A reader who signs as Quickwrit provided the following comment. Quickwrit described the Heller decision, written by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. The decision overturned a D.C. law that prevented people from keeping handguns in their homes.
In his address to Americans on gun control, President Biden quoted from the Supreme Court’s Heller Ruling — a ruling which pro-gun advocates think was a huge victory for them…but they haven’t read the ENTIRE ruling: On pages 54-55 of their Heller decision, the CONSERVATIVE majority of the Court gave Congress and state lawmakers a guideline for presumptively constitutional gun control action.
Why hasn’t anyone previously focused on pages 54-55 of Heller on which the Supreme Court has provided lawmakers an action plan?
As President Biden noted in his address to our nation, in Heller the conservative Justices provide blanket approval for various kinds of gun control, declaring: “Like most rights, THE RIGHT SECURED BY THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS NOT UNLIMITED…” [it is] “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Then the conservative Justices invite enactment of specific gun control laws by clearly pointing out which laws they would approve of, declaring: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
The conservative Justices additionally state: “We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [an earlier case decided by the Supreme Court] said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time’ [when the 2nd Amendment was written]. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’.” There were no automatic or semi-automatic guns “in common use at the time” the Second Amendment was written.
The CONSERVATIVE majority DID NOT HAVE TO write these things into their ruling — but they did in order to give lawmakers a clear path to constitutional gun control. The Court put the gun control ball into the hands of lawmakers.
[Please feel free to copy and share this information with your Friends and tell them to do the same because the more people who know about the Supreme Court’s ruling on constitutional gun control, the more likely it will happen.]
You can read the Court’s Heller ruling at:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In the 1970s, political and social topics were aired on television as comedy, to both entertain and provoke serious thought, to bring people of conscience together for the betterment of society.
Fifty years later, we have fifty senators and partisan representatives…that support a treasonous former president… that continue to spread “The Big Lie”, deceitfully stack the Supreme Court with justices bent on eliminating Roe v. Wade…that continue to disenfranchise American voters and subvert the will of the people.
At least, the character played by Archie Bunker demonstrated hope, understanding, and compassion when his true feelings of civility came to light toward the end of the show when he grudgingly expressed his love for his “meathead” son-in-law during the show.
A self-proclaimed conservative and republican at heart, the character Archie Bunker could teach todays fifty republican senators and partisan representatives a lesson in civility and morality and common sense values.
Yes. I’m an army veteran who has inherited a couple of family rifles and pistols of the type in use when the 2nd Amendment was made. They are muzzle loaders, which take a minute or so to load (if you’re fast) between shots. There were no repeating rifles, machine guns, or automatics before 1800. Of course, some officers and high-ranking men in society might carry a sword or a dagger. All of them were dangerous, of course, and reasonable people can debate when and where we should be able to carry any weapon, but it was impossible for Madison and his friends to be meaning rapid fire guns in their 2nd Amendment. They didn’t exist, and I don’t think there’s any evidence they were imagined by most lawyers or legislators. Btw, though I’m not a practicing attorney, I studied law and taught history. These arguments that anyone can carry anything anywhere anytime are entirely specious–though they’ve been often repeated and possibly believed by the naive.
Beautifully said, brilliantly argued, Mr. Burgess!
Easier said than done but…start carrying out the same rules that New Zealand applied.
Peskyvera, I’m asking you again, for the last time, will you denounce Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Why are you critical of everything in American, yet you defend Putin’s war? I won’t post your comments until you do.
GOOOOD questions for Pesky.
Thanks, Diane.
Since Peskyvera posts from Europe and since she has defended Putin, I won’t post her comments anymore because I think she is a Russian troll. She writes negative comments about the U.S. But never Putin, her hero.
Of course that was a different SCOTUS. Before Putin got to pick 3 members.
exactly
Quickwit’s reading operates off the assumption that gun rights apologists on and off the court will operate in good faith.
As Bush v Gore showed, even the supposedly more principled SCOTUS of 2000 did not hesitate to find goalposts to move when it suited them.
I have no doubt the modern version would be quick to find some nonexistent hair to split. The right’s overriding principle is to grasp power at every opportunity.
I had the same thought
Reasoning with the Unreasonable
Reason only works
With reasonable folks
It doesn’t work with jerks
And doesn’t work with jokes
It doesn’t work on those
With purest moneyvations
Unreasonable to suppose
That reason rules relations
Well done, someDAM!
