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As Charlton Heston said, out of my "cold dead hands." I saw a lawyer on FOX one evening, that said that he believes any business that places a "no firearms" sticker in their store window can be sued if harm comes to someone being beaten or injured in their establishment. They are taking full responsibility for that individuals safety. The lawyer was on with a women, who several years ago left her gun in her car, while she took her father and mother to dinner in a restaurant with a "no firearms" sticker. Both her parents were killed by a person who was robbing the restaurant.
Originally Posted by Jet sitter,Jun 27 2008, 10:45 AM
Thank God for justice Kennedy getting this one right!
I wasn't thrilled with his influence on the opinion, actually.
While I'm happy with letting people have weapons for self defense, I view the purpose of the second amendment as ensuring that the people have the means to resist the government if that should become necessary. In fact, I think this is obvious: when the amendment was passed, we'd just been through a revolution that we wouldn't have won had the British government been able to disarm the colonists. The earlier English historical precedents cited in Scalia's opinion were also clearly driven by the desire to give the people the means to resist oppressive governments - some of which had in fact disarmed segments of the population. I think that's why the prefaratory clause mentions "the militia" - as long as there's a militia consisting of all able bodied citizens armed for war, the government will have problems imposing unpopular rule by force.
The previous second amendment decision, in 1939, recognized this. While Stevens mischaracterizes that earlier opinion as construing the militia clause to negate any individual right to bear arms, a correct reading shows that earlier opinion did turn on the militia clause in a different way: it construed the clause as limiting the amendment to weapons suitable to a militia, while appearing to take for granted that the right was an individual right. Militia weapons would, of course, be the same types of weapons suitable to resisting the government if necessary.
During oral arguments, Scalia seemed inclined to interpret the second amendment in the same way that it was interpreted in 1939, as protecting an individual right to keep and bear such weapons as would be appropriate to a militia. Kennedy, on the other hand, didn't seem very receptive to that interpretation; rather, he seemed to prefer an interpretation that read the second amendment as being related to hunting and self defense, an interpretation I don't think there's a lot of historical evidence for. However, to get Kennedy's vote for a clear five judge majority, Scalia ended up concentrating on Kennedy's self defense theory, rather than on a more historically justified theory based on ability to resist the government.
The actual ruling would have been the same in both cases; general purpose hand guns are appropriate for both self defense and for militia use. However, I'm concerned the way the ruling was written may result in drawing the lines in the wrong places for some types of weapons; it may protect plastic pistols suitable for smuggling onto airplanes but not rifles, for example, while I'd draw the line the opposite way.
06-27-2008, 09:44 AM
Supreme Court rules on Second Amendment
