Gun rights: A stinger for Antonin

[SecularMotion]

There are basically two ways of explaining why a right to own guns belongs in the Bill of Rights. The first is that it's part of the assumed natural right to self-defence against other citizens. The second, increasingly the main line of argument by gun-rights advocates, is that's it's necessary to prevent governments from arrogating tyrannical powers to themselves. Hence the ready response of a pro-gun-rights New York Timesreader to an editorial calling for a compromise on gun control:

The Second Amendment was not written to protect hunters and recreational shooters. It was written as a safeguard against a government that might become so centralized and so powerful that it would pose a threat to the freedom of the citizenry and the Republic.

The same premise undergirds the gun-rights philosophy of the NRA ("America's First Freedom&quot , the Second Amendment Foundation ("the intent of [the second amendment] was to protect individuals from government powers&quot , and other gun-rights organisations. And indeed the Supreme Court relied on this interpretation of the second amendment's purpose in its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v Heller, which first established that the amendment guarantees an individual right to own guns. Many of the negotiating parties to the constitution, the court wrote, feared that the new federal government would act as Charles II had in 17th-century England, disarming rival militias so as to impose tyrannical rule. Hence the amendment's phrasing, "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." In his majority opinion, Mr Scalia glossed the amendment's prefatory clause thus:

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” See 3 Story §1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. (The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton).) Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/plus/chi-gun-rights-a-stinger-for-antonin-20120801,0,1583318.story

[COLGATE4]

1. Exposes the intellectual dishonesty of

Fat Tony's "originalism" theory of Constitiutional interpretation.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

2. This is a shortsighted and naive opinion.

ETA: All three of them.