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Gun Control & RKBA

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eridani

(51,907 posts)
Mon Oct 5, 2015, 04:00 AM Oct 2015

The Second Amendment Is a Gun-Control Amendment [View all]


http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/32756-focus-the-second-amendment-is-a-gun-control-amendment

This was an astounding constitutional reading, or misreading, as original as Citizens United, and as idiosyncratic as the reasoning in Bush v. Gore, which found a conclusive principle designed to be instantly discarded—or, for that matter, as the readiness among the court’s right wing to overturn a health-care law passed by a supermajority of the legislature over a typo. Anyone who wants to both grasp that decision’s radicalism and get a calm, instructive view of what the Second Amendment does say, and was intended to say, and was always before been understood to say, should read Justice John Paul Stevens’s brilliant, persuasive dissent in that case. Every person who despairs of the sanity of the country should read it, at least once, not just for its calm and irrefutable case-making but as a reminder of what sanity sounds like.

Stevens, a Republican judge appointed by a Republican President, brilliantly analyzes the history of the amendment, making it plain that for Scalia, et al., to arrive at their view, they have to reference not the deliberations that produced the amendment but, rather, bring in British common law and lean on interpretations that arose long after the amendment was passed. Both “keep arms” and “bear arms,” he demonstrates, were, in the writers’ day, military terms used in military contexts. (Gary Wills has usefully illuminated this truth in the New York Review of Books.) The intent of the Second Amendment, Stevens explains, was obviously to secure “to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.” The one seemingly sound argument in the Scalia decision—that “the people” in the Second Amendment ought to be the same “people” referenced in the other amendments, that is, everybody—is exactly the interpretation that the preamble was meant to guard against.

Stevens’s dissent should be read in full, but his conclusion in particular is clear and ringing:

The right the Court announces [in Heller] was not “enshrined” in the Second Amendment by the Framers; it is the product of today’s law-changing decision. . . . Until today, it has been understood that legislatures may regulate the civilian use and misuse of firearms so long as they do not interfere with the preservation of a well-regulated militia. The Court’s announcement of a new constitutional right to own and use firearms for private purposes upsets that settled understanding .
. .

Justice Stevens and his colleagues were not saying, a mere seven years ago, that the gun-control legislation in dispute in Heller alone was constitutional within the confines of the Second Amendment. They were asserting that essentially every kind of legislation concerning guns in the hands of individuals was compatible with the Second Amendment—indeed, that regulating guns in individual hands was one of the purposes for which the amendment was offered.

So there is no need to amend the Constitution, or to alter the historical understanding of what the Second Amendment meant. No new reasoning or tortured rereading is needed to reconcile the Constitution with common sense. All that is necessary for sanity to rule again, on the question of guns, is to restore the amendment to its commonly understood meaning as it was articulated by this wise Republican judge a scant few years ago. And all you need for that is one saner and, in the true sense, conservative Supreme Court vote. One Presidential election could make that happen.
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Almost EdwardBernays Oct 2015 #1
actually not, gejohnston Oct 2015 #6
a zeal to deceive jimmy the one Oct 2015 #13
I know exactly what I'm talking about gejohnston Oct 2015 #15
a blue link still needs explanation jimmy the one Oct 2015 #17
the reason I ignored the collective right gejohnston Oct 2015 #18
what kind of error was it jimmy the one Oct 2015 #20
stupid ol' supreme court jimmy the one Oct 2015 #19
printz and miller were both criminals gejohnston Oct 2015 #21
non responsive jimmy the one Oct 2015 #23
non responsive is gejohnston Oct 2015 #24
The U.S. Constitution doesn't do "collective rights." Rights are individual. Eleanors38 Oct 2015 #9
The right to life, liberty, and persuit of happiness is where firearm ownership comes from. ileus Oct 2015 #2
The "pursuit of happiness" does not necessarily equate with "happiness is a warm gun" Human101948 Oct 2015 #3
A right to life implies a right to self-defense discntnt_irny_srcsm Oct 2015 #4
It is the mode of self defense that is in dispute... Human101948 Oct 2015 #5
File with ATF... discntnt_irny_srcsm Oct 2015 #7
That's a negative, you're just wrong discntnt_irny_srcsm Oct 2015 #8
That paragraph essentially destroys interpretation out of context... beevul Oct 2015 #10
Absolutely!!! discntnt_irny_srcsm Oct 2015 #11
the invisible word - declaratory jimmy the one Oct 2015 #12
the Bill of Rights... discntnt_irny_srcsm Oct 2015 #14
declaratory & (govt) restrictive jimmy the one Oct 2015 #22
Of course it isn't, james. beevul Oct 2015 #16
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