Seems they’re really angling for the SCOTUS showdown. I’m not entirely uncomfortable with the idea; while I part ways with Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas on a lot of issues, I have to think we’re in good shape with those four votes re: the RKBA. We only need one out of Souter, Kennedy, Ginsberg (from what I hear, she’s pretty much in the collectivist 2A interpretation camp…ugh), Breyer, and Stevens. My uneducated guess would be that Kennedy and Breyer are our best hopes there. Someone more knowledgable about how the various justices line up on individual versus the collectivist nonsense (I mean really, people, come the hell on…why would the Founders write an Amendment whose meaning is that the state can’t tell the STATE it can’t have firearms? Clearly the meaning of the “people†in the 2A is NOT the state. If they wanted it to say “you can have a gun if you’re in uniform†or “you can have firearms if you represent the stateâ€â€¦it would flippin say that).
People have noted that Parker represents a real gamble. We could lose at the SCOTUS. We could lose big. They might rule that you don’t have a right to a firearm unless you’re an agent of the state, and that essentially any gun control law, no matter how confiscatory and draconian, is legit if a legislative body approves it.
That would have a few consequences, not the least of which would be the end of the Democrats’ newfound power in Washington; they damn well know that, despite the stupid sounding press clips from Carl Levin and Nancy Pelosi you’ve probably seen. If you think the backlash against the Clinton era AWB was bad for them, wait until the Brady Bunch and the Ceasefire Maryland harpies are popping champagne inside the Beltway and state legislatures in anti gun states start confiscating guns left and right; wait until the 2A truly is gutted, and the NRA points out to the 80mil+ gun owners in the US that there’s now caselaw from the highest court in the land saying you conceivably could be forced by the government to hand them all in.
It would decimate the Democrats for a generation. Maybe the Bradys will think about that before they pick this fight? They could win the battle and lose the war. Yup, the war isn’t just us vs. them in front of the SCOTUS.
The civil rights movement wasn’t stopped by Plessy vs. Ferguson. It wasn’t stopped by Orval Faubus and Byron de la Beckwith and every other Dixiecrat bigot who at certain times actually represented the majority opinion of their constituents. Despite setback after setback, people fighting for everything from gay marriage to legal medical marijuana to every other personal freedom you can think of have had to soldier on against negative results at the legislative level, polls and public opinion stacked against them, etc.
I’m quite confident that the backlash against an anti-individual freedom 2A ruling would be of similar magnitude. Greater, probably–gun owners are black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, straight, liberal, conservative, you name it. That ubiquitous thirst for freedom isn’t going to be squelched by five folks in black robes.
