I wish I could file this as an amicus brief in every court case based on the Second Amendment, like NYSRP v. Corlett.
Plaintiffs question the constitutionality of the Defendant’s action. But the practical question before the court regards the United States Constitution. Does it mean what it says, and is it even still in effect?
Where the courts have issued hard rulings on the Second Amendment, in recent decades it has mostly been, “No.”
Courts have allowed bans of weapons, bans of cosmetic features, bans on carrying weapons, limits on ammunition, and licensing requirements for an enumerated Constitutionally protected right.
Where courts, especially the Supreme Court, have ruled in favor of the Second Amendment, they have carefully worded their decisions to make recognition of the Amendment as narrow as possible. The Court invented levels of “scrutiny” not found anywhere in the Constitution, effectively rewriting the Second Amendment to read, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall be a privilege, subject to the capricious whims and perceived compelling needs of the government.”
Those who dislike the limitations on government placed there by the Constitution declared that the needs of the government must be balanced against the actual language of the document, with varying degrees of scrutiny, or nothing would get done. That was exactly the point in “shall not be infringed.”
in·fringe | \ in-ˈfrinj
infringed; infringing
Definition of infringe
transitive verb
1 : to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another
“to encroach upon in a way.” The basic founding document of this Constitutional Republic says that the government has no “compelling need” for limits on the People’s individual rights to keep and bear arms.
The Supreme Court has been reluctant to accept any Second Amendment case since McDonald, and when they do, as in NYSRP v. Corlett, they manipulate the issue to avoid tough questions. That case became the ultimate strawman argument in which the plaintiffs are required to defend a question they never asked, and cannot raise their own, far more important question again. Unexplained “mootness” and “lack of standing” are the Court’s go-to excuses for not hearing cases at all.
This problem with the courts has worsened in recent years. The appearance is of two underlying problems.
1. A strong political bias in favor of the radical Left, and against the Constitution as written.
2. A strong fear of the escalating violence of the radical Left should they make a ruling the rioting masses dislike.
In both conditions, the courts seems to ignore the Constitutional wishes of the conservative Constitution-preferring half of the country. Perhaps the courts have mistaken their remarkably limited violence for passive compliance.
An unknown Internet wag suggests otherwise, positing that the Left’s violence control is a rheostat, which can be gradually turned up and down as needed.
The very patient, conservative Right has an ON/OFF switch.
The courts’ accelerating tendency to discard the Constitution in making “safe” and “popular” (to the noisy Left) is putting more and more pressure on that switch.
No one with a properly functioning brain wants that switch flipped, leading some, under the — possibly mistaken — impression that the Constitution does mean what it says and is still in effect, to wonder just how many courts are so equipped.
This court must discard scrutiny in this case and examine the challenged law. Does it encroach upon the Second Amendment in any way that violates the rights of any individual? Is the Constitution still effect, or has the court declared The Revolution?
Any pro-Second Amendment attorney or organization that has the gonads to actually use — properly formatted and annotated by whichever court’s rules — this has my permission to do so. Note that the NRA is not currently a pro-Second Amendment organization. Perhaps it can rehabilitate itself someday.
Addendum: Some might wonder how serious I am about this. Not really; even it is something some judges need to hear. It would antagonize the court, which is pointless except in a hopeless cause where we want to out in a blaze of glory. Except in such a case, I’d probably question the judgement of an attorney who let me do it.
Sadly, we are very close to the “hopeless cause” point. So maybe I am serious.
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