aileron
07-23-2007, 06:37 AM
Now this is a good little read on rights conferred in the bill of rights that SHOULD be understood and accepted. :D
http://www.kxmc.com/News/Nation/145315.asp
Handgun Ownership Is A Privacy Right
Jul 20 2007 12:00AM
http://sayanythingblog.com/index.php
Via Glenn Reynolds we find Mike O'Shea commenting on the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning the District of Columbia's handgun ban, if it grants certiorari in the case of Parker v. D.C. He points to what happens when leftist judicial activists worship some parts of the Constitution and competely ignore others:
"So the Constitution says Roe, but it doesn't say I have the right to keep a gun to defend my home, huh?"
Precisely. The Supreme Court called on the famous 'penumbras and emanations' of the Bill of Rights in order to craft a right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, a case that laid the essential foundation for Roe v. Wade. Griswold concerned a Connecticut ban on the sale of condoms. The Court objected to this ban, saying essentially that reproductive rights are a 'life decision' that the state cannot infringe upon.
If the crux of privacy is the right of the individual to make important life decisions, then this reasoning must apply with equal force to self-defense. Self-defense is the ultimate 'life decision', concerning the most important among all inalienable rights, the right to self-defense.
Moreover, arms actually are mentioned by name in the Constitution, and given special status and protection by the Second Amendment. Combine this with the 'penumbras and emanations' of the Third and Fourth amendments - which confer special status upon the home and belongings of the individual - and a strong case can be made that gun ownership for protection of self, family and possessions is also an inalienable right guaranteed by the Constitution, and a much stronger right than privacy. After all, arms, persons, homes, papers and effects are all specifically mentioned by name as having some kind of special constitutional protection, whereas condoms, reproductive rights and privacy are mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, the Federalist papers or other essential founding documents of the Republic.
It is ludicrous to believe that the Founding Fathers only envisioned gun ownership as a 'collective right'. That certainly wasn't how the founders lived their lives - Thomas Jefferson, for example, said that the best possible form of exercise is to walk with a brace of pistols. And the idea that the founders thought that all guns should be turned in to an armory until needed for collective use in a militia is equally laughable. That theory has absolutely no support in any of the views or writings of the men who wrote and approved of the Second Amendment. Only to leftist ACLU lawyers - who argue for the broadest possible interpretation of the First Amendment while hypocritically arguing the narrowest possible interpretation for the Second - does this view make any sense.
http://www.kxmc.com/News/Nation/145315.asp
Handgun Ownership Is A Privacy Right
Jul 20 2007 12:00AM
http://sayanythingblog.com/index.php
Via Glenn Reynolds we find Mike O'Shea commenting on the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning the District of Columbia's handgun ban, if it grants certiorari in the case of Parker v. D.C. He points to what happens when leftist judicial activists worship some parts of the Constitution and competely ignore others:
"So the Constitution says Roe, but it doesn't say I have the right to keep a gun to defend my home, huh?"
Precisely. The Supreme Court called on the famous 'penumbras and emanations' of the Bill of Rights in order to craft a right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut, a case that laid the essential foundation for Roe v. Wade. Griswold concerned a Connecticut ban on the sale of condoms. The Court objected to this ban, saying essentially that reproductive rights are a 'life decision' that the state cannot infringe upon.
If the crux of privacy is the right of the individual to make important life decisions, then this reasoning must apply with equal force to self-defense. Self-defense is the ultimate 'life decision', concerning the most important among all inalienable rights, the right to self-defense.
Moreover, arms actually are mentioned by name in the Constitution, and given special status and protection by the Second Amendment. Combine this with the 'penumbras and emanations' of the Third and Fourth amendments - which confer special status upon the home and belongings of the individual - and a strong case can be made that gun ownership for protection of self, family and possessions is also an inalienable right guaranteed by the Constitution, and a much stronger right than privacy. After all, arms, persons, homes, papers and effects are all specifically mentioned by name as having some kind of special constitutional protection, whereas condoms, reproductive rights and privacy are mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, the Federalist papers or other essential founding documents of the Republic.
It is ludicrous to believe that the Founding Fathers only envisioned gun ownership as a 'collective right'. That certainly wasn't how the founders lived their lives - Thomas Jefferson, for example, said that the best possible form of exercise is to walk with a brace of pistols. And the idea that the founders thought that all guns should be turned in to an armory until needed for collective use in a militia is equally laughable. That theory has absolutely no support in any of the views or writings of the men who wrote and approved of the Second Amendment. Only to leftist ACLU lawyers - who argue for the broadest possible interpretation of the First Amendment while hypocritically arguing the narrowest possible interpretation for the Second - does this view make any sense.