USSC: LIKE TEARING DOWN BERLIN WALL? (OF GUN CONTROL) ?

YESTERDAY WAS A GOOD DAY.
The USSC took the first step
in ending the sickness that is government control of guns.

I am reminded of how soon after the Berlin Wall was torn down, the death of communism followed.
How soon after D Day, the death of nazism followed, about 11 months.
D Day was not perfect. Both sides made mistakes, yet the inevitable result resulted.
Yesterday was rife with portent.
If gun control were a corporation (like Enron),
I 'd be glad that I have no stock in it.

Yesterday was a good day to be alive.

So many politically correct lies were refuted & disproven by the USSC.
I have not yet completed my jurisprudential analysis of it.
It looks good.

Here are a few of the more savory and jucier excerpts of the USSC's holding:

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER:

"The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause"
[i.e."A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state..."]
and its operative clause."
[i.e."the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."]
"The former does not limit the latter grammatically,
but rather announces a purpose."
"...a prefatory clause does not limit
or expand the scope of the operative clause"
"... to put the point differently,
operative provisions should be given effect as operative provisions,
and prologues as prologues."




"What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people,"
the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community,
not an unspecified subset. As we said in United States v. Verdugo-
Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 265 (1990):
" ?'[T]he people' seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts
of the Constitution... . [Its uses] sugges[t] that ?'the people' protected
by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments,
and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments,
refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community
or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection
with this country to be considered part of that community."

Hence, the USSC adopts its holding in VERDUGO that the same people are
protected by the First and Second Amendments, so that the USSC holds
that the citizens who can worship and speak freely are the people who can
keep and bear arms (tho the Court elsewhere limited that against criminals and the insane).




"We start therefore with a strong presumption
that the Second Amendment right
is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans."
[emphasis added by David]
b. "Keep and bear Arms." We move now from the
holder of the right?-"the people"?-to the substance of the
right: "to keep and bear Arms."
Before addressing the verbs "keep" and "bear," we interpret
their object: "Arms." The 18th-century meaning is no
different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of
Samuel Johnson's dictionary defined "arms" as "weapons
of offence, or armour of defence." 1 Dictionary of the
English Language 107 (4th ed.) (hereinafter Johnson).
Timothy Cunningham's important 1771 legal dictionary
defined "arms" as "any thing that a man wears for his
defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at
or strike another." 1 A New and Complete Law Dictionary (1771)





Meaning of the Operative Clause.
Putting all of these textual elements together,
we find that they guarantee the individual right
to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.
This meaning is strongly confirmed
by the historical background of the Second Amendment.
We look to this because it has always been widely understood
that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments,
codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment
implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that
it "shall not be infringed." As we said in United States v.Cruikshank,
92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), "[t]his 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. . . ."
[emphasis added by David]

"...the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments
that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not
in existence at the time of the founding."




It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful
in military service?-M-16 rifles and the like?-may be banned,
then the Second Amendment right is completely detached
from the prefatory clause. But as we have said,
the conception of the militia at the time of the Second
Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens
capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of
lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia
duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as
effective as militias in the 18th century, would require
sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at
large. [emphasis added by David]

"As the quotations earlier in this opinion demonstrate,
the inherent right of self-defense has been central
to the Second Amendment right. The handgun ban amounts to a
prohibition of an entire class of "arms" that is overwhelmingly
chosen by American society for that lawful purpose.
The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the
need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute."
[emphasis added by David]


State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616-617 (1840)
("A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a
destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to
render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence,
would be clearly unconstitutional").
[emphasis added by David]


Respondent conceded at oral argument that he does not
"have a problem with . . . licensing" and that the District's law is
permissible so long as it is "not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner."
Tr. of Oral Arg. 74-75.
We therefore assume that petitioners' issuance of a license
will satisfy respondent's prayer for relief and do not address
the licensing requirement.
[emphasis added by David]





The foregoing is offered as proof that I wud never gloat.




David