BBC.
The case – which stems from a New York legal battle – challenges a state law that requires that gun users who want a concealed carry permit first prove they have a valid reason.
To help them determine how broad the rights of America’s many gun owners go, the country’s nine supreme court judges are also looking back to the 1328 Statute of Northampton, which dates back to the reign of Edward III.
[ … ]
In a separate 2008 Supreme Court case that struck down strict Washington DC handgun laws, the late Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Second Amendment to the US constitution codified “a pre-existing right” from England.
He added that by the time the United States was founded in 1776, the “right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects.”
Some historians, however, have disagreed with that assessment, noting that by the late 1200s, English authorities had passed laws restricting the right to carry weapons while traveling in public or in London.
The later 1328 Statute of Northampton – which predates the first recorded use of a firearm in Europe by several decades – declared that nobody “except the King’s servants in his presence” will “go nor ride armed by night nor by day” in fairs, markets “nor in no part elsewhere”.
Lawyers for New York, for their part, have written to the Supreme Court that from the Middle Ages onward, laws “broadly restricted the public carrying of firearms and other deadly weapons.”
Saul Cornell, an American history professor at Fordham University, said he believes it is “beyond ironic” that US gun advocates would look to England as the foundation of their view on gun rights.
“England was a super hierarchical society, and one in which the King has a monopoly of force and violence,” Mr Cornell told the BBC. “I’m not sure how anyone could conclude that this was a society that nourishes this robust, libertarian view of arms.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to any who really understands the complexity of English history,” he added. “Obviously, that doesn’t include many people in the gun rights community or many people sitting on some courts in America.”
Ah, we’re to the crux of the matter, yes? So let’s help explain this to the article author and the Fordham professor.
As we observed earlier,
Briefly, I couldn’t care less what English common law says about anything. The colonists fought a war over many things, including gun control (see Kopel, “How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution“).
The colonists fought a war against the government to overthrow tyranny. It’s ridiculous and sophomoric to pretend that they ever assumed that men wouldn’t engage in RKBA, or that they wouldn’t turn those guns against tyranny.
Presuppositions. This is the stuff of life. The 2A makes no sense unless seen in the light of the lives of the men who wrote it and their own assumptions, value judgments and world and life views.
Any lawyer who begins with, discusses or ends with English common law isn’t worth his weight in salt.
But you see, most lawyers aren’t worth their weight in salt, or they are tipping their hat to the ruling elite inside the beltway. As for the judges and justices, look at just how badly they got it wrong. Consider Scalia’s own words, and after reading them again, don’t ever again laud the ridiculous Heller decision or Scalia as it pertains to rights.
In a separate 2008 Supreme Court case that struck down strict Washington DC handgun laws, the late Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Second Amendment to the US constitution codified “a pre-existing right” from England.
He added that by the time the United States was founded in 1776, the “right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects.”
The professor from Fordham is correct in that “England was a super hierarchical society, and one in which the King has a monopoly of force and violence.” Not only was Scalia wrong in this sentiment or analysis, he founds the RKBA solely in English common law after the founders waged a war against England, with that war precipitated by the very thing under debate, i.e., gun control.
It does indeed boggle the mind. But not really so much when one considers that the Heller decision was all about making the RKBA semi-palatable for the nobility inside the beltway.
Heller offers a Second Amendment cleaned up so that it can safely be brought into the homes of affluent Washington suburbanites who would never dream of resistance-they have too much sunk into the system–but who might own a gun to protect themselves from the private dangers that, they believe, stalk around their doors at night. Scalia commonly touts his own judicial courage, his willingness to read the Constitution as it stands and let the chips fall where they may. But Heller is noteworthy for its cowardice.
We must keep the chattering class and the wine and cheese crowd happy at all costs.
The secret that the Fordham professor and the author of this piece doesn’t understand is that most Americans see the 2A as a covenant, not a source of rights. Most gun owners see their RKBA as given by God, not bestowed by the state.
Arguing the way these lawyers have, and judging the way even Scalia did, is not representative of America. So the professor is utterly wrong when he says “Obviously, that doesn’t include many people in the gun rights community …”
Oh my. He may correctly observe that of the legal community who is hell bent on pleasing their masters, but neither the author nor the professor are very much in touch with gun blogs, gun web sites, discussion threads (like reddit/Firearms or AR15.com), or even perhaps just knowing gun owners throughout flyover country. We must be careful to distinguish between those who believe that we need the king’s permission to hunt the royal forests (because he owns the land), and we need the constable’s permission to carry a weapon (because he owns the roads), versus those who see such demands as a breakage of covenant leading to divorce. We’ve been through divorce before, and it’s ugly.
What God grants cannot be removed by man, for it is as immutable as His nature. This belief is hard wired into the American soul. If the “nobility” presses this too far, these are lessons they may [re]learn the hardest of ways.
