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From: jim@ll-xn.ARPA@oswald.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re: Tests of constitutionality
Message-ID: <12268565100.17.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 5-Jan-87 15:40:54 EST
Article-I.D.: RED.12268565100.17.MCGREW
Posted: Mon Jan  5 15:40:54 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 5-Jan-87 22:48:16 EST
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Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.edu

In a recent article, mwm%opal.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU writes:

>> Many people claim that the second amendment provides the general
>> populace a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  This is
>> demonstrably false.
>
>It would be interesting to see that demonstration.

O.K.  The Supreme Court doesn't have a monopoly on legal
interpretation of the U.S. constitution.  Every court, both federal
and state, is bound to enforce, and therefore to interpret, the
constitution.  The Supreme Court's interpretetions bind all lower
courts, but where the Supreme Court is silent, lower court rulings are
binding.  Without exception, every gun control case that has come
before the courts has denied the existence of a general right to keep
and bear arms.  Such a general right therefore does not exist.  Q.E.D.

>Aren't malleable rights fun?

Of course.  Constitutional rights are LEGAL rights, not NATURAL
rights, and are therefore quite mutable.  Before Roe v. Wade, there
was no constitutional right to an abortion.  Now, there is such a
right.  In future the Court may recind the constitutional right to an
abortion.

I merely assert that a general right to keep and bear arms does not
exist.  The question 'will such a right exist in the future?' is a
speculative one.  I see no groundswell of legal opinion in favor of
such a general right, so I think its estabishment unlikely in the near
future.

-- 
Jim Olsen   ...!{decvax,lll-crg,mit-eddie,seismo}!ll-xn!oswald!jim
---
Jim Olsen   ...!{decvax,lll-crg,mit-eddie,seismo}!ll-xn!oswald!jim

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