Jabbadabbado posted:I just finished reading the opinion in full, and I think you're right, and for once I don't completely disagree with Scalia. For me, as a proponent of gun restrictions, it's very liberating not to have to make, ever again, the argument that the "well regulated militia" bit is critical to understanding the meaning of the text. Scalia settled the hell out of that question. Scalia basically rewrote the second amendment to read: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms for self defense shall not be infringed."
Declaration of Independence posted:all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
Jabbadabbado posted:Intellectual honesty? Scalia undertook a wholesale, radical redrafting of the second amendment. The number of pages of contortion it took Scalia to erase the words "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" from the second amendment impressed me deeply with its almost cynical disregard for the intelligence of the reader. If you want to read a solid example of a common sense, plain text argument with persuasive reference to history, common law and framer's intent, you don't have to look any farther than the Stevens dissent. I'm referring here only to the section interpreting the meaning and significance of the first clause of the second amendment. Other parts of the Stevens dissent struck me as unconvincing and an unnecessary stretch.
DC v. Heller posted: Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District’s handgun ban. And some of those few have been struck down. In Nunn v. State, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a prohibition on carrying pistols openly (even though it upheld a prohibition on carrying concealed weapons). See 1 Ga., at 251. In Andrews v. State, the Tennessee Supreme Court likewise held that a statute that forbade openly carrying a pistol “publicly or privately, without regard to time or place, or circumstances,” 50 Tenn., at 187, violated the state constitutional provision (which the court equated with the Second Amendment). That was so even though the statute did not restrict the carrying of long guns. Ibid. See also State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616–617 (1840) (“A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional”).
KnightWriter posted:Call me revisionist, but I don't think England had nuclear weapons, tanks or machine guns as part of its arsenal. If the government wanted to take over in a forceful way, no amount of weaponry from ordinary citizens could do a thing to stand in its way.
