Right Side of the Rainbow

Umm, hmm:

America’s confusion about the Second Amendment is now nearly total. An amendment that ensures a collective right to bear arms has been misread in one legislature after another — often in the face of strong public disapproval — as a law guaranteeing an individual’s right to carry a weapon in public. (Link)

I note in passing that if the Texas legislature up and approved same-sex marriage, the New York Times would applaud that, strong public disapproval notwithstanding.

Three questions for the Times’ editorial board:

• As even you would concede, all other guarantees in the Bill of Rights apply to the individual. Why would the Framers have placed a lone collective right in a list of rights otherwise applicable to the individual?

• Suppose the Second Amendment said, “A well stocked library, being necessary to the literacy of a democracy, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.” To whom would the right to keep and read books belong?

• The Second Amendment provides, in part, that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” But nowhere does the Constitution expressly provide for the right to abortion, as held either individually or collectively. Would you describe the principles of constitutional interpretation that compel recognition of an individual right to abortion while eschewing an individual right to bear arms?

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