{"id":1701,"date":"2007-11-26T05:49:27","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T10:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2009-12-23T13:49:26","modified_gmt":"2009-12-23T18:49:26","slug":"of-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1701","title":{"rendered":"Of The People"},"content":{"rendered":"

WSJ editorial<\/a> on the Heller <\/em>case – the striking down of the DC gun ban.\u00a0 There’s some background…:<\/p>\n

The phrase “the right of the people” or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and nowhere does it actually mean “the right of the government.” When the Bill of Rights was written and adopted, the rights that mattered politically were of one sort–an individual’s, or a minority’s, right to be free from interference from the state. Today, rights are most often thought of as an entitlement to receive something from the state, as opposed to a freedom from interference by the state. The Second Amendment is, in our view, clearly a right of the latter sort.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and the potential clinker…:<\/p>\n

As a practical matter on the Court, the outcome in D.C. v. Heller might well be decided by one man: Anthony Kennedy, the most protean of Justices. However, in recent years he has also been one of the most aggressive Justices in asserting any number of other rights to justify his opinions on various social issues. It would seriously harm the Court’s credibility if Justice Kennedy and the Court’s liberal wing now turned around and declared the right “to keep and bear arms” a dead letter because it didn’t comport with their current policy views on gun control. This potential contradiction may explain why no less a liberal legal theorist than Harvard’s Laurence Tribe has come around to an “individual rights” understanding of the Second Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for the closet autocrats<\/strike> nervous nellies:<\/p>\n

By the way, a victory for gun rights in Heller would not ban all gun regulation, any more than the Court’s support for the First Amendment bars every restraint on free speech. The Supreme Court has allowed limits on speech inciting violence or disrupting civil order. In the same way, a judgment that the Second Amendment is an individual right could allow reasonable limits on gun use, such as to protect public safety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While the Second Amendment movement can’t let down its guard even if <\/em>the good guys win Heller<\/em> – the price of liberty is <\/em>eternal vigilance – I think it’s reasonable to think that regulations made with the assumption that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual <\/em>right are likely to be less onerous than otherwise.<\/p>\n

It’d be a great start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WSJ editorial on the Heller case – the striking down of the DC gun ban.\u00a0 There’s some background…: The phrase “the right of the people” or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and nowhere does it actually mean “the right of the government.” When the Bill of Rights was written […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scotus","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7439,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions\/7439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}