Editorial off the mark

I'm surprised by this editorial ("From Our View") in today's Daily News. It's about the "right to bear arms."

It took more than 200 years but the U.S. Supreme Court finally settled, once and for all time, what the Second Amendment to the Constitution means. It means that any individual in the United States, who is not otherwise disqualified by reason of mental illness or criminal record, has the right to own a firearm.

What the hell does that mean, once and for all time? Does that mean it can never be amended? Yikes, that's scary. Good thing the bits about slavery being A-OK and women (and black people) not being able to vote had already been amended.

And did whoever wrote this do any research? Read this, from FrontPage Magazine and written by a constitutional lawyer:

In our search for the issue actually before the Heller Court, and to understand what that case actually decided, we have to look to the penultimate paragraph of Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court, some sixty-three pages later: “In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.” (Author's emphasis.)

This, and only this, is what the Supreme Court majority decided in District of Columbia v. Heller: the handgun ban and the inoperative requirement for home possession.

Because Heller is hedged by those four elements—“home,” “lawful,” “immediate,” “self-defense”—and, as I show below, because other important questions remain unanswered, judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment rather than ending with Heller has just begun.

Most of the other stories covering this decision clarify what it really was all about - but not our Daily News.

The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact. (The International Herald Tribune)

City officials expressed confidence the city would prevail in any court challenge, asserting, among other things, that the 2nd Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights restricts the federal government and does not apply to state and local governments. (The Chicago Tribune)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The handgun ban in Washington, DC, which is not a state, was struck down.

For all the chest-thumping taking place among gun advocates, last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling doesn’t mark a huge change in the nation’s approach toward ownership of firearms. (The Kansas City Star)

Handgun bans really don't work anyway - at least not in this country. Bad guys get guns whether it's legal or not. Average citizens who own guns, at least according to the press, rarely use them unwisely and in some cases actually prevent crimes from happening and/or they apprehend criminals before first responders can get there.

But hey, did Neil Entwistle legally own that gun with which he killed his wife and baby daughter? How about Charles Stuart, who killed his pregnant wife, which led to the death of their son?

Just as the framers of the Constitution, as learned and intelligent as they were, appeared to wrestle with this issue (that's why the wording is so ambiguous), so now are we.

I disagree with the Daily News - this ain't over, once and for all time.