Justice Kennedy and The Sentence
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday about the Second Amendment. From the articles I've read, it appears ready to declare some form of individual right to bear arms, not beholden to "militia" needs.
The Courts' current "fifth vote" on closely decided cases, Anthony Kennedy, from his questions and comments, is firmly on the individual right side of the question.
His route to getting there is humorous.
The Second Amendment reads "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."
According to Justice Kennedy the first two clauses about the Militia and security are surplusage: legal nothings there to reaffirm the existence and importance of state militias, divorced from the rest of the Amendment. He then reads the third and fourth clauses as if there was no comma between them (which I guess you have to do if you don't want them to be subjunctive), finding them to create a general right to keep and bear arms.
This is not English as I learned it in school, and I don't think it is English as used in the Eighteenth Century.
The good news, from my side of the fence - everyone, Justices and litigants, agreed that government can regulate firearms. The question becomes how much and how. We'll leave that for a decade or two of litigation.
2 comments:
The fact that we've had two college-related mass killings recently, committed by men with diagnosed psychological issues who legally purchased firearms, should have some bearing on the ruling.
I recently purchased a single-shot muzzle loading rifle for deer hunting in New York, and the dealer had to put me through the federal database before he could pass it over the counter. If this was necessary, it seems to me that every single firearms transaction should go through the database.
Go to a shrink for depression? Turn in your guns until you are well, and don't buy any more for awhile! That's just common sense.
Lifehiker,
The examples of law gone wrong do not interest the Supreme Court. Your eamples interest them as little as stories of little old ladies who blow away the burglar in their home, except in a subjective way.
They have the fatal flaw that they are lawyers. They feel compelled to parse. Their parsing will be informed by their worldviews, thought they won't admit it. They will announce a "rule" which they will chip away and add to for sometime to come.
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