2nd Amendment: an Individual Right?

I am unsure why this is even an argument. Really. I mean, even liberals can't be this stupid.

But here we are, arguing in front of the Supreme Court...the scope of the 2nd Amendment.

By some estimates, about 90 million people in the U.S. own a total of some 200 million guns.

Roughly 30,000 people in the United States died each year from guns; more than half of them are suicides. An additional 70,000 are wounded.

And neither of these facts are relevant to the argument at hand.

Constitutional rights, by definition, are guaranteed. They are rights that the founders presented to the citizens of the United States of America as essential to freedom.

Even some liberals have now accepted this obvious viewing of gun rights as an individual right. Newsweek has an interesting expose of the Constitutional Accountability Center. The CAC is a liberal legal advocacy group that has sided with conservatives, including Steven G. Calabresi, cofounder of the Federalist Society, to support expanding individual rights, including gun rights, in the states. "There is a deeply progressive historical basis for some individual right to bear arms," says Douglas Kendall, the CAC's founder.

Of course, this is all an interesting side note. The real focus is on whom the 2nd Amendment refers to. It is a confusing amendment, has been written several ways, but basically reads as the following:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Now, the punctuation and capitalization has led to many debates about whom the right actually belongs to. There is much case law that can be referred to, but I will leave that up to my legal scholar friends.

In the 2008 landmark case of the District of Columbia v. Heller, the justices ruled for the first time that gun ownership is an individual right - not just a right for militias. They overthrew Washington's handgun ban, which was similar to Chicago's, and allowed Richard Heller to have a gun in his home for self-defense. But the justices didn't say whether this right extends beyond federal jurisdictions. Gun-rights supporters maintain that gun rights, like others in the Bill of Rights, must extend to the states.

The current case before the court, McDonald v. Chicago, asks the court to clarify the issue. Otis McDonald, much like Richard Heller of D.C., wants a handgun to protect him from thieves and gang violence that ravages his community. He is barred, however, by the very strict gun laws of the city of Chicago.

The Court, in the Heller case, has said that the right is not absolute. "Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," said Justice Antonin Scalia. However, at the same time, the court clearly defended the right to bear arms, at least on the federal level.

Now, I am no Constitutional scholar, although I would say I have read as much as I can about the subject. But as a citizen, this seems a open-and-shut case.

The case really revolves around "whether the Second Amendment is incorporated into the Due Process Clause or the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so as to be applicable to the States, thereby invalidating ordinances prohibiting possession of handguns in the home."

If the court were to limit gun rights only to federal law, then it could not be considered a 'fundamental right', essential to the freedoms necessary for citizens to defend their rights. Free speech, for example, has been declared such a right which extends to the states.

If it is not an essential right, what right is essential? If that is the case, maybe the 14th Amendment, calling for equal protection, does not have to be followed by the states either. Which rights are the states supposed to follow, and which are they not? Can I get a list?

Liberals as usual twist the meaning of the Constitution as it fits them. They have a course set aside if they don't like the Second Amendment...they could pass a repeal via constitutional amendment. Ironically, I am not a believer in guns. I will never own a gun. But paraphrasing a famous figure, I may not agree with your right to a gun...but I will fight to the death for you to maintain that right. Until the opposition is willing to amend the Constitution, the right to bear arms is sanctified in the Constitution as an individual right...and I have confidence that this Supreme Court will defend that right.