Thursday, June 26, 2008

HELLER AFFIRMED!

Via SCOTUSblog, 5-4, with Breyer, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg dissenting. I figured as much a while back. Kudos to Justice Kennedy for swinging to the right and proper side on this one. Opinion hasn't been posted yet, but we'll soon see just how right the justices got it...

UPDATE: Opinion here. Good stuff so far...


Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications,
e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27,
35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.