Reply #100: Balls; the very notion of a "collective right" is an ad hoc fabrication [View All]

[Euromutt]

Despite the fact that the Bill of Rights refers in numerous instances to "the right of the people," the only instance in which proponents of the "collective right" interpretation apply that interpretation is when it comes to the Second Amendment. Somehow, nobody argues that "the right of the people <...> to petition the government for a redress of grievances" or "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" is anything other than an individual right, even though the language is no different from "the right of the people" in "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The presence of the prefatory clause in the Second Amendment, as opposed to the others, only serves to illustrate one difference, namely that--as opposed to the rights of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances and be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures--it is actively in the interest of the government, in the event that it should have to call forth the militia (and note that even in this day and age, "the militia" consists of more than the National Guard alone), to have available a pool of recruits who are already experienced with the skills of weapons handling and marksmanship.

I don't see Heller and MacDonald and being the equivalent of Plessey; they might well be the equivalent of Roe v. Wade, which, you may have noticed, has not been overturned, and is highly unlikely to be, which is why various state legislatures periodically try to find ways to impede access to abortion without running afoul of the ruling, not unlike the pretzel-like contortions the D.C. and Chicago city governments have been working themselves into to blatantly violate the spirit of the ruling while conforming to the letter.

Also, the Supreme Court, as an institution, has an inordinate amount of deference for the rulings of previous incarnations, including ones that are patently bullshit. It took 58 years to overturn Plessey, and the court still hasn't overturned the ruling from the Slaughter-House cases that held that the Fourteenth Amendment's privileges and immunities clause doesn't actually mean what it very obviously says. (As an aside, much as I dislike Clarence Thomas, I do have to give him credit for being willing say, in so many words, "Slaughter-House was a bullshit ruling and it's well overdue to be overturned.")