I hope Mr. Michael van der Galien does not mind, but this article definitely deserves quoting in its entirety:
It’s really quite simple: gun control legislation did not reduce violence. Secondly, people started actually reading the text of the second amendment of the United States Constitution. Thirdly, ‘laws allowing concealed weapons proliferated – with no ill effects.’
To put it more succinctly; the idea that outlawing guns makes society more safe was proven wrong, this while Americans started to realize that, just perhaps, the US Constitution actually means what it says.
Who would have thought it could be that simple?
(Bolding added by me – the other author did the italics.)
I really cannot add anything to such a concise explanation of what transpired last week… He hits the high points, and then the highest of them all – the Constitution really does mean what it says. I never would have guessed, eh? How ironic that it took a foreign journalist to recognize that…
But wait!
The above article links to another one, this time written by an American, and this time not quoted in its entirety:
– Gun control didn’t work. In the 1990s, despite its draconian ban, Washington became the murder capital of the United States. Chicago’s homicide rate, which had been declining in the years before it banned handguns, climbed over the following decade. Gun control didn’t work.
During the time the federal assault weapons law was in effect, the number of gun murders declined — but so did murders involving knives and other weapons. When the law was allowed to expire in 2004, something interesting happened to the national murder rate: nothing.
– Laws allowing concealed weapons proliferated — with no ill effects. In 1987, Florida gained national attention — and notoriety — by passing a law allowing citizens to get permits to carry concealed handguns. Opponents predicted a wave of carnage by pistol-packing hotheads, but it didn’t happen. In fact, murders and other violent crimes subsided. Permit holders proved to be sober and restrained.
People elsewhere took heed, and today, according to the NRA, 40 states have “right-to-carry” laws. As those laws have spread, the homicide rate has fallen sharply from the peak reached in 1991.
– The Second Amendment got a second look. In 1983, a San Francisco lawyer named Don Kates published an article in the University of Michigan Law Review arguing that, contrary to prevailing wisdom in the judiciary and law schools, the Constitution upholds an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Numerous legal scholars, spurred to examine the record, reached the same surprising conclusion. Before long, even some liberal law professors were coming around.
Ok, so Mr. Steve Chapman is an American, arguably a journalist, and also understands exactly what took place and why. Good to hear. But he goes on to make a few other interesting points as well:
The majority opinion last week, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, drew heavily on this stack of scholarship to argue that the framers did not limit the right to the context of service in a state militia. Without the stimulus provided by these contrarian thinkers, the decision would never have come to pass. And the Second Amendment would have remained what it was for so long: a curious irrelevancy.
Instead, the right to keep and bear arms has finally taken its rightful place with our other fundamental liberties. It may be the natural course of things for government control to expand and freedom to shrink. But as Jefferson knew, America was founded to reverse that process.
I am not sure I agree with his stance that the Second Amendment was a “curious irrelevancy” before DC vs. Heller, simply because something is hardly “irrelevant” when so many millions of people exercise it on a daily basis… However, I can forgive him that slip of the fingers for what he wrote in the second paragraph, and I bolded above.
I was having a conversation with Better Half last night that governments basically exist to self-perpetuate, pass laws, and control their populace… not a whole lot more. Not for “the good of the people”, not for “society”, not for the “advancement of mankind”… politicians go to work every day and spend that day ensuring they have a reason to come back tomorrow… and raising their paychecks every year. The Founding Fathers, thankfully, recognized this tendency in governments, and tried to arrange the American experiment in a slightly different pattern, giving power to the people to decide what politicans they want to represent them, what Amendments they want added to the Constitution, and so forth. Unfortunately, as with any body politic, we have been operating on our own behalf for far too long, electing politicians who promise us the world, deliver half of it, and then charge us for all of it (a concept that most voters still seem unable to grasp), with obvious cases in point being our disfunctional Welfare system, the disaster that is Social Security, and so forth.
However, as of the 26th of June, 2008, an essential freedom was returned to the citizens of the District of Columbia, and that decision will likely be used as leverage in the upcoming battles for the rights of the citizens in San Francisco and Chicago, as well as other towns. And maybe, just maybe, once people start getting that heady smell of freedom, and start realizing just how much of it they have given up to our “benevolent”, big-brother government… maybe, people will start waking up.
Or maybe I am just an starry-eyed idealist… Such is life.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Beagle Scout – Support the No More Excuses Energy Act, Democrat=Socialist, Allie is Wired, Nuke Gingrich, third world county, McCain Blogs, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Rosemary’s News and Ideas, The Pink Flamingo, CORSARI D’ITALIA, Nuke’s News, Right Voices, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
The court’s ruling was interesting to say the least. The sad thing is, it only appears to apply to the District of Columbia and other federal enclaves. In Justice Steven’s dissent, he quotes from “Presser v. Illinois”…
While that’s brought up in the dissent, Justice Scalia in the court’s opinion notes in a footnote on page 48…
I think we’ve got a ways to go yet before our second amendments rights are fully protected by the court. Especially when an opinion that relies so heavily upon the ordinary meaning of the words of the amendment overlooks the plain words of Article 6, section 1, paragraph 2 of the Constitution…
Unlike the first amendment, that the courts have said is “incorporated” by the fourteenth amendment into applying to the states and local governments, the second amendment makes no mention of Congress.
Great Reading
My friend has written another wonderful post with videos and links included. He named it: Quick Update, but don
You keep those eyes a starrying! I remember hearing about one lady whose house burned down in a fire, and congress wanted to help her build it again. The president (forget which one) could find no place in the Constitution to allow such an expense of other people’s money! It was vetoed, but now we have FEMA everytime it sprinkles or people live in a place where they cannot get insurance because it’s too dangerous to live there. You would THINK that would be a hint, but hey! Don’t worry! Here comes big brother…*sigh*
Ok, Mr. Nelson, so I admit that my knowledge of jurisprudence is a little limited, but how much weight does a dissent opinion carry in the case itself, and in future applications of the case? I mean, it is pretty much the decision itself that matters, is it not? The dissents are just opinions as to why the other justices did not agree with the deciding five, and I guess I thought that dissents did not really carry any legal weight, just were a method of venting basically. I guess I was wrong?
Of course, Scalia coming out and saying that himself is something of a different problem.
I do agree that there are more than a few things overlooked if the Supreme Court does try and limit the Second Amendment to only the federal government – if nothing else, D.C., while being quite the oddity, is not an entity of the federal government (at least as I understand its peculiar predicament), and simultaneously is not a state… And yet the Second Amendment obviously now applies to it.
Honestly, not being a Constitutional scholar, or even a lawyer, I have no idea. However, we are obviously going to have a few methods of testing the waters with Chicago and San Fransico… I would, however, be amused to no end if both of those ended up back on the Supreme Court’s bench.
Right there with you Rosemary… I remember taking a vacation down to the Outer Banks when I was a child, and seeing all of the multi-million dollar homes down there. I asked how they could survive the hurricanes, and I was told they did not really… then I asked how they were rebuilt every year, and you can imagine the answer. Self-reliance is more and more a thing of the past, and that, alone is turning out to be a significant factor in why America is the way it is today.