'Propaganda from gun nuts' becomes law, thanks to Supreme Court
NRA money helped reshape gun law
By Peter Finn, WashPost, Published: March 13
In 1977 at a Denver hotel, Don Kates paced a conference room lecturing a small group of young scholars about the Second Amendment and tossing out ideas for law review articles. Back then, it was a pretty weird activity in pursuit of a wacky notion: that the Constitution confers an individual right to possess a firearm.
“This idea for a very long time was just laughed at,” said Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of constitutional law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University, a chair endowed by the National Rifle Association. “A lot of people thought it was preposterous and just propaganda from gun nuts.”
More than 35 years later, no one is laughing. In 2008, the Supreme Court endorsed for the first time an individual’s right to own a gun in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The 5 to 4 decision rendered ineffective some of the District’s strict gun-control laws. And Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion echoed the work of Kates and his ideological comrades, who had pressed the argument that the Second Amendment articulates an individual right to keep and bear arms.
As the Obama administration pushes for gun-control legislation, it will have to contend with the changed legal understanding of the Second Amendment that culminated in Heller. That transformation was brought about in large part by a small band of lawyers and scholars backed by the NRA.
(More here.)
In 1977 at a Denver hotel, Don Kates paced a conference room lecturing a small group of young scholars about the Second Amendment and tossing out ideas for law review articles. Back then, it was a pretty weird activity in pursuit of a wacky notion: that the Constitution confers an individual right to possess a firearm.
“This idea for a very long time was just laughed at,” said Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of constitutional law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University, a chair endowed by the National Rifle Association. “A lot of people thought it was preposterous and just propaganda from gun nuts.”
More than 35 years later, no one is laughing. In 2008, the Supreme Court endorsed for the first time an individual’s right to own a gun in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The 5 to 4 decision rendered ineffective some of the District’s strict gun-control laws. And Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion echoed the work of Kates and his ideological comrades, who had pressed the argument that the Second Amendment articulates an individual right to keep and bear arms.
As the Obama administration pushes for gun-control legislation, it will have to contend with the changed legal understanding of the Second Amendment that culminated in Heller. That transformation was brought about in large part by a small band of lawyers and scholars backed by the NRA.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
1 Comments:
it's pretty clear that the 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendments are individual rights. Each contains the phrase 'the right of the people'. If the 1st and 4th are individual rights, then by definition, so is the 2nd. Indeed, when the Bill of Rights were adopted, some questioned the need for the 2nd Amendment at all because it was so universally understood that the right to keep and bear arms was not in need of being codified in the new Constitution.
The whole imbroglio of the restriction of a 'well regulated miltia' within the 2nd Amendment was argued very cogently by Pennsylvania delegate Tench Coxe when he wrote in the Philadelphia Gazette in 1788 the following:
"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 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."
The 'militia' are not the police or the national guard or the army. The militia are the citizenry - you and me. We are the militia.
Even Hamitlon in Fed 28 and 29 speaks about 'a well regulated militia' thusly:
"What plan for the regulation of the militia may be pursued by the national government is impossible to be foreseen...The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution... Little more can reasonably be aimed at with the respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped ; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year."
'well regulated' meaning 'well equipped', not that it is under consideration to restriction by a future Congress.
It is not the 'gun nuts', but the liberal 'gun grabbers' who are pushing the envelope using the militia clause as evidence that the 2nd Amendment is not an individual right. Quite contrary, the militia clause is a statement of purpose, not a restriction on the individual right to keep and bear arms.
I only wish the liberal gun grabbers would recognize this and stop tyring to foist their brand of 'for our own good' tyranny on our society.
Post a Comment
<< Home