Posted on 06/08/2009 12:43:11 PM PDT by neverdem
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How could any “originalist” skew “The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall NOT be infringed”, to mean anything other that the “People” of the several states?
There was no “DC” at that time, nor was there a nation guard.
Did the founders just put the 2nd amendment in there as a joke that didn't cover anyone?
I guess if that is the rule the states can vote to bring back slavery?
I'll vote for making liberals slaves. Public school teachers would have to mow my lawn and wash my truck every weekend!
Thursday, June 4th, 2009 11:45 am NOTE: The petition discussed in the post below National Rifle Association, et al, v. City of Chicago, et al. has now been docketed as 08-1497. It can be downloaded here.(I can't get it to open. I got an error message.) It raises one question: Whether the right of the people to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is incorporated into the Due Process Clause or the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so as to be applicable to the staes, thereby invalidating ordinances prohibiting possession of handguns in the home. (The post below was first published at 5:08 p.m. Wednesday.)
One day after losing a major test case in an appeals court on the scope of the Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association the nations leading advocate of personal gun rights asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to apply the Amendment to state, county and city government laws that seek to regulate firearms. The petition was announced by the NRA in this news release. The petition will be posted as soon as it becomes available.
The NRA is challenging a ruling on Tuesday by the Seventh Circuit Court, saying it was bound by Supreme Court precedent to find that the Amendment restricts only federal laws, not those enacted by state and local government. A post discussing the Circuit Court ruling can be read here.
A second petition, from other challengers to a Chicago gun ban, will be filed shortly, and no later than Monday, according to their attorney, Alan Gura, an Alexandria, Va., attorney who argued and won the Second Amendment case at the Supreme Court last Term (District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290). The other challengers to the Circuit Court ruling are the Second Amendment Foundation, the Illinois State Rifle Association, and four Chicago residents.
The Supreme Court last June established an individual right, under the Amendment, to have a gun for self-defense in ones home. The Court did not decide, however, whether the Amendment would now be applied to restrict state and local government moves to regulate or ban guns. That will be the core argument in the new petitions.
The NRA, in its news release about its petition, indicated it would argue that the Seventh Circuit Court should have followed the Ninth Circuit Court in finding a way to incorporate Second Amendment rights, through the Fourteenth Amendment, so that those rights would then apply against states, counties and cities.
It goes back a long way to Marbury v. Madison when the Supreme Court decided that it is the final arbiter in matters legal and Constitutional. In the early 19th Century, in Barron v. Baltimore it was decided that the Constitution and the amendments only applied to the feds. Any corrections will be appreciated.
Maybe it actually makes sense to live in DC?
I never realized that anyone would or could argue that the Bill of Rights was applicable to, and a restraint on the various States.
If I am wrong, then we are in deeper doodoo than I ever imagined, or could ever imagine...
I agree that is what they are basing that thinking on. I don't agree that it is origionalist.
To me origionalist means basing the opinion on what the framers had in mind at the time.
After all, the still active fundamental final authority is the people.
I don't think things have been perverted yet to the point of nullifying that!
bump
I agree, but the black robes screwed it up. I won't discuss my thoughts about lawyers. Shakespeare said it far better than I could.
The 2nd A does not name an actor (the one who would infringe RKBA), as the 1st Amendment does (Congress). I don't see how any State would not be constrained, considering the aforementioned supremacy clause.
That's what I used to think until I came across all the mental gymnastics that all these wicked lawyers devised, e.g. privileges and immunities, types of due process, incorporation, etc.
Yes, in 1791 all all rights named in the COTUS and the BOR applied to the States as well. The wordings are careful. What happened then? Some of the States and Justices who took the sides of the States chopped up the original intent so as to affirm power structures in those States.
I strongly support the originalist philosophy. Thomas Jefferson warned against new interpretations of the Constitution and recommended an originalist viewpoint:
On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invent against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. - Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, June 12, 1823.
One of the arguments that the left has used against the 2nd Amendment has been that gun ownership has to be associated with membership in a “well-regulated militia.”
At the time of the Bill of Rights, there was no National Guard. The militia was simply - Everyone. Or as James Mason put it: “I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole body of the people except for a few public officials. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them
And Noah Webster (1758-1843) American patriot and scholar, author of the 1806 edition of the dictionary that bears his name, defined the militia similarly as “the effective part of the people at large.”
So, the intent of the founding fathers was that the militia was EVERYONE. And the term “well-regulated” didn’t mean (as the liberals would love to believe) buried under an avalance of laws and regulations. It meant well-trained and disciplined.
Here’s a nice summary of the originalist meaning of the 2nd Amnedment. http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndmea.html
Thanks for the link.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
I fully expect Obama to give comfort to the enemy.
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