I ask, because that's what D.C.'s legal team has just been handed by Heller's legal team. A couple highlights:
The rights secured by the first eight amendments were not conjured at random, but in reaction to specific outrages of the King’s rule. The Second Amendment is no exception. While Petitioners and their amici may not believe that English law secured an individual right to arms for self-defense, colonial Americans certainly did, and it was the repeated, wanton violation of that right that led them to demand and ratify he Second Amendment.Those "specific outrages" are no less intolerable, and no less a threat, today (with the exception, perhaps, of quartering of soldiers--there doesn't seem to be much of a push to force that on us).
Petitioners plainly disagree with the Framers’ Second Amendment policy choices. Petitioners’ remedy must be found within the Constitution’s Fifth Article, not with linguistic sophistries or an anemic standard of review that would deprive the right of any real force.The citizen disarmament advocates, in D.C. and elsewhere, don't have to like the Second Amendment or the right it protects--but that freedom to dislike it does not grant them license to change its meaning to something they find more palatable, or to say that it, unlike the rest of the Bill of Rights, can be reduced in power to that of little more than a suggestion to lawmakers. There is a process for amending the Constitution. Have at it.
P.S. Removing the Constitutional protection from a fundamental human right of the individual does not cause that right to cease to exist, or to cease to be fundamental. Banning guns is the easy part--coming to take them is where it might get a bit hairy. Who wants to try first?
Stumble it!
4 comments:
To be fair to the gun-grabbers: the govt has been working damned hard to 'write off' other bits of the Bill Of Rights via law and administrative fiat.
Asset forfeiture if allegations of drug crime are made, and the 'anti-terror' wire tapping fiascoes come immediately to mind as examples.
The difference of course: those have (mostly) be attempted against people w/o the willingness to shoot back.
AE
Oh, no argument here, AE--the RKBA has plenty of company in the disappearing Constitutional rights category.
Excellent. Thanks for the update.
I like this part:
"Removing the Constitutional protection from a fundamental human right of the individual does not cause that right to cease to exist..."
And Locke would argue that if the government violates its contract by ignoring the law, then the people are no longer obligated to follow further edicts from the violators. Not that this is part of our system of law, but it's certainly the moral thing to do.
I realize this is outside of the scope of the case, but D.C. is certainly not the only area of the country to totally ban arms, as mentioned in the link above. There are also de facto bans, such as a municipality that requires licensure, but denies a vast majority of the applicants. This is not equal application of the law. (Not to mention "gun free" zones, which prevent me from carrying even though I sought express permission from the state to do so -- and regardless of the state's constitutional guarantee of my rights, where the only permission that should be sought is mine, so that I may negotiate for my liberty.)
I realize that they have to treat The Abomination of 1939 as precedent, but the federal government was granted no power to determine purpose, and titling the playing field toward the party with which you are associated is not only corrupt, but also unequal application of the law.
Indeed, how sad a day it would be that Americans again have to fire on Americans to defend their Constitutional rights. God spare us from this, but if it must be, bless us all with your Grace is such a terrible time.
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