brettbellmore
2/5/2016 5:12 AM CST
Of course, the Heller "typically possessed" standard has a serious problem with it:
For some 70 years prior to the Heller case, the Supreme court routinely refused to take any case where the 2nd amendment was so much as mentioned. During that time, a large number of laws accumulated, which would likely never have survived had the 2nd amendment been actively enforced by the Court.
So the current facts on the ground, the types of guns that it is common or uncommon to own, is actually a result of laws whose constitutionality the Court was refusing to review! It's rather as though the Court had declared that segregation was presumptively ok because it was traditional, and ignored that it had only had the chance to become 'traditional' because the Court wasn't enforcing the 14th amendment all that time.
It's quite possible that, were it not for all those laws the Court was refusing to review, short barreled shotguns would be the preferred home defense weapon, and people would typically own whatever the common battle rifle of the US military was. Likely, even.
For some 70 years prior to the Heller case, the Supreme court routinely refused to take any case where the 2nd amendment was so much as mentioned. During that time, a large number of laws accumulated, which would likely never have survived had the 2nd amendment been actively enforced by the Court.
So the current facts on the ground, the types of guns that it is common or uncommon to own, is actually a result of laws whose constitutionality the Court was refusing to review! It's rather as though the Court had declared that segregation was presumptively ok because it was traditional, and ignored that it had only had the chance to become 'traditional' because the Court wasn't enforcing the 14th amendment all that time.
It's quite possible that, were it not for all those laws the Court was refusing to review, short barreled shotguns would be the preferred home defense weapon, and people would typically own whatever the common battle rifle of the US military was. Likely, even.
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