The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation’s capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The justices voted 5-4 against the ban, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.
At issue in District of Columbia v. Heller was whether Washington’s ban violated the right to “keep and bear arms” by preventing individuals — as opposed to state militias — from having guns in their homes.
“Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious problem,” Scalia wrote. “That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”
I guess the way I am reading this ruling is that it is akin to Roe v. Wade for gun rights, essentially. The right to own a gun is reaffirmed, and what remains now for gun control advocates will consist of nipping around the margins much like the “reasonable restrictions” on abortion. Is that way off base, or would a comparison to the PA abortion decision (Casey?)a few years ago be a better fit?
At any rate, Kennedy was once again the swing vote, and it seems to me that anyone who thinks this is the Chief Justice Roberts’s Supreme Court is sadly mistaken. This is the Kennedy court, because he is the only one that matters.
gopher2b
There is a lot decide on this topic (after a very quick read of the decision). First, whether the 2nd Amendment protects a right to literally bear (carry) arms (conceal and carry). Second, whether the 2nd Amendment is incorporated to the the states. Heller only protect a federal right to bear arms and doesn’t speak to whether state or city governments can prohibit (ie Chicago has a handgun ban)
Incertus
Just from what I’ve read in bits and pieces, it sounds like a good decision in the sense that the personal right is affirmed, but the states are still given significant remedies to control who can own a gun and where they can be carried. I’m pretty sure it didn’t go as far as the NRA wanted it to.
My real question is whether this will preclude federal regulation. I doubt it, just like Roe didn’t (despite all the dishonest arguments about returning abortion to the states).
nightjar
Actually it is a monumental decision as the first time the Supremes have ruled on the basic question of a right for an individual to own a gun versus the “militia” standard in the Constitution. From what I’ve heard about it so far, is that it leaves intact much of the other restrictions different states and cities have imposed, such as concealed carry laws and such.
It’s also a decision I agree with wholeheartedly. Guess I’ll get flamed for that. Oh well.
whiskeyjuvenile
Kennedy wasn’t the swing vote; he was the strongest pro-Heller justice at oral argument.
Heller also strongly hints that the right discussed should be incorporated to the states.
Martin
Sounds about right.
States have a limited ability to restrict abortions. This seems to reaffirm that states have a similar limited ability to restrict firearms.
Throwing out the trigger lock restriction is the only part that really bothers me. I’m not one to blame homicides on the guns, but I could do with less of this type of news.
John Cole
I think you will be surprised how many people here pack. Most of us only really appear liberal because we hate Bush.
El Cid
We will never truly be safe until all adult Americans are required to openly carry loaded handguns at all times.
Shey
Not just Bush, the entire republican crime syndicate and their insane policy decisions of the last eight years.
Brachiator
Great point. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion on the recent habeas corpus case, and his vote in this case was obviously critical. However, the full decision has not yet been posted at the first news sites I viewed, but I find this bit from the NYT story very interesting:
In cases where the conservative majority carries the day, interested folks should check the dissents, especially those by Souter, who has taken on the role of challenging Scalia’s self-appointed authority as the interpretive mack daddy of the Supreme Court.
NR
“Gun control means you control your gun and I’ll control mine.” Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT)
Davis X. Machina
…but the states are still given significant remedies to control who can own a gun and where they can be carried.
Depends on the extent to which the new right is found to be “of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty”.
If it is, exercise of that right becomes essentially un-regulatable.
Nice to know that 180-some years after Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, we’ll be paying the price for the specter of servile rebellion that hung over the young Republic for the indefinite future.
nightjar
Relief. Democrats with guns is teh awesome!
Crusty Dem
I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’ve always found the reasoning for this:
“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.”
equaling no limits on guns to be a bit difficult to parse. Of course, the verbage of this amendment is just terrible.
In any case, we won’t be hearing any more complaints from the right about “activists courts”, right? RIGHT???
greynoldsct00
Just thinking about them makes me want to lock and load…
Zifnab
This really doesn’t surprise or bother me. Yeah, guns are bad m’kay, but there’s no way the SCOTUS was going to get down into the nitty-gritty of establishing what a 21st century militia is supposed to look like.
