Sotomayor, - "no right to bear arms", ...

[North Pack]

Sotomayor to Senators: 2nd Amendment does not apply to states
June 11, 3:35 PM · 5 comments
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When the lefties are replacing a lefty on the Supreme Court with another lefty, the balance is preserved and the downside to the country is somewhat minimized. Sometimes you need to pick your battles. If Obama were filling Scalia's seat for example, this would be a Battle Royale. I figured that the Republicans can't stop this nominee anyway, unless something big and nasty was unearthed. Methinks this is it.
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Though she says she supports Heller's holding that the 2nd Amendment prevents the Federal Government from banning guns, still undecided is the issue of whether that holding also applies to state bans. The Supreme Court has, over the years, decided that each Amendment in the Bill of Rights does indeed also apply to the states. It is crucial that Heller be read the same way. In a rare moment of candor from a SCOTUS nominee, Sotomayor seems to have tipped her hand: No dice.

    Other senators have come away from their meetings with Sotomayor concerned about her position on gun rights.

    Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said Tuesday that he was disappointed that the judge refused to say during their visit that the Second Amendment “protects a fundamental right that applies to all Americans.”

    DeMint said Sotomayor’s statement on Heller “doesn’t tell us much” about her view of the issue, noting that she stands by her ruling that held that the Second Amendment only protects against federal government curbs on the right to bear arms _ not state or local limits.

    “(H)er opinion was that the hundreds of millions of Americans in the 50 states do not have a fundamental right to bear arms. She refused to back away from that opinion in my meeting with her,” DeMint said Thursday.

Okay, the gloves are off. We need to pick this fight. She must be kept off the Court.

[shearload]

Delicious irony.  Gun rights advocates using exactly the same substantive due process argument that civil rights advocates used to sway an activist court in the '60s and '70s to impose busing and other desegregation methods on the states.  And the same argument gay rights advocates are using in their attempt to invalidate state laws against gay marriage.

All you need to invalidate state and local laws restricting gun ownership is an activist court, willing to read the 14th amendment very broadly to give themselves power to further decimate the powers reserved by the states.  And we may have just such a court now.

[airgunandy]

SO, it sounds to me like you are in favor of disarming the American citizen. Is that right? What happens when they come for your air weapons?

[North Pack]

In a convoluted way this whole thing may end up being decided by the SC ... The question being - are states/cities bound by the Second (or any) Amendment??? ... The answer has (should be) YES!!! ... What city/state ever voted on school busing and/or affirmative action??? A zillion programs that if put out to a vote, - wouldn't stand a chance.

[shearload]

If that's what it sounded like to you, then I did not write it well.

I'm in favor of democracy.  I don't like it when the SCOTUS decides controversial questions using novel legal theories to overturn two centuries of constitutional interpretation.

If you want the SCOTUS to hold that state and local governments entities have no right to regulate firearms, then can a state prohibit guns in public schools?  How about a city-owned football stadium or basketball arena, or a city park or city-owned airport?  What about carrying a large-bore centerfire rifle while squirrel hunting, or at night, in the woods, in combination with a high-powered light?

States have been regulating what you can do with a firearm for as long as I can remember, and throughout my father's lifetime, and his father's before him.  Now you want the Supreme Court to sort out what is reasonable and what isn't.

The state and city I live in are extremely unlikely to ban firearms in my lifetime, my children's lifetime, or my grandchildren's lifetime.  Most of us hunt and fish, and have for generations.  And most of us accept reasonable regulation of guns as necessary.  We would like to decide what is reasonable at a local level, if you don't mind.  I don't want five people in D.C. deciding it for us.

If our state legislature or city council passes gun regulations that the majority doesn't like, we can fix that.  If the US Supreme Court imposes regulations that we don't like, or invalidates restrictions that we believe are reasonable, then we may not be able to fix that.

If you believe your local gun regulations are unreasonable, then work to have them changed.  Keep in mind, when doing so, that most voters are female, and many do hold guns in high esteem as you do.  Try not to alienate them by staking out an extreme position.

[shearload]

That's my point.  If the Supreme Court decides the issue, it is may extend the terms of the Second Amendment to the states by using substantive due process, a formerly liberal, activist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Once they have done so, they decide what we can vote on and what we can't, as far as gun regulation.

Until the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights applied only to Federal actions.  Using the first ten amendments to overturn state laws began in earnest only in the middle of the last century.  

Keep in mind that the make-up of the Supreme Court changes over time.  And once it sticks its nose under the tent, it's hard to keep it out.