Bryan Miller is ho hum about the Supreme Court taking the Heller case. Joe Huffman and Thirdpower are already on it. Joe says:
[The second amendment is] overwhelmingly categorical and never been used to overturn a law since it was adopted, therefore we shouldn’t take it seriously and can enact laws that violate it without concern to the constitutionality of the law. Interesting logic. So, Mr. Miller, do you advocate treating the 13th amendment in the same way?
Read the whole thing. I actually think Bryan is right. The ruling won’t fundamentally be earthshaking…. over the short term. But over the long term, I wouldn’t be so ho hum. The first amendment similarly started out absent any earthshaking ruling, and with broad license for the government to regulate speech. Somewhere along the line, free speech went from this:
“The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.†– Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Schenck v. US, 1919
to what we have today, which are broad free speech protections that would never allow for something like the Espionage Act to stand today. I similarly expect the early second amendment cases to resemble the early first amendment cases. I don’t think the Supreme Court will ever bar all regulations of firearms, but I suspect the end result of this second amendment jurisprudence will probably leave us with much less gun control than Bryan Miller would like. I agree with Joe; you’re seeing masked frustration.