A Bull's-Eye For The Supreme Court

Second Amendment: In the "living Constitution" era, the Supreme Court rediscovers original intent and rightly rules that the right to bear arms applies to all Americans just as the rest of the Bill of Rights does.

It's hard to conceive how the justices could have decided otherwise. But by the narrowest of margins — 5-4 — they have reaffirmed that keeping and bearing arms is an inalienable and individual right like speech and religion, and that it applies to all individuals as the Founding Fathers intended.

Why anyone thinks the Second Amendment does not apply to all Americans is a mystery to us. Governments have powers; individuals have rights. The Bill of Rights was an enumeration of those individual rights — from freedom of speech to freedom of religion to the right to bear arms — that are to be protected from the intrusion of an oppressive government.

Writing for the court in a case involving restrictive firearms laws in Chicago and one of its suburbs, Justice Samuel Alito said the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states." Two years ago, in Heller vs. District of Columbia, the court ruled that gun ownership was an individual right but left unclear its scope.

I read parts of the argument and I was dubious at first, but I think the reasonings of Alito and Thomas (his is a bit different) are interesting.

Justice Thomas' decision was more than a bit different. He avoided the Due Process argument and used the Privileges and Immunities clause.

"I agree with that description of the right. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to “process.” Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause."

Unfortunately, we don’t have the numbers to stop Elena Kagan, barring an unexpected development.

How's this for an unexpected development?

Get one (1)congresscritter to insist on asking the following simple question of Ms. Kagan :

Is the united States of America a Democracy or a Representative Constitutional Republic?

The resulting debate would be literally unprecedented. At least since 1865.

It was a lot precedented between 1793 and 1860...

The 14th is the giant tunnel in the Constitution that brings prohibitions on the federal government to the states.

Why would the 14th even have been needed if recently freed blacks became 'people' rather than slaves? Wouldn't the BOR apply to them at such time? Oh, that's right, the BOR only limits the federal government.

This is where I don't follow the argument. I believe that certain items were put there as a 'for the record' statement with the understanding that no government could infringe on the RKBA, for example, as it would now be enshrined in a document with the most supreme legal status.

I think they might have done the same with 'ownership of humans' had the issue been settled at the time of it's writing. The same for fetuses- had they imagined a million a year would someday end up in dumpsters.

To me, the constitution was to be the document of all documents, attempting to encompass as many freedoms as possible while assigning as few powers as necessary to the general government. Ammendments allowed the states a way to fine-tune the sucker.

In that light, no person's right to keep and bear arms may be infringed as many states are currently guilty of with fees, licenses, and permits, etc. However, the states might weigh-in on the What, Where, When, How, and How Much with regards to 'arms' while being forbidden from denying a right to keep and bear them.

The way this is going it'll be ages before this 'right' is enjoyed as intended, imo. Any right that cannot be exercised is not a right at all but more likely a priviledge. I still haven't come across the Bill of Priviledges. I bet there are at least four justices who have a copy though.

LOL this has become an embarrassing exchange which is totally unprofessional on this great site. I see the moron in chief getting everything he wants. The puppet masters are successful in every endeavor. I know the situation, the problem is we don't capitalize when we are in leadership, this Kagan as Sotomayor are out right radicals. We are not in a good position to make any gains, even if we retake congress it will be the same old shi**. The mix does matter it needs to be changed, we count on out side to keep the rulings in check, this may be short lived.

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