced lie paulsen. More worthless assertion by you.
In a word: narrow. But that's the way the court likes them.
An individual right outside of a Militia. That certainly is the core question. And I agree that, if favorable, it would then "lead to new test cases on whether to extend the Amendment’s guarantee so that it applied to state and local laws".
The same can be said for gun ownership, it has several uses that can be both collective and individual. But in order for the collective need to be fulfilled if ever called upon it was necessary that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. If it were the other way around then all guns could theoretically be forced to be stored somewhere until their use is needed. And I've heard liberals make that case, which is ludicrous.
"The people at large" were the Militia, and they were to be assembled "once or twice in the course of a year". He wasn't suggesting asembling every person in the United States once or twice a year.
Of course, paulsen will point to some Jim Crow court to prove that not everyone is a "people" but I think we have resolved that issue over the years, much to bobbys dispair.
NB - I said she is “quoted” as being pro-2A.
Who votes what, nobody knows.
There have also been comments supposedly made by Souter that suggest an individual right but after Kelo I’ll believe it when I see it.
That's exactly what the documents did!
"consists of all of the people (initially all free men"
Initially all freemen (not free men). They were also called "freeholders". More reading for you.
And thank you for conceding that it wasn't every person. Every person (as protected by the fifth amendment, for example) would include foreigners, illegals, children, the insane, prisoners, etc. Words mean things.
Here’s my take on it, for what it’s worth:
My firearms and my RIGHT to keep and bear them, do not depend on ANYONE’s say-so. Self-defense is THE most basic Human, Civil, and Constitutional right. If they vote against the Second Amendment, it changes NOTHING for me, except the amount of ammo that I buy and how fast it gets cached and buried.
If they vote for it, as they should, then it is another victory for the Republic, for the time being.
Every scumbag politician who tries to remove this most basic of all rights should be very, very concerned for the day when Americans remember what the Second Amendment was really meant for, and it isn’t duck hunting. We are the ONLY “minority” that consistently exercises patience, and EXTREME tolerance while these A**holes mess with our right 24/7/365. Would ANY other “minority” put up with it?
WE ARE THE LARGEST SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP inthe country, with some 90 million gun owners. We need to start acting like it.
The socialists/communists in the Democrat Party (and liberal RINOS) want to push this country towards the brink of class/race/gender warfare; with the stroke of a pen, they make law-abiding honest citizens into criminals for what they own, for what they believe, for what they think, for what they teach their children, while they let the animals run rampant. If that becomes the case, well, then we have nothing else to lose, do we?
And at that point, it becomes “time to feed the hogs”.
I am a free man; my family has been shot full of holes for generations going back to the Civil War (on BOTH sides of the issue) for this country. I will not surrender one item, not one single item, because some group of maggots with a political agenda decides that I can’t exercise my right.
Too much blood has been shed to let it go so easily. Indeed, we owe many more
To those on the Left I say this - We will not go gently into that good night.
Molon labe.
NFHale
I wrote a paper on this case for one of my grad school classes - I completely copped out on the probability of success in the USSC. Gave it 50% either way, and I still do.
Actually the Constitution NEVER indicates that governments, federal, state or local, have rights. They are only indicated as having powers. People, that is individuals, are said to have both rights and powers. Compare and contrast the 9th and 10th amendments.
Yeah, especially the one that the Founding Fathers felt was the SECOND most important Right of THE PEOPLE!
If the Second Admendment is collective in meaning, then so are the 1st, 4th, 9th and 10th.
All of which also contain the clause "the right of the people..."
They say the swing vote is Kennedy but I’m optimistic because so many liberal scholars like Tribe, Dershowitz. and others concede it is an individual right. It’s very possible we’ll see maybe one or two of the left-leaning judges influenced by that.
O.K. Powers, not rights.
So what?
Gee...I've been an American for well over half a century now, and....not once in the first 40 or so years of that did I ever hear anyone attempt to characterize the Second Amendment as a "collective right", whatever that might be. Oddly, I don't think the military (of any flavor) needed an amendment to the Constitution to give it the right to have its members keep or bear arms. Sorta seems redundant, you know?
One of the major mistakes that Americans make is actually bothering to give credence to ludicrous assertions like this, which is clearly a cheap attempt to fabricate a nullifying definition of the Second out of whole cloth. The split second you actually start debating nonsense like this, you have walked into the trap that people like lawyers set: accepting their contrived reality as being even a bit real.
There is nothing to debate in this ridiculous perversion of the history and intent of the Second Amendment. It was concocted as an ad hoc argument from some simple distortions of ordinary words. At best, it shows how language is imprecise, and therefore the source of difficulty in making laws that are unassailable, as Messrs. Madison and Jefferson were trying to do.
But the Steve Breyers of the world revel in this crap, because it allows them to twist the world to their liking. And in so doing, change - radically - the Constitution.
Such games should be off limits to malicious children like them.
My worry is Scalia, not Kennedy.
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