From My Cold, Dead Fingers


WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Supreme Court announced today that it would decide whether the Constitution grants individuals the right to keep guns in their homes for private use, plunging the justices headlong into a divisive and long-running debate over how to interpret the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”


The federal appeals court here, breaking with the great majority of federal courts to have examined the issue over the decades, ruled last March that the Second Amendment right was an individual one, not tied to service in a militia, and that the District of Columbia’s categorical ban on handguns was therefore unconstitutional.


Fine.


A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


I got it... And I don't need a black robe to understand what it means. It means that federal, state, and local governments cannot make laws that prohibit me from owning and carrying a gun. It means that local law enforcement officials cannot infringe on this right by making me "jump through hoops" and beg them for a permit to carry this gun. That's what it means.

I sympathize with the law-abiding people of D.C. and other urban areas that are riddled with crime and shootings, but these laws do nothing to protect them or stem the violence. In fact, these unconstitutional laws have been a boon for every criminal, thug, and bully that preys upon an unarmed public. The honorable and wise men that wrote the second amendment would see the wisdom in the arming of the unfortunate souls that have to navigate lawless streets and raise their children where the local laws and enforcement is inadequate to their task.

If all the law-abiding citizens of this country exercised this constitutional right, there would not be an increase in deaths from firearms... To the contrary - there would be a marked decrease.