Another court ruling to reinforce the obvious.

We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited. We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments.

It is really quite simple – if the use of the phrase “the people” in the First Amendment is indicative of an individual right, the same must be true when that phrase is used in the Second Amendment, since it was composed at the same time by the same authors. And if the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates individual rights against the states in regard to the rights protected by the First Amendment, the same must be true of the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. It is about time that our Second Amendment jurisprudence catches up with our First Amendment jurisprudence.

Posted by: Greg at 11:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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