I often get frustrated wondering “What are they thinking? Do they actually think? Are they capable of thinking?”

For example, in my mind people are not consistent when they expanded the meaning of the 1^st Amendment to include things that did not exist (such as the Internet) at the time of the writing of the Bill of Rights. Yet those same people intend to negate the 2^nd Amendment by excluding things that didn’t exist at the time of it’s creation. What’s up with that? Are you insane?

This article helps with a certain aspects of those types of questions I have had.

In interpreting the Constitution, judges pay attention to social practices, and not only to judicial precedents. If federal and state governments have long regulated gun use, creating a tradition of such regulation, many judges would be reluctant to invoke the original understanding in order to upset that tradition. Tushnet finds that, since the Civil War, gun regulation has been common–and it has rarely been challenged on constitutional grounds. He concludes that the last century and a half shows a simple pattern: “A substantial body of laws regulating weapons possession and a small number of opinions addressing Second Amendment objections to such laws, with no opinions from appellate courts invalidating any modern regulations, and an apparent lack of interest by the Supreme Court in taking fundamental Second Amendment questions.”

[…]

In Tushnet’s view, there is an evident conflict between the original understanding and the legal arguments based on judicial precedents and social practices. He urges that in the face of such conflicts, the original understanding tends to yield. In the context of free speech, for example, we have gone far beyond the original understanding, protecting commercial advertising and even political dissent in ways that would have astonished the founding generation. Tushnet thinks that if we reject originalism, we will probably conclude, on the basis of social practices and judicial decisions, that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right.

This gives me a model to conclude they aren’t entirely insane. It does sort of make sense. I worry about the Supreme Court in the D.C. v. Heller case considering the impact on all the people that deserve to be locked up but prosecutors only charged them with gun violations because it was so much easier than proving they had committed some violent crime. If the Court comes strikes down the D.C. law there will be lots of people in jail appealing their convictions. The disruption to society could be significant. The historical aspect of the laws and our society have to be somewhere in the minds of the justices.

But translating the logic above to an analogous situation will make my take on this clear:

In the deep south during the last century there was a long history of social practices, judicial precedents, and traditions of regulation of people of color. Therefore it is entirely appropriate during the 1960’s the courts should have rejected the original intent of the 13^th Amendment and allowed whatever law the states and cities thought were “common-sense” for their situation.

Not!

There is only one correct way to handle this. If a government entity wants to implement a law that violates some original intent of the Constitution there is a proper way to go about that. They can amend the constitution to allow non-original intent. Anything else is a rationalization, an extremely serious threat to our enumerated powers form of government, and death to freedom.

There’s some serious talk going on about increasing the oppression of gun owners in Europe:

Against the backdrop of deadly school shootings in Finland and Germany, European Union legislators Thursday overwhelmingly backed tough new gun control rules they said they hoped would prevent Europe from becoming a gun-friendly culture like the United States.

Under the new rules, hammered out in 18 months of negotiations between the European Parliament, national governments and gun advocates, individuals age 18 and over will be able to buy and own a firearm, provided they are not deemed a threat to public safety. Individuals under 18 will only be able to obtain a gun for hunting or target shooting under the supervision of a licensed adult.

To plug holes in the current system, in which the registration of guns is not consistent across the 27-member bloc, each member state will be obliged to set up a computerized database of firearms, including details about their model, caliber, serial number and the names and addresses of both the seller and the buyer. The data must be kept by authorities for at least 20 years.

European legislators of all political stripes said the new rules were essential to prevent Europe from embracing the gun culture of the United States, where the right to bear arms is written in the constitution.

“We in Europe have a different culture than in the United States and we do not consider the freedom to buys weapons a human right,” said Gisela Kallenbach, a German member of the European Parliament from the Green group, who helped draft the proposed law. “All European cows are registered Europe-wide, so why not guns, if it can save lives? Civil liberties can be sacrificed if we can prevent people from being killed.”

How appropriate. A German who wants to sacrifice civil liberties to prevent people from being killed. That was done once before by the Germans in 1938:

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Jews (§5 of the First Regulations of the German Citizenship Law of 14 November 1935, Reichsgesetzblatt I, p. 1333) are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons.  Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.

The only question is, which lives will they be saving? In 1938 it was the Nazi lives that would be saved by sacrificing the civil liberties of the Jews.

When someone takes a weapon from you it’s an exceedingly rare circumstance that your safety will be increased. It’s someone else’s safety that might be increased.

What’s the problem with registration? Registration is a problem because those records were used by the Nazis to find all the Jews with firearms and experience with firearms. Firearms registration fails my Jews in the Attic Test. Firearms registration enables scenes like this:

The European Union doesn’t want to be a “gun-friendly culture”, instead they want to be tyrant-friendly culture. How many tens of millions of people must be murdered before they learn their lesson?

Via Bruce.

All in the name of the War on a Noun:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as American icons and infringing on people’s privacy.

Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel don’t need warrants to access hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, putting them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.

[…]

When going to private residences, for example, they are told to be alert for a person who is hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States; unusual chemicals or other materials that seem out of place; ammunition, firearms or weapons boxes; surveillance equipment; still and video cameras; night-vision goggles; maps, photos, blueprints; police manuals, training manuals, flight manuals; and little or no furniture other than a bed or mattress.

Still and video cameras? Photos? Maps? Discontent with the United States?

I would get so many “hits” it would peg their meters even before they got to the guns, ammunition, and explosives.