Heller in the local news
The News Sentinel’s Jim Balloch has a piece on the decision:
The decision does not specify to what extent guns may be regulated. Expect some big battles to come over that issue.
And:
But more was at stake here. Whatever your view of guns, you should endorse this decision and be sickened by – even angry – over the shameless and disingenuous attempts of dissenting Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens to reserve part of the Bill of Rights for state governments and deny it to citizens.
Ouch.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Is he trying to make a sarcastic point? This is far from unprecedented. Justice Thomas argued (I believe it was in the Pledge of Allegiance case) that parts of the Bill of Rights “resist incorporation.” Isn’t that exactly “reserv[ing] part of the Bill of Rights for state governments and deny[ing] it to the citizens?”
July 7th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Not exactly.
To reserve a (constitional) right to the states (and to deny it to citizens) is to say that the Federal Gov’t can’t do something to the state but it can do it to the citizens.
I.E. If the right to free press is a right belonging to the state but not the citizen then the federal gov’t can’t shut down Tennessee’s state owned newspaper, but can shut down the privately owned newspaper even if the state gov’t wants to protect it.
If, however, the right to free press is an unincorporated right of the citizens then the state gov’t can shut down the privately owned newspaper even if the federal gov’t wants to protect it.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
TGirsch, you are half right. Justice Thomas did indeed say that the Establishment Clause “resists incorporation,” but he also made his reasoning was limited to that clause, precisely because it does not deal with individual rights. And none of the other eight Justices – certainly none of the four who dissented in Heller – even went along with that.