@txradioguy, I have not "bastardized" Scalia; indeed I agree with his conclusion that the right to individual self-defense is a natural right which the Constitution requires the federal government to secure. But the result in Heller remains fragile, and there is no assurance that a future SCOTUS will retain its interpretation of the meaning of the 2A.
You continually misrepresent what Heller did for the Second Amendment...you continue to cherry pick and take completely out of contest what Justice Scalia wrote in the majority opinion in Heller. You refuse to see the clear black letter law of the Second Amendment.
Yes...you DO bastardize continually the Heller decision.
One of the more remarkable aspects of the 2A is the dearth of Constitutional interpretations of the right. Indeed, there have been only a handful of significant 2A decisions by the SCOTUS in over 200 years. Heller was the first significant SCOTUS ruling concerning the 2A in over 60 years. Since Heller (and the decision shortly thereafter that extended the individual right found as secured by Heller to the states), there have no significant 2A pronouncements by the SCOTUS. That's in contrast to dozens if not hundreds of significant SCOTUS rulings regarding the First and Fourth amendments.
There is a dearth of interpretations because the right...guaranteed in the Bill of Rights under the Second Amendment is pretty dame clear to the majority of people with a 6th grade reading level.
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.
Unless you're a Liberal or just plain obtuse...there's not a whole lot...if any...interpretation that needs to be done.
For 188 years there wasn't a need for any judicial interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. Not until racist Democrats and the KKK started implementing laws that infringed on a black man's right to own a gun.
The SCOTUS has historically avoided the 2A like the plague. And that, I think, why it is so critical to codify Heller, to provide a clear statement by the peoples' elected representatives in support of Heller's extension of the 2A to the individual RKBA. Another potential benefit of codification is that the law could state the appropriate standard of review for courts to apply when determining whether the right has been infringed.
They haven't historically had cases dealing with the second amendment until the late 19th and into the 20th Century because before then it wasn't an issue and there wasn't any doubt what "shall not infringe" meant and what the 2nd Amendment guaranteed.
It was pretty clear to everyone what was meant in the Second Amendment until you saw the implementation of Jim Crow laws in the south by racist Democrats in order to prevent Blacks from owning firearms. That gave is United States v. Cruikshank and Presser v. Illinois. Both established that "the Second Amendment right was a right of individuals, not militias, and was not a right to form or belong to a militia, but related to an individual right to bear arms for the good of the United States,"
The justices in Presser further noted that:
We think it clear that there are no sections under consideration, which only forbid bodies of men to associate together as military organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in cities and towns unless authorized by law, do not infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
Activist judges really got going in the 30's with the NFA and again 30 years later when they modified it in 1968. It's only as Liberalism and Progressivism have taken hold...especially in the big cities that the individual right to keep and bear arms has become a problem. And it's only a problem that you and your fellow leftists can see appearently.
Heller...as is noted in the majority opinion and as myself and others keep pointing out to you and you continue to ignore...only reaffirms what's written in the Second Amendment. It doesn't guarantee anything. It reaffirms.
If you need a dictionary definition of the word "reaffirm" I'll be happy to provide it to you because you seem a bit confused about its meaning.
The Second Amendment is already codified as I noted above. It doesn't need any further clarification. All your scheme seeks to do is take it from being an unalienable right...down to a piece of legislation that can be modified or stricken from our laws as the whim of any politician.
You claim to support Heller...but you talk like the four justices in the dissent. You as well as the dissenting Justices on the high Court do not accept the facticity of the rights and liberties of man as codified in the Bill of Rights, as natural rights. These Justices—and many other judges that fill the seats on the lower U.S. District Courts and that fill the seats on the higher U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal—do not and will not accept as axiomatic that the Bill of Rights comprises a set of indefeasible rights and liberties.
And you are right there with them.
