Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has done it again. In writing for a razor-thin 5-4 majority, he ruled that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution does not allow any governmental entity to prohibit "handguns held and used for self-defense in the home." He bolstered his assertion by claiming that the "historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted proves his view. This from a man who claims to be a strict constructionist, whose understanding of the Constitution and its meaning starts and stops with the intent of the Founding Fathers.
Right. And I'm the Queen of the May, and I have a bridge to sell you. This ruling is just another example of the lie the so-called strict constructionists promulgate. The fact is that they use truly "strict construction" only when it suits their purposes to do so. To anyone out there who disagrees, you are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
If Scalia were to implement his claimed beliefs, he'd begin his analysis by looking within the "four corners" of the document itself. It is axiomatic that the words the Founders used, and the way the Founders structured those words, reveal most clearly the Founders' intent and meaning. Grammatically, when subordinate clauses [sentence elements that cannot stand as complete sentences on their own, usually because they lack a verb--Ed.] are written ahead of the main clause of a sentence, those subordinate clauses modify or restrict the meaning of the main clause--because they are literally listed ahead of it and thus are enhanced in their importance relative to it. But that fact does not support Scalia's purposes, so he ignores it.
The Second Amendment in its entirety says: "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." So the prohibition on the people's right to bear arms literally is modified by the government's need and power to regulate state militias. (In today's lingo, the National Guard.)
But for Scalia, people have an absolute right to keep handguns in their homes. Nor can the government make them equip those guns with trigger locks or keep those guns disassembled. The government has no power to regulate these things. Yet Scalia's opinion also says the government can require that guns be licensed and can restrict or even prohibit the presence of guns in governmental buildings or other public accommodations. So he ignores all of the Second Amendment but the phrase "shall not be infringed"--except when he says the right is infringed. This isn't even loose construction. It's bald-faced legislating from the bench.
The irony here is that Scalia's ruling actually confirms that the US Constitution implicitly affirms the people's right to privacy. Scalia believes no right to privacy exists because it's not "within the four corners" of the document. But his ruling makes it the sine qua non for implementing the Second Amendment (you have the unfettered right to keep handguns in your home, remember). This is the identical rationale the Court has cited in the past for implementing the other rights explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Oops! Scalia didn't see that one coming, I'll wager.
Scalia also stressed that the government cannot restrict law-abiding citizens from owning handguns because handguns are Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense. They "can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police." I'd love to see some statistics on how many times this scenario is what unfolds when there's a gun-related incident in someone's home. The more typical scenario according to everything I've read is that the burglar manages to take the gun away from the homeowner and turn it against him. When the burglar gets away, yet another gun is loosed illegally on the streets. Scalia's ruling therefore may have the real world consequence of increasing the number and presence of illegal guns, thus the amount of violence, in our society. I'll bet he didn't see that one coming, either.
What's scariest about Scalia's opinion is that despite Scalia's and the media's assurances that nothing in the ruling prevents governments from keeping guns, assault weapons, and the like out of the hands of felons, this ruling opens the door to other cases being brought to the Supreme Court with the aim of restricting the government's authority to do just those things. The National Rifle Association intends to keep pushing its agenda. According to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom." [Emphasis added.--Ed.]
I don't place much trust in LaPierre's assertion that these rights are only for law-abiding Americans. The other thing that too many people fail to realize is that laws do NOT change behavior. If someone is determined to do something that's illegal, he's going to do it. What laws do is give those of us who want a civilized society the means to impose consequences on him.
With guns, however, we move into an area where imposing consequences is not enough. Nothing can make up for the lives lost to gun violence. Yet for Scalia and LaPierre it's OK, because the violence is largely confined to minority areas--like Washington, DC, the site of the law Scalia's ruling strikes down. I think I am safe in presuming that Scalia does not himself live in a part of DC infected with gun violence. So far, anyway. Remember: as the number of guns spreads, so widens the circle of violence around them.
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