Supreme Court: dangerous weapons can be banned

From a NYTimes editorial today:

When the Supreme Court struck down a ban on handguns by the District of Columbia in 2008, ruling that there is a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense, the decision was enormously controversial in the legal world...

The text of the Second Amendment creates no right to private possession of guns, but Justice Antonin Scalia found one in legal history for himself and the other four conservatives. He said the right is not outmoded even “in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem.”

It is not just liberals who have lambasted the ruling, but some prominent conservatives like Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The majority, he wrote, “read an ambiguous constitutional provision as creating a substantive right that the Court had never acknowledged in the more than two hundred years since the amendment’s enactment. The majority then used that same right to strike down a law passed by elected officials acting, rightly or wrongly, to preserve the safety of the citizenry.” He said the court undermined “conservative jurisprudence.”

Oh how conservatives hate activist judges,' except when one of those judges is their own, and no judge currently on the Supreme Court has been more activist than Scalia (or more overtly partisan). 

But it is important to note that even Scalia and his band of four other activist judges who concurred with him added,

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”

Oh my! Read on,

"...nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms” —“prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’ ”

Dangerous, like the Bushmaster semi-automatic with high capacity clips that Adam Lanza used to pump as many as 11 rounds into 20 1st graders last Friday?  What possible realistic use do semi-automatic firearms with high capacity clips like that have in society?  Hunting? Not really. Self-defence? There are much better choices.  So why does society allow them to be purchased and stored at home with no restrictions? Because the NRA and gun nuts told us that gun owners are law abiding and responsible.  Thousands of innocent shooting victims murdered this year alone might beg to differ...if they were still alive to testify.

--Trakker

Comments

[Dan D. Doty]

The Right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed ...

What part of that don't you understand?

[Trakker]

So, where is our well regulated militia also mentioned in the Second Amendment? Any sensible reading of the Amendment would put keeping and bearing arms in the context of a "well regulated" militia wouldn't you say? I'd say it's time to fulfill the well regulated militia part of the amendment.

How 'bout this? All gun owners must spend a weekend each month learning weapon safety and how to defend our country, you will store your firearms in a secure central location, and you will be called up for duty when needed. I'm thinking you could patrol the perimeter of our schools, keep the peace 24/7 in dangerous neighborhoods, accompany young children to and from school in high crime areas for a start.

[Dan D. Doty]

The people have their arms in case the government becomes tyranical ... unless of course, that's what you're hoping for.

[Trakker]

So you admit that you have no faith in the American people to elect good people? You have no faith that the system our Founding Fathers designed doesn't work? Or could it be that you only accept the results when your side wins, and when the Democrats begin winning and implementing more liberal policies, all of a sudden you begin calling our government tyrannical??? Do you really believe you and a bunch of gun nuts who dream of the day they get to use their super-manly firearms on real people are going to scare the Marines who will be sent to neutralize you?

[Dan D. Doty]

So you want to send the Marines to neutralize peolpe?

Hate to tell you a few things, but its kind of hard to the Marines to neutralize their fellow Americans when most people in the Military are conservative, plus you're also telling them to violate the Constitution they sworn to protect and defend. Besides many of those so called nuts you keep yelling about, many, many are ex-military.

I have great faith in our system of Government, but those in government more and more ignor our own Constition and Bill Of Rights.

Trakker, how does it feel being the one who wants to send armed men to strip your fellow Americans of their rights, property, liberty and maybe even their lives?

[Trakker]

Dan, arguing with you is futile. If you try to overthrow our freely elected government because YOU think it is ignoring the Constitution, you're damn right, the military will take you out and they should. By the way, Obama got a majority of the military vote in 2012.

What gives YOU the right to decide that our government is violating the Constitution? Don't we have courts and a judicial system to decide that? Isn't that what the founders put in place? You're just another citizen like me and you better act like a citizen and seek change the same way every American is supposed to, by speaking out and by voting. Waving your fucking firearms around and trying to intimidate voters and politicians is unpatriotic.

I'm ex-military too, btw.

[Dan D. Doty]

I'm ex-military also.

And everything you said is untrue about me.

The drama playing your head will one day lead to our next Civil War ...

[Trakker]

Civil War? I doubt it. I encourage you and your state to secede instead. No one I know will demand that our country fight you to keep you as part of the union. It would be a relief to both sides.

Frankly, I think it is time to let you guys set up your dream country of small government, low taxes, unlimited firearms, dirt roads, limited health care, small safety net for the poor, etc. That may be heaven for you. It would be hell for me.

[Dan D. Doty]

If all those that you don't like were to secede, you'd be in a lot of trouble.

When they leave, they're resources go with them.