This is so good....I had to post the whole thing.
I feel the joy!
From:
http://www.gunnewsdaily.com/news732.htmlExtracts of March 9, 2007 Second Amendment Ruling
On Washington DC Handgun Ban
Ban Ruled as a Violation of the Constitution (2nd Amendment)
(Decision by U.S. Federal Appeals Court)
Extract 1:
We start by considering the competing claims about the
meaning of the Second Amendment’s operative clause: “the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be
infringed.” Appellants contend that “the right of the people”
clearly contemplates an individual right and that “keep and bear
Arms” necessarily implies private use and ownership. The
District’s primary argument is that “keep and bear Arms” is best
read in a military sense, and, as a consequence, the entire
operative clause should be understood as granting only a
collective right. The District also argues that “the right of the
people” is ambiguous as to whether the right protects civic or
private ownership and use of weapons.
In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee
is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most
important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the
holders of the right—“the people.” That term is found in the
First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has
never been doubted that these provisions were designed to
protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion,
interference, or usurpation. We also note that the Tenth
Amendment—“The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”—indicates
that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of
distinguishing between “the people,” on the one hand, and “the
states,” on the other. The natural reading of “the right of the
people” in the Second Amendment would accord with usage
elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.
The District’s argument, on the other hand, asks us to read
“the people” to mean some subset of individuals such as “the
organized militia” or “the people who are engaged in militia
service,” or perhaps not any individuals at all—e.g., “the states.”
See Emerson, 270 F.3d at 227. These strained interpretations of
“the people” simply cannot be squared with the uniform
construction of our other Bill of Rights provisions.
Extract 2:
In sum, the phrase “the right of the people,” when read
intratextually and in light of Supreme Court precedent, leads us
to conclude that the right in question is individual. This
proposition is true even though “the people” at the time of the
founding was not as inclusive a concept as “the people” today.
Extract 3:
One authority cited by the District has attempted to equate
“keep” with “keep up,” a term that had been used in phrases
such as “keep up a standing army” or, as in the Articles of
Confederation, “every state shall keep up a well regulated and
disciplined militia . . . .” See Wills, supra, at 66. The argument
that “keep” as used in “the right of the people to keep . . . Arms”
shares a military meaning with “keep up” as used in “every state
shall keep up a well regulated militia” mocks usage, syntax, and
common sense. Such outlandish views are likely advanced
because the plain meaning of “keep” strikes a mortal blow to the
collective right theory. Turning again to Dr. Johnson’s
Dictionary, we see that the first three definitions of “keep” are
“to retain; not to lose,” “to have in custody,” “to preserve; not to
let go.” Johnson, supra, at 540. We think “keep” is a
straightforward term that implies ownership or possession of a
functioning weapon by an individual for private use.
Extract 4:
A knock on the Ninth Circuit Court's "Militia" interpretation:
As we noted above, the “Militia” was vast, including all
free, white, able-bodied men who were properly enrolled with
a local militia officer. By contrast, the Ninth Circuit has
recently (and we think erroneously) read “Militia” to mean a
“state-created and state-organized fighting force” that excludes
the unorganized populace. Silveira, 312 F.3d at 1069. As Judge
Kleinfeld noted, the Ninth Circuit’s decision entirely ignores
Miller’s controlling definition of the militia. 328 F.3d at 578
(dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). The Ninth
Circuit’s interpretation of “Militia” also fails to account for the
second Militia Act of 1792, id. at 578-82, as well as local
federal militia units such as those provided for by the Northwest
Ordinance, see Act of Aug. 7, 1789, ch. VIII, 1 Stat. 50, or for
the District of Columbia in 1803, Act of March 3, 1803, ch. XX,
2 Stat. 215.
Extract 5:
To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right
existed prior to the formation of the new government under the
Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for
activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being
understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the
depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from
abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the
important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the
citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient
for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to
placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right
facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be
barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth
for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second
Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects
are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s
enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or
intermittent enrollment in the militia.
Extract 6:
The modern handgun—and for that matter the rifle and
long-barreled shotgun—is undoubtedly quite improved over its
colonial-era predecessor, but it is, after all, a lineal descendant
of that founding-era weapon, and it passes Miller’s standards.
Pistols certainly bear “some reasonable relationship to the
preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” They are
also in “common use” today, and probably far more so than in
1789. Nevertheless, it has been suggested by some that only
colonial-era firearms (e.g., single-shot pistols) are covered by
the Second Amendment. But just as the First Amendment free
speech clause covers modern communication devices unknown
to the founding generation, e.g., radio and television, and the
Fourth Amendment protects telephonic conversation from a
“search,” the Second Amendment protects the possession of the
modern-day equivalents of the colonial pistol. See, e.g., Kyllo
v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31-41 (2001) (applying Fourth
Amendment standards to thermal imaging search).
