Op-Ed Argues SCOTUS ‘Radical’ For Not Wanting To Destroy Second Amendment

By Tom Knighton

The term “radical” gets thrown around a lot in politics these days. It’s a warning sign to voters. “Beware this position for it is radical!”

Now, sometimes, it’s accurate. Sometimes, it’s not.

One such time it’s not is when an op-ed tries to argue that the likelihood of the Supreme Court protecting the Constitution of the United States is somehow “radical.” I know, I know, no one’s that dumb, right?

Well, you’d think that. You’d also be wrong.

All that changed in 2008 with the court’s 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v Heller. In striking down a Washington DC ban on handguns in the home, the court’s conservative majority held for the first time that the second amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia”.

Relying on an “originalist” reading of the constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia insisted the supreme court had essentially misread the second amendment for 200 years. Originalists claim that reading the constitution as understood at the time of its adoption makes a judge a more faithful interpreter of constitutional text, although in reality this approach guarantees no such thing. To the contrary, it permits judges to cherry-pick history …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms