Heller v DC decision due this week

[Flash The Cash]

Every word in a law must be given an effect. The first clause of the Second Amendment must have an effect on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." The most natural effect might be to construe the word "people" to mean the people in a well regulated militia or perhaps to interpret the word "arms" to mean the type of weapons employed by the well regulated militia or maybe both.

That doesn't square with my personal views on the subject of people having weapons, but one doesn't interpret laws according to one's personal views. That's what judicial activists like Scalia do.

 

[Pericles]

Every word in a law must be given an effect. The first clause of the Second Amendment must have an effect on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." The most natural effect might be to construe the word "people" to mean the people in a well regulated militia or perhaps to interpret the word "arms" to mean the type of weapons employed by the well regulated militia or maybe both.

That doesn't square with my personal views on the subject of people having weapons, but one doesn't interpret laws according to one's personal views. That's what judicial activists like Scalia do.

OK - look that this sentence "It being Tuesday and having no other business upon my desk, I decided to have lunch."

Does this place limits on my ability to have lunch to Tuesdays when all other business has been attended to, or merely explain why the decision to have lunch was made.

Because the Amendment states a reason for the right to keep and bear arms (even allowing that as the primary reason), that does not limit the right to that one purpose. If that were the sole reason, much more concise language could be used vis. - "The right of the militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Note the absence of the phrase "Congress shall make no law" seen in other Amendments, and use of the phrase "the people" - why say that if the meaning was the militia?

If one has the opinion that the Amendment is no longer relevant, as perhaps quartering of soldiers in time of peace, at least have enough respect for the Constitution to repeal the Amendment, rather than legislate it away... but that probably would not get very far would it?

 

[Flash The Cash]

Whatever may have been the intention of the framers of a constitution, or of a law. that intention is to be sought for in the instrument itself, according to the usual and established rules of construction.

--Alexander Hamilton on whether the Constitution grants Congress power to establish a national bank​