D.C. vs Heller Amicus Brief - I would have signed it

[tekkierich]

For the Record, Candidate Matthews Would Sign the D.C. vs Heller Amicus Brief (http://www.richardmatthews.org/read/?For-the-Record-I-Would-Sign-the-DC-vs-Heller-Amicus-Brief-3762)

My Democratic opponent "Dutch" Ruppersberger did not sign this brief. Ron Paul did along with the majority of his colleagues.


From the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020703689.html)

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 8, 2008; Page A02

A majority of the Senate and more than half of the members of the House will file a brief today urging the Supreme Court to uphold a ruling that the District's handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), who led the effort to file the friend-of-the-court brief, said her staff could not find another instance in which such a large portion of Congress had taken a position on an issue before the court.

"This court should give due deference to the repeated findings over different historical epochs by Congress, a co-equal branch of government, that the amendment guarantees the personal right to possess firearms," their brief contends.

"The District's prohibitions on mere possession by law-abiding persons of handguns in the home and having usable firearms there are unreasonable."

District of Columbia v. Heller, scheduled for argument March 18, offers the Supreme Court a chance to settle years of debate over whether the Second Amendment -- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" -- guarantees an individual right to possess firearms or a "collective" civic right related to military service.

[Flash The Cash]

The fundamental principle of construction adopted in D. C. v. Heller was cherry picked by the five activists from United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931).


In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931)

--D. C. v. Heller

Since the five activists believe that it is the controlling authority on the principles of Constitutional interpretation, let's take a closer look at the case of UNITED STATES V. SPRAGUE. Here's the paragraph from U. S. v. Sprague opinion from which the activists claim to have obtained the principle.


The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical, meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition. Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 30; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet. 410; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U. S. 13; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U. S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U. S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U. S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U. S. 655; Story on the Constitution (5th ed.) § 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations (2d ed.) pp. 61, 70.


The Sprague Court was apparently articulating a rule of interpretation it derived from eight previous Supreme Court opinions, a section from Joseph Story's Commentaries and two page from Thomas Cooley's Constitutional Limitations. None of the sources citied in Sprague actually contain a sentence which reads, "The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical, meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition."

The rule espoused in Sprague doesn't exclude the application of other rules when the meaning of a word, term, phrase, clause or other element of language is still dubious after applying the meanings that are normally and ordinarily given to the words. This is just common sense, because many words have more that one normal and ordinary meaning. The word "right", for instance, is commonly used to signify over more than a half dozen intellectual ideas.

The five activists, judging from their snub of the second element of the principle advocated by the Sprague Court, seem to hold the view that words which have more than one meaning don't need further interpretation, which is of course, absurd. The activists, unless they are as dumb as rocks, know that the Second Amendment contains words that are going to still be dubious after applying the normal and ordinary meanings. For example, the normal and ordinary meaning of the word "people" is "persons collectively or in general." Applying that meaning to the word "people" makes the Second Amendment mean "the right of persons collectively or in general to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", which just don't sound right.

The activists don't want to be bound by any objective rules or principles when they ascertain the meaning of dubious words in the Second Amendment. They want to be able to give free rein to their personal views and put meanings on the words that will produce the outcome their little activist hearts desire.