Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Illinois ban on carrying concealed weapons overturned:
By the Seventh Court of Appeals. From the Sun Times: (emp add)
"We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home," Judge Richard Posner wrote in the court's majority opinion.
"The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside. The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense," he continued.
The evidence is inconclusive, so let's conclude something!
posted by Quiddity at 12/12/2012 02:43:00 PM
3 comments
All those Western marshals and sheriffs like Wyatt Earp or Matt Dillon who wouldn't let you wear your guns in town were damnable Lieberal Commie Fascist Nazis!
SCOTUS reading a right to self defense in the 2nd was bizarre, and this is the fruit of that.
They did it very cleverly, first creating that right in DC, and then extending it to all states in the next case that came up.
Well, we only have 9,000 killed each year to gun violence. Could be worse I guess, and probably will.
Oddly, though, a straight reading of an individual right to "keep and bear arms" for militia usage *would* prevent "infringing" access to BushMaster type assault rifles.
AFAICT, the point of the amendment was to preserve competency in military firearms so we would have an armed republic on the order of today's Switzerland.
It's a total anachronism today though, and if we were a better people, or democracy itself was a better system, we could reword the damn thing to make it clear what our rights really are, and where those rights end and community safety (the state's police power) begins.
|
