Sunday, June 26, 2022

Two steps forward, one step back

There were three significant steps taken this past week dealing with life and liberty- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

First, in the New York gun case,* the Supremes declared Thursday,  "New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public." 

One Unconstitutional Law Implicates Many Gun-Control Regulations

 Laws can be interpreted many ways. We seek guidance from the court to know what is legal and what is not. The US Supreme Court has largely ignored the right to bear arms compared to the number of decisions the court has rendered in other areas. We don’t have enough decisions to draw a clear map of where our rights begin and end. The court recently issued an opinion on the right to bear arms in public. This case redefined the legal landscape and gave us a few rules to go by. Let’s look at the unanswered questions to see if we may draw further conclusions. (Read the rest of this insightful post by friend Rob Morse at Slow Facts.)

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Let's apply the spirit of the militia clause . . .

 . . . to the reading of the Second Amendment . . . 

The headline in the Bucks County (PA) Courier Times says that we should apply the spirit of the militia clause to the Second Amendment. I see nothing wrong with the headline, but take issue with the writer's assertions. 

He claims, "In all the years I have been debating and discussing gun control, I have never heard the gun rights advocates refer to the first clause." That sort of statement is akin to my saying, "I have never heard it thunder in Montana." Well, I haven't, but that doesn't mean it hasn't.

 Then he goes on to state the logical fallacies that 

"we can't exclude children from bearing arms" and