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> Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of b
by bunderbunder 14y ago
> Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution.
Well, there are two things to unpack there.
First, the 2nd Amendment is one of the most vaguely-worded sections of the entire document. If we're relying on the Constitution alone, there's really nothing about it that's cut and dry. It's even so ambiguously worded that the Supreme Court has had to make a decision about what its syntactic structure should be considered to be. Worse, I've a relative who's actually known as an expert on whether one bit of ink is a comma or an ink blot. Meaning two things: One, even that's something that's ambiguous enough that learned people are capable of disagreeing about it, and two, the question is relevant enough to how the sentence should be interpreted that there's a demand for people to develop expertise on the question. That's how ambiguous and poorly-worded this particular piece of legislation is. With all that in mind, there's a strong argument to be made that one's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment's meaning has more to do with one's pre-existing opinions than it does to do with what the sentence actually says.
Second, there is a well-known process for creating laws that are specifically designed to go against what the current version of the Constitution says. Such laws even have a name. . . and that name happens to be the second word in its name. In light of that, to suggest that the 2nd Amendment means that it's impossible to enact legislation that alters the law to be other than what the 2nd Amendment says - or whether doing so would violate rule of law - is patently silly. Did the 21st Amendment violate rule of law?