The ACLU has a blog posting explaining their position on the 2^nd Amendment in a post Heller world:

So, we’ve been getting a lot of comments about the ACLU’s stance on the Second Amendment. For those of you who didn’t catch our response in the blog comments, here it is again:

The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized.

As always, we welcome your comments.

My comment is awaiting moderation. I wonder just how welcome it will be. I give it to you here in case it doesn’t see the light of day:

Fortunately it is the Supreme Court and not organizations such as the KKK or the ACLU that is the binding interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.

We now have the ACLU explicitly denying what the Supreme courts calls a specific enumerated right. This is even more egregious than the KKK demanding segregated bus seating, water fountains, and restrooms since the Constitution doesn’t enumerate the right for integration of public and private accommodations.

I had supported the ACLU in their support of the KKK because I thought the issue was one of free speech. Perhaps I was wrong in my assumption. Perhaps the issue was the ACLU enjoys the company of similarly minded bigots.

Update: They posted my comment along with many others. The last time I looked all the comments were very critical of the postion the ACLU has taken.

There is a certain amount of truth to this:

Partisans on both sides will argue about whether Mr. Obama’s equivocation represents a clarification or a reversal of his previous statements on the subject. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. Far more important is that the gradual disintegration of the gun control movement that once drove Democratic politics is now pretty much complete. For decades, the true meaning of the Second Amendment has been the subject of wrenching public debate. But last Thursday, when the Court expressly and historically extended the right of gun ownership to private citizens, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president merely shrugged.

Compare what Obama has been saying about guns to what Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and many others were saying in the mid-90’s. We are winning. We have landed on the beach and are advancing but we have not won.

The bigots still need to be put in their place. And that place must be political extinction. They must share the same small and narrow-minded corner of history as the KKK. It’s up to us to make it happen. We do that by reminding the people in the middle that these bigots are trying to deny people “a specific enumerated right” (Scalia’s words and you should adopt them) in the Bill of Rights. This is stronger than the right to vote. This is the equivalent of someone attempting to deny someone free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (again the courts specific examples which the 2^nd Amendment is on par with). Just like the Democrats were the party of the KKK 80 years ago Democrats are now the party of gun control. Those bigots must be made to feel just as unwelcome in any major political party as the KKK is today.

We have lots of evidence that Obama is just another anti-gun bigot but some of his statements deserve more attention.

From here we have:

I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.

Emphasis added. Notice how he switches from “illegal handgun usage” to taking “illegal handguns”? This is the language of weasels. People use guns illegally. But Obama says he wants to take handguns off the streets. He is attacking the wrong thing and he is attempting to confuse the issue.

And from here we have:

…he claimed to have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms” — while also seeing the need for “common-sense, effective safety measures” to protect “crime-ravaged communities.”

And:

“I’m a strong believer in the rights of hunters and sportsmen to have firearms. I’m a believer in homeowners having a firearm to protect their home and their family,” Obama said. “It’s hard for me to find a rationale for having a 17-clip semiautomatic.” http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=1AE9B6AE-D8A7-6619-6DA493C9771D0676

Since these “common-sense effective safety measures” include bans on numerous types of firearms this is like saying he supports the 13th Amendment but thinks it’s okay for some communities to keep slaves as long as their skin is a certain color.

Aside from throwing out the D.C. ban there is other good stuff for future victories in the decision:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

…

Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

…

We think that JUSTICE GINSBURG accurately captured the natural meaning of “bear arms.” Although the phrase implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the purpose of “offensive or defensive action,” it in no way connotes participation in a structured military organization. From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude that this natural meaning was also the meaning that “bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.

…

[I]t has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .

I’m only about 1/5 of the way through and I have to save the rest for later. I have a dentist appointment and work to do.