Yes - a small victory in a sea of FISA, wiretaps, and amendment violations galore. This was a small step to legalizing the constitution.
These individual (implicit/god given right to self defense where the second amendment enumerated again the right to stave off authoritarians) firearms rights makes this a lot harder to pull off:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/zeioccw/einsatz1.jpg
http://www.cloakanddagger.de/home%20page%20itemsHitler%20and%20the%20Dalai%20Lama_files/Einsatzgruppen-IN-action.gif
http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/upload/minisites/ukraine/images/expo4_02_l.jpg
http://www.angelfire.com/apes/conspiracy/nazigun.jpg
http://hsgm.free.fr/recent/einsatzgruppen5.jpg
http://hsgm.free.fr/recent/einsatzgruppen8.gif
http://hsgm.free.fr/recent/einsatzgruppen2.jpg
http://hsgm.free.fr/recent/einsatzgruppen4.jpg
http://oybay.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/armenian_genocide_440.jpg
http://www.friendsoftibet.org/main/images/tibet_execution_3.jpg
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1371/1047105414_d6cd502f21.jpg
Fidel and Raul Castro shooting someone extra judicially. Notice the victim here is unarmed.
http://faustasblog.com/uploaded_images/execution-777128.jpg
The Second Amendment means the same thing if you write:
Ronald McDonald likes to make hamburgers, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Or, as the opinion states:
Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command. The Second Amendment would be nonsensical if it read, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be infringed." That requirement of logical connection may cause a prefatory clause to resolve an ambiguity in the operative clause ("The separation of church and state being an important objective, the teachings of canons shall have no place in our jurisprudence." The preface makes clear that the operative clause refers not to canons of interpretation but to clergymen.) But apart from that clarifying function, a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.
There are NO COLLECTIVE RIGHTS. They do not exist. The Militia Act of 1792 says if you do not have a rifle and 20 rounds for that rifle you are breaking a federal law at this moment. This militia is the unorganized militia, and between the federalist papers, the state constitutions, the US Federal Constitution and a lot of early tests in the new Republic, it was a RIGHT, it is your right , the government has a limitation in power than is cannot take the implicit/god given rights away, and its ENUMERATED again, apparently the framers had the foresight to realize tyranny would again rule the day.
Lets review where SHALL NOT is used elsewhere in the Constitution.
Section 9
The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended
Amendment 4
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment 8
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment 9
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 15
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Amendment 19
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Amendment 26
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Regulated at the time more or less meant 'well trained.' They WANTED a large group of pissed off minutemen to get rid of a tyrannical regime.
I case one hasn't noticed, piles of rifles really make life difficult for our invading army in Iraq, maybe we should consider doing the same thing to this illegal terrorist government.
"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms SHALL NOT be infringed."
62%+ in this CNN poll agreed with SCOTUS ruling:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i32/zeioccw/shallnotbeinfringedwethepeople.png
Not that I need a democratic consensus in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, but gun grabbers are wrong and are bordering on treason.
All too many of the other great tragedies of history--Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few--were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.
My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed--where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
-- Alex Kozinski, U.S. Circuit Judge, 9th District.
The Fed devalues the dollar such that purchasing power is half of what it was in 2005, and the SCOTUS gives back an enumerated right that neither the state nor the Federal government ever had the right to take away, and there are still people pissed about the guns *not* still being banned in a place where violent and gun crime are through the despite the gun ban.
From the opinion.
Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.Why we need to have power with the people, check out Death By Government:
We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1.1.GIF
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHINA.FIG1.5.GIF
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF
Cathy L Lanier, the Police Chief in DC [She is already in deep shit by creating military checkpoints and forcing citizens to check in and out of neighborhoods as if she and the illegal police goons are the Schutzstaffel], said that they would work up a spate of legislation to defy the Supreme Court, and would be arresting people despite the ruling. If you shot this woman and claimed you were ridding our country of a Democratic terrorist, I would let you off or hang the jury if I was on your Jury. These police officers never read the 14th Amendment's Equal Proteciton of Laws clause.
Lanier: While the policies are being revised, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said, officers who find handguns in residents' homes will "use their discretion" about whether to arrest the owners.
More on Herr Obersturmbannführer Lanier:
D.C. Government Faces a New Reality
Class Action Filed Over Checkpoints
Rights Group Calls Police Activity in Trinidad Neighborhood Unconstitutional
If the police can have, so can you:
"no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; ..."
Samuel Adams
"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence ... from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable ... the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
Richard Henry Lee
"The great object is that every man be armed." and "Everyone who is able may have a gun."
Patrick Henry
"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
Thomas Jefferson
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
Patrick Henry
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that ... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; ... "
Thomas Jefferson
"The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
Alexander Hamilton
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson knew what he was doing when he decided we need to be able to defend ourselves from government, and be the instrument of change and overthrow a corrupt government if and when it happens? He was right. The government should not feel it can walk into our homes and take control. The government should ALWAYS have to fear that such acts would be a significant risk.
Please also note the leading cause of childhood deaths is drowning in pools. Guns dont even register.
Doctors are better at killing you by accident than guns are on purpose ...
Total number of gun deaths in the U.S. in 2005: 31,000
http://www.ichv.org/Statistics.htm
Total number of deaths in the U.S. from medical errors in 2005: 44,000-98,000
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/353/13/1405
The total gun deaths (acccidental and non-accidental) were still lower than the lowest estimate of deaths due to medical errors, with most of the medical errors stemming from flawed paperwork and medication administration.
Accidental gun deaths are below 1,000 a year. In 2005, last year they have numbers for, accidental firearms deaths numbered 789, according to the CDC WISQARS Mortality Reports.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html
So now that we have the right to guns, when do we get rid of the free-speech zones and get a vote in congress?
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic if you can keep it" responded Franklin.