Scotus rules 2nd amendment is an individual right

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What exactly does the US constitution say about the right to bear arms?

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Unfortunately, because of the wording it's kind of hard to determine what exactly it says about it, Artemis Entreri's learned opinion notwithstanding. Having quickly glanced through the decision (does anyone else here ever look at court decisions before they go off commenting on them?), it appears that the justices themselves agree that it's not -- not only is the decision a near-tie (5-4), but even Scalia's lengthy exposition seems to admit that it's not a cut and dried answer.Fortunately, rather than have subliterate opinionators try to sound out the big words in the Constitution, we have a system whereby nine highly trained legal experts (well, at least six highly trained legal experts, a moron, a party hack, and a nut case) try to offer a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution in certain gray areas.In this case, according the Supreme Court, the Constitution says that the District of Columbia cannot simply ban handguns outright.-By the way, is subbie going to weigh in on this? I'd especially like to get his opinion on the written decision. The few decisions I've read include references to lots of prior precedents, which is kind of lacking here, having to go back to original documents over 200 years ago. I realize that there isn't a lot of federal precedent on the Second Amendment, but is this ruling a bit unusual?

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

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It seems to all come down to what constitutes "arms". Is that correct?

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No, I think it comes down to what is meant by "militia". Is a militia an organized state-controlled military organization, or is it the able-bodied male population; the question of what are arms becomes important if the latter answer is chosen.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

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I think it's to do with whether the constitution was really talking about people bearing arms as militias to prevent evil European monarchies re-colonising the fledgeling country...

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...or people bearing arms to prevent the federal U.S. government from straying too far from its proper role. The Antifederalists (who gave us the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment) were afraid of the military and police powers of the proposed central government.I find it interesting how the wingnut conservatives in the U.S. constantly harp about the "original intents of the Founding Fathers" and then turn around and piss on their graves by trying constantly to increase the state's coercive police and military powers.Edited by Chiroptera, : typo

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Thanks for weighing in, subbie.

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I suspect this is caused by Justices on both sides of the issue struggling to reach the conclusions they want. This, I think, is an artifact of a disturbing trend in judicial appointments, particularly to the Supreme Court, in focusing more in ideology than judicial temperament and reasoning.

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This is sort of the impression that I got, but I don't have any legal training. But then, as I mention, it's probably tough when there isn't a lot of previous case law [is that the correct term?] to rely on. I still haven't read the decision closely, but my initial impression is that I find Breyer's reasoning more unconvincing that Scalia's.And considering the problems the justices had with this, I find it highly amusing how people weigh in on this with very emphatic opinions when they don't have any legal training or, and this is the good part, when they haven't even bothered to read the decision to begin with.Not that I don't have opinions on this, but at least I recognize my own limitations. And I remember the first time I read a Supreme Court decision with which I disagreed -- and was amazed at how the Supreme Court (at least at that time) was definitely not just making up law out of thin air.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev

Come to think of it, are there many actual examples from history where "a well-armed citizenry" did manage to prevent a tyranny? And off-hand I can't think of an example where a government banning weapons successfully prevented a civil war when the population was determined to wage one -- in fact, in most civil wars the warring factions usually have no problem getting weapons from outside sources.

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Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
-- M. Alan Kazlev