Armed With The Truth: FDT on the 2nd Amendment

Good words from someone who has been a solid friend of the Second Amendment and to individuals to whom the rights belong.

Our individual right to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, may finally be confirmed by the high Court; but this means that we’re going to see increasing pressure on the Supreme Court from anti-gun rights activists who want the Constitution reinterpreted to fit their prejudices. The New York Times has already fired the first broadside.

[The Rest of the Story]

...it is between those who see it as an individual right versus those who see it as a collective states’ right having more to do with the National Guard than the people.

Unfortunately, the article falsely portrays the individual-right argument as some new interpretation held only by a few fringe theorists. The truth is very different, as civil-rights attorney and gun-law expert Don Kates has pointed out recently.

From the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1791 until the 20th century, no one seriously argued that the Second Amendment dealt with anything but an individual right — along with all other nine original amendments. Kates writes that not one court or commentator denied it was a right of individual gun owners until the last century. Judges and commentators in the 18th and 19th century routinely described the Second Amendment as a right of individuals. And they expressly compared it to the other rights such as speech, religion, and jury trial.

The Times has simply replayed theories invented by the 20th-century gun-control movement. Their painting of the individual-right interpretation as a minority view is equally fanciful.

Courtesy of Fred Thompson at NRO

Read it all at the link. And GOA, stop being bought off by Ron Paul, especially your web staff, you idiots.