Please read the Heller opinion. And here's the thing - Heller was a 5 -4 decision. If you refuse to believe that Heller affirmed your individual right to KBA, then don't go crying when a later SCOTUS majority takes it away. As I've advocated numerous times on this board, the only real solution is to pass a Constitutional amendment making clear that the 2A provides for an individual right, for the purpose of individual self-defense, notwithstanding the 2A's predicate clause which plainly describes the right in terms of the now-obsolete concept of the militia.
As much as you and Smokin Joe may wish to believe it, the 2A doesn't afford you a right to go shooting "tyrannical" government officials. The Bill of Rights is, generally speaking, intended to secure against government overreach your and my "natural" rights. The natural right which deserves protection is your right of individual self-defense, not to assemble an arsenal so you can stage a revolt against our duly-elected representatives. Bottom line - that natural right, just the same as the natural rights to privacy and self-determination that conservatives disparage, can and are protected by the Constitution - because of the interpretation and construction of that document by the courts.
And just as you insist that fetuses have rights and women do not, so may liberals try to take your gun rights away, and in the same manner - by achieving a SCOTUS majority that will ignore stare decisis and overturn its prior precedents.
Ever read this?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --
While it was a very radical statement of intent, it is seminal in the formation of this country. Pay particular attention to the underlined phrases. Why, these radicals spoke of things like Rights (
of the People!), and "just powers", conferred, not by Divine Right and bloodline, but conferred
by the People to a Government for the purpose of securing their rights, with their consent.
What People do you think they were talking about? Wow, these were the same people who helped write, hung out with those who wrote, that Constitution thingy where the phrase "Of the People" is also used. The People meant just that
@Jazzhead, just like that collection of individuals who possess the rights enshrined in the First Ten Amendments, regardless of the mumblings of those people who sit at court benches. Those Rights are
unalienable.
As for the Right to assemble an arsenal, well that's what really started this whole thing, with the British marching on Lexington and Concord to take one away from the Colonists. The most powerful Army in the world, at the time, and they eventually lost.
The only question is one of whether the Governments instituted to secure those rights acknowledge and secure those Rights, and if not, then the Government is not doing its job. If that Government goes too far in its attempts to deny those Rights, it is no longer serving its purpose, its powers are not just, the governed do not consent.
Government does not create (natural) rights, it can't take them away, it can only stand in the way of people exercising their Unalienable Rights. The SCOTUS does not and cannot
grant rights. The Constitution does not
grant rights, it only acknowledges them, lists some, and attempts to protect them from the machinations of those in government. It even leaves the list open ended so as not to disparage Rights not listed.
There is no natural Right to murder a baby in the womb, just a convenient fabrication (an unnatural right) claimed to be a 'right' that flies in the face of the Right to Life reserved to the People in numerous places in both the Declaration and the Constitution (and numerous other writings of the Founders), and it does so by declaring their human offspring aren't "people".
In the 50+ years since Roe, we've found out a lot more about human gestational development, and taken some incredible pictures of that process, images which indicate that there
is a little human in there, who, if allowed to continue to develop, will be fully recognizable as a member of the species
Homo Sapiens.
To step forward, that's one of The People in there. In no way is that one of the People a lesser being than the ones walking around, in terms of having Rights, unless the court tries to create a class of People who are 'not People', who are
subhumans, who have no Rights.
Statistically speaking, just over half of them, given the opportunity will develop even more from hat we call babies, to toddlers, to girls, and into "women". Yet the assertion is that these developing women have no "women's" rights, only the ones who have reached the age of puberty and become pregnant do. Ant then the court asserts they have the right to kill that other member of The People, just because they have asserted their sexual maturity. Are we going to define that acquisition of the Right to Life some time earlier in their development, or is it inherent in the full package of natural Rights which all People possess?
This is where the court creates gray areas (the meat and potatoes of lawyers) in order to declare one group of humans lesser beings compared to another group of humans. That concept flies in the face of the whole idea of natural Rights.
Ironically, as some claim, we allegedly fought the bloodiest conflict on American soil over the concept that no human beings are chattel, to be disposed of as property: there are no lesser humans in terms of Rights. How can a court which could logically extend the Rights of the People to one group of the People, reserve them from another, to the degree that those included in that group of people are subject to a horrible death (one we would not allow for the most heinous criminal, duly convicted) at the whim of another?
Because that is what the logic of the court has done in
Roe. You can call that ruling a lot of things, but it is in no wise "justice".
