The Court and the Second Amendment

By agreeing yesterday to rule on whether provisions of the District of Columbia’s stringent gun control law violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court has inserted itself into a roiling public controversy with large ramifications for public safety.

For once, I couldn’t agree more with an editorial at the NY Times. HUGE ramifications for public safety. If handguns throughout major cities and even smaller rural areas are banned just like they are in DC, we’re SCREWED.

Something tells me, however, that’s not what the NYT editor had in mind in regards to “public safety” which in the NYT dictionary means something along the lines of, “the right to defend yourself with nothing more than a spork.”

The hope, which we share, is that the court will rise above the hard-right ideology of some justices to render a decision respectful of the Constitution’s text and the violent consequences of denying government broad room to regulate guns. The fear is that it will not.

Well then I hope that this is your worst, farging nightmare, you bastiches. Respectful of the Constitution? It’s quite clear that our Founding Fathers intent was to have the Constitution interpreted as such:

The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all documents is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and intention of the parties.

Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by President James Madison

Far be it from the NYT to actually pay attention to history, and respect our Founding Fathers intent.

At issue is a 2-to-1 ruling last March by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that found unconstitutional a law barring handguns in homes and requiring that shotguns and rifles be stored with trigger locks or disassembled.

Right. There are more accidental drowning deaths involving swimming pools - by a large margin - than by handguns. Does that mean that we should be storing our pools without water and a diving board? It is massively unconstitutional.

The ruling upheld a radical decision by a federal trial judge, who struck down the 31-year-old gun control law on spurious grounds that conform with the agenda of the anti-gun control lobby but cry out for rejection by the Supreme Court.

Oh, here we go again with the “anti-gun control lobby.” If by that phrase you mean the millions upon millions of law-abiding gun owners who feel the need to protect their families against criminals who don’t follow the laws that misguided nanny-legislators put forth, then yeah, color us a lobby.

Much hinges on how the justices interpret the Second Amendment, which says: “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.”

Pretty damn obvious to me, but hey, I’m not a Supreme Court Judge.

Opponents of gun control sometimes claim a constitutional prohibition on any serious regulation of individual gun ownership. The court last weighed in on the amendment in 1939, concluding, correctly in our view, that the only absolute right conferred on individuals is for the private ownership of guns that has “some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency of a well-regulated militia.” The federal, state and local governments may impose restrictions on other uses — like the trigger guards — or outright bans on types of weapons. Appellate courts followed that interpretation, until last spring’s departure.

Damn, I was so looking forward to putting a Sherman on layaway.

A lot has changed since the nation’s founding, when people kept muskets to be ready for militia service. What has not changed is the actual language of the Constitution.

Couldn’t agree more, asshole, thanks for making my argument for me.

To get past the first limiting clauses of the Second Amendment to find an unalienable individual right to bear arms seems to require creative editing.

And certainly the New York Times wouldn’t know a damn thing about “creative editing”, right? That must be why it’s so easy for you to see this issue the way you do. Creative editing experts!

Beyond grappling with fairly esoteric arguments about the Second Amendment, the justices need to responsibly confront modern-day reality.

Exactly. Bans don’t work because criminals don’t follow the rules. Major cities that have areas of poverty, crime along with handgun bans simply take the law-abiding individuals who would normally have need to protect themselves, and offer them up for the slaughter. Let the foxes in, and lock the hen house door.

A decision that upends needed gun controls currently in place around the country would imperil the lives of Americans.

It would imperil the lives of Americans who have been able to run free through “gun-free zones” with their weapons of choice, kicking in teeth, mugging, robbing, and killing innocent civilians who are unarmed because the tool is being blamed above the crime and the criminal.

Ick. Just read through an entire NYT editorial. Now I need a shower.