It's been a long time coming, and the remaining skirmishes will still be fought, but for now it looks like the good guys won. The left, of course, sees it differently:
Justice Stephen G. Breyer objected to the majority decision, and read his dissent from the bench. He disagreed with the majority that it is a fundamental right, and said the court was restricting state and local efforts from designing gun control laws that fit their particular circumstances, and turning over all decisions to federal judges. Joining him with dissenting votes were John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Stevens wrote his own dissent and did not join Breyer's.I remember the '50s, and this sort of argument brings back memories of George Wallace standing in the school house door, screaming for "states rights". Indeed, most gun control laws come down to a racist root in the end anyway. The inherent rights of a U.S. citizen were gone over in great detain in the Derd Scott case in which it was decided that Mr. Scott could not possibly be a U.S. Citizen because, according to Justice Taney:
It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.Which sort of suggests that anyone, of any extraction, who is not permitted the right to arms, is not actually a full citizen of the country.
I have seen at least one report calling this decision "the last battle of the Civil War" and that may well be an accurate assessment. All that's left now is the mopping up actions, but don't let your guard down, and, to coin a phrase, "keep your powder dry".
Fittingly, the last Confederate civil war veteran died today without ever conceding defeat. R.I.P. Robert C. Byrd, (D-KKK).
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