It seems pretty clear to me, at least, that the 2nd Amendment was included because the Founding Fathers recognized that if a country’s citizens were going to need to pick up arms and fight off an oppressive government once, they’d likely have to do it again. Basically, it exists to allow for the possibility of armed revolt. And that doesn’t flow if you’ve got to be part of the US Army or the National Guard before you can pack heat.
Of course, the founders wrote the 2nd Amendment long before the invention of the tank, the hand grenade, or the bullet proof vest. So its intended purpose is seriously outdated. But the SCOTUS’s job isn’t to fix that the founders left behind. We leave that clusterfucking up to Congress via Constitutional Amendments.
Punchy
Damn you. You took my sound bite. As I’ve bitched before, why even try this in front of 9 justices? Why not put all 8 on indefinite vacation, and just have Kennedy adjudicate? After all, we all know the Scalia Cabal will mail it in, and it’s looking more like the progs will do likewise.
lutton
Don’t forget about Shooting Liberally
RSA
I agree; from here,
a few summaries and quotes:
So licensing and regulation are still on the table. Here’s something I don’t get, though. Scalia:
First, as an originalist, Scalia seems to be ignoring the idea of the Second Amendment making it possible for the citizenry to resist a tyrannical government. Second, his exception seems a bit circular to me–law-abiding citizens using guns for lawful purposes? He’s one of the people deciding what “law-abiding” and “lawful” mean!
Crust
OT, but check out tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/yoo_we_dont_make_claims_of_inf.php“>Yoo‘s testimony:
He doesn’t think so, but apparently he isn’t quite sure. I guess he can’t rule out that maybe he did just give such advice, but forgot about it. It isn’t the sort of thing one would necessarily remember. Yet even Yoo thinks Bush is arguably deserving of impeachment. (I actually disagree with him on what are valid grounds. He thinks screwing up a war is grounds for impeachment, I disagree. I think Bush deserves impeachment based on FISA violations, torture and a raft of other things Yoo was involved with.)
Incertus
It’s a myth that Democrats are all pro-gun-control. The NRA and their friends make it a big deal because they need to keep the money coming in, but on the national level, the attitude has been for quite some time that local areas are far better suited to decide gun law than the federal government is.
KCinDC
This decision isn’t close to “no limits on guns” as far as I can tell so far.
Just Some Fuckhead
You’ll pry my gun rights from my cold dead constitution.
gopher2b
Ask the Iraq insurgency if its seriously outdated.
cleek
and that’s why the first 15 pages or so of the decision are spent parsing that one sentence.
furrythug
The Roe analog is apt in at least one respect… Scalia seems to divine a core right of “self defense” that’s not contained in the text of the Second Amendment.
Just saying, you know, penumbras and all that.
gopher2b
D’oh! Wrong quote….same point.
cleek
fuck Yoo
Cris
I think that clause was one of the few serious lapses in judgment in the entire Bill of Rights. In my opinion, it’s an independent clause; the amendment only needs to say “The right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Why attempt to justify it? It has only served to open the door for infringement.
Imagine if the first amendment started with “A vigorous intellectual discourse being necessary to the life of a Republic…” Free speech opponents would constantly lean on that clause to justify limiting any speech that doesn’t meet the requirement of the clause.
Don
Actually, I don’t own any firearms, am a die-hard Massachusetts liberal (regardless of Bush) and I think this is a sensible decision. Liberals are not anti-gun, that’s really a myth. Now, some of us may be more gun-control than others, but repeal of the second amendment is a viewpoint that you’ll find only in the fever swamps. In a mainstream lefty site like Daily Kos, for example, you’ll find debate, but considerable support of this decision.
So John, I don’t think this is the NRA’s Roe, because it’s not something that’s going to get liberals incensed. It’s not a right that, by and large, we’re interested in taking away. Unlike Roe, which is under continual assault from the right, Heller is not going to be a bete-noir of the left. It just isn’t.
scott
When will I be able to carry an open and loaded RPG-7?
And if Toobin’s recent book on the Soopremes is to be believed, Kennedy is loving every minute of this. He’ll stay on the court for as long as he can since the overall dynamic of the voting block(s) won’t change in the near term
Just Some Fuckhead
To suggest Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens are progressives is really a testament to how far right we’ve moved in the last thirty years.
