Ding dong, the witch is dead - Jay Maynard

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Thursday, 26 June 2008

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1143 - Ding dong, the witch is dead

The Supreme Court ruled today, 5-4, that the Second Amendment guarantees (not grants) an individual right to own handguns, and struck down a District of Columbia ban on them. They left open lots of questions, and said that many existing ownershp restrictions are permissible - but did say that laws that act as a total ban on handgun ownership, or that prevented the use of guns in self-defense, were in violation of the Second Amendment and therefore unconstitutional.

The opinion is strongly worded in demolishing a number of long-held arguments against gun ownership. It calls the argument that it only applies to arms that existed at the adoption of the Amendment "frivolous", and at one point says Justice Stevens' dissent is "dead wrong".

We're in for more lawsuits: the Court did not explicitly state that the Second Amendment was binding on the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (though they did hint as much), and they did not define any test to be used to determine whether a regulation on firearms ownership and use is permissible (though they did explicitly rule out a "balancing of interests" test). Even so, the Court's opinion today is about as clear as it can get in upholding the meaning of the Second Amendment as I, and others, have been arguing it for years: it protects an individual's right to own and use firearms, including handguns, for self-defense as well as hunting and defense of the country.

current mood: [mood icon] pleased

(4 comments | Leave a comment)

Comments:

[User Picture]
From:howardtayler
Date: - 0000
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...for self-defense as well as hunting and defense of the country.

... and defense FROM the country, as Thomas Jefferson originally intended. :-)
[User Picture]
From:mynameisnotreal
Date: - 0000
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Heh, yeah. How often do people forget that? I like the quote from the movie V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their government; the government should be afraid of the people.
[User Picture]
From:korgmeister
Date: - 0000
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I would think the government's efforts to ignore the second ammendment indicate they're plenty afraid of the people.
[User Picture]
From:mynameisnotreal
Date: - 0000
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I carry concealed, as licensed by the State of Michigan. I find the hoops that I had to leap through to get the blue card to be reasonable. I can understand some restriction on gun rights, but I firmly agree with you that a total ban would be unconstitutional. Hooray for SCOTUS!

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