NOVAE MILITIAE

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_guns

I knew that SCOTUS was close to a decision on the matter of whether they would hear it or not.

On the one hand, it makes me nervious, because I know with 100% certainly where SCOTUS should come down. I don't shine in too many areas, but one of the areas I do shine is in the area of the constitutional history of the Second Amendment. I've authored a law review article on the subject, and the decision that is going to be reviewed by SCOTUS took the "individual rights" side of the argument, which I defended. But that's irrelevant, really. SCOTUS will do what it's going to do, and these days we don't know from decision to decision whether what it does will be constitutionally based or politically based.

On the other hand, I and the millions upon millions of firearms owners in America don't give a tinker's damn what SCOTUS will do. As constiutional scholar Stephen Halbrook, writing of a future "definitive" SCOTUS ruling, says at the end of his hallmark study, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, "Regardless of what the nine justices of the Supreme Court may rule, it seems likely that millions of Americans will continue to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

You damn betcha we will.  Readers should understand that sentence in the context of how anti-gun "progressives"  defend the post-modernist "postivist" notion of law, in which a "living constiution" evolves to meet the needs of modern Americans (which actually means benighted, decadent, dumbed-down and morally compromised *"liberal"* Americans, if you'll excuse the redundancy). In this statement, Halbrook implictly draws a crucial distinction between certain decisions of SCOTUS, on the one hand, and constitutional reality, on the other. Contextually, that statement is made at the end of a masterful presentation outlining why SCOTUS should rule on behalf of the "individual rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment (or more precisely, an individualist/collectivist interpretation as opposed to a purely collectivist one, in which the Second Amendment is viewed as guaranteeing the rights of the states to form and maintain a state militia in the form of the "National Guard"). Note that to the progressives, it doesn't matter what what the Framers of the Constitution meant. It only matters what SCOTUS decisions say, irrespective of whether or not the court departs from the Framers' intent.

But the bottom line is, as Halbrook notes,  that we gun owners will continue to exercise our constitutional right to keep and bear arms, whatever SCOTUS might decide. We still have our state constitutions, most of which guarantee the right to arms and many of which expressly state that the right applies to individuals. We will continue to own our handguns, our shotguns, our bolt-action rifles, and our semiautomatic rifles, both of non-military and military configuration. The vast majority of us will not register them or surrender them. Should the government ever dictate that we are to do so, we will tell them, Molon Labe: Come and Take Them.

Step lightly and do the right thing, SCOTUS.  That's what I and countless other American gun owners say.