Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumMore Gun Regulation Is Inevitable
Last edited Tue Apr 26, 2016, 02:04 PM - Edit history (1)
By
Francis Wilkinson
Campaigning for her mother in Maryland last week, Chelsea Clinton said the Supreme Court could issue a "definitive" ruling on gun control in the near future. Clinton didn't define "definitive," let alone "gun control." But with a vacancy on the court following the death of Antonin Scalia, it seems more than plausible that Clinton the Younger was referring to overturning the landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.
Scalia was the author of Heller, the 2008 ruling that established an individual right to gun possession. Scalia's death -- despite the still uncertain prospects of replacing him -- has raised a question about Heller's durability.
Heller was decided by a 5-4 majority. The dissent, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, was not meek. Stevens basically accused Scalia of throwing out two centuries of legal precedent and reading Scalia's own preferences into the Second Amendment. Scalia, he wrote, all but dismissed the amendment's highly inconvenient preamble placing gun rights within the context of a "well-regulated militia."
Without identifying any language in the text that even mentions civilian uses of firearms, the Court proceeds to find its preferred reading in what is at best an ambiguous text, and then concludes that its reading is not foreclosed by the preamble. Perhaps the Courts approach to the text is acceptable advocacy, but it is surely an unusual approach for judges to follow.
In other words, Scalia, Ye Olde and Venerable Originaliste, was making it up.
more...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjKyfWj_6zMAhWDcT4KHRY2CfEQFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloombergview.com%2Farticles%2F2016-04-26%2Fmore-gun-regulation-is-inevitable&usg=AFQjCNFeitw29EUz81MSGtRLEQmfaUddEA&sig2=UHsOF-GraZ2ImE25cAmMoQ
jmg257
(11,996 posts)and short-barreled shotguns and rifles will be perfectly legal. We can all have M9s with 15 rounders too. What about M4s? M16s?
Those arms, and their accoutrements such as full-capacity mags, being ideal for militia duty.
Nothing inconvenient about the militias, especially since so many of we, the people are members by law.
BTW - link no work.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,737 posts)Citizens United is not nearly as high a priority, if at all. She profits greatly from that one.
flamin lib
(14,559 posts)Yet Heller could end up being overturned anyway. Strategic litigation is commonplace in the U.S. If gun-regulation activists don't pursue it, others outside the fold could. The Heller suit itself was advanced over the resistance of the NRA, which feared the Supreme Court would use it to affirm that gun rights are indeed attached to militia duty.
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Successful nations eventually figure out ways to stop underwriting failure. The U.S. may continue to allow 100,000 citizens to be killed or injured each year by guns. But not forever. Sooner or later, an increasingly cosmopolitan U.S. will free itself from the extreme gun-rights movement, and the inertia of mass death. A change might be instigated by politicians. It might be instigated by judges. Heller could be the basis of increased gun regulation, or it could be swept aside in favor of a more restrictive ruling. Either is possible. And given the extravagant tragedy of the status quo, either is more likely than no change at all.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Democrats in close races, welcome to GC politics.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)Stevens ignored a preamble of his own, so hasn't got much room to talk there:
http://billofrights.org/
Amendment 2 restricts only government and authorizes nothing. The collective rights argument becomes even more laughable, however, when one takes into account that congress was already granted certain explicit powers over the militia, and disarming it wasn't among them.
Its the right of the PEOPLE, not the right of the militia, sorry collective rights theorists.
beevul
(12,194 posts)Purveyor
(29,876 posts)beevul
(12,194 posts)Right. The people that want to read the word "arms" as "some firearms that don't offend us" aren't the extremists, gosh no.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)in her art history classes.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/04/23/unethical-quote-of-the-week-chelsea-clinton/
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/04/i-force-myself-to-slog-through-mush-of.html
Stevens' dissent was full of shit
http://onsecondopinion.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-district-of-columbia-vs-heller.html