[int_19h]

That is a drastic oversimplification of the case. What happened in 2008 was a culmination of a long process that started long before then. I would argue that the starting point was the 1989 essay "The embarrassing 2nd Amendment" [1] by Sanford Levinson, who is not exactly known for his conservative views otherwise.

In general, as with every other Supreme Court case, I would recommend going to the primary source and reading the majority opinion and dissents [2], since they go over the various arguments in meticulous detail, and judge for yourself.

[1] https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refe...

[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

[Maursault]

Your comment is a Straw Man. My intention was not to summarize the case. Changing the Founders intended meaning of the 2nd to include self-defense was really outrageously skew to the case itself, and entirely unnecessary and irrelevant to the case and the 2nd. It is brazenly false NRA propaganda from the early 20th Century come to fruition and provably not the Founders' intention. The case is incidental, because its effect on the 2nd that is relevant --because the subject was the "difficulty" in changing the US Constitution: it does not take 2/3rds majority of both houses of Congress and a majority of the States legislatures. All it takes is a senile gunnutter on the bench to go beyond the mandate of the highest court and the judicial branch of government: Judges do not legislate. Yet Scalia did, and that part of the decision came out of left field (the idiom would have worked better if it was right field, but that isn't the idiom). The 2nd had a purpose, the purpose was militias, whom the Founders were devoted to, to make a standing army unnecessary, to prevent the consolidation of executive power. But now as an individual right to be armed for the purposes of self-defense it leaves the nation with less and no protection against tyranny. But at least pride has been elevated from an indulgence to a virtue. The last proper exercise of the 2nd will be the Black Panthers at the Alameda County courthouse. That was how the Founders intended the 2nd to work, not as a way to say "don't touch my stuff," not as a source of paranoid mass-delusion.

[int_19h]

The "provably not the Founders' intention" part is the one where you're wrong, and the court opinion specifically discusses this, which is why I recommend that people read it before jumping to conclusions.

By the way, one thing that's often forgotten is that 2A itself was merely an adaptation of similar clauses in state constitutions at the time (many of which explicitly spelled out self-defense as a motivation). At the same time, the original Bill of Rights was all about limiting what the federal government can do, and didn't originally limit the states at all; it was assumed that the respective state constitutions would take care of that, presumably, by expressing the will of their citizens through their own democratic mechanisms. So it's no surprise that the discussion focused mostly on militia - that was the primary concern of the states wrt potential federal government overreach.

When 14A was ratified, and then BoR amendments gradually incorporated against the states, the courts had to reinterpret them accordingly. For example, 1A says that "Congress shall make no law ...", for the same exact reason: the people who wrote it were originally concerned specifically about the power of the federal government. But today, we interpret it as applying to state governments as well, and rather more expansively - and I would hope you'll agree that it's a good thing!

BTW, you seem to be unaware that pro-gun sentiment is alive and well outside of the radical right today - it didn't end with Black Panthers. Some prominent examples include John Brown Gun Club and Huey P. Newton Gun Club.

[Maursault]

> The "provably not the Founders' intention" part is the one where you're wrong, and the court opinion specifically discusses this, which is why I recommend that people read it before jumping to conclusions.

I am afraid not. The court may have had a historical review before discussion, but they did not examine the minutes of the Constitutional Congress, where it can be read plain as day that the Founders discussed at length and intentionally rejected including a right of self-defense in the 2nd. They talked about it and decided against it. To be plain, the Framers of the Constitution did want an armed citizenry, but only for the purposes of militia, and militia for the purposes of a check on tyranny, not for crime or hunting. Back then, pretty much everyone was armed, and they wanted the armed citizenry to form militia and they wanted to prevent the government from disarming the militia. The 2nd was never about about an individual's right of self-defense. Everyone has a right of self-defense, and we do not need the 2nd Amendment to have that right. The court's decision regarding the 2nd in that 2008 case was literally pulled out of thin air, and it will only stand until someone gets around to correcting it, and it may be a technicality, but it's wrong to include self-defense because it weakens the Amendment and reduces or eliminates any check on tyranny.

The point about the Black Panthers was simply to illustrate a proper exercise of the 2nd Amendment in that famous instance at he Alameda County courthouse. Just being a gun club is not an exercise of the 2nd (in its original intent) unless that club arms themselves and assembles in such a way to put themselves' in harms way to prevent tyranny from succeeding.

[int_19h]

"Gun club" is just a name; you should look up what those guys actually do, e.g.: https://psjbgc.org/