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?”
And the way it does that is by prohibting the infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
If your interpretation was correct, our Founders could very easily have written, "The power of the state-regulated militias to arm themselves shall not be infringed".
Please tell me how YOUR understanding of the Second Amendment differs from this simpler wording.
I hope that you are correct.
It's difficult to stay calm when this case represents the first large step necessary to stop the infringement of my rights in Kalifornia.
The decision I hope to see will invalidate many Ninth Circus decisions that need to be overturned. I hope that the majority can get the phrase "fundamental right" into the decision. That's needed to take the second large step.
BTTT
If there is a silver lining in all of this, the timing, ahead of next year’s presidential election, will force Democandidates to take a stand on the issue. Clinton/Obama/Edwards are going to have to weasel and squirm on their views, which will be fun to watch. Especially since they want to widen their base with south/west voters. Of course, wishing for them to take a stand on anything is like wishing for rain in Georgia.
Don’t argue with the moron. He will take the thread way off base due to his inability to see past his incorrect interpretation.
For instance, lower court decisions have nothing to do with what SCOTUS does. Only prior SCOTUS decisions are considered precedent to the SCOTUS.
The bigger question is, why aren’t they?
lmao!
“..the RKBA belongs to individuals, not the government, at any level.”
I agree.
Another way the libs may try to wriggle out of this is that handguns, in the sense of the Second Amendment aren’t covered, as in the 1700’s militia relied on long guns and only officers used handguns. I’m sure that all kinds of imaginative arguments are going to be put forth by the opponents of the Second Amendment and I am really worried that the 5 libs on SCOTUS will hang together on this.
From Aymette v. State of Tennessee, 2 Humphreys 154 (Tenn. 1840):
"The words "bear arms," too, have reference to their military use, and were not employed to mean wearing them about the person as part of the dress ... A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms."
Very true and even there lower court rulings lately have been citing the 2nd Amendment as an individual right. But I agree, ultimately the only court that counts when it comes to affecting the country as a whole is the USSC and they're typically only concerned with where past Supreme Courts have gone.
Did you think George Mason was referring to every person in the United States (except for a few public officials)?
Wow. You are hopelessly lost.
As things stand today, you cannot successfully mount a 2A challenge to a gun control law, because the Court will just point to Miller and say you're not in a militia, and that's all it takes today to dismiss your claim. Oh, and they might fine you for bringing a frivolous claim which has been rejected time and again.
If we lose, you will not be able to successfully mount a 2A challenge to a gun control law, because the Court will just point to Heller and say you're not in a militia, and that's all it takes today to dismiss your claim. Oh, and they might fine you for bringing a frivolous claim which has been rejected time and again.
See how we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain?
That is simply incorrect. This sort of "lawyerly myopia" is what is going to destroy our rights and freedom.
You're so wrapped-up in legalistic tactics that you're ignoring the greater danger of the political and cultural strategy being implemented. While it is technically correct that a negative ruling won't have an appreciable effect on mounting "2A challenges" to gun control laws, that is essentially irrelevant.
What such a ruling will actually signify is a fatal defeat in the battle of ideas and principles, in which the concepts of individual rights and freedom upon which this nation was established will have finally been overpowered by those of collectivist statism. The loss of the Second Amendment will represent the destruction of the last bulwark and guarantee of the theoretical underpinnings of the moral and philosophical case for individual rights and resistance to tyranny made by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence.
A negative ruling will destroy the fragile ambiguity which has so far sustained our Second Amendment rights and will send a clear signal to the anti-gun enemies of freedom that they have won the war of ideas and now have a free-hand to ramp up their efforts to disarm the American people. It will open the floodgates to new oppressive legislation, and not only will 2A challenges be moot, but pretty much any challenges to gun control efforts will eventually be as well.
The immediate battle is legal, but the war is cultural, ideological and political. A victory in the court would be a welcome respite, but it will in no way guarantee an ultimate victory for our rights. A loss, however, will immediately entail a tremendous loss of ground in that larger war.
As pointed out in the link I provided Lawrence Tribe, who is no conservative by any stretch of the imagination believed the Founders were referring to defense of one's life, family, and property. That is at least partly why he changed his opinion regarding that amendment's meaning.
Still even if the word "bear" was meant strictly for military use when needed as that state court decision seems to believe it doesn't preclude the people from keeping arms. Again under your theory if the 2nd Amendment were only about militias and using arms for that purpose then theoretically all of us could be forced to keep our arms locked up somewhere under state supervision until needed. Why do you suppose that wasn't advocated from the very beginning when the Amendment was adopted?
Go to The Militia Act of 1792. That document defines the state Militia. In detail.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson is quite clear in its meaning. Note that it says Free Man and not Freeman.'
Yes, because you quoted it incorrectly. The correct quote is, "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms within his own lands or tenements."
Jefferson was not talking about the second amendment. He was proposing that language for the 1776 Virginia State Constitution, 12 years before the second amendment was written. It was rejected by the Virginia State legislature.
"Every other quote by Constitutional authors, contributors and supporters says effectively the same thing."
I know. But, like Jefferson, they're not referring to a right protected by the second amendment.
"I'm sure that the founding fathers would have no problem with resident aliens being armed."
I'm sure the Founding Fathers would say that it's up to the state in which the resident alien lives. In 1792, the second amendment, however, did not protect the RKBA of non-citizens. It still doesn't.
No I don't. If the 2nd Amendment is ruled by the USSC to be merely a "right" of state governments to arm a militia the antis will shift into a full court press to force European style gun control on Americans. Even though some lower federal courts have already made such a ruling, the antis are still held back to some degree by the public perception that the amendment actually guarantees an individual right, which of course it does. If the USSC makes a similar ruling it will be a signal to the antis at every level of government that they can now go all out to pass stricter gun laws.
Not even close! You're just making this up as you go along!
Hamilton discusses this in Federalist 29. He says that disciplining "all the militia" would be "as futile as it would be injurious".
Similar to the Kelo decision. There will be no direct effect, but the decision may affect state thinking.
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