Posted by
JBDavis on Friday, May 11, 2007 11:39:22 AM
Read his latest,
here:
Our individual right to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, may finally be confirmed by the high Court; but this means that we’re going to see increasing pressure on the Supreme Court from anti-gun rights activists who want the Constitution reinterpreted to fit their prejudices. The New York Times has already fired the first broadside.
A few days ago, the Gray Lady published a fascinating account of the case — fascinating but fundamentally flawed. In it, the central argument about the Second Amendment is pretty accurately described. Specifically, it is between those who see it as an individual right versus those who see it as a collective states’ right having more to do with the National Guard than the people.
Unfortunately, the article falsely portrays the individual-right argument as some new interpretation held only by a few fringe theorists. The truth is very different, as civil-rights attorney and gun-law expert Don Kates has pointed out recently.
From the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1791 until the 20th century, no one seriously argued that the Second Amendment dealt with anything but an individual right — along with all other nine original amendments. Kates writes that not one court or commentator denied it was a right of individual gun owners until the last century. Judges and commentators in the 18th and 19th century routinely described the Second Amendment as a right of individuals. And they expressly compared it to the other rights such as speech, religion, and jury trial.
Read it all, it is worth it.
Or listen to it
here.
Run, Fred, Run.