Court bolsters gun nuts

Justices Rule for Individual Gun RightsThe Supreme Court declared for the first time on Thursday that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to have a gun, not just the right of the states to maintain militias.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the landmark 5-to-4 decision, said the Constitution does not allow “the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home.” In so declaring, the majority found that a gun-control law in the nation’s capital went too far in making it nearly impossible to own a handgun.

But the court held that the individual right to possess a gun “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is not unlimited. “It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” Justice Scalia wrote.Comment:  Gun love is fundamental to our national culture. It's tied to a host of other things we value: conquest, domination, authority, violence. We're all about imposing our will on others, and guns are an integral part of that.

Indians were the first victims of our unhealthy lust for guns. If we had had fewer guns, more slaves would've escaped and more Indians would've lived. Guns are why Indian haters such as Andrew Jackson could enforce their will despite the opposition to them.

Since other cultures don't share our fixation, it's clearly not universal. Americans see the issue one way and foreigners see it another. Therefore, it's a good reason to take a multicultural perspective--to view the issue as other people do.

Anyway, what can we conclude from this ruling?

Conservatives are willing to overturn two centuries of precedents whenever it suits them. In other words, they're shameless judicial activists. And they're flaming hypocrites because they complain when liberals do what they do constantly.

In the current term, the five conservative justices won several 5-4 decisions over the four liberal justices. Although the liberals occasionally take conservative positions, the reverse isn't true. I think Robertson has voted with the liberals only once or twice, and Alito never has.

The claim that these two would be fair and impartial is a pathetic joke. They're almost pure ideologues who rarely if ever vote against their partisan beliefs. The Democratic senators who opposed them were right to do so.

This vote demonstrates the vital importance of being able to nominate judges. That's a major issue in any presidential campaign. When Obama or the next Democratic president nominates more centrist, less fanatical judges to the Supreme Court, decisions such as this one will go the other way.

Justice Scalia didn't say anything stupid this time, but he's still a doofus. His recent vote against the right of habeas corpus is a prime example. He supposedly votes based on the Founding Fathers' "original intent"...but in this case he thought a weak substitute for habeas corpus would be okay.

Where in the Founders' voluminous opinions did they say habeas corpus was an option, not an absolute? Nowhere, that's where. The Founders would have kicked Scalia's ass for ignoring their clear intent.

Fortunately, this gun ruling doesn't affect my central argument: that the 2nd Amendment permits gun control. The Court prohibited only the most extreme form of regulation: banning guns completely. Other forms of gun regulation are still legal.