After 217 years, Supreme Court affirms the right to bear arms
You're right, Phillip, when you say "They managed to slip a little bit of bias in, but it looks like they were trying to stay neutral for a change."
What I find most promising:
Q. Will the ruling allow those who are arrested or convicted on gun charges to challenge their cases?High-court ruling recognizes that gun laws only disarm victims
A. Yes.
I don't completely agree with this guy, but his opinion piece promotes an individual right to a general audience, so it works in our favor. I do agree that Judge Scalia was being activist, and it may surprise you to find out I agree with a point made by Judge Breyer in his dissent, although obviously not for the same ultimate reason (see pg. 42-43 of Breyer dissent, or 155-156/157 of the .pdf file):
I am similarly puzzled by the majority’s list, in Part III of its opinion, of provisions that in its view would survive Second Amendment scrutiny. These consist of (1) “prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons”; (2) “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons”; (3) “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by . . . the mentally ill”; (4)“laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings”; and (5)government “conditions and qualifications” attached “to the commercial sale of arms.” Ante, at 54. Why these? Is it that similar restrictions existed in the late 18th century? The majority fails to cite any colonial analogues.Bingo. Sometimes your enemy hands you a chair. Don't be afraid to bash with it.
Scalia manufactured those unnecessary concessions out of thin air, and happy as most gun owners who haven't read the majority opinion are about the outcome, we damn well deserve to know it.
8 comments:
I'm glad someone else picked up on some of this, I've been waiting. As noted only the term felony was used on the criminal side of the ruling. At once I thought about Lautenberg's gun laws (special thanks to Bob Barr). My hunch is they know this is going to be coming their way and stayed as far away from it as they could. By only using "felons and mentally ill" they left out misdeameaner. By doing so when a federal court rules the Lautenberg gun laws unlawful it can quote the USSC as having ruled only felons and the mentally ill are subject to being unlawfully unable to own firearms.
This is just my two cents worth of reading into the ruling but its the very first thing I thought of as I was reading the ruling.
AvgJoe,
By making a list that SCOTUS believes would pass scrutiny they left the door open for that list to be added to. Domestic abusers would logically fit in that list.
Personally, I don't see Heller as a win so much as the gut shooting of the second amendment.
I believe that the problem isn't *what* Scalia wrote, but why: considering the lack of precedent and prior rulings, the words, text, and private correspondance all clearly point to an individual Right. As in the vote tally *should* have been 6-3, 7-2 or better.
After having read the decision and thought about it for a few days, and considering recent decisions such as Kelo and the terror related challenges, I can only come to the conclusion that Scalia was forced to write what he did because of that pesky Constitution thing. He really, along with the other Supremes and the rest of the Government don't want us armed, period. The blogosphere is correct: no rest, no celebration, now is the time to push even harder.
Perhaps we should start with what we were given: since they say we can be armed in our homes, it is time to expand that definition, starting with the concept of 'home town'.
"Shall not be infringed"
unless you've been convicted of a felony sometime in your life,
unless you want to bear an arm somewhere the state doesn't want you to,
unless you wish to sell an arm,
unless you wish to bear a concealed arm,
unless you wish to bear an arm openly,
unless the state believes you're a nut,
unless you own what the state has determined is an "assault" weapon,
unless you wish to own a fully automatic firearm,
unless you live in a community property state and are married to a felon, a person under a protective order, or a nut,
unless the state can dream up some other cockamamie rational to infringe upon your rights.
The anti-gunners are still there and are still determined to infringe as far as they think they can. Heller is a small step in the right direction but the battles are far from over. DC's mayor made no bones in his televised interview about his desire to find some way around the Heller decision.
One wonders if that was what it took to keep Kennedy on board.
I would guess that the only reason that the 2nd passed muster was that if it were invalidated, then the rest of The Bill Of Rights could have been knocked off like dominoes. AND, quite possibly they may have been reading enough of Mike Vanderboegh to know that they better throw us a little bitty bone.
I wonder if Justice Breyer's observations in dissent can be used in a future case to overturn such restrictions?
Wouldn't THAT be a delicious bit of irony.
One thing that is strange is, government buildings and schools. By far and large schools are government buildings. This could be seen as protecting government interest over citizens interest.
Post a Comment