Incertus
And why we’ll be arguing about this for as long as that Amendment exists. After all, this decision overturns a couple of centuries of judicial findings, as far as I can tell.
I’d be all in favor of calling a constitutional convention just to hash out that mess of an amendment. I’m not even all that worried about how it turns out–I just want the fucker to be clear.
Davis X. Machina
Dahlia Lithwick, for Slate
ET
As a DC resident I don’t like the decision but I do think it was the right one. This just means I will have to worry about my idiot neighbors as much as I will the gang bangers and assorted trash who get their weapons in Virginia.
Crusty Dem
KCinDC, I’m just referring to the general NRA mentality. I don’t really have any major issues with the ruling, but I think we could probably use a new amendment to nail down what we can and cannot restrict. There’s a whole continuum or “arms” here, from knives to muskets to shotguns and rifles to handguns to semi-automatic and automatic weapons to grenades and anti-tank missles to hydrogen bombs (I’m leaving some things out). No one (even the NRA) has claimed that we have a right to all of them…
Martin
I don’t think he is. I think he’s observing that it used to be possible back when the military was pouring their own powder, but that today there is no reasonable amount of firearms that we could equip the public with that would slow down, let alone stop a modern military.
Anyone remember the jackoff that stole a tank down in San Diego a few years back? There was no stopping him by police until he got stuck on the median. And even then it was fuck-all hard for them to get the hatch open and shoot him. And that was the police – well armed, well equipped, and trained to work together.
The Moar You Know
I am largely as left-wing as it’s possible to get – I don’t appear liberal, I am liberal – and a bone of contention between most of my leftist friends and I has been my unequivocal support of the “individual” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment; a right I exercise fully.
It’s a position that has earned me a lot of abuse from fellow lefties, and I’m sure that I’ll be getting some bitter emails today. To which I can only reply:
SUCK IT BITCHES I WIN
Punchy
How Scalia can take such a literal, minimalist view of the 2nd, but feels free to re-interpret the 6th and 8th (and surely the 4th, if given the chance) when Scary Brown People make him go Code Brown is nearly criminal.
Stunning that few people call this “Justice” out on such rank and transparent duplicity.
DUDACKATTACK!!!
On the contrary. My blood is Blue but I hate the idiotic handgun restrictions we have in Baltimore. How well has that worked out?
I hope this ruling will shake things up in that respect.
Kirk
First the narrow, specific.
Federal law (and thus DC due to it’s peculiar situation) cannot generally prohibit a person from maintaining a handgun within that person’s residence in a ready-to-use status.
It is not considered a general prohibition to require licensing and registration in regard to that situation.
On the other hand, federal law can restrict and deny ownership, possession, and/or use:
– for felons and the mentally incompetent/insane;
– of certain types of firearms (machine guns being the specific example)
– in certain locations (schools and courts)
– situationally (concealed).
The decision strongly implied these would/should be applied to state and municipality laws, but because the case did not explicitly involve them no explicit statement was made.
As a comment and expanding off the Kennedy remark… I took the tenor of Kennedy’s questions and discussion to mean while he was generally supportive of the individual interpretation, he’d resist entirely a decision that said something like:
“unless individually denied for cause, anyone can carry any weapon anytime.” ie, the hard-side NRA position.
Don
Not soon. Scalia specifically gives the OK to regulation of “unusual” weaponry.
David Hunt
You should be okay, then. Bush and Cheney buried the Constitution in an undisclosed location after they killed it. No one should be able to find to pry the rights from it.
/snark
junkiebrewster
I hope they combine this with Drinking Liberally!!!!
The Moar You Know
I laughed. With the clause “vigorous intellectual discourse” I could bring the entire MSM to a screeching halt.
Cris
I’m a little frustrated by how often the controversy is framed as a matter of personal practice. I don’t exercise the right, I’ve never fired a gun that didn’t say “Daisy” on the side, I don’t allow handguns inside my house. But I believe the 2nd amendment unequivocally and unambiguously confers an individual right. I recognize the benefits of gun control, but I believe it’s unconstitutional.
