Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is rather put out today. He went home last night with brain filled with bloggy goodness and proceeded to log into Blogger and blog away on guns and the 2nd Amendment. But then, as many of you might know… Blogger decided to fart, become persnickedy or something. Needless to say, many many many words and some fine ideas were lost… Your Maximum Leader would like to recreate the blog, and might try later tonight, but let me hit some of the highlights.
RE: Churchill. The great man did certainly change and tweak position based on new circumstances. But, it should not be inferred that a small group of core principles did not endure.
RE: 2nd Amendment. Yes, your Maximum Leader did in fact read all of the Volokh sources and provided no unwitting information. But here is where the M of A is wrong. There is a difference between saying that there is no individual right to own a gun and saying that Congress cannot regulate or restrict some types of gun ownership. As the M of A knows, your Maximum Leader, while not a great supporter of gun control at all, doesn’t deny that Congress can enact restrictive legislation. (Just as other rights enumerated in the Constitution can be “tweaked” by legislative action and interpretation of the courts. For example “Hate speech” codes that have been upheld although your Maximum Leader feels that most of what is categorized as “hate speech” should be protected by the First Amendment.) And allow your Maximum Leader to get pedantic on the M of A’s proverbial arse… The M of A clearly likes to ignore the part of the Second Amendment that reads “…, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” If you would like, the first part “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,…” is a dependent clause to the main clause. While it is modified, the main clause clearly states that the right of the people shall not be infringed. And furthermore, in US v Emerson 2003, the right of individuals to keep and bear arms was affirmed. BTW, this case was linked at the bottom of the source page on Volokh. I suspect the M of A just chose not to read it. Start down in Section V. concerning the Second Amendment, and see what the court said concerning stare decisis and the Miller case that the M of A quotes extensively. Emerson was not reviewed by the US Supreme Court (although it was appealed to them) and the decision stands unmodified. At best, one can now say that the constitutional waters supporting the argument the M of A is making are muddy.
RE: Warren Burger. He was retired when he said those comments. (And your Maximum Leader would argue - going mad at the same time. He made some very weird constitutional statements during his retirement that (luckily) never found their way into case law.) And if he believed in his position so strongly, why did he not accept a case (of the thousands) for review while Chief Justice that would allow a more comprehensive explaination of the Court’s view known?
Regardless… Your Maximum Leader fears that he doesn’t have the time now for a comprehensive review of that which he wrote (and lost - curse Blogger!) last night.
Carry on.
