The Supreme Court has certainly been very busy this week handing out their judgments on various cases, from ruling on child rape to letting ExxonMobil get away with a slap on the wrist. Today, their big decision was to expand the second amendment like no one has before. The Court struck down a handgun law in Washington, D.C. that stood for more than thirty years and made the N.R.A. jump for joy (and the founding fathers, I assume, roll over in their graves).
From The Huffington Post:
The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most federal firearms restrictions intact.
District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents of the nation's capital to register their handguns. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Fenty said.
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "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."
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.
What Scalia and his merry band of followers forget is that Constitution is a living, breathing document and when the Second Amendment was written, we lived in a much different America. In 1791, Americans protected themselves from various threats that the government was ill-equipped for, now we have a military with a budget of over half a trillion dollars. Early Americans also hunted in greater percentages to feed their families, now most people hunt in the supermarket.
Now this doesn't mean we can't own guns, but there should be certain limits in our (hopefully) more civilized society. The fact is, having more handguns means more people will die, whether it be from random accidents, domestic disputes or whatever.
|