Shorter me: you don’t have to be a gun owner to support gun rights.
The Moar You Know
You are right about him not getting stopped until he got stuck; you are wrong about the hatch. Watch the video; took the officer who opened it took about five seconds to do so. I’m sure it seemed like an eternity to that cop, though, sitting on a live tank with the engine revving.
The cop who did so had been crew on that model of tank and knew how to handle it.
Gerald Curl
This opinion is shocking — it does not have one reference to Jack Bauer or something Sean Hannity said. Which one of Scalia’s clerks was asleep at the wheel?
MH
I used to be very anti-gun, but the Bush years have changed my mind. I’m now glad we have the 2nd amendment. Pardon the pun, but I half-suspect we may have dodged a real-live fascist bullet sometime back in 2003.
I went shooting with my uncle this past xmas. Didn’t care for it, really – I found it rather dull. But I wanted to know a little about guns so that in case I ever needed to use one, I wouldn’t accidentally shoot myself. I consider it something of a national duty to at least KNOW how a gun works and how to safely use one. Knowledge is power and ignorance is dangerous.
liberal
Zifnab wrote,
Is that just intuition? It’s a question of historical fact; do you have cites? (Preferably outside the Glenn Reynolds/new 2nd Amendment interpretation crowd circlejerk.)
RSA
Ah, thanks for that perspective; I hadn’t thought of it.
liberal
cris wrote,
Hmm…last I checked, the Amendment didn’t have strikes through the words “well-regulated”.
scott
I have it on good authority that on Sep 12, 2001, the Deserter In Chief and Vice President Deferment walked over to the Archives building, had the Constituion and Bill of Rights taken out of their hermetically sealed mayonnaise jars, took a runny shit, then used the documents to wipe their asses. Then flushed them down the nearest toilet.
I read that on the internets so it must be true.
I still want my loaded RPG-7.
dr. bloor
Oh, it happens all the time; he just doesn’t give a fuck about what anybody else thinks in general or thinks of him specifically.
mymassivecock2xu
Forgive me for any harshness, but anyone who thinks that the text of the second ammendment restricts the right to own weapons to only active members of the militia is not only not a constitutional scholar but knows nothing about military history either.
Look at the actual schedule of militia training exercises from our founding at it is abundantly clear that they expected militia members to already be quite familiar with the use and maintenance of firearms before they ever joined. There is NO WAY at all that a person could be expected to start their firearms training upon joining the militia and be at all competent or effective with them if they ever had to fight. Training a few hours for 1 day a month is simply not enough to build a skill base. Its only enough to keep old skills from getting too rusty. Add on the fact that most militia training was focused on teaching people to maneuver and fight as a team – not to shoot their guns – then you see the absolute ignorance behind the idea that the authors of the second amendment expected firearms experience to be restricted to militia duty.
liberal
DUDACKATTACK wrote,
Obviously no local gun-control regime has any hopes of succeeding.
Face
Did he point to his pants when he said this?
scott
A couple of years back, the city of St Louis tried something like this. They wanted to get 20-something hipsters to relocate into the city proper so they figured they’d combine a drinking get-together with gun lessons and shooting. Figured it would make the usually-surburban white boyz and girlz feel “safer” when asked to move into a city their parents fled because of yunnowho who lives there.
I don’t recall how that little program ended up.
Sloegin
Heller will be very similar to Roe in that *nothing* gets settled by it. Inherent ‘right to self defense’ shares many similarities to inherent ‘right to privacy’. Regardless of which way you swing on it, it’s sloppy legal reasoning being applied to an even sloppier original amendment.
This thing is gonna be like a a big game of Pictionary, aka “fight in a box”. Expect Con Law battles for the rest of our lives. Roe’s only been maligned and challenged for 35 plus years now. Heller is gonna enjoy a similar run.
Martin
Ah, you’re right. It was hard to work out what was going on – and they spent a long time up there.
I remember watching it happen. It was when chases started to become a recreational sport here in SoCal. First time I’ve seen the video since then.
