REFLECTIONS ON HELLER, Part III
SCOTUS’ opinion in District of Columbia, et. al. v. Heller, is probably the most welcome official document in memory for gun owners’ rights activists. As such, it bears multiple re-readings.
Savor this, for example, from Justice Scalia’s majority opinion:
“By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. See Malcolm 122-134. Blackstone, whose works, we have said, ‘constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,’ Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 715 (1999), cited the arms provision of the Bill of Rights as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. See 1 Blackstone 136, 139-140 (1765). His description of it cannot possibly be thought to tie it to militia or military service. It was, he said, ‘the natural right of resistance and self preservation,’ id., at 139, and ‘the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence,’ id., at 140;see also 3 id., at 2-4…Thus, the right secured in 1689 as a result of the Stuarts’ abuses was by the time of the founding understood to be an individual right protecting against both public and private violence.” (Pages 20-21 of the Heller decision.)
In his dissent, Justice Stevens wrote, “The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy.”
Yes, Justice Stevens, the Court would have us believe the obvious truth, as confirmed by the vast majority of the substantial body of Constitutional scholarship that exists on the topic…
July 19th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
It seems that many people forget that the founding fathers were revolutionaries. They didn’t trust government, so of course they wanted to limit government’s ability to restrict civilian guns. Without civilian guns the Revolution would never have been able to begin.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Great idea publishing this blog. Since there’s a significant delay in reaching the market for most of what you write (magazine lead times, etc), it’s great to find a forum where you can put your thoughts down on paper practically instantaneously, especially for those of us who are LFI alums.
Keep up the good work.
Chris
July 21st, 2008 at 1:20 am
There is a great article Right here on BWH that is very relevant to this discussion. It is in Issue #58 titled “We don’t need no steenking 2nd Amendment” By John Silveira. The article goes into great detail on the second amendment and its true intent and interpretation. You can read it in the John Silveira’s Colum area. It’s worth your time.
~Brogan
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Justice Stevens must be senile. The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights was “to limit the tools available to “… the Tools.
As Scalia writes:
”
We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting
upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all.”
So much for Stevens.