The precedent is perfectly clear and hundreds of years old as well. Scalia cited this 1846 opinion in his DC v. Heller opinion, for example, among many others:
“The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, re-established by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta!”
No, Supreme Court justices for the past two centuries actually know how to read, it turns out, so they can easily tell that a well-regulated militia is the main socially beneficial outcome of, and not a prerequisite for or restriction of, the right to keep and bear arms.
The Supreme Court also justified that abortion should be policed at the state level despite 50 years of it being protected at the federal level, so I wouldn’t use their ability or reason as jutsification. “They can easily tell”, when it agrees with what you agree with. In the same way the Constitution can be read to agree with digital 4th amendment rights, or not.
Of course they did. It’s clearly the correct legal decision, regardless of whether abortion is good or bad or whatever.
Congress has never had the balls to actually enshrine the right to abortion in legislation, and so 50 years ago the Supreme Court took it upon themselves to write the law themselves by nonsensically putting it under the umbrella of “medical privacy”.
This incredibly hacky “solution” is clearly outside of the Court’s jurisdiction and mandate, and legal experts have been saying for decades that the right to abortion should be enshrined in statute, and not rest solely on this flimsy precedent.
Note also that the Court’s opinions specifically note that a federal law legalizing abortion would be perfectly acceptable, if it existed, which it doesn’t.
If people want abortion to be legalized federally, they should elect representatives who will sign that into law instead of relying on the Supreme Court to yet again overstep its bounds and write bad law. The Dobbs v. Jackson outcome is very clearly the correct one, legally.
Unfortunately, though, your point that the Court doesn’t always follow its mandate or stay within its jurisdiction is well taken. For an actual recent example of the Supreme Court writing even more bad law, look no further than Citizens United.
So where are they? Why is there not a robust structure, or pipeline of ownership to membership, including (most critically to me) the training and monitoring of those who are armed (well regulated)?
Just because you adopt the first part (ownership before membership) as important, doesn’t mean society, and the pre eminent law of the land can just give up on the second.
I don’t mean “show me that a militia exists”, I don’t need that link.
I mean why are the vast majority of gun owners not affiliated? Not trained?
Just because you adopt the first part (ownership before membership) as important, doesn’t mean society, and the pre eminent law of the land can just give up on the second.
I agree completely, but that’s still irrelevant to the question of the right to keep and bear arms in the first place.
I mean why are the vast majority of gun owners not affiliated? Not trained?
This is largely how Switzerland works, for example, and they’re a perfect example of why people should be affiliated and trained.
But to answer your question, the dual role of militias as both external defense and internal peacekeepers has unfortunately been usurped. On the one hand by the growth and sophistication of the US Armed Forces, and on the other by the originally racist and anti-working class organizations that later became police forces. The latter highlights even moreso the reason why the right to keep and bear arms is so important (as well as the importance of self-organization of those keeping and bearing the arms!), and it boggles my mind how eager people are to give it up with everything that’s happened in the past few years, especially women and minorities.
I wish they would stop calling standard capacity rifle magazines "high capacity" to try to play them up as being in some way unusual
10 rounds isn't even really standard for pistols, basically every full size pistol comes with a magazine larger than that (for reference, the most common US police duty pistols, the Glock 19 and 22, come from the factory with 15 round magazines), smaller than that and you're getting into compacts that are meant to be more easily concealable (which itself has its own risk)
I'm fine with restrictions that make sense, but trying to say that full size pistols (with magazines >10 rounds) are "high capacity" and "not commonly used for self defense" is just patently false
I don't really care what they call it, but nobody (other than mass shooters) needs to be walking around with 11+ bullets loaded. The common arguments against gun control--hunting, self defense, collecting, target shooting--are all totally unaffected by limiting the capacity of magazines.
If I had my way, people would be limited to low capacity mags and bolt action rifles. This is the sensible and legal middle ground between banning everything and banning nothing.
Now maybe you think the limit should be 15 instead of 10, or something, but those 5 extra rounds are potentially 5 more lives taken or ruined (not counting the ripple effects on family and community) in a mass shooting scenario. To me, that's incredibly difficult to justify.
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