In District of Columbia v. Heller, decided today (6/26/08), the Supreme Court struck down D.C.’s ban on individual ownership of handguns. In doing so, the Court expressly adopted the view that the Second Amendment grants an individual right to keep and bear arms, as opposed to the “collective right” (relating to a “well-regulated militia’) theory espoused by gun control advocates.
Although I personally own no firearms, and confess that in my college days I contributed $5 to a group called Handgun Control, I have seen the light of the individual rights view, and have long wondered why groups that are usually screaming at the top of their lungs for all sorts of individual rights (usually with no notion of corresponding responsibility) are so inconsistent when it comes to the Second Amendment.
I can never recall the left ever doubting in any other case involving one of the amendments of the Bill of Rights that the Constitution did not grant an individual right. If the Second Amendment did really involve just a collective right for the states, why was it even necessary? The left frequently admonishes us, with their usual sanctimony, that we need to live up to the ideals of the Constitution, inconvenient though they may sometimes be. Why should the Second Amendment be disregarded or regulated so much as to be meaningless?
For anyone who truly loves liberty, and regardless of your personal feelings about firearms, do you really want the government to be able to deny one of your Constitutional rights just because it has become unpopular among certain constituencies?
Howard County Maryland Blog 