really?
LA Times cool with incorporation, except for that whole second amendment part:
It’s tempting for supporters of gun control — including this page — to hope that the high court will rule that the 2nd Amendment doesn’t apply to the states. That would be a mistake and would give aid and comfort to conservative legal thinkers, among them Justice Clarence Thomas, who have questioned the incorporation doctrine.
We were disappointed last year when the Supreme Court ruled that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right, giving short shrift to the first part of the amendment, which refers to “a well-regulated militia.” But we also believe the court has been right to use the doctrine of incorporation to bind states to the most important protections of the Bill of Rights. If those vital provisions are to be incorporated in the 14th Amendment, so should the right to keep and bear arms.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
At least he gets that you can’t cherry pick rights, no matter how much you’d like to, because what is good for one is good for the other.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
The first subordinate clause of the 2nd Amendment sentence is, in part, a reference to Article I, Section 8 clause 16 in which the Federal gov’t has “delegated powers” only over “such part of the militia” that it employees. Otherwise any organized militia is under the regulation of “a free State”. It’s also clear from quotations of our founders that militia refers to the armed citizenry. Hence all Fedral gun laws are unconstitutional that in any way infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear (carry) arms.
The 2nd Amendment, as a grammatical sentence, is non-sensical and self-contradictory if “militia” in the subordinate, explnatory clause isn’t synonomous with “the people” in the the independent clause.
June 10th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I am in favor of Gun Control,that’s why I spend so much time at the range.
June 10th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I have read the Gura application for cert on the Chicago case. The issue now before the Supreme Court, should they take the case, is self defense, with the 2nd Amendment meant to stop the state (local, state, or federal government) from infringing on that unenumerated right by limiting the government from taking the means to self defense.
That Alan Gura is a genius. Everyone, including the LA Times, thinks these court cases are just about guns. They aren’t.
These cases are going to specify an individual right to self defense that has the strength of an enumerated right to arms at its core.
June 10th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
uh oh, looks like someone picked up a case of the intellectual honesties.