After failing in the federal 3rd Circuit, the Second Amendment will have another bite at the apple at the New Jersey Supreme Court. I don’t expect this to go differently than in the 3rd. I’ll be shocked if it does. Most likely the NJSC wants to revise their now antiquated collective-rights ruling to be one which recognizes the Second Amendment as being a fundamental, inalienable right that doesn’t mean anything, so don’t get any ideas, peon.
As a side note, though somewhat related, if I could pick one fact to drive into the brains of gun owners around the country, it’s that the Second Amendment doesn’t fundamentally mean anything short of what the robed ones say it means. You’d be surprised how common the “Well, they just can’t do that. The Second Amendment, you see…” like the founding fathers are just going to descend from the heavens and beat some sense back into policymakers if someone gets it wrong. They have no idea how much this game has been rigged.
“the Second Amendment doesn’t fundamentally mean anything short of what the robed ones say it means.”
Wow, Sebastian, look out — you’re starting to sound like me!
Quite awhile ago I heard a story — possibly apocryphal — about a tax protestor who made his case (pro se) in court regarding the unconstitutionality, etc., of the federal income tax, and the judge said, “I am impressed! You have done an excellent job of stating your case, and possibly you are correct on many points. But do you know what? I’m the judge and you are going to prison. . .”
(I flash back to my own municipal hunting ordinance case of about 49 years ago, when a judge said more succinctly “Shut the eff up, you’re guilty.” But, I was vindicated (at considerable expense) by a higher court.)
But your point is important; I hear everyone from tax protestors to Sovereign Citizens promoting doctrines that imply that, if you just come up with the proper magic incantation to recite in court, the Black Robed ones will have to bow down before you as if prostrated by lightning. It has never happened, even once. Law is politics and power, the same as everything else. Law is not magic.
But they’ll continue making their assertions….and in the case of our local yokel, keep getting arrested and making bad case law.
“the founding fathers are just going to descend from the heavens and beat some sense back into policymakers ”
No, that’s why they gave us a Second Amendment, so we could do it ourselves.
Yes, but that’s a doomsday option. That’s kind of like arguing we don’t need an army, navy, or diplomatic corps because we can just nuke anyone who interferes with our national interests overseas. Absent civil wars you have to win elections and persuade policymakers.
I’d also remind that a civil war is based on the not-necessarily-valid assumption that one side is going to be made up entirely of Good Guys. ‘Tain’t necessarily so. Frying pans and fires spring to mind.
A constitution is just a piece of paper. Rule of law is a myth; all laws must be interpreted and enforced by fallible men. We have never left rule of men and we never will.
The reason law is treated as metaphysical and quasi-mystical is to make us forget that. Hell, it’s even the reason judges wear black robes and usually sit elevated above the rest of us.
Gees….everything sounds doomy and gloomy, like we are eventually are gonna loose anyway…might as well give up.
No… the message is that we can’t expect words on a fading piece of paper is going to save us. We can only save ourselves.