Posted by
Will Malven on Friday, June 27, 2008 8:36:09 AM
Will Malven
June 26, 2008
In a very narrowly worded decision the Supreme Court, in a disturbingly slim 5-4 majority decision confirmed what any half-witted reader of the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights could have told them from the beginning, the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of the individual to keep and bear arms.
Having this giant leap of imagination and comprehension (somehow complex pharases like "shall not be infringed," that most people find very straight forward, they find perplexing) they went on the limit the breadth of their decision by back pedaling as fast as they could.
Apparently even Chief Justice Roberts and his fellow Conservative Justices Alito, Thomas, Scalia (who wrote the majority opinion) can't bear the concept of a civilian population which would actually be capable of standing in battle against the military of on oppressive government, which is, with no ambiguity whatsoever, precisely what our founding fathers envisioned.
Being neither fish nor fowl, this decision, while important for its establishment of the right to keep and bear arms (RTKB) as an individual right, is not a great decision, rather it is a frightening decision. It is frightening to me that four of the nine justices are so willing to ignore our constitution and the inescapable intent, as made clear both in the phrasing of the Second Amendment (using the imperative "shall not be infringed") and in the extensive writings of the framers, to pursue their own political agenda. Stevens in his comment:
"[The majority decision] 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 his further comment that that evidence for such a limit (on the tools available to elected officials to regulate civilian uses of weapons)
"is nowhere to be found."
If those two statements weren't so bone-chilling in their portent and so ominous in their implication of a desire to strip us of our God given, inherent rights, they would be laughable. Here's a clue for Justice Stevens, our forefathers provided no such tools...anywhere.Our forefathers preserved for all posterity our right to protect ourselves against any and all threats whether it involves a matter of self-defense or a matter of the tyranny of the state. Breyer's comment:
"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."
is at least consistent with his Kelo (Kelo v. City of New London) vote. Apparently Breyer doesn't believe any right of the people is an absolute right. Unfortunately the five most Liberal Justices (the Foul Four, Breyer, Gisburg, Souter, and Stevens, + Kennedy) are all amenable to the abrogation of any right of the American People as protected by the Bill or Rights, even the right of property, which our forefathers believed to be the primary and most fundamental right.
As for Heller, Justice Kennedy doesn't get it write very often, but at least this time he managed to muddle his very mediocre way to a correct decision. What part of the word "right" don't these "scholars of law" understand?
Far from finding this decision reassuring, it frightens the heck out of me. It frightens me that the American people were one president away from having "the right which protects all other rights" stripped away from them. Had Albert Gore, Jr. rather than George Walker Bush won the election in 2000, what Heller has barely preserved, would have been lost forever.
It is unimaginable to me today that there are so many citizens in our society who are so blasé about their rights as protected by the Bill of Rights. We are as near to becomming a society of sheep as we can without losing outright all of our freedoms.
Dr. James McHenry (a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention) tells us that When the Constitutional Convention ended on September 18, 1787, "a lady asked Dr. Franklin, 'Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy? "A republic.' the doctor replied, 'if you can keep it.'"
Unfortunately, it appears that we are all too near losing that which Messrs. Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and McHenry attempted to leave us.
Well, at least they got this one partially right and realized that the RTKBA is an indvidual right.
Long Live Our American Republic!!!