And So The Heller Decision Begins To Crumble

I have written several times about the jurisprudential badness of the Supreme Court's District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the late Justice Antonin Scalia amputated the Second Amendment to find an individual constitutional right to bear arms, but then tacked on to the ending a lecture on the need to regulate guns that was unsupported by any legal rule or precedent.  A decision that much at odds with itself is not bound to be respected for very long.  And, in any event, Heller cannot be allowed to prevent a government from carrying out what is unarguably its most basic responsibility: the safety of the governed.

Which is why this is so important.  Although it respects the logic of Heller to the extent that such logic exists, it nevertheless enforces a view of the Second Amendment more consistent with what the Framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended:  the view that the right to bear arms is subordinate to the right to be safe, especially in public.  We have, sadly, allowed the need for gun companies to make money to get in the way of what was once patently obvious.  Let's hope that, with the help of courts like the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, it can become patently obvious again.