Some Übermensch are slightly less self deprecating :) .

Update: t-shirts and such :)

*digress into full Monty Python sketch*

If we really need the feeling of safety, let’s get it wild west style instead of depending on big daddy government for it.

Who’s with me?

–

I’m with the majority on this case and the habeas/gitmo case but I like Doug’s post. I haven’t read Scalia’s opinion in this one but I read his dissent in the other one. Since Scalia’s principles find no way to extend to what I’d consider basic human rights in the habeas/gitmo case I find him pretty laughable as a model of anything. Not that the justices can use the DofI as precedent but are all men created equal or aren’t they? And if you read the federalist papers, they were very worried about times like these where any branch of government is going unchecked and they weren’t too fond of the possibility of a long standing two party system. These are exactly the sorts of things they were worried about. I think they even mention somewhere terrorism as a guise. A guy who works with me keeps preaching the federalist papers so I guess this is my repreaching.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, (note the comma, not period here) the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Now everyone knows this amendment (except the NRA that forgets the first part). However, most forget that that in Article 1 Section 8 (the part of the constitution that outlines Congressional power) of the US Constituion it reads:

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

In other words, Congress is the only government body that has the authority to allow citizens to be armed or not. It is Congress that maintains the right to arm, train, and decide who can and cannot be in the militia. There is nothing in the constitution that outlines citizens to have the right to hunt (especially in this day in age when it is no longer necessary given the nearest Smiths or Walmart).

Scalia was appealing to a “natural law” made up in his disgruntled mind. It is not even appropriate for ANY Judicial Branch to decide who can or cannot have guns. Owning or possessing guns is not a guaranteed Constitutional right UNLESS Congress says it is.

Scalia’s argument should have been that the District of Columbia did not have the right to restrict residents from owning hand guns because Congress must approve the law first. If it was approved through Congress, then it would have been a Constitutional Law.

I realize I am preaching to the choir for the most part here, but I would advise anyone that believes that owning hand guns or any other type of weapon is a Constitutional right. I believe the Constituion is very clear as to who can own a weapon, purchase the weapon, and what the weapon can be used for.

I would just say its my just my opinion, but I (unlike Scalia) read the Constitution in its entirety.

[The right that was alleged to have been violated] “is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the ‘powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police,’ ‘not surrendered or restrained’ by the Constituton of the United States.”

So, in other words, the court in 1875 simply thought that the 2nd amendment curtailed *Congress* from limiting people’s right to bear arms, for whatever reason; if the state or the sheriff or the grocer wanted to limit that right, that would be a separate issue (the 2nd amendment wouldn’t apply). Still, with Heller, the Court is reversing itself, and saying that anybody who tells you you can’t have a gun, whether they are Congress or the grocer, is violating the second.