Seems Robert Levy has been fighting the good fight for the Second Amendment. "I believe in the written Constitution and that the text ought to be interpreted the way it was meant to be," Levy said. Of his lawsuit against the District of Columbia, now before the Supreme Court: "Only one plaintiff remains: Dick Heller, a security guard who applied for a handgun license and was rejected under the district's handgun ban. The lower federal courts, while striking down the law, concluded only Heller was harmed by the city's law."
Kentucky, early on, held that "the right of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State must be preserved entire".
"The Second Amendment protects a right of individuals to own and possess firearms, much as the First Amendment protects a right of individuals to engage in free speech." "In 2001, the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum opinion stating that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."
On November 20, 2007, the United States Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, case no. 07-290. The question the Supreme Court justices posed is whether the provisions of the D.C. statute “violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.”
Rico says we should all remember that the Second was written to protect the First: "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." He feels that we should drop the initial 'ablative absolute' phrase, and just leave the operative part: "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". That would preclude the stupidities over the definitions of 'well regulated' and 'militia', and would better reflect the original text from the First Congress: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person."
17 March 2008
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