Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw) Guest Blogger
I have discussed the Second Amendment and the difficulties I have in allowing citizens to own semi-automatic weapons and large capacity clips of ammunition in the past, but Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a recent Fox News interview, just took my concern over semi-automatic weapons and shot it down.. with a shoulder firing rocket!
“Referring to the recent shooting in Aurora, CO, host Chris Wallace asked the Supreme Court Justice about gun control, and whether the Second Amendment allows for any limitations to gun rights. Scalia admitted there could be, such as “frighting” (carrying a big ax just to scare people), but they would still have to be determined with an 18th-Century perspective in mind. According to his originalism, if a weapon can be hand-held, though, it probably still falls under the right to “bear arms”:
WALLACE: What about… a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute?
SCALIA: We’ll see. Obviously the Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.
WALLACE: How do you decide that if you’re a textualist?
SCALIA: Very carefully.” Think Progress
OK. I get it now. Under Justice Scalia’s originalist reading of the Constitution, he might not allow you to carry a big Axe around to frighten people, but a shoulder firing rocket launcher might be legal! At what point do we decide that public safety just might trump a radical reading of the Constitution? This is the same justice that opined in the District of Columbia v. Heller case that reasonable restrictions to the Second Amendment might be allowed by the Court. Heller
Maybe Justice Scalia needs to see the photos of the carnage a semi-automatic weapon or a shoulder fired rocket launcher can create. Under this thinking, RPG’s might be legal for all citizens to own and carry. Grenades can be hand-held and therefore under Justice Scalia’s warped sense of thinking, they too might be legal for citizens to carry. Do we draw the limit at briefcase nukes that can be carried in one’s hand?
Obviously the theory that Justice Scalia is promoting can be carried to extreme and hilarious lengths. The real scary part is that Justice Scalia doesn’t understand how hilarious and dangerous his concepts are in the real world. I am also confused why Scalia is allowed by Chief Justice Roberts to go on Fox News and opine about issues that just may end up in front of the Supreme Court. Isn’t this interview evidence that Justice Scalia has already made up his mind on the issue of other portable weapons?
What do you think of these comments by Justice Scalia and does his concept of originalism go too far? Since Justice Scalia thinks that these kind of weapons may be legal, is it too far-fetched to wonder if the current crop of right-wing Militia’s are free to purchase these kind of weapons, even if they hope to use them against the government?
Additional Reference: Prof. Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago
leejcaroll,
Too bad for you. It was already tipped.
If he was really smart he wouldnt tip his hand.
Mike Spindell 1, July 29, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Has anyone ever told you that you should go to ComPsych? I’m not going.
Mike S. Good description. Another way of saying much the same: his ego is bigger than his brain.
I read this and realize that Scalia is a supremely stupid man in this sense. One can be extremely intelligent, extremely well-educated and have extremely great knowledge, while at the same time being supremely stupid. Stupidity as I define it is the inability to recognize that there are viewpoints different from ones’ own that might possibly be valid. Being supremely stupid is to be so absolutely convinced of your own superior insight, that all other views pale in comparison to yours. The supremely stupid are the most dangerous to us all in that they are so covinced of their “superior” intelligence that they never fear doing harm.
To have parsed the 2nd amendment as hand-held weaponry is just plain silly.
It is not the size nor content of the weapon in the hand that concerns me so much. It is the size and content of the brain controlling the hand that controls the weapon.
…… George W Bush comes to mind…..
Maybe we are looking at this backwards, citizens should have the right to bear arms and governments can’t! ….I bet the governments then would be more responsive to the needs of the citizens. 😮
Bad idea. Give me some Navy ammo.
Thanks OS I thought it was around that time that it was invented but that it was not widely used until later.
Raff, the missile is the ammunition. As for launchers, there are some rifles that are fitted with a grenade launcher. Those look like overgrown shotgun shells. Most rocket propelled grenades need a tube launcher. The famous Russian RPG-7 you see on the news from the Middle East is so simple a child can operate it, literally.