Pretty fortunate, that.
rawshark
Its not a myth, it’s how the right works. They are pro-gun so if you’re not with them you must want the exact opposite, no guns on earth. Its the same with all issues.
dr. bloor
And was he wearing a kilt at the time?
Martin
Scalia doesn’t wear a kilt, you know.
scott
And did he have anything on underneath?
Ut oh, that just raised a mental image I don’t think I wanted.
RSA
Oh, I forgot to comment on the post title:
I’m glad to see someone finally call out the NRA on being a bunch of effete, champagne-sipping caviar eaters.
ThymeZone
He’s the Deciderator?
Cris
See my earlier objection to the first clause. On the other hand, I will acknowledge that the presence of the clause does clarify the intent of the amendment, but the wording does not imply that the right to bear arms is allowable only for the purposes of a well-regulated militia.
As Incertus and Crusty Dem and others have observed, the amendment is a grammatical trainwreck.
west coast
Civics 101: The Constitution limits the government, not the citizen.
Anyone else find it entertaining that the 4 who got things right with regards to habeas got it wrong here, and vice-versa?
Tsulagi
Yeah. During one of the Republican debates, the candidates were asked who among them owned guns. I was a little surprised that only three or four said they do. Of those, only one said he had two weapons. Had to laugh as I was thinking I can arm all of you tards and I’m supposed to now be the Dirty Fucking Hippie.
You should see some of emails circulating around about Obama and 2nd Amendment. Pretty much like Obama is the greatest threat EVER, the stealth Muslim will take away your guns! Kinda doubt this SCOTUS decision will slow them down.
Nick
rawshark Says:
And even then, the right, well, at least the President they seemed to worship, supported extending the Assault Weapon Ban…
Saying the right is necessarily “pro-gun” is as bad as saying the left is “anti-gun”.
myiq2xu
BTD says the 2nd Amendment only applies to militias.
I told him that as of today, that is not the law.
Scalia said so.
myiq2xu
I recall when Nancy Reagan said she had a nice “lady-like” pistol.
CFisher
Not that he used it, but the ninth amendment would apply, IMO.
Pasota
I haven’t read the decision yet, but from what I’ve read about it, it may be significant setback for the NRA true believers.
All the commentary focuses on Scalia’s upholding the right to possess a gun in the home for self-defense or hunting. The 2nd-Amendment fundamentalists, though, always emphasize the right to bear arms as a Constitutional check against government tyranny. Their big fear are the “gun grabbers” who want to register all guns as the first step toward confiscating them, and I haven’t seen anything about this decision prohibiting gun licensing and registration.
Of course, that rationale for the 2nd Amendment would be hard to reconcile for the same party that says, if the government tells you to do something — even if it’s wrong — we should all agree it’s something you need to do. (Read: telecoms, if that was too obscure a reference.)
rawshark
redbeardjim
Original Intent! Everyone has the right to a muzzle-loading musket.
rawshark
And they hated him for it. Just like they hated him for taking sides outside the family in the immigration amnesty plan.
eyelessgame
My personal theory – which is worth what you pay for it – is that the reason the 2nd Amendment was phrased like it was was that the author intended (hoped?) it would be revisited if the justifying clause ever became obviously outdated.
Suppose we had an amendment that read “A reliable supply of Wood being necessary to the Construction of a Seagoing Vessel, the right of the Navy to grow and harvest Trees shall not be infringed.” It would be clear from the text that the Navy has the right to grow and harvest trees, period. But it also seems to me that if we ever stopped making ships out of wood, we should write a new amendment dealing with the new reality — and that this would obviously be the intent of the author of the original.
I agree that the 2nd Amendment clearly says that people have the right to bear arms, and as such the SC ruling was constitutionally correct. The Amendment also gives a justification that one may argue is no longer relevant. (One may argue it. I am not taking a position.)
Of course, given the political power of the
Naval Forestry CommissionNRA, there won’t be any constitutional convention discussing any repeal or modification of the amendment.Note that just because the justification is outdated it does not follow that guns should not be constitutionally protected. Many people will argue that owning guns is a positive, vital, life-affirming, erection-enhancing activity, and that for one or more of those reasons it should have constitutional protection.
