The Justice Department is suing Denver through the Second Amendment Section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, according to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon.“I have directed the Civil Rights Division, through our new Second Amendment Section, to defend law-abiding Americans from restrictions such as those we are challenging in these cases,” Dhillon said. “Law-abiding Americans, regardless of what city or state they reside in, should not have to live under threat of criminal sanction just for exercising their Second Amendment right to possess arms which are owned by tens of millions of their fellow citizens.”Denver’s ban, which has been in place for 37 years, bans so-called assault rifles and magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.“The Constitution is not a suggestion and the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “Denver’s ban on commonly owned semi-automatic rifles directly violates the right to bear arms.
It's rare for me to wish the Federal government luck in its attempts to meddle internally with the states; in general I have supported Jefferson's vision of a Federal government that 'looks out,' and deals with external threats or clashes between states only. However, as noted even in 2014:
We've added one more constitutional role to Jefferson's ideal, which is making sure that even within states government does not violate basic rights. Generally the Federal government has done this badly, but at times they've been the only one to do it at all.
I was thinking of course of Jim Crow style oppression by state and local governments when I wrote that, but it applies here also.
UPDATE: Hall favorite Harmeet Dhillon predicts SCOTUS will declare the AR-15 legal and constitutionally protected across the nation. It certainly ought.
4 comments:
Did we actually add it? Article IV Section 4 empowers, in fact commands, the Federal government guarantee each state maintain a Republican Form of government which at least indicates the Framers from the very beginning were not unconcerned about the actions states might take towards their citizens. I won't disagree that the list of concerns has expanded but the concern seems to be there from the start.
Maybe, depending on how widely you read "maintain a Republican form of government" as being a concern about "how the states treat their citizens." Since they were at that time thinking of "Republican" as especially a reference to the ancient Roman Republic, it certainly needn't entail anything like our own ideas about the word -- or the relationship between citizens and the state, for that matter. The franchise could be extremely limited among the citizenry, for example, and the state could both permit and practice slavery without violating the Roman rule. Those were the concerns that the 13-15th Amendments brought up.
However, it is true that this Jeffersonian notion -- like 'a high wall of separation between church and state' -- was from his letters, not the Constitution or Declaration. It was especially his idea, not 'their' idea.
If the Constitution declares rights granted by our creator and inalienable, and the states violate those rights, does not the Constitution essentially demand that the states be prohibited from violating said rights, at least in theory though not explicitly? Perhaps even explicitly though indirectly via the supremacy clause? It wouldn't make a lick of sense to say that yet allow states to violate those rights at will.
Notice that while the First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law ...", which is a limit on the federal government, the Second says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." There is no particular government body it applies to, so it seems to me to be a common right of all the citizens.
- Tom
Post a Comment