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.
The Bill Of Rights is upheld! Great news. Should actually not be news at all. The Bill of Rights is the foundation of America and American values.
http://www.patrickpillion.com/images/online/abortion/
…guns mean freedom – everybody must have the right to protect his family!
For those who think that the Second Ammendment only applies to the government, one must remember the purpose of the first ten ammendments to the Constitution: to establish what rights the people as individuals have against Government power, not to give the Government more powers as the Government’s power to keep and bear arms is found in Articles 1 (Congress’ power to regulate the Armed Forces) and 2 (the Present’s power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces) of the original portion of the Constitution.
Here in the Republic of Ohio ~grins~ our constitution and Bill of Rights is better than its federal counterpart.
Ohio’s Bill of Rights has a Right to Keep and Bear Arms clause that mentions personal protection, no doubt so that people who don’t know how to diagram sentences will understand what the Right means!
Yep, right there in Article I Section I:
State constitutions are often like that, offering very useful insight into what words and concepts actually meant to those who lived by them and wrote them into law.
Ohio also equates Right of Conscience as equivalent to Freedom of Religion.
Something more to think about though: the fact that our recent ancestors stressed that a certain right “shall not be infringed” should cause thinking people to wonder…. “ah, I wonder what Rights have been infringed then!” Some Rights surely have been infringed, including our Right to vengance. Limited by law, but still a Right, if you are willing to accept the responsibility that accompanies it (in this case that responsibility includes willingness to serve time or go to the gallows if one chooses to exercise the Right to vengance.
Unfortunately, your comment editor’s buttons are not working here in Firefox, or I’d have used them to format my comment
Ohio’s Article I Section IV on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
I should have included this in my comment above.
Not to clog your blog with comments, but I think this info is worth knowing and passing on in these times where the willfully ignorant man and woman tends to think that he is King (or Queen).
If you compare murder rates from any European country with any American country it doesn’t look that good for weapons. And you know for sure, that wearing weapons is forbidden in each European country.
So maybe that’s kind of an evidence for you?
For Germany I’d like to complete, that not only carrying weapons is forbidden but also the possession. Except if you have a special permission – like hunters ie.
Sometimes people do ask, who are the militia? the answer is that we all are. But this is by the way.
Something that even the smartest Europeans have never understood is that our protected right to bear arms is not so we can go hunting, it’s so that as sovereign individuals we can fight against even our government if need be. Government was the only entity that our Founding Fathers really feared.
To have the right carrying a gun around, that’s a thing we Germans cannot understand. It is probably hard to break with traditions, but that’s no excuse at all. My opinion is, living in a country without weapons is saver.
It looks like we Europeans have the same position about the American Law in that specific case. I have to admit, I can’t see anything positive about the right, carrying a gun with you.
@ Julia – it’s nothing to do with tradition, it’s to do with law.
The history of the Constitution is that the individual states would not have ratified it without the ten amendments – documented history. These amendments were simple protections against tyranny, and they were an essential part of the American people’s adopting the Constitution.
The US is different from Europe in one supreme way: sovereignty of the nation is vested in the individual, not in the state. I was born in Europe, and I can tell you that this sovereignty is an actual feeling that is unknown in Europe.
Until you experience this feeling, with all respect I have to say I am not sure that you can understand the special position of the individual in the US – and the sovereign protections embodied in the Bill of Rights.
Thank you for the wonderful eulogy on TEMPUS FUGIT. We had a Julia from Germany as a foreign exchange student in E. Jordan, Mi. this past year. What is a website URI? Should it read ‘URL’? I feel like a stranger in a strange land. How many “blog-sites” are there? Are they for recreational use, sources of income, or just for sharing information and opinions? Please edit unacceptable content as you feel necessary. I “hit” upon the tempus fugit site recently and was deeply touched by the Mary Angela Jaquith eulogy. It must have been done by a talented wordsmith. It reminds me of an old BeeGees tune that has in it, “It’s only words, but words are all I have, to steal your heart away.” I guess if there’s no evil intended in it and it is beautiful then it could be described in the old ways as being “inspired by the Holy Spirit”. I like long e-mails and snail mail, but if one is in it for the money, then short and sweet (or profitable) must be the rule. If weblogs are supposed to be provocative of new thoughts and comments on current events, do you think a recent announcement by the Pope concerning allowing Latin Masses is going to be a good or popular change? Well, my only armament item is a .177 cal. air rifle that gets a squirrel or two each year. Thank you, Mark for keeping your part of the “net” clean and civilised. And, thank you especially for the eulogy of the deceased Mary J.
