Gun Rights

Not to criticize any justices in particular -- because I understand the culture and processes of the Supreme Court -- but it is shameful of our system that we could only get a single Supreme Court Justice to agree that "the Second Amendment is ... fully applicable to the States ... because the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment as a privilege of American citizenship."

As I guessed, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment applies to the states, but through "due process" instead of "privileges or immunities."

Of course, what's even more amazing is that a fundamental right of the people of the United States was found not to be a fundamental right by four of the nine justices. This position is only possible to hold -- if you understand the law -- by denying the Heller decision, or by denying the selective incorporation precedent through which rights are "incoporated" to the states by due process.

Either way, it amounts to the same old song: the liberals on the Court hate the rule of law. They care only about their chosen outcomes. The caselaw is absolutely, utterly, undeniably, clear: we have a fundamental federal right to keep and bear arms (Heller), and such fundamental rights, through due process, are applied to the states. There's nothing more to it. You have to deny those settled principles of law to dissent in this case. You have to be a consequentialist who hates the rule of law, setting it aside whenever you don't like its outcome.

That's what these four justices are. Sotomayor has proven herself now, as Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer did before her. To wit, Justice Stevens, in his dissent, actually argued against the Second Amendment itself, calling it an "injustice," comparing it to slavery and the subjugation of women: we can't just willy-nilly grant historical rights through the 14th Amendment, because look at these other EVIL historical rights we used to have (implying, of course, that gun rights are also evil).

I don't think more needs to be said than this. On the one side we have people standing up for what the Constitution actually says and means, and on the other, we have people denying our fundamental constitutional rights just because they don't like them.

Thankfully, liberty prevailed and the Second Amendment has taken its proper role as applying to the states, even though it's nearly a century-and-a-half since the 14th Amendment was ratified with that explicit intent.