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Showing Original Post only (View all)The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun [View all]
How the Supreme Court upended the well-established meaning of the Second Amendment.Source: The Nation, by Dorothy Samuels
Since President Obama will be speaking to this matter for the foreseeable future, we should clarify what exactly the 2nd Amendment is - and what it is not.
In common with the other big rightward swerves by the Roberts Court, the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller was an aggressive exercise in mendacity. By upending the well-established meaning of the Second Amendment, the Court made the country less safe and less free. It did this under the guise of a neutral and principled originalism that looks to the text as it was first understood back in 1791 by the amendments drafters and their contemporaries.
Hellers 54 majority decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, was less in sync with the founding generation than with the top priority of a powerful interest group closely aligned with the Republican right. The National Rifle Association had been waging an intense 30-year campaign to secure an individuals constitutional right to keep and bear arms by winning over members of the public, high-level politicians, and, ultimately, the Supreme Court. Mission, to an alarming degree, accomplished.
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To grasp the audacity of what Scalia & Co. pulled off, turn to the Second Amendments text: 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. To find in that wording an individual right to possess a firearm untethered to any militia purpose, the majority performed an epic feat of jurisprudential magic: It made the pesky initial clause about the necessity of a well regulated Militia disappear. Poof! Gone. Scalia treated the clause as merely prefatory and having no real operative effecta view at odds with history, the fundamental rules of constitutional interpretation, and the settled legal consensus for many decades.
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Then there was Scalias peculiar breakdown of the phrase keep and bear arms into its component words to argue that the Second Amendment protects a general right to possess gunseven though, as Stevens pointed out, the term bear arms was most commonly used in the 18th century to describe participation in the military.
And lets not overlook the most absurd thing, which Breyer tried to get at in a separately filed minority opinion: At a moment in modern America when more than 30,000 lives are lost to gun violence each year, and mass shootings are a common occurrence, the majority opinion relied heavily on a guesstimate (and a rotten one at that) of what the Second Amendment meant more than 200 years ago, with no common-sense balancing test taking into account the real-world consequences for today.
The complete story at: http://www.thenation.com/article/how-the-roberts-court-undermined-sensible-gun-control/
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The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun [View all]
yallerdawg
Dec 2015
OP
And the 1st amendment was never meant to give corporations speech=money rights.
valerief
Dec 2015
#1
If a conservative administration decided that Democratic Underground, LLC had no 1A rights...
friendly_iconoclast
Dec 2015
#38
So the folks who intended a collective right went back to their respective states..
X_Digger
Dec 2015
#3
Umm, no. The right exists, everywhere. That doesn't make any restriction impossible.
X_Digger
Dec 2015
#11
Being necessary to the security of a free State. How secure is a free state with armed nut jobs? nt
Xipe Totec
Dec 2015
#4
No, this is a fundamental aspect of our government that you seem to have missed.
X_Digger
Dec 2015
#25
Give it up X_Digger, some people just don't get it or are intentionally obtuse. eom.
GGJohn
Dec 2015
#43
Apparently so. I have a bruise on my forehead from pounding it on my desk. n/t
X_Digger
Dec 2015
#45
How about this...the bill of rights is a set of instructions from the governed to the governors tha
Augiedog
Dec 2015
#48
The bill of rights was promised to the states even though promulgated at a later date. No bill of
Augiedog
Dec 2015
#70
I agree totally, thus my contention that the second amendment first must be recognized for what it
Augiedog
Dec 2015
#72
I'm sad you missed my point. If it helps, please ignore that last sentence. Better yet, ignore me.
Augiedog
Dec 2015
#75
Any perfunctory reading of post revolutionary history will provide the context in which the bill of
Augiedog
Dec 2015
#81
Is that what you call a general lack of understanding of the pertinent subject matter...
beevul
Dec 2015
#26
The militia is/was not the people...it excluded women, slaves and anyone who had self worth of less
Augiedog
Dec 2015
#44
"The Second Amendment Was Never Meant to Protect an Individual’s Right to a Gun"
EX500rider
Dec 2015
#17
Ah - the 2nd IS only for militia purposes? So we can buy M16s and M4s and M9 now?
jmg257
Dec 2015
#27
"The #2 Amend now THREATENS the security of a free state." Then stop complaining and get it repealed
friendly_iconoclast
Dec 2015
#41
Can you find a graphic that shows suicide and homicide rates that include all methods?
pediatricmedic
Dec 2015
#51
To anyone who believes the 2A doesn't protect an individual right to possess firearms,
branford
Dec 2015
#60