COLD DEAD HANDS….Since I’m time zone challenged, I’ve only now heard the (not unexpected) news that the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the DC gun rights case today; that it was written by Antonin Scalia; and that for the first time it finds that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to own handguns. So that’s that: the one-worlders at the UN can’t take away your guns anymore.
I’m basically OK with this. My personal, layman’s view has always been that both the history and the wording of the Second Amendment point toward a limited, personal right to bear arms, not merely the right for a militia to be armed. On a practical level I’m less sure whether this is a good thing, since I’ve never gotten into the policy weeds of handgun control and whether it’s effective. Still: a right’s a right. The wording of the Second Amendment suggests to me that the government can regulate guns a bit more than they can regulate, say, speech, but that they can’t flatly ban them.
On another note, this is the latest in a whole bunch of high-profile 5-4 Supreme Court rulings this term. I wonder if that means that the composition of the court will be an even bigger campaign issue than it otherwise would be? My guess is yes.
