“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”— Sun Tzu
So, here’s to knowing the enemy. And as you can see from his first words, you can figure out what sacred cow of his is actually being gored.
The author tapdances around the large body of work surrounding not just the 2nd amendment, but the entire bill of rights. Not just the intent, but the actual framing of the bill of rights is entirely about constraining the federal government from doing certain things. It would be odd if the 2nd amendment was the only one that had specific constraints on people; let alone the fact that you have to torture the text to arrive at that meaning.
His logic is extremely clouded by his bias. The operative clause ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed ” is not contingent upon the descriptor.
A well regulated (kept in proper working order) militia (both the organized and unorganized variants) being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people (not the militia) to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The second amendment describes the purpose of arms, why they are to be kept, so that an unorganized militia of the people can be mustered to provide for the common defense, which includes self-defense.
An unregulated militia will be of poor form and will lack training and suitable armaments necessary to provide for the common defense, or ideally self-defense.
The part – ‘the right of the people’ – would specifically state ‘militia’ and not ‘people’ if it had specified that militia were to keep and bear arms, and not the people. The framers specifically said the right of the people for a reason, it’s not up for debate.
To keep (possess) in their own arms in their homes or elsewhere, to bear on their persons.
Amy Coney Barrett and the Second Amendment: Why her “expansive view” is utter BS
“Pro-life” Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who will almost certainly be seated on the Supreme Court this week, seems to have no problem putting guns in the hands of individual Americans who want to buy them — every Tom, Dick and Kyle. She reportedly takes “an expansive view” of the Second Amendment, writing in her only ruling on gun regulation that it should not be considered “a second-class amendment.”
A number of groups advocating gun control and gun safety, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, and the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, expressed their deep concerns with Barrett’s nomination in a recent letter sent to leading members of Congress.
The 2008 Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller expanded the meaning of the Second Amendment far beyond militias — regulated or not. And that 5-4 majority opinion was written by Barrett’s mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia.
It might be useful to look back on that ruling to take another look at the “textualist” approach to reading statutes and the “originalist” approach to reading constitutional questions, and to learn what one might then expect of a Justice Barrett.
There are a number of things one might find admirable about Barrett. She was a seriously engaged student at all levels of her education, taking an English degree at Rhodes College and graduating at the top of her law school class at Notre Dame. She’s a mother (of seven) who manages to work in a demanding career. At her gym, she’s apparently known for her commitment to doing pull-ups, for gosh sakes.
Barrett is also a self-proclaimed “textualist” or “originalist” when she looks at statutes or the Constitution. In rendering decisions as a judge, she says she believes in adhering to precedent but also in closely reading the text of an enacted statute or the Constitution, seeking the reasonable meaning of that text, in the context of what most people at the time it was written would consider it to be. Continue reading “”