Here is a segment from the Military Channel. (annoying lead-in commercial warning):
Just make sure you stay out of the way of the doves so you can shoot them with a little bird shot gun after they’re let out of the cage. Make sure you don’t catch a lead pellet in your face.
Lotta and OS,
Isn’t the missile just the ammo for the launcher? Isn’t an RPG launcher incorporated into military guns already?
At least his thinking is consistent; he also thinks that there is no generalized right to privacy and that the Griswold decision is wrong. The framers did not anticipate abortion. No doubt their wives, or women in general did: various plants as abortifacients and useful in birth control have been valued world-wide for thousands of years, but to Scalia I’m sure that doesn’t count. Probably to the framers too, i suspect that men never got too involved in nuts and bolts of ‘women’s business’ for the overwhelming length of human history.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/29/scalia-suggests-women-have-no-right-to-contraception/
OS, you make an interesting point regarding the launcher (which may be legal as a hand-held weapon in Scalia’s frame of logic) but that the actual missile, as ordnance, is illegal. I read your comment and thought, ‘I’ve heard something like that before’:
Darren,
Why do you think the .22 will be a single shot? Whatever works best.
I would say Title 26 USC Section 5845 would effectively regulate the shoulder fire rocket launcher as a destructive device (4 ounces of propellant for the rocket and 1/4 ounce charge for the warhead) So from a statutory point of view it would certainly be illegal.
I belive the intent is to differenciate what can be regulated without a global ban on all or significantly all firearms. The contention seems to be in how the regulation is applied.
One side of the firearms debate wants no guns and the other wants freedom to own guns. I would find it very hard to accept the vast majority of the latter would be comfortable wtih Stinger AA rockets as being free to buy anywhere but the latter fears a death by a thousand cuts by chipping away one step at a time until no guns are allowed. This is the reason the semi-automatic rifle issue is a hot button for them. It represents that if the semi automatic rifle is taken away, the rifle, the handgun, the shotgun and the single shot .22 will be next.
Isn’t it odd that your Plutocrats haven’t organised a change to the 2nd Amendment yet? The only thing they have to fear is the disenfranchised citizen wanting his future back.
Something will be done about the 2nd Amendment in the USofA when rich people (or celebrities perhaps) start getting shot en masse by poor people.
If you’re an originalist, isn’t an individual right to bear arms more plausibly derived from the Ninth or Tenth amendment?
If there is an individual right to bear arms contained in the Second Amendment, it is because of precedent. The text is clearly about militia.
“Isn’t this interview evidence that Justice Scalia has already made up his mind on the issue of other portable weapons?”
Scalia has repeatedly proven he is a right wing ideologue. If for no other reason he is proof of why Obama needs a second term. (Since Bader Ginsberg, for one, has announced plans to retire)
Scalia is also proof perfect of the prof’s assertion that the way the court is made up needs to be changed.
OS it is an alternate uiniverse, he has a job for life, pretty much no matter what he does.
A U.S. Navy warship brought down a civilian Iranian airplane by mistake. Bad day.
Don’t take over our embassy. That’s an act of war. Don’t shoot down civilian airplanes.
What struck me most odd about Scalia’s comments, was that he said a cannon would not be allowed because the amendment says ‘to bear arms.’ This seems like an odd side bar to me, to carve out this distinction, and therefore likely to be some lynchpin in the structure of his second amendment positions.
What relevance does this specific notion of ‘to bear arms’ being to actually carry a weapon, have to the current debate on the ability to regulate certain types of weaponry? I would think that ‘to bear arms’ would apply to a cannon drawn behind a horse to be used in battle, to a weapon carried by more than one person, to a weapon that was pushed or pulled, and other armaments.
I have heard the argument that ‘to bear arms’ was relevant to military activity around the time of the writing of the constitution, but do not recall it being used so specially for carrying by a person.
I don’t know of any instance where a gun has killed anyone.