[evil-olive]

> with jail time for legislators and governors

uh-huh. what provision in the Constitution authorizes this, exactly?

is there anything in contemporaneous writings (Federalist Papers, for example) where someone advocated that a reasonable separation of powers would be "Article 3 judges should have the power to send legislators to jail as a side-effect of ruling that a law is unconstitutional"?

you can argue about the 2nd Amendment all you want, that's one of the oldest pastimes on the internet. but arguing that legislators should be thrown in jail for passing laws you don't like is flashing a big neon "I'm a crank" sign.

[SilverElfin]

The constitution is the highest law of the land. Violating it has consequences. They should be enforced.

> but arguing that legislators should be thrown in jail for passing laws you don't like is flashing a big neon "I'm a crank" sign

Ad hominem aside, this is equivalent to “We should have laws but they should be selectively meaningless”

[evil-olive]

> The constitution is the highest law of the land. Violating it has consequences. They should be enforced.

yeah, the consequences are that the law in question gets overturned.

you're not arguing for enforcing existing consequences, you're trying to make up a whole new set of consequences.

people get extremely emotional about the topic of firearms, so let's take what you're saying and apply it to a different context, and hopefully you can understand how ludicrous it is.

FDR signed an executive order [0] for internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry. it was challenged in a case that went to the Supreme Court [1].

SCOTUS upheld that executive order as constitutional. but let's imagine it had gone the other way, and been struck down as unconstitutional.

with the "consequences" you're proposing, a decision striking down EO 9066 would also imply President FDR must go to jail, wouldn't it? after all, he violated the Constitution. that is an insane outcome - a 5-4 SCOTUS vote could send a President to jail?

the Constitution clearly lays out methods of punishing elected officials - impeachment and possible removal by Congress. in your zeal to defend one tiny sentence of the Constitution, you're inventing out of whole cloth a completely separate way of punishing elected officials, one which would itself be unconstitutional.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

[QuiEgo]

Checks and balances man. If a legislature makes an illegal law it should be struck down by the courts or vetoed. The system is working as designed.

Judges being able to throw people from other branches in jail would cause all kinds of other problems.