AJ DiCintio

Gun Rights Hanging by a Thin Thread
June 30, 2008

A few minutes after ten on the morning of June 26, the Supreme Court gave every conservative a reason to get excited, charged up, fired up, yes, even, if need be, a little wild-eyed about the coming election.

Yes, with its decision in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, the Court has completely and irreversibly extinguished the hope burning in the hearts of Democrats and their Liberal allies that Right of Center voters won’t overcome the malaise affecting them.

Of course, I may be wrong. Languid conservatives may refuse to fight, refuse to become sincerely animated when they explain to their independent and moderate friends what is at stake in this election.

On the fence conservatives may stay at home on Election Day; they may skip voting for president; or they may vote for the Liberal candidate.

Barack Obama may win — in that event, we know what kind of judges he’ll nominate because he has been up-front and clear-cut regarding his support for a Liberal Activist judiciary.

Well, if he does win, we can tweak the old saying a bit to remind us that "In a democracy people get the kind of Supreme Court they deserve.”

But enough about the consequences of malaise, political pacifism, and political nihilism on the part of conservatives. Let’s get to the case at hand.

First the background: Justice Scalia summed up the essence of the District of Columbia law at the heart of Heller when he wrote as follows in the majority decision:

"...[the DC law] totally bans handgun possession in the home. It also requires that any lawful firearm [rifle, etc] in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, rendering it inoperable.”

The issue before the Court, then, was this: Does the Second Amendment confer a right upon individuals to bear arms, thereby making the extreme provisions of the DC law unconstitutional; or does the Amendment establish only a corporate right that pertains to the right of states to form militias, thereby not simply rendering the DC law constitutional but permitting states to outlaw individual ownership and possession of arms altogether?

(By the way, contrary to what most Americans may believe, this question had never before been taken up by the Supreme Court.)

In its decision in Heller, the Court came down on the side of an individual right. However, the decision was 5-4, a fact that ought to have every person who cares about gun rights shouting not just "Aye, there’s the rub” but "Aye, there’s an astonishing, frightening, never would have believed it rub!”

To fully comprehend the profound nature of that rub, we need to look at what the Liberals in the minority had to say. Therefore, a few quotes from Justices Stevens and Breyer before getting to what Justice Scalia emphasized in the majority opinion.

(Only quotes it is, because what Stevens and Breyer write, and what Ginsburg and Souter agree with, is so clear and so shocking that comment is unnecessary.)

Stevens:

Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.

...the Second Amendment’s omission of any statement of purpose related to the right to use firearms for hunting or personal self-defense, is especially striking...

It [the Second Amendment] does not describe a right "to keep arms” and a separate right "to bear arms.” Rather, the single right that it does describe is both a duty and a right to have arms available and ready for military service, and to use them for military purposes when necessary.

Breyer:

The Second Amend­ment’s language, while speaking of a "Militia,” says noth­ing of "self-defense.”

They [the Framers] are unlikely...to have thought of a right to keep loaded handguns in homes to confront intruders in urban settings as central. (Breyer italicizes only the word "central.”)

Nor, for that matter, am I aware of any evidence that handguns in particular were central to the Framers’ con­ception of the Second Amendment. (Breyer italicizes only the word "handguns.”)

In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.

On behalf of the majority, Scalia begins with a statement of belief every common sense American will find refreshing as he argues that the Second Amendment’s words "Right of the People” mean exactly what they say because the Constitution "was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in [a] normal and ordinary [manner]...[excluding] secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation..”

Then, throughout the rest of his long opinion, he offers a constitutional, legislative, and judicial history of gun rights, including references to and quotes from Pennsylvania’s Declaration of Rights (1776) "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves, and the state.”

Of course, the Liberal Activists deny the relevance of laws passed before the Bill of Rights was ratified and hold that similar state laws passed after its ratification only prove that the Framers never intended to confer gun rights upon individuals for any purpose whatever.

There it is, then: For the first time in American history, an adjudication by the Supreme Court regarding the Second Amendment’s fundamental meaning.

And what do we find except the following profound fact that encompasses only one of the many issues requiring every lover of democracy and every hater of a judicial oligarchy never to relent in the fight against Liberal Judicial Activism:

What the vast majority of Americans have taken as a fundamental right for more than two centuries hangs by the thin thread of one vote, one vote cast by one person of 300 million, one vote that if changed to the side of the Liberal Activists will have the Supreme Court ruling that in the Second Amendment, the Framers thought it a good and wise thing to veer from the rights of the People they enumerated in the rest of the Bill of Rights to guarantee the right "to keep and bear Arms” exclusively to government.