NRA

[detbuch]

I am not overly optimistic that any SCOTUS decision is written in stone, including Heller and Mcdonald. Those were 5 to 4 decisions as are so many nowadays. A matter of one vote can affirm or reverse decisions. Considering what has happened to the rest of the Constitution, ex Bill of Rights, and the constant nibbling even at those rights, I think we have to be reminded that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. I think, also, that vigilance without wisdom or understanding, is merely vigilance by the ignorant. When the people see through a glass darkly, or glasses tinted by the color of a soft tyranny which paints pictures of a benevolent state giving them happiness merely paid for by the price of transferring their awsome burden of responsibility to the State, they are ripe for less soft, harsher tyrannies.

[ReelinRod]

Originally Posted by detbuch

I am not overly optimistic that any SCOTUS decision is written in stone, including Heller and Mcdonald. Those were 5 to 4 decisions as are so many nowadays. A matter of one vote can affirm or reverse decisions.

But what is left to reverse in Heller?

Both dissents rely on twisted logic and hiding from sight many fundamental tenets of the Constitution that the Court has settled long ago and are not open to revisiting.

Both dissents agree that the right secured by the 2nd is an individual right, possessed and enforceable by individuals but they each embrace a "militia conditioned individual right" model. This theory is just the latest in a series of endless step backs from more restrictive interpretive mutations. As each previous layer is torn away and discarded the anti-individual right side just embraces a new restrictive model and present it as the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Typical shape-shifting leftists that we are forced to endure . . .

The original, "militia right" and "state's right" interpretations inserted in the federal courts in 1942 which only served to completely extinguish the individual right interpretation, are dead; there is no going back to them. The flesh has been flayed off those theories to the point where now just a couple bones (the "militia conditioned individual right) are being rattled and shaken by the leftist Witch Doctors to try to scare away the the "individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia" interpretation. Well, it isn't going to work.

Breyer's and Stevens' dissents, like most treatises advocating for a restrictive interpretation, focus on what the 2nd Amendment isn't and what it doesn't do . . . Rare indeed is any explanation of what the 2nd does under their interpretation and how it has functioned with that action in the courts. Of course there is no such record to cite; theirs is just a grand thought experiment that can't withstand scrutiny.

This theory that the dissents are arguing is just the very last straw to grasp before the entire anti-individual right camp is discarded into the "flat-earth" bin . . .

[spence]

Originally Posted by ReelinRod

Breyer's and Stevens' dissents, like most treatises advocating for a restrictive interpretation, focus on what the 2nd Amendment isn't and what it doesn't do . . . Rare indeed is any explanation of what the 2nd does under their interpretation and how it has functioned with that action in the courts. Of course there is no such record to cite; theirs is just a grand thought experiment that can't withstand scrutiny.

That's simply not true. Seven's dissent on Heller is quite lucid and describes precisely what they believe the Second Amendment to be.

-spence

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by ReelinRod

But what is left to reverse in Heller?

Not so much "what" is left, but "who" is left to do so. If one of the five concurring justices had previously died and Obama had appointed another Kagan or Soto Mayor type, what do you think the Heller decision would have been? He may well be able to appoint a couple of justices in his final term. Then we may have a period when the Constitution is "subject" to those "liberal interpretations," which Spence speaks of.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Not so much "what" is left, but "who" is left to do so. If one of the five concurring justices had previously died and Obama had appointed another Kagan or Soto Mayor type, what do you think the Heller decision would have been? He may well be able to appoint a couple of justices in his final term. Then we may have a period when the Constitution is "subject" to those "liberal interpretations," which Spence speaks of.

pretty stark contrast (and I'd argue frightening) in the dissent...this is great... Breyer's dissent goes on to conclude, "there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."


I'm pretty confident that these liberals/progressives could apply the "no untouchable Constitutional right" thing to pretty much all/any of our Constitutional guarantees if they were in the mood

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Quote:
Originally Posted by ReelinRod
Breyer's and Stevens' dissents, like most treatises advocating for a restrictive interpretation, focus on what the 2nd Amendment isn't and what it doesn't do . . . Rare indeed is any explanation of what the 2nd does under their interpretation and how it has functioned with that action in the courts. Of course there is no such record to cite; theirs is just a grand thought experiment that can't withstand scrutiny.



That's simply not true. Seven's dissent on Heller is quite lucid and describes precisely what they believe the Second Amendment to be.

-spence

this is hilarious...Steven's dissent is a laundry list of liberal pretensions that prove the basic and obvious difference in thought process between the competing ideaologies....which is that some seek to follow the Constitution and others are always seeking a way around it...