This ruling should have been 9 to 0 in favor of the 2nd Amendment.  Instead, it was 5 to 4.  This means that four USSC justices decided that they could, unelected and unaccountable, amend the U.S. Constitution without going through the amendment process specified by that document: passage by supermajorites in both houses of the legislature, signed by the executive, and ratified by 3/4 of the states OR as the result of a Constitutional Convention.  No, four arrogant justices, for their own personal reasons, decided not to interpret the Supreme Law of the Land but to legislate from the bench and completely bypass the legislative and executive branches.  This is a very bad sign.  People should be insensed that the USSC has usurped the Separation of Powers built-into the Constitution: legislative branch wirtes the laws; executive branch approves and administers the laws; and judicial branch upholds and interprets the laws. 

 

Everyone should read Justice Scalia's majority opinion to understand the brilliance of his reasoning.

 

Everyone should also read the minority opinions of Justices Stevens and Bryer to understand how arrogant and dangerous these judges are.

 

The echoes of this decision will reverberate for a long time.

Silver Bullet
The Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2008; Page A12

The 2008 Supreme Court term ended with a bang yesterday as the Justices issued their most important ruling ever in upholding an individual right to bear arms. The dismaying surprise is that the Second Amendment came within a single vote of becoming a dead Constitutional letter.

That's the larger meaning of yesterday's landmark 5-4 ruling in D.C. v. Heller, the first gun control case to come before the Court in 70 years. Richard Heller brought his case after the Washington, D.C. government refused to grant him a permit to keep a handgun in his home. The District has some of the most restrictive handgun laws in the country �?essentially a total ban. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision by Judge Laurence Silberman, overturned the ban in an opinion that set up yesterday's ruling by taking a panoramic view of gun rights and American legal history.

In writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia follows the Silberman Constitutional roadmap in finding that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is an individual right. The alternative view �?argued by the District of Columbia �?is that the Second Amendment is merely a collective right for individuals who belong to a government militia.

Justice Scalia shreds the collective interpretation as a matter of both common law and Constitutional history. He writes that the Founders, as well as nearly all Constitutional scholars over the decades, believed in the individual right. Many Supreme Court opinions invoke the Founders, but this one is refreshing in its resort to first American principles and its affirmation of a basic liberty. It's not too much to say that Heller is every bit as important to the Second Amendment as Near v. Minnesota (prior restraint) or N.Y. Times v. Sullivan (libel) are to the First Amendment.

Which makes it all the more troubling that no less than four Justices were willing to explain this right away. These are the same four liberal Justices who routinely invoke the "right to privacy" �?which is nowhere in the text of the Constitution �?as a justification for asserting various social rights. Yet in his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argues that a right to bear arms that is plainly in the text adheres to an individual only if he is sanctioned by government.

Justice Breyer, who wrote a companion dissent, takes a more devious tack. He wants to establish an "interest-balancing test" to weigh the Constitutionality of particular restrictions on gun ownership. This balancing test is best understood as a roadmap for vitiating the practical effects of Heller going forward.

Using Justice Breyer's "test," judges could accept the existence of an individual right to bear arms in theory, while whittling it down to nothing by weighing that right against the interests of the government in preventing gun-related violence. Having set forth this supposedly neutral standard, Justice Breyer shows his policy hand by arguing that under this standard the interests of the District of Columbia would outweigh Mr. Heller's interest in defending himself, and the ban should thus be upheld.

But as Justice Scalia writes, no other Constitutional right is subjected to this sort of interest-balancing. "The very enumeration of the right takes [it] out of the hands of government" �?even the hands of Olympian judges like Stephen Breyer. "Like the First, [the Second Amendment] is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people �?which Justice Breyer would now conduct for them anew."

In that one sentence, Justice Scalia illuminates a main fault line on this current Supreme Court. The four liberals are far more willing to empower the government and judges to restrict individual liberty, save on matters of personal lifestyle (abortion, gay rights) or perhaps crime. The four conservatives are far more willing to defend individuals against government power �?for example, in owning firearms, or private property (the 2005 Kelo case on eminent domain). Justice Anthony Kennedy swings both ways, and in Heller he sided with the people.

Heller leaves many questions unanswered. Contrary to the worries expressed by the Bush Administration in its embarrassing amicus brief, the ruling does not bar the government from regulating machine guns or other heavy weapons; or from limiting gun ownership by felons or the mentally ill. Any broad restriction on handguns or hunting rifles will be Constitutionally suspect, but legislatures will still have room to protect public safety.

Heller reveals the High Court at its best, upholding individual liberty as the Founders intended. Yet it is also precarious because the switch of a single Justice would have rendered the Second Amendment a nullity. With the next President likely to appoint as many as three Justices, the right to bear arms has been affirmed but still isn't safe.

That said, what we really need is for the Feds to require and the States to administer a real citizen militia including arms and training. Somewhat like the Swiss do today.

 

The Second Amendment was written, based on the recent experiences of our founding fathers as they sought to establish this nation.

During that struggle for our freedom, the government (the British redcoats) had guns and they attempted to prevent the taxpaying citizens (us) from having such tools of self-defense.

Our founding fathers had first hand experience with the dangers of having the government using weapons against an unarmed populace.

*  The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting.
*  The Second Amendment isn’t intended to ensure that the US Army has guns.
*  The Second Amendment isn’t intended to ensure that the police can have guns.
*  The Second Amendment is about ordinary people having guns so that we can fight our own government, if our government becomes oppressive.

How will we know if our government is tending to become oppressive? Well, one key warning sign will be when the government tries to take away our guns.

 As Dr. Suzanne Gratia-Hupp, a CCW holder, who watched her mother and father murdered at the Luby's Resturant Massacre in Killeen, TX because the law would not allow her to bring it into the building, told the House-Senate Judiciary Committees (and really p.o.'ed Senator Schumer, ace gun-grabber):

 

[paraphrased] "The Second Amendement isn't about duck hunting.  The Second Amendment is about our right to protect ourselves from all of you guys (Senators) up there."

 

See the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71YpogEUCDI