Obligatory D.C. handgun ban lifted post

Obligatory D.C. handgun ban lifted post

Sorry, I’m just not excited about this at all. Know why? Because there never should have been a handgun ban in the first place. So as far as I’m concerned, this decision was way overdue, and it’s about damn time. The sad part is that the decision should’ve been 9 – 0, if the activist justices like Stevens and Bader-Ginsburg, for example, were actually concerned about staying true to the Constitution. But they aren’t, and so we get the 5 – 4 decision. (Sigh.) So while I’m happy that the ban was lifted, I just can’t seem to garner much excitement beyond IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME. Rachel, on the other hand, is absolutely thrilled.

In honor of this, I think I might go shooting this weekend. Maybe break out the shotgun. We’ll see.

Here’s the AP story on the “historic” decision — because, you know, this is an entirely new concept and all. I’m quoting them, and if they have a problem with it, oh well. When bloggers start getting paid for the endless poaching of our writing by the mainstream media, then I’ll start paying them.

Silent on central questions of gun control for two centuries, the Supreme Court found its voice Thursday in a decision affirming the right to have guns for self-defense in the home and addressing a constitutional riddle almost as old as the republic over what it means to say the people may keep and bear arms.

The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns and imperiled similar prohibitions in other cities, Chicago and San Francisco among them. Federal gun restrictions, however, were expected to remain largely intact.

The court’s historic awakening on the meaning of the Second Amendment brought a curiously mixed response, muted in some unexpected places.

The reaction broke less along party lines than along the divide between cities wracked with gun violence and rural areas where gun ownership is embedded in daily life. Democrats have all but abandoned their long push for stricter gun laws at the national level after deciding it’s a losing issue for them. Republicans welcomed what they called a powerful precedent.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, straddling both sides of the issue, said merely that the court did not find an unfettered right to bear arms and that the ruling “will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.” But another Chicagoan, Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, called the ruling “very frightening” and predicted more violence and higher taxes to pay for extra police if his city’s gun restrictions are lost.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain welcomed the ruling as “a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom.”

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia, a once-vital, now-archaic grouping of citizens. That’s been the heart of the gun control debate for decades.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said an individual right to bear arms exists and is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

President Bush said: “I applaud the Supreme Court’s historic decision today confirming what has always been clear in the Constitution: the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear firearms.”

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12 Comments
  • PaleoMedic says:

    What chills me to the bone is the gist of the dissenting opinion (can’t recall who wrote it – I frankly don’t care). It said, basically, that he sees nothing in the Second Amendment that states the government shall not enact laws to prevent the citizen from arming himself. But in fact that is precisely what the Second Amendment states, in no uncertain terms. The entire Constitution, as originally written with the Bill of Rights, was intended to stifle GOVERNMENT power. It was about giving men the God given right of liberty. To know that an appointed justice of SCOTUS thinks otherwise frightens me deeply.

  • Mat says:

    It was Justice Stevens who wrote the dissenting opinion.

    My bet is that Stevens and Ginsburg will retire in the next four years, but will be unfortunately replaced by more leftists appointed by Obama.

  • I R A Darth Aggie says:

    My bet is that Stevens and Ginsburg will retire in the next four years, but will be unfortunately replaced by more leftists appointed by Obama.

    Or worse, leftists appointed by McCain. Anyone to the right of Karl Marx will get rejected by the Senate…

  • I’m glad that that the decision went our way (for the most part), and still cheesed off that there had to be a ruling.

    My fear for the scotus is that one of conservative judges will die when Obama is in office….

  • baz says:

    Not sure why everyone is so certain. The first amendment protects free speech (“..shall not be infringed”) but there is clearly protected speech and unprotected speech.
    Likewise, with the whole “well-regulated militia” part, which this group seems to think is mere window-dressing, there must be protected ownership and unprotected ownership. The yardstick has up to now always been the militia reference. This decision changes that. That’s why this is historic.
    To be fair, the authors left out a conjunction describing what the relationship is between the “well-regulated militia” and the “right to keep and bear arms” so the connection has always been one of proximity.
    That’s the problem in a nutshell.
    I wish I could be as certain about these things as you all seem to be.

