The topic of the 2nd Amendment is a very hot topic.  Usually, you are either strongly for or strongly against the rights of individuals to own firearms; it seems as if there is no middle ground on the subject.  The main problem I have with our government trying to remove our right to own a firearm is their completely flawed and failed logic.  For reasons unknown to me, they seem to believe that taking my guns away will cause the criminals to automatically give up their firearms.  I fail to understand how removing my rights will cause someone who already is a criminal, who has no intention of following the law in the first place, to suddenly decide to give up their firearms because it is against the law.  I’m sorry, but that makes no sense to me.

Back in 1976, Washington DC passed a law that makes it a crime to own a handgun in the district.  It also has a law that requires rifles and shotguns to either be disassembled or disabled while being stored.  They say it is to help keep crime down, but it appears they have failed.  Violent crime has been on the rise, even after the ban on handguns went into effect.  That should give us a clue right there that banning firearms is not the answer.  Had these sort of restrictions been in place during the Revolutionary War, we would probably be called The United States of Great Britain.  (No offense to the British.) This is the very sort of thing our founding fathers were trying to prevent when they wrote the 2nd Amendment.  They fully intended to allow the citizenry to keep and bear arms and they certainly never meant for those arms to be disabled when they were needed the most.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court has finally handed down their ruling on the Washington DC ban and they have came down in favor of allowing us citizens to keep and bear arms.  The majority’s opinion reads:

“We hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The Second Amendment, Scalia said, “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.”

I am sure there will be a lot of questions brought up by the Supreme Court ruling.  Some of them will be related to handgun bans in other cities, such as Chicago and there are already lawsuits in place to challenge those laws.  The ruling does bring to my mind another question that gives me pause for much thought.

A lot of the focus on the issue of abortion is aimed at the Supreme Court and it’s makeup. A lot has been said about the kind of judges John McCain or Barack Obama would appoint to the Supreme Court and how this would affect the outcome of any rulings it may be in the position to rule on, especially when it comes to abortion. I say this applies to the 2nd Amendment as well. Take a look at the vote on the Washington DC case.  It was a 5-4 decision and that scares me.  You would think this sort of case would be a no-brainer, but it wasn’t.  The decision was one vote away from going against our right to keep and bear arms.  If another liberal judge is appointed to the Court, then the rights we hold dear could very well be swept away in a decision such as this.  Just one more reason to give a lot of thought about the Presidential election and for whom we will cast our vote.

That’s my take!

Larry

Tags: 2nd Amendment, Abortion, Barack Obama, Chicago, Firearms, Founding Fathers, Great Britain, Guns, John McCain, President, Supreme Court, United States, Washington DC

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 5:35 am and is filed under News/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.