[COLUMN] Court ruling a victory for liberty

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday scored a victory for liberty when it correctly struck down a 32-year-old Washington, D.C., law banning handguns and ruling for the first time that the Second Amendment is a personal right and not a right of the states to maintain militias.

In other words, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means exactly what it says: "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."

This seems obvious to me. After all, why would Congress and the states create a Bill of Rights for the people and include in it a right for the states to form militias?

That would make no sense.

The Bill of Rights was meant to recognize some of the rights of the people, not of the government. The amendment even specifically states "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Seems pretty specific. Additionally, the phrase "right of the people" is used several other times in the Bill of Rights and in the unamended Constitution.

Too many liberals and other anti-gun (i.e., anti-freedom) people like to think that because the first phrase of the amendment mentions the militia, the right must be for militias. That is simply wishful thinking by those who want to restrict liberty by banning guns and preventing people from having the means to protect themselves and their families.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in his majority opinion, skillfully put that straw man to rest. In fact, while admitting that the Second Amendment's grammatical construction is unique in the Constitution, such opening phrases were common during the founding era, especially in individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, and that the opening clause simply announces the purpose of the main clause.

What I find disturbing, however, is that four Supreme Court justices seem to think it is OK, despite the clear, unambiguous meaning of the Second Amendment, for governments to put forth a complete ban on guns.

Justice John Paul Stevens was so distraught at the thought that people might want to defend themselves, that he actually read his dissent aloud from the bench, which is very uncommon.

Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons." He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Of course it is. That was the whole point of the Constitution, to strictly limit the powers of the government and to protect the natural, God-given rights of the people. If Stevens does not understand that simple Constitutional truism, then he has no business being on the bench.

The Constitution is not, as liberals like to claim, a living document that can be reinterpreted whenever the winds of societal mores change. The Constitution means what it says and it was written in plain, common language, rather than technical, legal language. It was meant to be understood by the very people it was created to protect.

In short, the Constitution is a limiting document that specifically lists what government can do. It is called the Enumerated Powers doctrine. If a specific power is not enumerated, or listed, then the government does not have that power.

Plain and simple.

For example, because the Constitution does not specifically give the government the power to ban firearms, the government does not have the power to ban firearms.

Besides, constitutional issues aside, gun-control laws, especially ones as restrictive as the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, only serve to increase crime.

The murder rate in the district had declined for the five years preceding the ban. In every year but one since the ban, the murder rate was higher than it was before the ban.

While I praise Thursday's court decision, it did not go far enough. The court, while ruling that the Second Amendment was a personal right, said it was not an absolute right, which means there will still be a gun-control debate in this country.

Therefore, Thursday's decision will not be the last word, I am sure.

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category | Column
author | Lucente

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