The rights of the community should be higher voted than the rights of individuals. Security for the whole country should be the priority NR. 1. If the world around an individual is more secure due to the fact that there are less weapons. An individual won’t have the need protecting himself.
@Sigfried
Under US law, ultimately it is impossible for the rights of the community to be voted higher than the rights of individuals. The source of law itself in the US is the individual, not the community.
The Constitution is the supreme source of US law, and it locates the sovereignty of the nation as deriving from the individual, and from no other source.
So, we could debate all day about how it should be, but this is how it is.
This is something that Europeans rarly understand, and it makes all the difference, and explains why the right to bear arms is one of the ultimate rights of American individuals, even though in other countries this right resides with the state.
I see it as a big win, too. I’m aware people from other countries have a different opinion about this topic. We have a different history which should be protected.
Allow me to present a short “dissertation” about the concept of Rights.
Regarding the German fellow’s comment. For all practical purposes, the right to keep and bear arms actually IS a German or Germanic right. So though it’s not odd that present day Germans “can’t see” or understand the need for the right, it is rather odd. And one wonders if such persons are actually Germans at all. Or did they just happen to be “born” in Germany?
The thirteen colonies demanded the second amendment, and most of the rest of the amendments in the federal Bill of Rights (and the state bills of rights in the wtate constitutions), because these were mostly were Germanic people and they had that tradition. Angles, Saxons, Danes, Franks, and even Visigothic “Spaniards” descend from germanic tribes. Northern Europeans. And even the Celts were remarkably similar, to the extend that Tacitus could often label a group “Celt” or “German” only by whatever side of a river they inhabited.
Remember, folks, Germany really did conquer the world. It was called The British Empire, wasn’t it? And we are all speaking German. Anglish,! eh?
And the reason that “we” won the first and second world wars is there were *more* Germans on our side, he he he. Right?
Society being made up of individuals, the rights of society cannot morally supersede the rights of the individual. Might does not make right, but it does make “able.” Hence the firearm concealed beneath my jacket. It’s my defense against those seven wolves in sheep’s clothing who want to sit down to dinner with me. Right?
But forget about all that for a moment. Most “conservatives” who support gun rights do so for the very same reason that many “liberals” support anti-gun regulation. They’re just brainwashed that way! So their stance amounts to nothing, for all practical purposes, having no intellectual substance.
Someone of real intellect (or at least attention span) would notice something right away upon reading the second amendment.
A certain right “shall not be infringed.” Hmmm… That means that rights can be infringed– and probably have been infringed. So what rights were infringed by our fledgling government?”
Any takers?
Ok. One right that has been infringed is your right to vengeance. That’s been infringed. Encroached. Yes, indeed. Yet traces linger in our jurisprudence, specifically the concept of “fighting words.” Before the infringement, the offender would be required to meet you on a field of honor, or forfeit his honor, and in earlier days, his property and his right to life (meaning anyone who was able, could kill him with impunity).
Rights cannot be taken away by those who have not granted them. They may only be infringed, abridged, encroached upon. Generally, that’s done at the level of the mind, by implanting nonsensical ideas into young children.
It’s also done by tinkering with the language. With the “new, improved product” being fed to young children.
There’s no such thing as human rights, animal rights, or civil rights. Civil privilege, yes; civil rights? Sorry, no.
Rights may only be claimed by “the belligerent claimant in person.” And your favorite lawyer or political hack cannot win them for you.
And remember when there was talk about granting women “the franchise?” Giving women the vote? Voting is not a right. Understand?
Finally, as all rights come with responsibilities attached, no right can ever be taken away or made into a non-right. Because… if one is ready and willing to accept the responsibility that accrues from exercising a right, one may exercise said right, one being physically capable. Right? So long as one knows about the right, of course.
So… what rights do we not know about circa 2007?
Political hacks don’t like to hear things like this, for some odd reason
Salix Albion
“Right” here and now LOL
Salix, yes this is a dissertation
) …we germans are teached well about history and for shure it wasn’t always the nicest one. But I’m quite surprised about the big influence we have on outher countries and to be mentioned in one line with the British Empire. Nice to get to know some more background about Germna history and to see how other countries are seeing us. It was a pleasure reading this lines due to the fact that they are written in a humorous way. Greetings from Germany.
With guns easily available, there will be more college killings. Most asia country do not allow weapons to be legal, so you can see there are less people misuse weapon which are use to protect and not to harm people.
I am glad to have the change to read all. Very useful information for all who has interest in this area. I personaly had great advantage from these informations..