A friend recently wrote an article that rubbed many in the
gun culture the wrong way. I have to
include myself among them. The
implication was that regulation of fundamental rights has always been
constitutional and always will be. He
further indicated that the phrase, “A well ‘regulated’ milita…” referred to the
ability of lawmakers to regulate this fundamental right in particular.
I strongly disagree.
In the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) known as D.C. v. Heller, the justices made it clear that the phrase has
nothing to do with the operative clause, “the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed.” A
study of the term “regulated” as referred to in that day and time referred to
equipment that each person was to be able to bring if the militia was called
out.
We must never forget that a fundamental right pre-exists the
constitution and the founding of this country.
Rights are “endowed by our Creator.”
History has shown repeatedly that certain rights are more likely to be
regulated/restricted/infringed than others.
Those are the rights that governments fear the most. These include, right to self defense, free
speech, free exercise of religion, free press, free assembly etc. The reason governments detest and fear the
free exercise of these rights is because the People use these methods to rein
in the governments that are out of control.
If the government can put a test on the exercise of these
rights then the government can effectively eliminate and reserve these rights
to itself. So what can the government
regulate justifiably? We need to
understand the purpose of laws that our founders set up. The purpose was to provide of frame work for
justice. We need a method to determine
injury. If I exercise my right to free
speech by slandering my neighbor we can have a law with reasonable penalties
assigned against the offender. We cannot
have a law that says you cannot speak.
