I’ve been waiting for this decision ever since I heard about the case in a CATO Daily Podcast. From the CATO site:
On June 26, 2008, the Court rediscovered the Second Amendment. More than five years after six Washington, D.C. residents challenged the city’s 32-year-old ban on all functional firearms in the home, the Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that the law is unconstitutional.
CATO
Here’s the pdf for the District of Columbia v. Heller decision.
I’d like to offer a thanks to Rob Balen (who was subbing for Jeff today) for alerting me to the fact that the Supreme Court finally got a decision right. Having said that, I must observe that Rob Balen the food critic is a gun-phobe. I never heard so much whining over someone being allowed to have guns since the last time I heard someone begging not to be shot in a movie.
Someone should explain the danger to this Yankee carpet-bagger, when he goes South and tries to tell Southerners that they can’t be trusted with weapons. It’s going to rile some people up.
Where is Suzanna Hupp when you need a voice?
I was living in Austin when this tragedy occurred. I remember at the time wishing that a customer had taken the guy out. No one could wish harder than Suzanna Hupp.
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Militias are the people. Each individual person is a member of the militia. Guns equip the militia. Should we amend the constitution? Remove the second amendment and task government with our protection, empower the military as the only form of defense for the country?
If not, then each of us is responsible for our own defense, and the defense of our neighborhood/city/state. That is the way the founders intended for this to work. It’s about time the courts have acknowledged these facts.
Postscript
Heller itself may have been the correct decision as relates to gun ownership, but there is so much else that is being left unsaid in this post that I can’t imagine where to begin, even if I wanted to fix all the misconceptions apparent in this piece. Since I made a deal with myself ages ago not to erase old posts and simply make corrections through editor’s note, postscript or afterword, I’m left scratching my head just how to exactly paint the picture of my cognitive dissonance on this subject. I think I’ll start with a link to my 2013 article:
…in which I reverse pretty much everything I say above aside from appreciating that the Heller decision changes everything.
The tragically escalating numbers of mass shootings in the US over the last decade has left us all pretty much scratching our heads. A good number of what I considered allies as of the writing of this 2008 piece have become conspiracy fantasists in the true meaning of the phrase and have decided that any mass shooting that can’t be explained with the label terrorism is automatically a false-flag event. They are essentially turning themselves into the kinds of nut jobs that really shouldn’t be trusted with high-powered weaponry in the first place.
This development has left me without a place to call home on this subject. I do find some comfort in the writings of Jim Wright over at Stonekettle Station. Sadly he doesn’t see any end to this craziness either. For myself, I think I have written my last article on the subject of guns:
I don’t have anything left to say on the subject. I just want the senseless killing to stop. When the US itself gets tired of the bloodshed and settles in for a good old-fashioned discussion of what an American fix for this problem might look like, then we will see an end to it. Here’s hoping that self-reflection occurs sooner rather than later.