  • Baz said:
    “Likewise, with the whole “well-regulated militia” part, which this group seems to think is mere window-dressing, there must be protected ownership and unprotected ownership. The yardstick has up to now always been the militia reference. This decision changes that. That’s why this is historic.
    To be fair, the authors left out a conjunction describing what the relationship is between the “well-regulated militia” and the “right to keep and bear arms” so the connection has always been one of proximity.
    That’s the problem in a nutshell.
    I wish I could be as certain about these things as you all seem to be.”

    Well, it’s easy to be this certain. Read what other papers that the founding father’s wrote and you will see what they meant.

    “The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
    — Thomas Jefferson

    “No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
    — Thomas Jefferson

    “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” Tench Coxe in “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution.” Under the pseudonym “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1. Coxe sent a copy of his essay to James Madison along with a letter of the same date. Madison wrote back and the quote follows.

    “Accept my acknowledgments for your favor of the 18th. instant. The printed remarks inclosed in it are already I find in the Gazettes here [New York] … The amendments … will however be greatly favored by explanatory strictures of a healing tendency, and is therefore already indebted to the co-operation of your pen.” James Madison in a response letter to Tench Coxe above supporting the interpretation of the Second Amendment as an individual right.

    “to preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them …” Richard Henry Lee writing in Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Letter XVIII, January 25, 1788

    I can going on this all day baz. But I have to work

    Peace and Prosperity to you

  • Jay says:

    It really is scary that we were one vote away from our Constitution being destroyed.

  • baz says:

    Two out of four of your quotes make explicit reference to arms being centered around some militia-like organization (i.e., defense against government tyranny). The fourth implies it as a defense of “liberty,” and since gun crime was not a problem of the day, one must conclude similarly for that one.
    I read these as actually support the opposite point of view that militias are the yardstick, which as I said, is what the judiciary has typically done up to now.

  • baz
    The milita at the time was the the free people of the colonies. You remember the minutemen right? The back country militias were almost exclusively farmers, traders, etc. Not a national guard (or even army reserve) that we have today.

    Peace

  • Wish I could edit comments 🙂

    “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.”
    — Tench Coxe, 1788.

  • Cylar says:

    Baz says:
    The first amendment protects free speech (”..shall not be infringed”) but there is clearly protected speech and unprotected speech.
    Likewise, with the whole “well-regulated militia” part, which this group seems to think is mere window-dressing, there must be protected ownership and unprotected ownership.

    Nobody, including the Supreme Court, has argued against so-called “reasonable restrictions” on firearms ownership and use. That’s why all the scares I’ve been hearing over the last few days ring rather hollow. You know, all this nonsense about how this means that mental patients will now be able to purchase surface-to-air-missiles. Similarly, it’s illegal to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater. A reasonable restriction on the 1st Amendment. Lower courts will have to hash-out exactly what that means in the years to come.

    However, a total ban on a certain type of weapon which has a positive use, covering persons not found mentally or morally deficient…is not a “reasonable restriction.” That’s all the Court has said.


    Two out of four of your quotes make explicit reference to arms being centered around some militia-like organization (i.e., defense against government tyranny). The fourth implies it as a defense of “liberty,” and since gun crime was not a problem of the day, one must conclude similarly for that one.

    Your unsupported circular logic amuses me. I trust you’ve got some kind of evidence for the claim that 18th century America was free of gun-related crime?

    I’m also curious as to how anyone supports the idea that a “militia” would today be available to defend “liberty” against the infringements of our own government. I cannot work out how this refers to anything other than private arms (as a check on government).


    I read these as actually support the opposite point of view that militias are the yardstick, which as I said, is what the judiciary has typically done up to now.

    It has always seemed absurd to me that anyone would think our Founders wrote nine amendments to protect individual rights against government tyranny…but partway down the list, decided to include one which ostensibly grants government the right to regulate a core individual right. The “militia” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is simply to establish the government’s right to call upon the citzenry for civil defense purposes in the event of a national emergency, nothing more. To construe it as a blank check for government regulation of guns is entirely inconsistent with the spirit of the other 9 amendments of the Bill of Rights.

    Had the people been deprived of this right, it’s unlikely the War for Independence would have been won, and equally unlikely that the newly-independent colonists would have been able to defend their new nation against a British return, a large attack by the natives, or some European power trying to take advantage of the power vacuum.

    Stop embarrassing yourself, moonbat.

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