The Constitution Isn’t A Guidance Document
BY Herschel Smith
5 years ago
Via reader Fred, this idiotic missive from a Duke University professor with whom we’ve crossed paths before.
The main problem with relying solely on text, history and tradition, however, is that it doesn’t provide useful guidance for modern-day regulations that respond to modern-day gun violence. The text alone can’t tell you whether a machine gun is an “arm” or whether convicted felons are among “the People” the Second Amendment protects. The 27 words of the amendment are silent on many questions, and history and tradition don’t speak with one voice—there were and are significant regional differences in approaches to gun regulation, as well as divisions between urban and rural areas.
Perhaps in some extreme cases (a total ban on public carry, for example), text, history and tradition would provide relatively clear rules. But for most standard forms of modern gun regulation—restrictive licensing schemes for public carry, for example, or prohibitions on high-capacity magazines or on gun possession by people convicted of domestic violence—all of the work would be done by analogical reasoning. Judges would have to decide for themselves whether certain modern guns or gun laws are relevantly similar to laws from 150 or 200 years ago.
Hey dumbass, the constitution isn’t a guidance document. It’s a covenant, and you break it at your own peril.
On November 22, 2019 at 12:02 am, Mike said:
“Judges would have to decide for themselves whether certain modern guns or gun laws are relevantly similar to laws from 150 or 200 years ago.”
When the Constitution was ratified there were no ‘gun laws’ in the modern sense: a man was free to carry his pistol or rifle wherever he needed to carry it, and cross state lines freely from state to state and beyond into the wilderness. A man was free to design whatever weapon he could imagine, and sell it if there was interest in the design. That was “uniformity” of the 2nd Amendment nationwide, and it has been severely diluted by succeeding generations of willfully ignorant judges and legislatures.
That’s my short answer to that word-salad composed by law school ‘gentlemen’ which I find to be highly insulting and composed on a foundation of quicksand.
On November 22, 2019 at 9:52 am, Dirk said:
I see it different, I see the constitution as literally the only thing keeping the left at bay. Boys it’s simple, the answer is no. The left are not ” the boss”, or in my logic chain, chain of command. I don’t seek their permission for a single thing.
I do as I chose, because of the founding document.
At63 I have zero intentions of changing how I live my life, because Socialist, no check that, communist are making a run on the shit show , titled DC inc. not today not ever, will I give up any God given right to live a thus far relitively peaceful life.
Tic Toc.
DW
On November 22, 2019 at 9:53 am, Thisisme said:
If the fact that mass murder is already against the law, and that doesn’t stop or curtail mass murder. What make anyone thinks making it illegal for the gun to participate in the mass murder will stop or curtail the illegal event? Are guns more pragmatic than mass murderers? Just curious.
On November 22, 2019 at 1:48 pm, billrla said:
I imagine that the good professor excels at interpreting the white spaces between words.
On November 22, 2019 at 4:35 pm, Fred said:
“…a sliding scale of means-end scrutiny…”
I’m unworthy oh judges of men and tools. All this time I thought that ‘shall not be infringed’ meant shall not be infringed until I saw your precious light and applied a sliding scale of means-end scrutiny to it. Now I see the true light and will bow down, oh Nebuchadnezzar, er, Lincoln, er, Stalin, and surrender all of my objects deemed to be unworthy by your perfect will using this sliding scale of means-end scrutiny. Here, please oh mighty ones, leave us defenseless oh most exalted of the black roped gods and rape our daughters and kill our wives and put us on the rail cars, your high and noble majesties. What could I have been thinking all these years? Take all the things; the sliding scale has spoken!
On November 22, 2019 at 5:40 pm, Fred said:
“roped” Heh! Missed that. It could have been a B, but nah, I’ll leave it.
On November 22, 2019 at 6:02 pm, Frank Clarke said:
The Dred Scott decision, horribly decided, did, however, contain some interesting observations. In particular, Taney opines that Scott simply could not be ‘a person’ because that would allow him to go armed wherever he pleased, and Taney thought that ridiculous. Left unsaid was Taney’s implicit assumption that any –white man– COULD go armed wherever he pleased, and that was in 1857.
‘Annoyance’ is being replaced by ‘grudging admiration’ at the progressive left’s impressive capacity for self-delusion.
An additional benefit is that I no longer have to shake my head and mutter “How can anyone be that stupid?” It’s not stupidity; it’s willful ignorance.
On November 23, 2019 at 9:39 am, Todd said:
This clown and his ilk love rules to the nth degree, it saves him and his kind from having to think. Besides, unfettered liberty scares the crap out of people with no moral compass; they think everyone is like them, unable to control their impulses and desiring to lord it over others, esp. those who have different mindsets that one could also consider part of, gasp, multiculturalism. That someone like this is not roundly criticized in the mainstream press for obviously idiotic statements, from a professor no less, tells you all you need to know. These controllers and their useful idiots don’t care about liberty, they only care about control.