Supreme Court says Second Amendment guarantees right to carry guns in public

Perhaps it’s been posted, but here is a persuasive argument that the faux originalists were wrong about the history of the Second Amendment and what the citizens believed and the framers intended.

The Supreme Court’s Faux ‘Originalism’

“Many Americans find the Second Amendment poorly constructed and confusing. Historians do not. In the 18th century, when Congress passed and the states ratified the amendment, political consensus held that rights and obligations were two sides of the same coin. “The rights of persons that are commanded to be observed by the municipal law are of two sorts,” wrote Sir William Blackstone, the eminence grise of Anglo-American legal scholarship. “First, such as are due from every citizen, which are usually called civic duties; and second, such as belong to him, which is the more popular acceptance of rights … reciprocally, the rights as well as the duties of each other.”

To my mind, the prevailing attitude of recent “me, me, me” generations has been all about rights, and very little about obligations as citizens in a society. Faux machismo is also prevalent. I guess I’m just old fashioned.

 

Actually, I don't care what the distinction is. My feeling is that John owns an unnecessary device capable of great destruction and one that has been used too many times to kill numerous people, including children in schools.

 

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole of terminology, you can’t call it a destructive device because that’s something else entirely (think a grenade).

(f)Destructive device

The term “destructive device” means (1) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas (A) bomb, (B) grenade, (C) rocket having a propellent charge of more than four ounces, (D) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, (E) mine, or (F) similar device; (2) any type of weapon by whatever name known which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel or barrels of which have a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, except a shotgun or shotgun shell which the Secretary finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes; and (3) any combination of parts either designed or intended for use in converting any device into a destructive device as defined in subparagraphs (1) and (2) and from which a destructive device may be readily assembled. The term “destructive device” shall not include any device which is neither designed nor redesigned for use as a weapon; any device, although originally designed for use as a weapon, which is redesigned for use as a signaling, pyrotechnic, line throwing, safety, or similar device; surplus ordnance sold, loaned, or given by the Secretary of the Army pursuant to the provisions of section 7684(2), 7685, or 7686 of title 10, United States Code; or any other device which the Secretary finds is not likely to be used as a weapon, or is an antique or is a rifle which the owner intends to use solely for sporting purposes.

 

Yes… but we were not talking about your personal preferences. We were talking about the way the gun violence in America is framed. Words have meaning. How you label something, how you describe something changes how it is viewed. You know this. While it may not have an impact on your personal views it will have an impact on others. You may not care because it aligns with your beliefs. But those terms are being used for the simple purpose of manipulating those that do not know any better.

 

Thanks! But I don't care what you call it.

 

Then in this case, I think the manipulation is good (keeping in mind that the manipulation is not "working" on me, but may "work" on others). Perhaps we should show people, particularly enthusiasts for these types of weapons, pictures of bullet riddled bodies, children, and unrecognizable corpses. Would that be a matter of manipulation? Many people may think that such an exercise would be inhumane and I wouldn't disagree. The destructive nature of the weapon itself is inhumane.

I've said it many times before, but if humans last long enough on earth, there will be no such weapons. Society will have advanced enough to purge itself from such inhumanity. Humans will be more concerned with logic, intellect, poetry and the arts. From John Adams:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

Humans have a long way to go.

 

It seems the only lens you are willing to look at a topic and consider it is through your own personal biased lens. That’s fine. But at this point there is no need for further discussion. You clearly are ok with whatever it takes to get AR15 banned and confiscated. I am not. We won’t find common ground if your fine with manipulating the masses with false nomenclature and narratives as long as the ends justify the means.

 

This really applies to both Dobbs and Bruen, but the ladies at Strict Scruitiny flagged some piece by historical scholars on the accuracy of the Justices' references to history in justifying their opinion:

Opinion | A Supreme Court Head-Scratcher: Is a Colonial Musket ‘Analogous’ to an AR-15?

From now on, the constitutionality of firearm regulations, like prohibitions on guns on airplanes or in the hands of domestic abusers, will depend solely on whether they are, in some ill-defined sense, “analogous” to a historical regulation, not whether they are effective in preventing serious harms.

Properly applied, such a test could still leave many modern gun laws in effect, because regulation of deadly weapons is part of America’s common law tradition going all the way back to medieval England. Historians have written volumes on the topic, and the Duke Center for Firearms Law, of which we are co-directors, maintains an online repository containing more than 1,600 illustrative regulations.

But drawing relevant analogies between some of these historical laws and contemporary ones will be perilous work. Is a modern AR-15-style rifle relevantly similar to a colonial musket? In what ways? Is a gun prohibition on the subway or in Times Square relevantly similar to medieval laws prohibiting weapons at fairs and markets? How?

The Horror in New York Shows the Madness of the Supreme Court’s Looming Gun Decision

Empowered by this recognition of express constitutional authority to robustly regulate arms in public, dozens of states and cities enacted laws limiting guns in public, including good cause permitting schemes similar to that in New York. The map below illustrates just how widespread such regulations were. In the Bruen oral argument, Paul Clement falsely claimed that only a smattering of laws limiting armed travel existed. In fact, millions of Americans were living under one of these types of laws by the end of the 19th century. Moreover, these laws were all modeled on racially neutral gun regulations passed by legislative bodies dominated by the same Republicans who championed the 14th Amendment. These laws were not an aberration, nor were the vast majority of them influenced by the racist Black Codes written by Confederates who had sought to disarm recently freed Black people; they were part of a reinvigoration of long-standing police power limits on armed travel in public, restrictions that existed for hundreds of years under Anglo-American law.


History, the Supreme Court, and Dobbs v. Jackson: Joint Statement from the AHA and the OAH (July 2022) | AHA

In September 2021, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians submitted an amicus curiae brief to the US Supreme Court presenting the relevant history to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. We are dismayed that the court declined to take seriously the historical claims of our brief. Instead, the court adopted a flawed interpretation of abortion criminalization that has been pressed by anti-abortion advocates for more than 30 years. The opinion inadequately represents the history of the common law, the significance of quickening in state law and practice in the United States, and the 19th-century forces that turned early abortion into a crime.

Historians might note that the court’s majority opinion refers to “history” 67 times, claiming that “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.” Our brief shows plentiful evidence, however, of the long legal tradition, extending from the common law to the mid-1800s (and far longer in some American states, including Mississippi), of tolerating termination of pregnancy before occurrence of “quickening,” the time when a woman first felt fetal movement. The majority of the court dismisses that reality because it was eventually—although quite gradually—superseded by criminalization. In so doing the court denies the strong presence in US “history and traditions” at least from the Revolution to the Civil War of women’s ability to terminate pregnancy before the third to fourth month without intervention by the state.

These misrepresentations are now enshrined in a text that becomes authoritative for legal reference and citation in the future. The court’s decision erodes fundamental rights and has the potential to exacerbate historic injustices and deepen inequalities in our country. We expect that historians will continue to correct the court’s misinterpretation about the history of legalized abortion in the US in their own research, teaching, and public speaking, while also addressing the multifaceted dilemmas presented by this decision.