Supreme Court Rules on DC Gun Ban

[sanjavalen]

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/

Heller affirmed

Victory for individual rights. We'll see how much of a victory when the opinions are read at length.

[softwareNerd]

Kudos to the SCOTUS for voting this way.

[sanjavalen]

Scalia's opinion can be seen here.

I have work, but I'll comment on it tonight.

[sanjavalen]

Sigh...

“Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.”

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”

“Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ 307 U. S., at 179.”

Why hello, status quo.

[sanjavalen]

As the dissenting opinion notes:

In essence, the majority determines what regulations are permissible by looking to see what existing regulations permit.

[skap35]

Ruling strikes down D.C. gun ban!!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,372041,00.html

[softwareNerd]

The quoted post is from a different thread.

...the Court left plenty of wiggle room for other unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions to be put in place, such as a registry, banning certain types of guns, parts and/or ammunition, etc...

This is the court's standard operating procedure. No victory from the court will be a big one. They are not a body that lays down principles (I'm not sure if they once were). They try to focus on as narrow a decision as they can.

So, in the D.C. case, they're basically saying that a complete ban is going too far, but all sorts of restrictions are possible. OTOH, with one vote going the other way, they would have said a complete ban is constitutional. So, that fate was escaped by a whisker. The SCOTUS does not protect individual rights in any principled way (they would have to unravel too many laws if they did): neither the GOP judges nor the Democratic ones. I view them as more of a "super Senate", who will vote their ideology, but have the additional burden of framing a justification based on the constitution and precedent.

Edited June 26, 2008 by softwareNerd

[Unknown Idealist]

The quoted post is from a different thread.This is the court's standard operating procedure. No victory from the court will be a big one. They are not a body that lays down principles (I'm not sure if they once were). They try to focus on as narrow a decision as they can.

To put it another way, the Court preserves the semblance of limited government (a key sales point for the Ministry of Truth), while leaving the door wide open for the continued erosion of individual rights.

The appropriate comparison here is to cigarettes. You don't ban them outright; you gradually tax and regulate them out of existence. The objective is to control the populace while propping up the illusion of "free to choose."

[K-Mac]

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/supreme.court...s.2.757471.html

An excerpt:

The Supreme Court ruling does not automatically invalidate the Chicago handgun ban, but opens up the possibility of a court challenge that could get it declared unconstitutional.

The Illinois State Rifle Association filed a lawsuit with just that purpose in mind at 9:15 a.m.

The National Rifle Association also plans to file lawsuits in Chicago and several suburbs, as well as San Francisco, challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome.

While this is yet more good news for individual rights, I can't help but wonder if it's only temporary. This will just make the evil, rights-violating politicians go back to their drawing boards and come up with more creative gun laws. And with the aforementioned "wiggle room" the Supreme Court left in its decision, it will likely take decades to get those overturned, if at all.

[Robert Steiner]

Scalia's use of "historical narrative" concerns me. While I am relieved by the court's decision I don't think "historical narrative" should be a reason to be for something. Many crimes can be supported by historical narrative. History is how we learn why things are the way they are. We are supposed to learn from history not use it as justification.

[Scott_Connery]

I took the decision as a bit more positive than most of the rest of the crowd. Yesterday, the nation did not have an (acknowledged) individual right to arms, today we do. The decision also said that intermediate or strict scrutiny would have to apply for any gun law. Very few are likely to meet this hurdle.

[khaight]

Scalia's use of "historical narrative" concerns me. While I am relieved by the court's decision I don't think "historical narrative" should be a reason to be for something. Many crimes can be supported by historical narrative. History is how we learn why things are the way they are. We are supposed to learn from history not use it as justification.

I think this flows from Scalia's theory of judicial interpretation. He adheres to a form of originalism called "textualism", which holds in essence that laws should be interpreted based on what their text meant at the time it was enacted. This requires extended historical analysis of key terms in disputed laws, as we can only determine what the text meant by how it was interpreted by people at the time.

There are serious epistemological flaws in Scalia's approach; for an Objectivist analysis of these check out Tara Smith's law review article Why Originalism Won't Die: Common Mistakes In Competing Theories Of Judicial Interpretation.

[softwareNerd]

Someone lost no time. Chicago's gun laws are being challenged now.

[Benpercent]

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”

Just these past few days I have started getting really frustrated with how approximately people treat their words.* Treating words as approximate can only lead to more approximate thinking, whereas treating words precisely allows for more precision (but does not guarantee it).

For what reason do these politicians thinks rights are limited? And to be clear, by "limited" in this context I mean "not including all units naturally subsumed." Only by having the law treat words precisely can we safely rely on the dictionary to interpret the law. The word "arms" in the sentence "The right to bear arms" subsumes all weaponry, by definition.

* I had a rather sad, but comical, bout with my relative the other day who kept telling me to "switch the pillows around" on the couch, and after seconds of frustration and putting pillows everywhere, she finally told me she was talking about the couch cushions, not the pillows.

[khaight]

I had a rather sad, but comical, bout with my relative the other day who kept telling me to "switch the pillows around" on the couch, and after seconds of frustration and putting pillows everywhere, she finally told me she was talking about the couch cushions, not the pillows.

Reminds me of an incident at work. A senior vice-president was giving a presentation to the work-group I'm in, and at one point she asked those present who had worked for the company for a year to raise their hand. I'd been working there for almost eight years, so I raised my hand, and someone else who knew how long I'd been there called me on it. When I explained that I had in fact been there for a year (plus more), it turned out that the question the SVP was really trying to ask was how many people had worked for the company for no longer than a year. I was far from the only person who had misunderstood the question.

Words mean things, people, and I tend to hear the ones that are actually said and respond to them instead of the murk that is inside your head.

[DavidOdden]

Words mean things, people, and I tend to hear the ones that are actually said and respond to them instead of the murk that is inside your head.

Murk, as in darkness, or muck, as in swampy soil?

[Benpercent]

Murk, as in darkness, or muck, as in swampy soil?

Why not both? With darkness we have evasive thinking habits and with the muck we have an unfit and difficult-to-use mind.

[khaight]

Murk, as in darkness, or muck, as in swampy soil?

My intention was "murk", which is why that is what I typed. (Using the wrong word in a mini-rant on the topic of the incorrect use of words would be ironic at best. Sort of like the time at work when a co-worker forwarded one of those e-mail threads about someone who forwarded an e-mail to the wrong person, to the wrong person.)