The ruling last week by the Supreme court was far from a victory for the second amendment, gun owners and gun enthusiasts. The court affirmed that reasonable bans on weapons may stay on the books. This includes gun registration, gun licensing, background checks, fingerprinting, the type of guns which owners are allowed to posses, and the purpose those guns may serve. There is something very wrong with each one of those restrictions. The first which applies to each one of them is that in order to enforce them they require a bloated system of federal and state agencies and databases paid for out of your pocket. Registration and licensing has throughout history been a prelude to gun confiscation in times of civil unrest. Fingerprinting makes a gun owner an automatic suspect to a crime if he happens to visit a place which later turns into a scene of a crime. A gun owner could go into a 7/11 and buy a slurpee, an hour later a thug could go in and rob the place and all of sudden the lawful citizen has a myriad to federal agents at his door for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Background checks requires the aforementioned bloated bureaucracy, registration and licensing. The last two follies the court made was affirming that the citizenry may not posses certain weapons that may be harmful to the well being of the state and then limiting the use to home and personal defense uses. The 2nd amendment states the right of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The founders used the word arms without a further defining adjective because they didn't know what sort of arms were yet to be created and wanted the citizenry to have every available means to compete with a governmental arsenal. Similarly the court ruled that the second amendment applied to personal defense particularly in the home. The framers gave us this right because they wanted us to have an available means to take back our country from tyranny if the time comes which is why a ban on any particular type of arms is so damaging. In reality what we have is not a right as the 2nd amendment would suggest but a privileged which we are supposed to believe is a gift from the state.

I urge you to read the Lew Rockwell post that Tom Mullen posted which touches upon several of the same topics I've discussed in more detail and with quotes from the Heller decision.

I have not had time to read the 157 page decision yet. However, this gentlman has, and confirms some of my suspicions about this "blow for freedom."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w32.html

I'm not trying to be "glass half empty" here, but....

Tom Mullen

www.tommullen.net
www.myspace.com/skepticsongs

When Harry Browne was running for president as a Libertarian, he was asked if he had a litmus test for Supreme Court Justices. He said he just wanted people who could read the simple language of the constitution.

What a novel concept! And why can't we have that???

Let's be real honest here. The same five justices that you applaud for affirming our second amendment RIGHTS are the same five justices that don't give a rat's ass about an American's reasonable expectations of privacy (read some of Justice Thomas' opinions such as that in Lawrence v. Texas), or the privilege of habeas corpus (read Justice Scalia's opinion in that Broudimire v. Bush case just decided a few weeks ago).

A five to four decision is very scarey! We need a few members of the SCOTUS impeached and at least a couple of them tried for treason. Can someone tell me exactly what part of the phrase "shall not be abridged" is subject to interpretation? The Second Amendment is as clearly and forcefully written as anything in the English language yet lawmakers just don't seem to be able to comprehend that very clear message.

Pat

I hope it's a sign of the Supreme Court inching away from Bush & co... just in case it is forced to review a 911 Truth lawsuit (getting closer,) and/or impeachment. They're a wiggly bunch of worms.

__________________
Freedom is an inside job

I guess before this decision by this 9 bunch of elitists we had no second ammendment?
The more I learn the more simple it becomes. There is the Constitution and the ammendments. That trumps everything else in the country. Outside of that the states have all the control and nothing they do can offend the Constitution. It is that simple. Most of the so called laws on the state books are bunk as are the myriad Federal mandates. When numbers of people wake up to that then we will be free. It does not matter how the Supreme Court rules on anything. When the criminal Feds want to take away the Conbstitution they can and most people will continue to sit and wring their hands waiting on a hero.
In DC if one homeowner had blasted a criminal he would have been taken to jail by the ignorant police. He would have had to stand trial. If there had been 12 moral and educated people on the jury who refused to convict on the grounds that he exercised his 2nd ammendment rights that case would have been solved long long ago. Learn your jury duties folks. We do have the power to stave off this type of crap. Why do you think the criminal government gave up on prohibition?