Today the Supreme Court hears a challenge to DC's gun control laws, which amount to a total ban on gun ownership by law abiding citizens. The crux of the matter is whether the Second Amendment grants an individual right to "keep and bear arms." If it does, DC's laws certainly violate that right by preventing the vast majority of people from owning guns. If it does not grant an individual right the DC ban is ok, because people will have no right to own guns (even in their own homes, even for self defense).
I don't know about you, but I'm sure hoping that the Supreme Court considers this case seriously and acknowledges that the Second Amendment grants an individual right. I know it's not politically correct to own guns these days, but the Supreme Court shouldn't be influenced by that. The job of the Justices is to find what the Constitution really means, and to suggest that the Second Amendment doesn't grant an individual right (when it's placed second in a list of individual rights, in a document that is expressly concerned with individual rights) is ridiculous.
I'm not going to get into whether guns or good or bad, or whether disarming the populace and leaving criminals and police as the only people with guns is a wise move. Those questions are for different posts. The really important question, which must be addressed no matter what your personal beliefs about guns are, is whether the Supreme Court should take away a right that was expressly granted by the Bill of Rights.
If the Court somehow finds that the Second Amendment does not grant an individual right, what's to stop them from finding that the First Amendment doesn't either? Or the Fourth, or the Fifth? If the Court starts down that road, I'm afraid to think where it will lead- and you should be too. Don't be fooled into thinking that the Second Amendment is different: it's not. If the Court is swayed this year by the vocal minority of people who believe law-abiding citizens shoudn't have guns, there's no reason why the Supreme Court of 50 years from now will not also be swayed by a vocal minority who believes due process is no longer necessary.
This decision is going to make waves, no matter what it is. Let's just hope it's a move towards reclaiming one of our forgotten rights, not towards more government tyranny.
The title of today's post is a quote by L. Neil Smith (from The Probability Broach).
P.S. Did you know that the American Revolution was brought on by the British confiscation of Massachusetts colonists's arms?
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