Court Finally Gets One Right

I have been fairly critical of the United States Supreme Court in recent days, especially since they have shown no respect for legislative process. However, events this morning have caused a need for some kudos, after they finally got a judgement correct. According to Reuters news service, the Supreme Court struck down the Washington, D.C gun ban, in Heller v. the District of Columbia, declaring that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to own guns.

According to Reuters,

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Second Amendment protected an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Although an individual now has a constitutional right to own guns, that new right is not unlimited, wrote Scalia, a hunter.

He said the ruling should not be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill or on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in places like schools and government buildings or laws imposing conditions on gun sales.

Honestly, this should have been an easy call. The Second Amendment is one of the shortest and clearest parts of the entire document. As quoted from the National Archives it says,

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

While liberals try to obfuscate the issues with the explanation of the Amendments that mentions the need for a militia, the basic text states "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This is pretty blunt, and unlike some Supreme Court decisions (Boumediene and Kelo come to mind, not even mentioning Roe) is completely supported by the Constitution's text itself. No foreign law, no waffling from leftists trying to disarm Americans so as to more easily impose their own brand of Communism. It is almost impossible to misconstrue the meaning of the Second Amendment and I am delighted to see that five justices actually had no problem understanding the clear meaning of the actual text itself.

Of course, we should worry that four justices (Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Breyer) somehow cannot understand the plain language of the Amendment. They are capable of inventing new rights out of thin air for unlawful combatants, and rewriting parts of the Constitution with which they disagree (Kelo), yet when it comes to one of the clearest parts of the actual Constitution, they are unable to understand its clear import.

This ultimately, is why elections matter. Since Congress has abrogated its Constitutional role of judicial oversight, the only way to guarantee that the Constitution is upheld is to appoint strict constructionists, and the only party that shows any signs of doing that is the Republican Party- the Democrats prefer to appoint people who want to change the Constitution- not uphold it. So to all my conservative and libertarian friends whoa re considering sitting out the 2008 Presidential election, i say that although John McCain is not perhaps the candidate we would prefer, he is infinitely preferable to Barack Obama.

PC Police Strike Again

The Left loves to claim First Amendment protection for everything from pornography to treason. However, they are not very good at extending the protection of the First Amendment to ideas with which they disagree. And the idea that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution should be treated equally as the First is one they strongly oppose, to the point of censoring anyone with a differing opinion. Nowhere are these censors more active than in the school system.

The latest evidence of the PC police's inconsistency in First Amendment support and their virulent opposition to the Second Amendment came in Pennsylvania. According to the Associated Press, a fourteen-year-old boy who wore a T-shirt bearing an image of a weapon was given detention when he refused to cover the images. As the Associated Press reports,

The shirt bears the image of a military sidearm and on the front pocket says "Volunteer Homeland Security." On the back, over another image of the weapon, are the words "Special issue Resident Lifetime License — United States Terrorist Hunting Permit — Permit No. 91101 — Gun Owner — No Bag Limit."

Officials at the Millersville school told him to turn his shirt inside out. When Miller refused, he got two days of detention.

Fortunately, the boy's parents are more cognizant of the rights extended by the First Amendment than the blinkered school officials. They filed a lawsuit against the school district for denying their son his First Amendment rights. The school district's response? A lawyer for the school district claimed that,

...school must create a safe environment for students in the post-Columbine era, and bringing even the image of a gun to school violates the district's policy.

This is the height of idiocy. An image of a gun on a shirt that clearly is patriotic, pro-American is somehow creating an unsafe area? How about the kids who wear T-shirts celebrating drugs, or mass murderers like Mao Tse-tung or Che Guevara? Do those also create an unsafe environment? I would hope that the school district loses this case. If they had a uniform and the student violated the uniform code, that would be one thing, but disciplining the boy because he wore a shirt with the image of a weapon is entirely ridiculous.

On a side note, where is the press' usual reluctance to name names of non-adults? The student in question is underage. Were this a story about a teen pregnancy, I have no doubt the press would refuse to name the girl in question (though the purported father's name would probably be splashed all over the headline). Why was this student not treated similarly? is it becasue of his message or because of his gender?

A Miniature Deterrent

I own a few guns, though i am by no means a collector. However, I have long appreciated both the workmanship and the need for weapons to provide personal protection since the police rarely can arrive in time to prevent criminals from attacking. Thus I was fascinated today to see a report of the world's smallest handgun- the Swiss Minigun. According to the report in the United Kingdom's Daily Mail,

This is the world's smallest gun - and although it might look like a harmless toy to some it is anything but as it is capable at firing deadly bullets at a speed of 300mph.
The Swiss Minigun, being marketed as a collector's item, is two inches long, and fires 4.53mm bullets.Costing £3,000 in stainless steel, a gold-plated, diamond-studded version is also available.

The official site for the company contains more information. The Swiss Minigun measures a mere 5.5 centimeters (2.2 inches) long and weighs only 19.8 grams (0.7 ounces). In other words, it is the perfect crime deterrent- for women in particular as it is small and light enough to be easily carried in a handbag. Unfortunately for US gun enthusiasts, the weapon is illegal in the United States as it is too small to qualify as a sporting weapon. Pity- carrying one of those would be reminiscent of the classic scene in the first Men in Black movie where Will Smith's character is issued the Noisy Cricket pistol- which turns out to have a punch far exceeding its size.

In any event, I find the Minigun to be a wonderful weapon- I just wish we could own it here in the United States. Just why does a weapon have to be classsified as a 'sporting weapon'? I don't recall the Second Amendment mentioning anything about the militia being 'sporting'? Just a thought....