June 26, 2008
Heller Yes!
Good to have this headline at the top of my Yahoo portal page this morning:
Supreme Court says Americans have right to guns
Gun Rights
Posted by jk at June 26, 2008 10:45 AM
Scalia writes:
"There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms," Scalia said.
(...)
In Thursday's decision, the majority justices agreed with Heller's reading. "Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms?" Scalia asked in his opinion. "It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew," he said.
"That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people's arms," he wrote.
The frightening part of this ruling is how close it came to going the other way - Justice Anthony Kennedy's mood of the moment. Had he stumbled we'd be facing the end of the land of the free and home of the brave as we know it, at least in law. Add to this that the Federal appeals court that sent the case to the higher court did so by a 2-1 decision and you might, like I, resolve to make frequent and generous contributions to NRA lobbyists.
Scalia writes:
"There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms," Scalia said.
(...)
In Thursday's decision, the majority justices agreed with Heller's reading. "Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms?" Scalia asked in his opinion. "It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew," he said.
"That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people's arms," he wrote.
The frightening part of this ruling is how close it came to going the other way - Justice Anthony Kennedy's mood of the moment. Had he stumbled we'd be facing the end of the land of the free and home of the brave as we know it, at least in law. Add to this that the Federal appeals court that sent the case to the higher court did so by a 2-1 decision and you might, like I, resolve to make frequent and generous contributions to NRA lobbyists.
Posted by: johngalt at June 26, 2008 3:53 PM | What do you think? [1]