Still packin', at least for now

When you hear the words "Second Amendment," what do you think of first? The NRA, gun control, wingnut militias, "safer bullets" (as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders so eloquently described them), or "what the crap"?

If your first thought was the last phrase I mentioned, you might want to stock up on other thoughts (i.e., by reading this post and the links attached) so you can think of something slightly less ignorant next time.

Hopefully when you hear those words, you think of the Constitution of the United States (1789), where this amendment is found among the nine other amendments in the Bill of Rights:

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As the National Archives website linked above explains, the thirteen original states refused to ratify the Constitution unless the Bill of Rights was added. Without these negative rights, i.e., rights that spell out where the government can't tread on the American people, the colonies believed the Constitution left a whole lot of sketchy leeway for the government to butt in on their private lives. The newborn American government could possibly even regress into a tyranny like the one whose chains they'd just busted (England's, stupid).

America's first citizens thus believed that an individual's right to own their own gun was essential to liberty.

Okay, blah blah blah. American Government 101. Enough said. Right.

Well, not according to the decision that was handed down by the Supreme Court today on McDonald v. Chicago. In this decision, the Court ruled 5-4 that America's first citizens were right on this individuals-can-tote-guns business. If one person had voted differently, then a precedent would have been set to vaporize the Second Amendment. Null, nada, kuch nehi, rien. Zilch. With one ruling.

Interestingly enough, the justices in the majority ruling justified their vote (in favor of the Second Amendment) by discussing how this amendment was necessary for the full emancipation of black slaves after the Civil War. They cite the Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1866 in the following way:

"The most explicit evidence of Congress’ aim appears in§14 of the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866, which provided that 'the right ... to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens ... without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery.'" (p. 26, Syllabus, McDonald et al. v. City of Chicago, Illinois, et al.)

For fun, you can read Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion on pp. 67-122 of the linked syllabus, if you're super bored and/or just burned through a case of Red Bull.

The point I'm making here is that this decision was close--too close. If the ruling had been 5-4 against the Second Amendment, the Court would have set a landmark precedent for the cause of gun control [read: government control], and against the cause of preserving American personal liberty. As Rush Limbaugh put it on his radio program today, "Even the Bill of Rights is up for grabs with this [current administration's] crowd and the left. Folks, we are hanging by a thread, we are hanging by a very thin thread."