Second Amendment Lives

Being on the west coast, I'm too late for this to be breaking news, but the Supreme Court has upheld the Second Amendment as an individual's right to keep and bear arms. It can be regulated, but it cannot be outright banned (the case was regarding Washington DC's complete ban on ownership of any handgun inside the district limits). The argument from the anti-gun crowd has always been that the Second Amendment was a collective right granted to state militias, not a right granted to individual citizens. As Kip explains, this is absurd:

The decision then traces how it would be absurd to suggest that, e.g., the First or Fourth Amendments did not guarantee individual rights but rather some contorted “collective right,” which is exactly what opponents of the Second Amendment try to do. “The people” means, well the people! Persons, individuals. Freedom of speech for persons. Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures for persons. Freedom to bear arms for persons. Not states — persons!

....

If a blob of text has the word “Apple” ten times, then you don’t get to pretend that it means “Apple as in fruit” nine times but “Apple as in Steve Jobs” once and only once, when it suits you. It is facially absurd, and utterly sloppy constitutional interpretation, to pretend that “the people” means “individuals” everywhere in the Constitution except the one place where you want it to mean “a state government.”

If you read Kip's entire piece, this decision may have consequences outside of just gun regulations.:

Meanwhile, one wonders (hopes?) whether any jurist might make the same argument about the Ninth Amendment? If “every Amendment counts” and “the people” unambiguously means individuals, then isn’t it time to end this unforgivably insolent reasoning that the Ninth Amendment is an “inkblot” or a “mere rule of interpretation” and not a self-standing font of individual liberties separate and co-equal with the rest of the Bill of Rights?

The Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Interesting times.