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Jun
26
The U.S. Supreme Court, hereafter referred to as Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) today affirmed in a 5-4 decision that the Second Amendment indeed refers to an individual right to keep and bear arms. This was a somewhat expected win, given the questions asked by the justices in oral arguments and the history of SCOTUS in treating the Second Amendment as an individual right in dicta in unrelated cases. In something like 34/35 previous decisions, the court grouped the right of the people to keep and bear arms with the individual rights enumerated in the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. There are other cases where the court spoke more directly to the Second Amendment as an individual right.
(See book by Dave Kopel, Stephen P. Halbrook, and Alan Korwin, Supreme Court Cases, Bloomfield Press, Phoenix, AZ, 2003.) (See also Kopel, David, “ A {Really} Brief History of the ‘Collective’ Right to Keep and Bear Arms), America’s First Freedom, National Rifle Association, Palm Coast, Florida, March, 2008, Page 34.) (Note: citation for this section was originally listed, in error, as “Not So Fast.” Error has been corrected above. I apologize for any inconvenience.)
While we can be happy and greateful that the court did the right thing in affirming an individual right, this ruling does not solve all our problems as advocates for the right of self-defense against crime and tyranny. There is still the issue of incorporation of the Second Amendment into restrictions on the powers of the states mentioned in the Fourteenth Amendment. The court appears to have issued a narrow ruling that does not address issues like semi-auto bans and restrictive licensing.
The smart people on our side are reading this voluminous decision to determine the impact of the details on the debate. (The Devil is always in the details.
A more troubling aspect of this decision is that it was rendered down idiological lines, when the preponderence of evidence would seem to have mandated a nine/zero ruling in favor of the historical “Standard Model” interpretation of the Amendment. This should not surprise anyone. In the “Post Modernist” world of subjective reality and moral relativism, the facts don’t matter. Intuition, internal reality, and even magical thinking are considered to be as valid as scientific attempts to discern truth based on the best empirical evidence available.
We have seen activist judges create new rights, such as abortion, that could not have been conceived by the Founders. (Sorry! Couldn’t resist the pun.) Since the 1960’s, we have seen revisionist interpretations of the Second Amendment as a collective right taught in law schools and trumpeted by the mainstream media as fact. This decision should at least put that relatively new canard to rest.
There remains the problem of liberal ideology over scientific inquiry and the elevation of personal beliefs and world view over attempts to accurately assess external reality beyond the bounds of our internal wants and desires. The Left is now talking about the need for “emotional” arguments to sway voters on guns and other issues, since, in their view, all scientific endeavor is tainted anyway by our idiosyncratic psychological processes.
What I believe to be this failure of rational thought is probably best exemplified by the liberal tactic of putting up signs that say “No Guns Allowed!” It is as though they really believe that the signs will deter persons intent on robbery, assault, and murder. “Oh. Gee. I can’t take a gun in there, so I guess I can’t hold up the bank, or kill my ex-wife.”
Why don’t they just put up a sign that says “No Bank Robberies or Murders Allowed!” In the absence of a sign, someone might attempt a crime with a knife. (Check out the British experience with gun and knife control. It ain’t working over there either.)
In any case, this narrow win points out the necessity of electing admittedly imperfect candidate John McCain to the White House in the interest of maintaining some sort of ideological balance on the SCOTUS. Those of you who don’t like McCain need to remember that no third party candidate has ever done more than throw the election to the other side. Wishing and hoping will probably not result in a different outcome this time.
McCain is not my favorite guy for a variety of reasons, but he is my candidate. Yes, I’ll say it again. He is the only candidate that gun owners can influence that has a bat’s chance of winning the election. I believe anything else is magical thinking on our part. Right-wing magical thinking is as irrational and dangerous as Left-wing magical thinking. No. That’s not correct. Right-wing magical thinking is more dangerous than Left-wing magical thinking, because we should know better. We are the custodians of rational thought in an America increasingly given to Post-Modern idiosyncratic fantasies. (The world is this way, because I want it to be this way! I want it! I want it! I want it! You get the idea.)
The vitality of the SCOTUS and the long-term viability of the Heller decision depend on our voting for the possible, rather than for the perfect. People who vote on principle for candidates who can’t win are called losers. I don’t like it, but as Jimmy Durante used to say, “Dese are de conditions dat prevail.”
Def Mech
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[...] if I’m wrong, but I believe Defense Mechanism, the point person for all-things-2nd Amendment, was first on the scene. Of course, I got to give it up to The Midnight Rider, who had a comprehensive four part series - [...]
Things will get worse with McCain.
Things will get much worse with Obama. And that is why I am voting for Obama. For things will only get worse with McCain but they need to get much worse for us to survive as a nation.
Of course a statement like that needs an explanation. And I will do so in the form of an analogy. Do you know how to cook a frog? Well, if you put it in a pot of boiling water the frog will quickly jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of water that is warm and turn up the heat gradually up to boiling the frog will just sit there not even realizing it is being boiled alive.
Obama is the one who puts the frog into the hot water and McCain is the one who turns up the heat gradually. With Obama his extremism will cause a backlash so great that America will start electing good leaders to oppose him. It happened in 1980 and it happened in 1994. And it will happen again.
But McCain he will really be the death of the Republican Party. As I said above things will get worse with McCain and therefore he and his party will get the blame. And then America will elect a Democrat in 2012. And if history has shown us anything it has shown that the Democratic Candidate has been getting increasingly extreme. So I can’t tell you who the Democrats will put up that year but I can tell you that person will be as extreme if not more extreme than Obama. So, how long are we putting off having an Obama-like candidate? Four Years?
And meanwhile McCain has shown that he wants to drive conservatives and conservatism away from the Republican Party. For those of us who believe that conservatism is the only solution to our country’s problems, it is unacceptable that neither of the two major parties represents conservative values.
So, I am left with the ultimate act of “tough love”. Not to say there aren’t hard times ahead for there is but that is true with McCain as well. But at least with Obama there is hope that things will get better after him. With McCain all hope is lost.