The thing that seems clear is that (a) gun ownership has constitutional protection, and (b) the specific justification for its protection given in the constitution may be outdated.
lutton
That’s called New Years in Philly. :)
pharniel
worst part of the assult weapons ban was that it was a protectionist bit of shit.
sure, you couldn’t purchase an ak anymore, but the american made rip off? strangely not on the list..
honestly, i’d like to see the government have to prove why anyone shouldn’t have access to a firearm, instead of now, where essentially various ‘poll tax with the serial numbers filed off’ are used to ‘regulate’ gun owner ship.
but then i’d also like to see ‘right to self defense’ as an amendemnt to the constitution.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
You’ll pry my Improvised Explosive Device from my cold dead hands!
RSA
Actually, we have a real example in the Seventh Amendment:
Cris
Twenty dollars!
eyelessgame
yah, that “twenty dollars” really sticks out like a sore thumb. (I’m not a constitutional scholar. Have we done anything about that? Or is it still $20 that requires a jury?)
Paul L.
But it is not based on the “penumbra” of the Constitution.
Unlike the President who signed the Assault Weapon Ban that the left seemed to worship.
…
Until he criticized the Obamessiah.
And if Bush is willing to sign a new Assault Weapon Ban, why don’t the Democrat push it again, now that they control Both houses of Congress.
It can not be that those brave souls fear the evil Gun Lobby.
ThymeZone
The gun laws that matter are the ones that affect behavior and use, not ownership.
If you doubt this, try carrying a firearm into the Supreme Court building.
jenniebee
That’s it. We need a Constitution party.
b-psycho
People on the left need guns more than the right-wingers, IMO.
PaulW
My problem with today’s gun ownership ruling is that I don’t see the Court defining the part about “well-regulated militia”. All I’ve seen is just “people have a right to own guns.”
It also would have been nice to have Scalia or one of the other judges affirm that just because people have a right to own guns, that it’s still against the law for people to shoot anybody they want. Just to make that abundantly clear, ’cause some gun owners don’t get that, yknow?
flyerhawk
Wouldn’t this be more pro-gun version of Casey v Planned Parenthood with Miller playing the role of Roe?
libarbarian
Fuck.
Now you tell me.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
With all due respect John, the analogy to Roe is not a good one for a number of reasons:
1. At its core, Roe restricted the government’s control over an woman’s body–there are still such things as the War on (Some) Drugs (but that’s a subject for a different thread).
2. Heller will not have a national impact to the extent that Roe did. I don’t know how many cities or municipalities have gun bans similar to the one in DC that Heller overturned by I don’t think there are that many.
3. For all the NRA’s fear-mongering, the number of people who want to ban all guns is really quite small and they have no real clout within the Democratic Party. By contrast, the people who want to overturn Roe and make all abortions illegal is a large and extremely powerful voting block within the Republican Party.
You’ll read and hear some crowing about this decision from the wingnuts for a couple of days but overturning Heller will never be a political rallying point for the left the way overturning Roe has become for the right for the right.
Brachiator
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. The first pages of Scalia’s decision tries to firmly establish the argument that the only way of ever looking at the Constitution is based on what the text meant to the founders. By contrast, Justice Kennedy’s opinion in the habeas corpus case began with the historical foundation of the concept of habeas corpus, not with narrow textual readings.
Later, Scalia gets inconsistent, invoking textual interpretations from the 1820 through the 1850s, which is well after the founding. Still, I can just see some in the right wing falling all over themselves to congratulate Scalia on reinforcing the concept of “originalism.”
Oddly enough, I agree with much of the majority decision. I just think the means by which Scalia tries to justify it is weak.
Scalia’s opinion provides some clear historical perspective on this. English law restricted the crown’s ability to disarm the populace (at least Protestant males), and this chip-on-the-shoulder attitude with respect to authority informed the way that early Americans looked at their right to bear arms.
Shorter: even the Robin Hood legends are based on the idea that a free people have a right to keep and bear arms to defend themselves against a hostile state and to provide for their own protection, to feed themselves, etc. Longbows, handguns, not much difference.
