The right that protects all other rights
There was a big win for America and the Second Amendment yesterday as the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the District’s hand gun ban is unconstitutional. I’ll be heading to the range for some victorious target practice soon enough.
Interpreting the Second Amendment broadly, a federal appeals court in Washington yesterday struck down a gun control law in the District of Columbia that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes.
New York Times: Court Rejects Strict Gun Law as Unconstitutional
Broadly? How is the determination that the Second Amendment protects the rights of people to own weapons in any way broad? It’s plain English.
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.
Arms = weapons. People = individual humans in America. It doesn’t say that only the government can bear arms. It doesn’t say that only the militia can bear arms. It says “people.” I’m a person. I have a right to keep and carry a gun. It’s pretty sad that a common sense ruling like this is considered news.
Linda Singer, the District’s acting attorney general, said the decision was “a huge setback.”
“We’ve been making progress on bringing down crime and gun violence,” Ms. Singer said, “and this sends us in a different direction.”
A direction where citizens can help protect themselves from the crime, instead of relying on legislators and the police? Sounds like a good direction to me. The District of Columbia frequently has the highest per-capita yearly murder rate in the country. It is consistently in the top five for per-capita crime rates. Somehow that doesn’t strike me as evidence in favor of the gun ban.
