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Fri, 27 Jun 2008

Landmark Ruling Enshrines Right to Own Guns

In one of the worst decisions it ever handed down, the Dred Scott case in 1856, the Supreme Court nonetheless provided a rather clear enumeration of the rights that citizens possess. It's not just the right to bear arms that's being eroded as this passage from the opinion shows:

More especially, it cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens, or would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling embraced the view that the Second Amendment protects the personal right to own a gun, and seemed certain to usher in litigation around the U.S.

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