Fascinating. It isn't often that any group takes on a nation's constitution. It's too bad it'll probably take months before a ruling is made.

Looking at the article, and the wikipedia entry for the second amendment;



It seems that people are trying to use the language of the amendment to change the meaning and invalidate it, scary stuff.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has the legal right to establish exactly what the Constitution means, so with a clear party majority, most all of the Constitution could be re-interpreted.

Actually, I think "people" (aka the District's solicitor general and I'm guessing several constitutional lawyers) are trying to define the language of the amendment. They'd have to agree upon a definition of the terms involved before any amendments could possibly be made.


Just out of sheer curiosity, what's scary about clauses of the second amendment being revoked? Where I live, we don't have a "right to bear arms" that could be infringed, so I don't know how this will affect people in Washington and the rest of the USofA

Personally, I think a *right* to bear arms is a little outdated too. I think something like gun ownership should be a privalidge afforded to a responsible few. I love what the UK did, which was to basically ban all personal gun ownership altogether.

I think the scariest part of this is that once someone starts slicing up the constitution, it opens it up for anyone to remove parts that they don't like too.

I'm really torn on this one.

Beh, Marbury vs. Madison set a bad precedent, and now the courts think they can legislate from the bench.

Mmm, statutory intent! Gotta love that our forefathers were a bunch of unhappy colonists...wonder what they'd think of people ripping it apart today?

Unfortunately for the prosecutors, the Constitution is pretty plain on this point...

"People". Not "militia members". The whole point is that if the security of the nation is in jeopardy, that the people can form a militia to defend it.

i better hide my slingshot if the right to bear arms is killt.

im with you....part of me does not see the point in having as many guns as we do in this country...

but at the same time, i too fear the slicing and dicing of the consitution (which heavens knows has already been plenty butchered)

i mean i was raised with guns...i was taught how to fire rifles and pistols when i was about 9 or 10 years old. when we would go camping, my dad would take my brother and i out and have us fire at cans on rocks. everyone in my family including my mom can operate a basic gun (and im a damn good shot with a pistol if i do say so myself!). but the thing is, we were properly trained on how to operate them safely AND my dad always kept the bullets and the guns in two seperate places....my brother and i were also well enough behaved to not go looking for them.

so although im very liberal when it comes to politics....on the issue of guns, im torn...i tend to have a more traditionally conservative view...but i also think we need even more stringent regulation on gun possession...i think people should have to take classes on proper gun operation, just like you have to take classes to get a drivers liscence

just my 2 cents on the issue ;-)

I have also been raised around guns and my dad actually is a gun dealer on the side for law enforcement agencies. I know that guns are dangerous and need to be handled with care but they are misunderstood as well. Banning guns would be disastrous. Yes guns have the power to kill a person and in the media you only see guns for the bad and not the good. However, did anyone see what happened to Australia? They basically banned all guns and the prime minister said something along the lines of, Self defense is not a reason for owning a gun. Well 12 months after the gun ban, in the state of Victoria, the amount of armed robberies went up 300%! Remember all guns were supposed to be banned. All the gun ban did in Australia was give the criminals less fear to rob people because they knew they weren't going to get shot in the process!
In fact Sweden literally gives out guns to the citizens and they have one of the lowest crime rates in the world! In an ABC special I saw one day they interviewed criminals and said what are you scared of when you commit a crime? They replied, we are scared if the person is armed. Just the thought of having a gun deters people from crime. So why get rid of them? I think the people trying to should look at the facts and take them as hints because if guns are banned crime rates will be off the charts.

Crime has nothing to do with gun ownership. Wether or not people have the right to bear arms is not the deciding factor in crime rates, or else all countries with or without the right to bear arms should either be overrun with crime or not.

In Canada there is a right to bear arms, but the crime rate is way lower then the US.
In the Netherlands there is NO right to bear arms, and yet crime is less then in the US. So I don't see a correlation between gun ownership and crime.

Meh! Those criminals who obtain their guns illegally don't care about the wording of the constitution. If they ban gun ownership for the public at large, it's not going to matter a patch to those people whom law-abiding citizens want to protect themselves from in the first place.

I suppose we need to break the issue down to its most fundamental. Why guns? Why should they be illegal?

Because they kill people? Cars kill people... a baseball bat can kill people... Hell, an un-chewed piece of steak can kill someone!

If the only reason for not having guns is: "in the wrong hands they be used for violence against the innocent," than it sets a bad precedent for what the government can tell us to do. If we decide its best for them to take away everything that might be harmful if in the wrong hands, we're going to spend a lot of time sitting alone in the corner.

Outlawing guns will not stop outlaws from owning guns. Fewer guns is not going to give us a lower crime rate.

“Anyone that would give up liberty to gain security will deserve neither and lose both.”
-Ben Franklin

Maybe not, but there is a direct correlation between the numbers of murders and attempted murders, and the legalization of gun ownership.

In 2000, the US had approximately 15,517 murders. The UK had 792. It's a lot harder to stab someone to death, looking them in the eyes, than it is to shoot someone from far away without ever even seeing their face.

Also, most of the US's murders don't come from outlaws, they come from disgruntled people who have never committed any serious crimes before, and probably won't commit any again.

Personally, I wish we would adopt an anti-gun policy. Or at least apply much stricter regulations to them, and eventually phase them out. But, before all that, we should try to bring up better citizens who won't ever resort to guns and violence anyways.

The fact that the numbers support your theory doesn't mean that one is necessarily directly effected by the other. You could also argue that cultural differences are to blame. I doubt everyone killed in the UK was stabbed. You also have to take into consideration UKs 58,789,194 people as of 2001 to USA's 300,402,197. Then you have to consider who those people are, why they're angry, etc. There's a lot more to stopping criminals than taking their guns away.

This is what I'm getting at, the problem is bigger than just guns. If guns go away, something will replace them.

There's been talk of banning handguns for a while here (Ontario) and I always think the same thing. Take the guns away from law-abiding, responsible owners and the only ones left will be the criminals.

I bet someone invents a time machine and goes back to ask Thomas Jefferson to clear this one up before the courts rule on it.

Disgruntled people who have never committed a crime before manage to find hitmen.

I've never smoked crack but I bet I could find a dealer if I wanted to.

When someone has a will to shoot another person... they CAN and WILL find a gun, laws be damned.

Most murders are crimes of passion. Sure, hitmen get hired, but the time it takes to find a hitman and organize the whole ordeal gives the person a long time to cool off and realize their mistake. The trouble is, if the person has a gun in their hand at the time, they are more prone to fly off the handle and do something rash.

You can get guns in Europe very easily, but it takes time. It's not like they don't exist at all over there, they just aren't so much in general circulation.