The Right of the People
I’m sorry, but it’s been a whole week now, and I still can’t stop grinning about the Heller decision (Cato, Cato, Wiki, SCOTUSblog!). I love that they got this one done in time for tomorrow. Independence Day, motherfuckers.
In related news, does anyone know where I can get a big poster of Justice Scalia to hang on my bedroom wall? Dude’s my new hero.
Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.
We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
I’m always amazed at the number of people who think it is legitimate to attack a clear Constitutional right in the courts. If the courts do as they’re supposed to do, they’ll uphold those rights every single time. If you don’t like the Second Amendment (or the 16th, or the 17th, or whatever) your only recourse is to re-amend the constitution and strike that part out. This is intentionally hard to do, because it *should* be hard to change the supreme law of the land–it should not be possible for a bare majority to tell everybody else that they no longer have the right to freedom of religion, for instance.
But for all those who want to get rid of the 2A, there are two ways to go about it. Get your Representative or Senator to introduce a bill calling for a new amendment that strikes out the 2A, and hope a super majority of Congress will pass it, then hope a 3/4ths majority of the state legislatures will also pass it. Or, you can go right to the state legislatures, get 2/3rds of them to petition Congress for a Constitutional Convention, and then get the Convention to propose your amendment. Then, of course, it’s back to the states, and you need 3/4ths this time for ratification.
It’s not easy, and intentionally so. But if that’s what you want in the end, this is how you need to go about it. Trying to trick the courts into doing something they do not have the authority to do is ridiculous and wrong-headed.
Comment by Dave | 18 July 2008