The Grand Panjandrum
Good. Jesus Christ on a crutch I am sick to death of the issue. Plenty of us liberal folks own several fine weapons for our own purposes. We just don’t generally get out panties in a knot every time the NRA or some pencil-neck Right Wing pansy starts shrieking like a WATB about the gummint coming to get our guns.
I’m much more concerned about FISA, warrantless wiretaps, torture etc.
I don’t hate him. But he and his gang of war criminals should be hanged, but I don’t hate him. I don’t spend much time hating anyone or anything. (OK, except ketchup on hot dogs! Now that should be punishable by flogging or something like that.) But I’m feeling ya, bro. I probably wouldn’t invite him over for lunch either.
Tzal
After one of my con law classes I asked the professor why we didn’t discuss the second amendment. He answered that there just wasn’t a lot of law on the subject. There wasn’t a body of jurisprudence on the second amendment that can be traced back to a specific decision or event in a way that made the second amendment amenable to academic study. Well, there is now.
Whether or not you agree with the decision, we are witnessing a rare, profound, moment in American history. And that’s pretty exciting.
Pasota
I’m in the middle of reading the opinion now, and the following struck me:
Somebody confiscate Scalia’s tee-vee please. Was the Founding Fathers’ original intent really to vouchsafe the right to hold a criminal at bay while dialing a telephone? I mean, is it reasonable to assume that these visionaries did not anticipate hands-free bluetooth technology?
Paul L.
BS. Democrats/Progressive know that Gun Control is a losing issue and are hiding their true statist desires. So, Sen Feinstein has no real clout?
20/20 hindsight:
PeterJ
I blame Grand Theft Auto.
—
Not sure what in the 2nd amendment prohibits me from owning a Davy Crockett or the modern equvivalent of an 18th century mortar or howitzer.
(Except maybe the term ‘arms’, but it’s obvious that a milita would have needed some cannons too)
And I’m not sure why it’s wrong to prohibit ex cons from voting but it’s right to prohibit them from owning firearms.
Brachiator
Well, Scalia goes on a bit about the 2nd Amendment and self-defense, even though this is not in the text itself. Must be in the “penumbra.”
Scalia’s decision implies that assault weapons (however you define them) and other stuff not hand guns or small arms equipment can be regulated.
Xenos
M
The amendment is written the way it is because it was written by a committee. Half of the people on the committee wanted right to keep and bear arms to be held by militia members, the other half insisted that the right to bear arms should be held by citizens, but wanted to make sure that states could keep guns out of the hands of Indians, black people, and other threats to the PTB.
The language then gives the right to keep and bear arms to individuals, and makes clear that this right derives from the need for militias, and so, implicitly, does not necessarily apply to those domestic enemies of the state who ought not necessarily benefit from the right to be armed.
A little legal realism goes a long way to explain things in American history.
Pasota
The reasoning goes that 18th-Century militia weapons were the same as ordinary household weapons. Therefore, the 2nd Amdendment’s reference to militia “arms” means the ordinary household weapons of today, even though such weapons did not then exist and are virtually useless for modern military purposes:
I.e., let’s not reality intrude upon our preordained outcome.
Pasota
True. This is another striking aspect of the decision. We’re going to see more “self-defense” litigation arising directly out of this case. The right to resist unlawful arrest comes to mind.
pharniel
so let’s chaneg it to ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’
and while we’re at it change 10 to have soemthing like ‘the right to privacy from every zealous spammer and government snoop shall not be abriged’
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
I guess just like your hero George W, you can deduce a person’s true feelings by looking into their soul?? But I guess you’re onto us and we’ll have to stop warming up the engines on all those black helicopters
If you’re looking for me to defend DiFi, you’re barking up the wrong tree. As far as I’m concerned, she’s already on my shit list for her “Yes” votes on the Iraq War Resolution, and the confirmation votes for Mukasey as AG and John Roberts for Chief Justice, and most recently she voted for cloture on the obscene FISA bill.
And I stand by my original statement. The hardline gun-banners are, for all intents and purposes, a non-entity within the Democratic Party (most of them probably voted for Nader in 2000 and 2004) while the abortion-banners are one of the most–if not THE most–powerful political blocks within the Republican Party.
