I enjoyed this little bit of serendipity today, but then we ex-newspapermen have a twisted sense of humor. We call it a defense mechanism, but calling it that is also a defense mechanism. Anyway, on with the post…
A few minutes ago I got a release from Joe Wilson saying:
Wilson: No More Inconsistencies with 2nd Amendment Rights
(Washington, DC) – The Supreme Court rightfully extended the reach of the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms to all 50 states by a vote of 5-4. The case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, is the second ruling on gun rights in three years, and substantially expounds on the 2008 Supreme Court decision in D.C. v. Heller that nullified the handgun ban in our nation’s capital.
Congressman Joe Wilson (SC-02) applauded the decision, saying, “This ruling from the highest court in the land is a momentous change in the fight to restore gun rights in America. For too long, our Constitutional right to bear arms has been inconsistently applied across the United States, and I am confident this ruling will change that.”
Coincidentally, this ruling comes on the same day as Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings, raising the profile for debate on the Supreme Court nominee.
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A little earlier this morning, I had received this headline from The Onion: “8-Year-Old Accidentally Exercises Second Amendment Rights.” After that, you don’t really need (or want) an excerpt elaborating, but here’s one anyway:
NORFOLK, VA—Gun owners nationwide are applauding the patriotic, though accidental, exercise of Second Amendment rights by 8-year-old Timothy Cummings Tuesday.“Timothy is a symbol of American heroism,” said NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre from Cummings’ bedside at Norfolk General Hospital, where the boy is in serious but stable condition from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. “While praying for his recovery, we should all thank God that his inalienable right to keep and bear arms has not been infringed.”The incident occurred shortly after Cummings returned from school and found that his parents were absent from the house. Displaying what Second Amendment-rights groups are calling “good old-fashioned American ingenuity,” Cummings placed a pair of phone books on a stool to retrieve his father’s loaded .38-caliber revolver from its hiding place on a closet shelf. After a preliminary backyard investigation of his constitutional rights claimed the life of Pepper, the family’s cocker spaniel, Cummings fell on the weapon, causing it to discharge into his left thigh.“The framers of the Constitution would be so proud of what my boy did yesterday,” said Cummings’ father Randall, 44, who originally purchased the handgun for home defense. “If 8-year-old boys discharging loaded firearms into their own legs isn’t necessary to the maintenance of a well-regulated militia, I don’t know what is.”…
Yeah, I know. As humor goes, that’s pretty brutal. But so is the reality that it lampoons. Of course, all too often in reality, a human being is killed when kids play with guns. But even The Onion flinched at that.
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So much for state’s rights. That’s the thing about conservatives, they’re all for state’s rights until one of their sacred cows gets in trouble. Same thing happened with medicinal marijuana and right to die laws on the west coast.
@bud–and they’re trying to limit states’ rights to extend same sex marriage rights, too.
We must give the Supremes credit for creativity. In Bush v. Gore, they decided that the 14th Amendment applied to how electoral recounts were done – except they also decided their decision wasn’t a good precedent.