[craigepo]

I would encourage everybody to read this opinion---the ideas contained therein are amazingly important, both for 2nd amendment fans and the run-of-the-mill libertarian.

One note: the facts discussed by the Court's conservatives are rather disconcerting. I knew of some of the violence done to freed slaves immediately after the Civil War. However, I did not realize that so many of these atrocities were enabled by the several Southern States' various refusals to allow black men and women to arm themselves.

As to the 2nd amendment issue, the Court's ruling holds that a state or local government law regarding firearms can now run afoul of the 2nd amendment. This is because the Court, in this case, has "incorporated" the 2nd amendment's guarantees into the list of rights that are mandatory/necessary/judicially cool. The opinions written by Alito, Scalia, and Thomas were very well written and researched, and in my opinion used very solid logic.

For those who haven't read my ramblings before, the "Incorporation Doctrine" is a Supreme Court creation. It allows the Court to hold that certain rights are so important that the Court rules that the states may not wholly infringe upon those rights. Those rights are generally cherry-picked by the Court at its whim; there is no guarantee that a Constitutionally-guaranteed right will be "incorporated", and thus protected from state/local encroachment.

As you read this opinion, you may note that the "conservatives" on the Court are less-than-enthusiastic about the hit-and-miss subjectivity of the Incorporation Doctrine in its present form. In fact, the rule now seems to be that if a right is "fundamental", then it is applied against the states. This is a huge sea-change in constitutional law.

Stated differently, now, if a right is "fundamental", the states must tread lightly, period. No Ivy League banter, no looking to see what other countries do on the issue, no liberal intelligentsia saying "the right to bear arms doesn't really mean the right to bear arms".

I understand Sigaba's worry regarding using historical analysis when construing the Constitution, but do not necessarily agree. Generally, there are three(3) ways to interpret the Constitution: (1) "living document"; (2) Strict Construction; and (3) Original Intent.

The "living document" folks hold that the Constitution is a living, breathing, changing document. Their idea is that the Constitution's meaning changes with time. The liberals on the Court, Sotomayor, Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg generally hold to this ideal. The problem with this technique of construction is that our citizens' rights are always-changing, and may be changed based upon judicial whim.

Strict Construction adherents construe the Constitution exactly as it is written. Pros---the citizens' rights are easily predictable. Cons---what happens when the definition of a word changes over a century or two?

Original intent judges hold that the Constitution's words mean precisely what they meant at the time the Constitution was ratified. In so doing, these judges attempt to ensure that our citizens' rights are what they were intended to be when the Constitution and its amendments were adopted. However, as you can see by reading this 214-page opinion, it takes a hell of a lot of work to determine the proper historical basis for the Constitution and amendments.

IMHO, the Original Intent technique, while causing the most work for judges and attorneys, is the most likely of the three described techniques of preserving our rights. Moreover, this idea is most likely to ensure that the rights preserved actually resemble those that were ratified by the Nation's citizens, as opposed to some monstrosity dreamed-up by the newest Ivy League justice on the Court.