Posted on 05/09/2002 7:02:38 AM PDT by ethical
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/69642_guned.shtml
Changing the 2nd Amendment
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
It is disturbing, though not surprising, that the federal government has decided after numerous decades of settled thinking on the Second Amendment to reinterpret its position.
The marked shift, formalized in a pair of footnotes to legal briefs submitted Monday to the U.S. Supreme Court, occurs because of the deeply held beliefs of the man who is now leading the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Last summer, in a letter to the National Rifle Association, Ashcroft foreshadowed the change in official thinking. "Let me state unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protects the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms," he wrote.
The department's departure is profound from philosophical and practical standpoints.
Until now, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Justice Department has been in virtual lockstep with the high court's position on the Second Amendment, as last stated in the 1939 decision, United States v. Miller. In that case the court said the amendment protects only those gun ownership rights that have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well regulated militia."
While legal scholarship on the exceedingly volatile amendment has seesawed between the two disparate views, the courts have been generally unified in their thinking -- adhering to the Miller decision in more than 100 federal and state appellate cases -- until last fall.
Then, in the prosecution of a Texan for violating a 1994 federal gun law, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals departed from precedent to maintain that the amendment protects the individual right to bear arms. It did say those rights could be subject to "limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions."
It should be noted that the department, while announcing its change of heart on the basic thrust of the amendment, does not disagree that gun ownership can be curtailed to some extent. And the department would prefer that the high court not involve itself in the Texas case or its companion on appeal, the case of a man convicted of owning two machine guns in violation of the ban against them.
We disagree. Though couched in a footnote, the pointed challenge to decades of unified thinking by the judiciary -- the perspective that ultimately counts -- has been made.
The time is ripe, as is said in legal parlance, for the high court to weigh in again on the Second Amendment and, it can be hoped, reaffirm the position that the Constitution guarantees only a collective right to guns through state and federal militias, not an individual's absolute right. Otherwise, the door will open wide to weakening the responsible gun laws that protect us all.
Perhaps the Administration is waiting until they've had a chance to appoint a Supreme Court Justice or two.
Wrong. "Gun laws" mainly protect gun-toting criminals from any fear of resistance.
The paper is either edited by dysrons or is engaging in the typical dishonest argument that has become the identifying characteristic of the Fabian Socialist claiming to be a "Liberal."
Anyone remotely familiar with the thinking of the Founding Fathers on this issue (see The Right To Keep & Bear Arms), knows that the decisions to which this writer refers were the contrived manipulations of the Constitution by activist Judges, who accepted the situational ethics that all Fabian Socialists and their allies embrace. There is absolutely no evidence that the 2nd Amendment was not intended to do what every patriot at the time wanted done, a clear enunciation of the sacred right of the individual American to arm himself for his own and his people's protection.
This is not debatable among people with intellectual integrity. It is debated by those who think that verbal gamesmanship is more important--or at least more useful to those who seek power--than sacred oaths.
What pathetic verbage!
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
B I N G O
If they want to change the Constitution, then pass a new Amendment. The formal procedure is very well explained.
Preferrably at 2200mph, with rotation.
It's not about duck hunting, or even primarily about home defense. Its about shooting usurpers.
Any other explanation for it's existence is tap dancing around an uncomfortable truth.
That statement was certainly much more true in the days of the Spirit of '76.
As we all should recall, the Minute Men, were the Militia of the day and their need to have weapons at home was fundamental to the strategy of the Militia, which they were an integral part of.
Liberals do not recall history, they interpret it to fit their changing needs. Then they attach lables to it and call it things like "herstory."
You nailed it.
Seems to me if this only applied to a militia that is where the wording would stop, as in "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." But, being a thinking man, I would say the addition of "the right of the people" pertains to every citizen.
Just wondering how The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board would feel if the last paragraph of their article read like the preceeding?
Me too.. Isn't it strange the first National Guard Unit wasn't even formed until the early nineteen hundreds..
As I defend my family from a terrorist, it is my duty as a member of that Militia to use any available Lethal Force.
I will NOT call 9-11 to beg the police to protect my family when they are in danger. However, I will notify the police where they may gather up the body parts, if finally show up.
So, according to YOUR interpretation of the 2nd Amendment……
when a burglar or rapist or plunderer breaks down my
door, or my life is otherwise threatened, I’m supposed
to call the “state and federal militias?”
Yeah, right. Gee, wasn't it Hitler who confiscated all the
firearms first? Oh, but we peons just can't take
care of ourselves, can we?
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