If there is any document out there that is more annoying to people on the Left, it is the Bill of Rights. To them, it is something to be used when it serves their purposes, and denigrated or ignored when it hurts their radical agenda. They read “rights” into it that are not there, and work to reduce the rights that are actually specifically written.
To set the latest bit of liberal “how do we muck with gun rights” story up, here’s how the WP story starts
But when the justices on Tuesday confront the question of whether the (2nd) amendment applies to state and local governments — not just the federal government and its enclaves, such as the District of Columbia — the court’s most prominent gun enthusiast faces something of a constitutional quandary.
The most likely path to recognizing gun ownership as a fundamental right is one that has been heavily criticized by Scalia and other conservative scholars, and it seems inconsistent with his belief that the Constitution should be interpreted in terms of its framers’ “original meaning.”
Interestingly, the WP is unable to qualify the first part of that second paragraph with, you know, facts, and simply serves to obfuscate the issue.
The alternative, one embraced by an unlikely coalition of libertarian, liberal and some conservative scholars and activists, would apply the Bill of Rights to the states in a way they say is more grounded in the Constitution. But it is also a route that could open what is invariably described as a Pandora’s box of additional rights of citizenship — health care, for instance, or housing.
Got that? If gun rights are applied to the States, as laid out in the 2nd Amendment, rights that do not appear in the BoR could suddenly appear! Oh, the quandary for those gun loving wing nuts! Except, the first is real, and the latter aren’t.
After a bit of background on the case at the heart of the article, McDonald v Chicago, and told that the Heller case left open the question of whether the 2nd Amendment applies to States, we get to the heart of the liberal idiocy
To most, it might seem illogical that the Bill of Rights would apply only to actions of the federal government, but that was its intent. Over the years, the court has said most of it applies — or in the court’s language is “incorporated” — through the 14th Amendment.
Only in Liberal World. Certainly, the 1st appears to apply only to the federal government, as it starts out “Congress shall make no law…”, which is, arguably, applicable to the federal Congress only. That said, Amendments 2 through 8 do not have any qualifiers that would make them appear to be for the federal government only. Are we to believe that only the feds have to offer fair and speedy trials? That they are the only ones who cannot engage in “cruel and unusual punishment”? That the “right to be secure….” applies only to the folks working out of Washington? Imagine a State deciding that their law enforcement officers could simply enter any house and detain any person they wanted on a whim. Do you think the liberals at the Washington Post would be wetting their panty shields as they scream about 4th Amendment Rights?
Interestingly, the two other Amendments that do apply specifically to the Federal government are two that, along with the 2nd, the Left would love to see go away, because the Left hates that any power might go to the States and the People. The Framers felt it was necessary to put not one, but two Amendments, the 9th and 10th, in the B0R to reign in the potential of the federal government, so they didn’t do something like, oh, say, require people to have health insurance or face a fine and/or jail.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU
OMG it is the Obama is gonna take our guns !!