This term alone the "conservative majority opinions" have been downright contradictory on "relevant legal issues". Women now have a right to defend their life with a gun but cannot defend their life with healthcare.
It's clear that they are simply using "originalism" to cherry pick what falls in line with their personal opinions.
The Supreme Court stated that you could not apply handgun laws in a way that privileged one group over another. Historically, if you were black, no gun. White and knew the governor? Weapon up.
The supreme court's policies have been pretty straightforward if you read the constitution. The legislature has the responsibility to write the law. Not the supreme court (which is un-elected), not bureaucrats (who are un-elected) - without explicit law to make it possible.
The fact that everyone is screaming that an unelected bunch of mostly white folks are returning power to congress and telling them - no, be democratic - reveals a awful lot about the current state of the United States.
The supreme court didn't take away the ability to get abortions. It just moved jurisdiction to states instead of at the federal level because there is absolutely no mention of abortion in the Constitution, when there absolute is mention of guns in the Constitution.
The majority of states in the US will have the same abortion laws they have always had.
If there was a handheld contraption with a trigger that could fire a small nuclear projectile that could destroy an entire city would the right to have one be protected by the second amendment just because it fits the general definition of a gun?
It's not a game. The founders could not have foreseen the types of weapons that we quite arbitrarily consider to be 'guns' as described in the constitution, therefore if anyone is playing games it is the people who call themselves 'originalists' when they pretend that it is that philosophy that informs their judicial opinions.
> Women now have a right to defend their life with a gun but cannot defend their life with healthcare.
You are just illustrating my exact point. Right to keep and bear arms is explicitly secured in the Constitution that it “shall not be infringed”, whereas nothing of this sort is clearly and explicitly said about abortion rights. Here, again, conservatives focus on what the law actually says, and liberals focus on their preferred policy, and if their preferred policy is not to be clearly and explicitly found in the law, it is instead found in the “emanations of the penumbra”.
> Right to keep and bear arms is explicitly secured in the Constitution
An individual right to keep and bear arms was newly discovered in 2008, in a 5-4 decision. It took 220 years for a single vote majority to find evidence of it.
> it is instead found in the “emanations of the penumbra”
That's a funny way of describing the Ninth Amendment.
The pushback on the "individual right" thing is always so funny to me, because if you really believe that 2A was about membership in a "militia" then it's meaning is that the government can't disarm itself.
It's truly hilarious, given the context of when it was written.
> During colonial America, all able-bodied men of a certain age range were members of the militia, depending on each colony's rule. Individual towns formed local independent militias for their own defense.
Even today, there are organized, state-run militia (the National Guard) and unorganized, independent militia.
I think you're deliberately missing my point, which is that to take your position literally you have to think 2A was about making a rule to keep only a state-run organization armed right after they had just fought (and won) a war of independence using, among others, individuals and "unorganized, independent militia" and the weapons they personally owned. It truly strains credulity to think the Founders sat down and wrote with that intent. Plus, you can actually just go back and read what they wrote about their reasoning back then if you want. It's all in the public record. That it took the Court this long to actually have to say it is more a function of the deliberate gaslighting that's taken place in the 20th century to convince people this right never existed. Even in Dred Scott Chief Justice Taney noted that if African slaves were given citizenship they'd be allowed to "keep and carry arms wherever they want".
I think most people that actually follow the "it was about membership in the militia" interpretation really do believe that only the government should be allowed to have weapons. That's fine, and there's an argument to be made there, but I'd appreciate it if they just made that argument rather than rewriting history.
The entire second amendment here:
“ 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.”
Notice the first phrase.
Absolutely nothing here says “every Joe wacko can have military grade arms in case they want to overthrow the government “
Tell me it’s originalism to interpret the words above in any way other than what it reads as: a description of state militias.
It's clear that they are simply using "originalism" to cherry pick what falls in line with their personal opinions.