Dreggas
Scalia is right here and I am sure everyone is wearing their blue tooth when someone breaks into their home. I have fired rifles and pistols as well as shot-guns. The reality is for home and self-defense a pistol is far, far superior to any other firearm. It has nothing to do with what’s on Scalia’s TeeVee.
Paul L.
The following hardline gun-bannering Democrats.
like Senators Biden, Schumer, Feinstein, Boxer and Lautenberg?
or
Chicago’s mayor Daley, Washington DC’s Mayor Fenty and New Orleans’ Mayor “chocolate city” Nagin who had the NOPD confiscate Guns during Katrina.
Still say they are non-entities in the Democratic Party.
Chuck Butcher
All this ruling does is affirm about 180yrs of history. The idea of a collective right appeared around the 1970s to back the idea of bans. It does not appear in the hisorical record and particularly not around the Framing.
What you are going to find is that blanket or extreme restrictions are going into court rooms and will be over-turned. Licenses that limit to the powerful and connected will be gone as will NYC’s ban.
As far as military useful weapons, explosives are out, but the M16 certainlly isn’t. You do have some rough hoops to jump through – including a provision that the govt can inspect your machine gun at any time (byebye 4th).
As for lefties and Democrats and firearms I am:
Democratic County Vice-chair
State Delegate
Vice-Chair Gun Owners Caucus Democratic Party of Oregon
Personally known and respected in quite a few power centers as a left Democrat
A former US Rep candidate (primary)
A note of serious consequences, having fired a weapon does not mean any level of competency with it.
Pasota
Which is a great argument to bring up in the legislature when deciding which types of guns to control in the real world today. But I’ll wager that the ability to dial a telephone — a freaking telephone — played almost no role in the Framers’ original intent in drafting the 2nd Amendment. (Recall that the case is about the right to bear specifically handguns.)
And the holding-a-gun-on-the-bad-guy rationale comes straight from Scalia’s tee-vee, if not his ay-ess-ess.
Scott H
While I agree with the outcome, I must argue that bad Justices don’t write good decisions. Please, go read some of
that crapthe gems. That Scalia and his Boyz happen to have come down on the side of individual rights is purely coincidental. This will become one of those Undead Issues that we will never hear the end of the whinging over.Dave_Violence
The right to gun ownership is explicitly in the US Constitution. This is a civil rights victory for the whole US of A. Excellent!
Now, if Senator BO supports this and he is sincere and the NRA believes him and the individual, law-abiding citizens do as well, he will be President BO, easily.
grumpy realist
Considering that this decision got made right after that nut shot and killed quite a few people in that plastics factory, I find it quite interesting.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to add a clause “except keeping arms out of the hands of angry idiots who go postal and kill a large number of people around them.”
Am just waiting until the NRA actually manages to get rid of all restrictions on concealed carry…and we have yet another idiot go bonkers with a gun at a mall. Lots of “well-armed citizens” doing their “patriotic duty” trying to take him out….except they won’t know who the nut is, shoot at their helpful neighbors also trying to act as Good Citizens….and then the police will take out EVERYONE who is holding a gun and shooting, because they won’t be able to tell the difference between the baddies and the goodies.
What fun! Pass the popcorn….
Paragon Park
the most significant thing about Heller is that it didn’t establish a standard of review by which to judge firearm regulations.
Clearly, the majority rejects the deferential rational basis test, but in addition to stating it was not reaching the issue of standard of review because in its opinion the DC ban would fail even the rational basis test (a questionable assertion to be sure) it was rather inscrutable in addressing Breyer’s dissent. It seems to agree with Breyer that strict scrutiny is not appropriate or workable but then argues less than coherently about the limitations on balancing tests regarding enumerated rights.
I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean because ALL of the established standards of individual constitutional rights v. government regulation review involve balancing. Moreover, other than an absolutist approach (which Scalia also clearly rejects saying the ruling does not prohibit all regulation) I cannot conceive a principled method of review that did not involve balancing competing interests.
The lower courts are going to hav difficulty applying this decision to regulations that are not extremely similar to the DC handgun ban because the opinion offers so little real guidance as to how to conduct reviews. On assume the Court will eventually recognize some form of intermediate scrutiny but that could be years away.