Right to Bear Armaments... Yes, You too Can Legally Own a Nuclear Bomb!

Here is a report from the NY Times about today's US Supreme Court decision striking down a Washington DC law to prohibit handguns:

Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, his most important in his 22 years on the court, said the justices were “aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country” and “take seriously” the arguments in favor of prohibiting handgun ownership. “But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” he said, adding: “It is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” ...

It has been nearly 70 years since the court last examined the meaning of the Second Amendment. In addition to their linguistic debate, Justices Scalia and Stevens also sparred over what the court intended in that decision, United States v. Miller. In the opaque, unanimous, five-page opinion issued in 1939, the court upheld a federal prosecution for transporting a sawed-off shotgun. A Federal District Court had ruled that the provision of the National Firearms Act the defendants were accused of violating was barred by the Second Amendment, but the Supreme Court disagreed and reinstated the indictment.

For decades, the overwhelming majority of courts and commentators regarded the Miller decision as having rejected the individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment. That understanding of the “virtually unreasoned case” was mistaken, Justice Scalia said Thursday. He said the Miller decision meant “only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.”

I find it funny that the "strict constructionist" judges can peer at the words:

2nd Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

and come up with ideas about "law-abiding citizens" or "typically possessed" but not notice that words like "militia" might mean the local national guard and not any Tom, Dick, or Harry that wants to own an assault rifle for "sporting" purposes.

The US has been hornswoggled by the NRA and right wing nuts into reading these words as "Every person has the write to arm themselves to the teeth." I find it funny that nobody has yet appealed a case to the Supreme Court arguing that the "right to bear arms" means that you can acquire and keep small tactical nuclear weapons in your basement or collect "bunker busting" bombs as a hobby. Certainly the US Supreme Court views assault rifles as covered by the law, so why not an M1 Abrams tank, or the right to have your own B1 bomber?

Sitting north of the US border I fall out of my chair laughing myself silly at how Constitutional "scholars" bend themselves like pretzels to interpret fairly clear words about a militia into an unrestricted argument for "citizens" to arm themselves to the teeth.

In closing, let me pass the microphone to what appears to me to be a reputable Constitutional Scholar who can help us understand the finer points of today's Supreme Court decision: