On March 18th, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments that could affect Second Amendment interpretations and thus gun laws for a generation or more. Not only is the Second Amendment to the Constitution the most poorly written, but writers and interpreters of the Amendment tend to get their language wrong as well.
The headline in my local paper, the same as the article originally appeared in USA Today, was "Do you have a legal right to own a gun?" That is a different issue than whether I have a Constitutional right to own a gun. Case in point - the Constitution grants me the "free exercise" of religion, but laws restrict free exercise if my religion calls for drug use, polygamy, human sacrifices, etc.
So the argument the Supreme Court "should" hear is whether the Constitution grants the ownership of arms to individual persons, or not. It's a simple argument really, and indicative of why Justice Clarence Thomas asks few questions - strangely an issue of late. Justice Thomas is a pretty good reader and he knows his job is not to rule on what is fair, or good, or best for people, but rather on what the Constitution says.
Arguers against personal gun ownership often state the Second Amendment applies to state militias, "such as the National Guard." How can anyone not note that a "state" militia would not be a "national" guard? If our present National Guard was solely a state militia the President could not deploy the troops, they would not wear U.S. military uniforms, they would all be on the individual state payrolls. The truth is that most states have no militia - so that argument fails from word one.
No, the operative phrase in the Second Amendment is "...the right of the people to keep..."
Like it or not it really is no more difficult than that. And I suspect Justice Thomas will again have no questions.
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