Ok, I admit - I am not exactly the most vocal Second-Amendment-rights activist, neither am I the most intelligent person, neither am I the most versed in Constitutional legalities, interpretations, considerations, and nuances. To put it simply, I tend to be a man of rather shallow thoughts, and literal interpretations and understandings.

As such, it tends to annoy me when people screw up the simplest of things.

I am not even going to address the entire article, problematic as it may be, nor am I going to address the recent decision by the Supreme Court, nor am I going to even come close to addressing the anti-rights arguments put forward in the article. Rather, I am going to exclusively address the first and third paragraphs of the article, as quoted below for your edification:

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether the District of Columbia's sweeping ban on handgun ownership violates the Constitution's fundamental right to "keep and bear arms."

...

At issue is one that has polarized judges and politicians for decades: Do the Second Amendment's 27 words bestow gun ownership as an individual right, or do they bestow a collective one -- aimed at the civic responsibilities of state militias -- making it therefore subject to strict government regulation.

So what is the problem with those two paragraphs? Well, before we delve into that topic, we should also probably go ahead and quote the Second Amendment, just for clarification and simplicity:

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.

Those of you who are on the leading edge of intelligence will probably already see where I am going with that, but I figure I have come this far, I may as well explain myself entirely. Consider the Amendment, and, more importantly, the specific verbage of it. If you take out the first explanatory phrase, and the specific topic it is addressing, you have the basic core of, "The right of the people to [do X] shall not be infringed." This concept is held throughout three other Amendments, and arguably a fourth.

But what does it mean, and why is it relevant? Simply put, the Constitution, and therefore its writers (namely, the Founding Fathers of old), recognized the existence of certain rights already inherent to human beings. In the specific case of the Second Amendment, the Constitution recognizes that each individual person already possesses within himself the right to bear arms - and then attempts to ensure that the government could never abridge that right. The Constitution did not, I repeat, did NOT grant anything in reference to the Second Amendment - it merely protected, guaranteed, ensured, or however you wish to phrase it.

And this is where the Clinton News Network fails.

In the first paragraph, the author makes a reference to "the Constitution's fundamental right to 'keep and bear arms'". To be perfectly straightforward, the Constitution has no such right. It recognizes that such a right already exists, and it does everything it can/could to ensure that the right continues to exist without limitation or abridgement, but that right is not inherent to the Constitution in any way, shape, or form. The author continues in the second paragraph by commenting that the Supreme Court is considering a sizeable question, but then defines the question using the words, "Do the Second Amendment's ... words bestow gun ownership..." If that is, indeed, the question the Supreme Court is considering, then my opinion of it has lowered a considerable degree. However, I am quite sure the author is continuing to make considerable and sizeable errors in relation to the Constitution and its Amendments, so the Supreme Court can rest easy that my opinion of it is still more or less neutral. If you have not caught on by now what those errors are, then I have sorely failed in the purpose of this post, but suffice to say that, in reference to the Second Amendment, the Constitution "bestows" nothing, but instead recognizes, and tries to protect, an already-existing and intrinsically-held right.

In the end, this distinction may seem inconsequential... a matter of semantics, and therefore relegated to the realm of those who care about such banalities. However, for those of us interested in the preservation of our God (whatever that word may mean to you) granted rights... well, as they say, the Devil is in the details. And until people fully and accurately understand how the Constitution and its Amendments work, they will never have the chance to realize just how many of those rights and freedoms have been stolen by, sacrificed to, or freely granted to the government, in all of its various incarnations.