Nailed it, Danny
“ Why hasn’t anyone previously focused on pages 54-55 of Heller on which the Supreme Court has provided lawmakers an action plan?”
It’s only as good as far as it goes. Pages 54-55 of the Heller decision indicate is constitutional to…
–prohibit concealed carry
–prohibit possession of firearms by felons or the mentally-ill
–prohibit carrying firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government bldgs.
–impose conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms
–prohibit the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons
However, that last one—“dangerous and unusual weapons”— is undermined by the subsequent paragraph. One would like to have the constitutional option to consider semi-automatic rifles and handguns, as well as large-capacity magazines, and even any gun capable of being operated with large-capacity magazines, as “dangerous and unusual.”
If you don’t feel like looking it up, here it is:
“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”
That is muddy paragraph. It claims on the one hand that “militia” have the right to carry weapons of war in today’s parlance, and on the other hand that ordinary citizens also have that right. Here’s the giveaway: “the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.” That conflates what today’s militias– National Guardsmen– may carry & keep in their homes with what ordinary citizens may keep in their homes for self-defense.
And it’s all based on a most-likely willful– considering the depth of historical “originalist” research in Scalia’s Heller decision—misinterpretation of grammar. There is no grammatical basis for separating the first clause as “prefatory”—a sort of judicial throat-clearing– in order to claim that the second clause is independent and establishes a constitutional right for ordinary [i.e. not “militia”] citizens to bear arms anywhere — in one’s home — for self-defense.
Scalia, the originalist’s originalist, chose to ignore the 1790-era grammar– which still obtains today! The punctuation is not ambiguous, i.e., not subject to “legal interpretation.” Although DC circuit & SCOTUS did just that. The 2nd Amendment is a classic example of the “absolute construction,” which links both clauses semantically. As Bob Shepherd wrote in a previous post where this was discussed: “Absolute constructions get their name from the fact that they don’t have a typical syntactic relation to specific words (e.g., an adjective or determiner or quantifier modifying a noun, and in that sense are absolute (i.e., stand on their own). However, the “stand on their own” part emphatically DOES NOT mean that absolutes are unrelated to the rest of what is going on in a statement. In fact, they generally refer to the time, cause, or circumstances of an action as a whole, as in, the keeping and bearing of arms is a necessary circumstance for having a well-regulated militia.”
As I read it, the constitution is silent on non-military citizens’ right to bear arms, as well as on the right to self-defense. The latter doesn’t need constitutional affirmation, does it? It’s supported by centuries of common law, and explicit in criminal law nationwide.
I’ll not bore you with the last point against Heller, which appears in the subsequent section & is addressed in Breyer’s dissent. Summary: it appears to make all handguns (including semi-automatic with large magazine) fine for in-home self-defense, & does so by suddenly departing from the originalist framework.
I wish we had nine judges on the court with your ability to think clearly, Ginny!
Click to access abornkourylawrev2012.pdf
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https://constantinecannon.com/attorney/richard-m-aborn/
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https://constantinecannon.com/attorney/marlene-koury/
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The rubber is about to meet the road!… hang on to your “premisorial shorts (see, premisory, premise and shorts)”!
“Dangerous and Unusual” is a good description of the current Supreme Court.
Exactly right, SDP.
Our dangerous and unusual SCOTUS
Thank you, Quickwrit, for the sanity!
I looked it up and learned the US Supreme Court Heller case was dated June 26, 2008, and Antonin Scalia is now dead.
How will Traitor Trump’s three appointments to the court vote today? Will they throw out the sensible language found on Heller pages 54 -55, as they are allegedly doing to Roe vs Wade?
The Supreme Court today is not the Supreme Court of 2008. Today there are six conservative justices and even if Roberts votes with the three sane justices, sanity still loses.
And the wife of one of those five conservative justices sided and supported the January 6th insurgents and Trump’s BIG LIE. She joined in that conspiracy to overthrow the US government and trash the US Constitution.
Ginni and Clarence Thomas are a disgrace to the Court. Never happened before that the spouse of a Justice was politically active in cases likely to come before the Court. I feel certain he will not recuse himself.
The Ginni Thomas fiasco does not get enough attention. It’s simply astonishing.
I agree he won’t recuse himself. Recusal rules at SCOTUS (and at lower courts) are murky and there really is no check on the discretion judges apply on recusal decisions at that level. Note that Justice Jackson has pledged to recuse herself from the Harvard affirmative action case (correctly, I think).