Thursday, July 21, 2022

Tweet of the Day- Second Amendment Literacy


Aside from anything else, it's nice to hear a Democrat avoid the obligatory- in their mind- assurance that "I'm in favor of the Second Amendment."

Raskin: They say when we argue for removing weapons of war from the streets of America, we’re actually telling them to repeal the 2nd amendment. We are not telling them to repeal the 2nd amendment, we are telling them to READ the 2nd amendment

On gun safety, it doesn't get any better than that.  However, Raskin notes that even in District of.Columbia vs. Heller in which Justice Antonin Scalia found a (non-existent) individual right to bear arms, the Justice wrote that the right is not unlimited. So Raskin adds

The sort of weapons protected were those in common use at the time. That was the musket, of course, and if you're an originalist, as Justice Scalia was, then you would say you have a right to carry a musket but you don't have a right to carry an AR-15. Even if you want to update that language to say, well, in common use at that time means in common use in our time- which is what I'm hearing from the gentleman- how is it in common use for Americans to use AR-15 when 68% of Americans don't own any gun at all and probably 80 or 85% of Americans don't own assault weapons?

It's questionable that Americans have the right individually to keep and bear even a musket, aside from participation in the militias which no longer exist. But I'm fine with telling our fellow citizens that they can carry a musket, and even more so that  repealing the 2nd Amendment is less important than reading and understanding it.


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