The Constitution enables the people and restricts the state.

I am very pleased with this ruling after they got it COMPLETELY wrong the day before re: Child Rapists.

I remember reading about a guy who interviewed an English professor to get a completely objective interpretation of the second amendment based on the sentence structure and dictionary definition of each word for the time period. The professor broke down the second amendment into pieces and went through it with a fine-toothed come. In the end, the professor objectively concluded that it was indeed the individual’s right. The kicker is, the professor personally believed it was a collective right. Logically, since the Supreme Court ruling interprets the second amendment as an individual right, it is NOT an opinion to say they’re correct. (On a side note, hard as I try, I can’t find the interview with this guy on Google. I guess it’d help to remember his name…)

I’m glad they ruled the way they did, but I also wish they’d be more clear on the restrictions. We don’t need to hunt Bambi with M-16’s, and we don’t need some convoluted ambiguity on what we can and can’t shoot, either.

One related article worth pointing out is this one by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. She quoted a professor who thought the dissenters should have mockingly writen that the decision “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed” a la Scalia in his dissent in the Boumediene case. One could just as easily say that if this case had swung the other way that Scalia could have reused that same line to great effect.