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Saturday, March 10, 2007
Tackleberry Will Be So Happy
This might surprise people, but I agree with Michelle Malkin and this court decision:
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the District's longtime ban on keeping handguns in homes is unconstitutional.
The 2 to 1 decision by an appellate panel outraged D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and other city leaders, who said that they will appeal and that gun-related crimes could rise if the ruling takes effect. The outcome elated opponents of strict gun controls because it knocked down one of the toughest laws in the country and vindicated their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's language on the right to bear arms.
...
The District's law bars all handguns unless they were registered before 1976; it was passed that year to try to curb gun violence, but it has come under attack during the past three decades in Congress and in the courts. Yesterday's ruling guts key parts of the law but does not address provisions that effectively bar private citizens from carrying guns outside the home.Fenty (D) said the city is committed to pursuing additional appeals, adding: "I am personally deeply disappointed and frankly outraged by this decision. It flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia."
I'm completely sympathetic with DC's problems with violence, though I have no idea whether the handgun ban has had any meaningful impact on the crime rate.
Regardless, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" seems to be a pretty damned specific reference to the right of individuals to be armed, not just state-regulated militias. No twisted parsing of where the commas are and what clause follows which can change the clear intent of our Framers, particularly when you consider state constitutions (e.g., VT and VA) that preceded our Federal document.
Now having said that, let me observe that there also probably reasonable limits on gun ownership that can be debated, just as there are reasonable limits on free speech (e.g., yelling 'theater' in a crowded fire). That's probably where Malkin gets off the NTodd Constitutional Bus...
ntodd
March 10, 2007 | Permalink
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Comments
D.C. is right next to several states where guns are easily available. You want to do a handgun ban, you need to be an island. A ban for residents, but not a realistic ones for criminals just isn't workable.
I am not a gun nut, but I believe allowing homeowners to have a hand gun, after gun safety, child safety training is a reasonable compromise.
Posted by: trifecta | Mar 10, 2007 3:52:50 PM
You're just trying to get it Little Lulu's pantz, aren't you?
Posted by: flory | Mar 10, 2007 3:54:09 PM
Yeah, what trifecta said. DC would be a much safer place if Virginia wasn't right next door.
I also have no problem with homeowners having guns. My problem is when Congress tries to pass laws overturning the local DC laws about gun ownership. I've long said I'd happily go along with congressional efforts to overturn DC's gun laws as soon as they remove all of the metal detectors from the capitol and their office buildings.
There are plenty of guns in the capitol, just none under the control of the people who are being governed. Guns are great tools, I just don't understand why our leaders are so afraid of being near members of the unwashed masses who might have them.
Posted by: MikeJ | Mar 10, 2007 4:13:13 PM
How do you then cope with the other half of the amendment? You know, the part about well-regulated militias? Pace the wingnut fringe and at least one of your future ex-wives, the Second Amendment is not a blanket grant.
Posted by: Michael | Mar 10, 2007 8:09:30 PM
trifecta - I'm not a gun nut either, though my ex-wife had guns in the house (and she wouldn't let me touch them until I took a gun safety course, which I never did). I don't think guns and violence are really the best way to defend liberty, but they certainly have been an important part of the formation of our nation and a right that I don't think I should deny anybody.
flory - I gotta win her heart and mind if she's ever going to become my ex-wife.
MikeJ - The mob is dangerous to those in power. Congress has learned that lesson from the Revolution quite well.
Michael - easy: the People are atomic and Militia are molecular. You can't have a militia, regulated or not, without some segment of the population being armed. Remember that it was militias that played an important part in the Revolution, including the Revolution of 1774. And I don't mean a state-sponsored organization, but The People rising up with arms they had in their possession. And given the Framers' concerns about standing armies, have an armed populace meant the ability to respond to all threats, including from within.
Posted by: NTodd | Mar 10, 2007 9:07:50 PM
The most important thing to remember, regardless of your views of gun ownership, is that places that ban gun ownership immediately gain higher crime rates than those that allow firearms. Virginia is not the only state which has a much lower crime rate because people are allowed to defend themselves, and criminals know it and stay away.
Remember also that the Second Amendment was- like all of the other amandments- for the People as a whole. An educated and sane person cannnot possibly beleive that the framers of the Constitution somehow decided that everything else was for People, but that one is only for the ruling powers, when their intent was to keep the ultimate power AWAY from the rulers.
