All Posts Tagged With: "2nd Amendment"

Citizens Have Right to Own and Bear Firearms for Hunting and Protection Highest Court Says Lays Landmine In Presidential Race

The ruling will certainly provoke much comment about Barack Obama’s “Gun grabbing; God nuts” pejorative.

The U. S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on the 2^ndAmendment right to keep and bear arms Thursday morning upholding a citizen’s have that right to own and bear firearms for hunting and self-protection. It does say felonms and the mentally ill may lose that right. The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791.

The last time the U. S. Supreme Court even glanced at the amendment was just before World War II and the issue then was a sawed off shotgun used in a robbery and transported across state lines. The decision upheld individual rights to keep and bear arms but limited ownership of such sawed off shotguns, and machine guns. You can own a machine gun but it must be strictly licensed and controlled. The provocation for today’s decision is Washington DC’s absolute ban on private ownership of hand guns. Despite the ban the nation’s capitol remains its “murder capitol.”

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The Constitution does not permit “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home,” Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington’s requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority “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.”

He said such evidence “is nowhere to be found.”

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, “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.”

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

One of the 2^nd Amendment’s curiosities is that Congress originally passed the following wording. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. “ But, the wording circulated to states and ratified has different capitalization “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There is also the use of ablative absolute construction at its beginning - common at its writing because many then were well schooled in Latin (and thank you again Miss Knapp my long suffering high school Latin teacher and avid football fan).

The National Hurricane Center’s 2008 forecast is not as apocalyptic as in recent year’s (those have completely missed their mark) predicting only one major storm to make U. S. landfall next year.

or the first time Oprah entered the fray on the side of a Presidential politician — Barack Obama

rab League countries led by Saudi Arabia with 16 others will attend a U.S.-insisted peace conference this week in Annapolis, Maryland