Glenn E. Meyer said:
Do I have list for you? Amusing.
Actually, I was serious. I didn't know if perhaps you had condensed your core arguments and beliefs on the subject of school carry, down through the years. I was simply interested in reading them if you had. Sometimes, reading such material can be useful in giving spark to thoughts of my own, on various subject matter. I really haven't pondered school carry, at great length.
On a personal level, I certainly favor school carry. But, that's primarily due to the fact that I think that it would be good public policy. Accidents and violence will happen, no matter what, but as a general rule of thumb, I do not favor laws that seek to intentionally increase the vulnerability of the populace at large to the multitude of criminal elements that roam society.
Constitutionality doesn't hinge upon whether the law in question is good public policy or bad policy, though.
Tom Servo said:
Yep, it protects the right to have a handgun in the home. At the moment, we come to a full stop right there.
I understand that reasoning, but whereas you might see it as us coming to a full stop, right there, I see it somewhat differently. From my perspective, Heller, far from being little more than a lurch and then we are brought to a grinding halt, I see it more as having put the ball into motion.
The Second Amendment refers - and protects - the right to bear arms. It doesn't mention handguns. The Supreme Court hasn't construed "arms" in the right to keep and bear arms to be limited to just and only handguns.
Tom Servo said:
That doesn't preclude bans based on capacity or type. It doesn't preclude limiting a household to a singular handgun. It doesn't preclude local bans on rifles or magazines. Nor has it done anything to roll back arbitrary "good cause" licensing schemes.
Understood - but neither has it upheld the very bans of which you complain. No single case will be a panacea, for the very simple reason that it couldn't be.
As far as local bans are concerned, it's not as though incorporation against the States in McDonald shields local governments from that very same incorporation. There will always be local governments that enact all sorts of laws. It took a while for the First Amendment's broad nature to be fleshed out by our judiciary. Rome will not be built in a day for the Second Amendment, either.
Tom Servo said:
Seeing these problems persist, and seeing new ones created, can be cause for pessimism. The developments of the last four months, including this week's refusal of cert, don't help.
Certiorari denied doesn't speak to the merits or the demerits of a give case. The anxiety and frustration that individuals feel, when certiorari is denied in a case that one might prefer the Court to take is not to be equated with constitutional frustration of a given right in question. So, that we, as individuals or even as groups sometimes find our patience to be a bit lacking, it is hardly cause for constitutional despair.
The Court ruled narrowly in Heller, but the overall wording of the entire opinion isn't narrow - not by a long shot.
Tom Servo said:
Heller and McDonald were good developments, and I hope they were the foot in the door. However, if our progress stops there, I do fear for the future.
From my perspective, Heller and McDonald were more than just mere good developments. Federal judges at the circuit level now talk in their own Second Amendment jurisprudence about this new terra incognita. Terra incognita isn't the equivalent of a constitutional ant hill.
Heller, by its own account, was the Court's first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment. It took until the 21st century for this first in-depth examination to occur.
I believe that Scalia's opinion for the Court in Heller crafted a very solid foundation for Second Amendment jurisprudence going forward. Heller and McDonald were precedent-setting opinions. I regard them as such, anyway. They are not inconsequential in scope or nature or substance.
That many choose to try and water their significance down with a flood of pessimism doesn't alter their constitutional significance by so much as a single, solitary iota.
It is said that patience is a virtue. It's most needed, when it is most needed.
The right to keep and bear arms is not a right that is absolute in nature. So, with no case, under any realistic scenario, is perfection to be achieved. Short of a constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms will never be construed by our judiciary to be absolute in nature.
Certainly, some issues present more favorable challenges than do others. But, that's just a fact of life, not a cause for despair.
What does pessimism gain one, anyway? Stress? Worry? Does it make one's prospects on the constitutional front better?