Posted by: Badger Jack | Mar 11, 2007 2:44:14 PM
Excepting that the arms need not be an atomic property, they can be something that only happens at the molecular level. Even the notion that people brought their own arms to the militia in Revolutionary times is not exactly well-supported by evidence. Not to mention the fact that we're hardly in the 18th century anymore, we don't need to worry about being attacked by wild creatures (or pissed-off members of the First Nations) on our way to Sunday meeting--and hence, I would argue, the need for personal firearms is largely imaginary. And pace Badger Jack, there's no real way to tell what effect a handgun ban has on the crime rate, because we don't exactly have Soviet-style internal border controls that make such things effective. As for the argument that Virginia's crime rate is lower because criminals know "the peepul" are armed and stay away, don't make me laugh.
Posted by: Michael | Mar 11, 2007 3:30:58 PM
Excepting that the arms need not be an atomic property, they can be something that only happens at the molecular level.
The arms are not atomic. The people bearing them are.
Even the notion that people brought their own arms to the militia in Revolutionary times is not exactly well-supported by evidence.
Given what I've been reading, it is supported enough. Yes, militias did appear to have caches of arms, but the people were undoubtedly armed themselves.
the need for personal firearms is largely imaginary
Then the Constitution must be changed to reflect that. There's a mechanism to update it to fit contemporary needs that doesn't involve just arguing away a right.
Regardless, the point originally wasn't fear of wild animals so much as fear of a centralized, despotic government. Yes, yes, the government has bigger weapons than we do generally, but that's still not relevant: it's a individual's right, with some reasonable limitations.
Posted by: NTodd | Mar 11, 2007 3:44:00 PM
A further point is that prohibition is a proven failure whenever it is tried, and guns are no exception.
Posted by: whig | Mar 11, 2007 7:20:40 PM
No twisted parsing of where the commas are and what clause follows which can change the clear intent of our Framers, particularly when you consider state constitutions (e.g., VT and VA) that preceded our Federal document.
Ah, but that's narrowing your focus: there are a fair few other state constitutions that preceded the Federal one, and some are nowhere near as explicit.
whereas it is of the utmost importance to the safety of every State that it should always be in a condition of defence; and it is the duty of every man who enjoys the protection of society to be prepared and willing to defend it; this convention therefore, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, doth ordain, determine, and declare that the militia of this State, at all times hereafter, as well in peace as in war, shall be armed and disciplined, and in readiness for service.
My take on the second amendment is that it's a deliberately ambiguous bit of prose in a document that's about as good an example of eighteenth-century prose as most Americans encounter. My presumption, then, is that the bad writing isn't sloppiness, but the product of an amendment-by-committee, which attempts to encompass both the individual-rights states and the collective-rights states -- or, more precisely, the bottom-up-militia states and the top-down-militia states. The New Yorkers walk away thinking that their position on the regulated militia has been validated, and the Virginians walk away thinking their position on individual rights has been endorsed.
Do I think there's the kernel of an individual rights model? Probably, with precedent from 1689. Do I think the Second Amendment spells it out explicitly? Not at all. Why? Because the drafters had the capacity to do so (in the language used in a number of state constitutions) yet didn't. They came up with a fudge to placate Virginians and New Yorkers and kicked it down the road.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Mar 12, 2007 6:42:52 PM
Well, there might be constitutions that aren't so explicit, but the fact that Virginia's is, and much of what Virginia did is a model for the Declaration and the Big C, seems to trump any lack of wording in other documents. The wording of the Amendment is so similar that it could easily be a bad edit.
Regardless, "the right of the people" seems pretty fucking explicit to me.
Posted by: NTodd | Mar 12, 2007 7:19:40 PM
Presuming Virginia was the model is begging the question, though; and if they'd wanted it pretty fucking explicit, they'd have made it so with the 18th-c equivalent of copy-and-paste from one of the several state constitutions that were pretty fucking explicit. (Bad edit? Oh, come on.) Instead, you get a MS Word autosummary of thirteen different ones.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Mar 12, 2007 11:19:22 PM
No, it's not begging the question. It's saying that's a starting point, and editors fuck things up, just like they did with the Declaration.
And the VA thing is only added to give people perspective. I still think that the most damning thing is that the Big C says "the right of the people". Hard to get around that, no matter where the commas are placed.
Posted by: NTodd | Mar 12, 2007 11:52:51 PM
Buy me stuff off my 
