I said I would get into guns in my this posting and so I will.

There is a case (District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290) which the Supreme Court will be deciding coming up later this year. As currently constituted, it will be ruling on the following issue: Does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to have a gun for private use, or does it only guarantee a collective right to have guns in an organized military force such as a state National Guard unit?

From the Court's own blog, here is how the Court phrased the granted issue:

“Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

The first listed section bars registration of pistols if not registered before Sept. 24, 1976; the second bars carrying an unlicensed pistol, and the third requires that any gun kept at home must be unloaded and disassembled or bound by a lock, such as one that prevents the trigger from operating.

The Court did not mention any other issues that it might address as questions of its jurisdiction to reach the ultimate question: did the one individual who was found to have a right to sue — Dick Anthony Heller, a D.C. resident — have a right to challenge all three of the sections of the local law cited in the Court’s order, and, is the District of Columbia, as a federal enclave, even covered by the Second Amendment. While neither of those issues is posed in the grant order, the Court may have to be satisfied that the answer to both is affirmative before it would move on to the substantive question about the scope of any right protected by the Amendment."

I'd like to raise my hand here and interrupt with an observation: THE INDIVIDUAL'S RIGHT HAS BEEN RENDERED MOOT BY ANY UNDERLYING ISSUE. This underlying issue is simply whether the police power of the state allows it to modify the meaning and practice of the Second Amendment even and especially if the Supreme Court rules in favor of an individual's right to own their own gun.

My interpretation is that it does and I'll explain why in very simple terms. First though I feel I should interject a definition of the police power to which I referred. Since the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1787, it has been understood that the federal nature of the government set forth by the Constitution effectively created a system of dual sovereignty. This implies that both the national, and state governments have powers that are peculiarly their own, and that can not be exercised by the other sphere of government. Powers granted to the federal government are enumerated within the Constitution itself. However the federal nature of the United States form of government grants the remaining powers to the state governments. Among those powers which are held by the state governments is the so called “police power.” This power grants the states the right to police their citizenry in the interest of their health, safety, welfare and morality.

Now if you'll take a look at the Second Amendment, it is not a long statement even though its interpretation has conflicted our citizens for two centuries. I contend that we as a society composed of liberals, moderates and conservatives have all for quite some time approved a modification to the Second Amendment without argument or strife. What am I talking about you ask? What I am talking about is that if we accept that individuals may own guns, nowhere in the Second Amendment does it prohibit the ownership of guns by convicted felons. Yet, our states for many, many years have exercised their police powers to ban felon ownership of guns. So the line has been crossed and accepted by all that the state has a right to do this. Which means that the argument should not be on absolute ownership rights but should be on how far does the police power extend and whether each individual governmental state has the right to control those powers and rights within its respective borders.

If a state has the right to ban ownership by a class of citizens it has already defined, then any state has the right to control, modify or ban ownership of any other class of citizen it may choose to define. Think about that for awhile and I'll be back another time to talk about why I don't think it's workable to try to ban guns altogether and my own suggestion on how we should proceed.

Well, this is going to be kind of fun...I think. I have always wanted to write and comment on events and trends going on in our political and governmental world from what I hope will be a little bit different point of view. I say it that way because while I consider myself a liberal, I find that my viewpoint isn't always on the same wavelength as my fellow liberals. That doesn't necessarily mean I am conservative either but that I could be askew from both.

Besides politics, I will also occasionally stray into sports and entertainment because I have basically been a jock and a movie/tv fan all of my life. I hope to have some fun with that too.

By fun, I mean that I expect I will engender some lively discussion from anyone who reads what I write and that some hackles will maybe be raised. If any of us cares about or believes in something then it deserves to be brought out and examined if any of us intends to proselytize other people with it. If someone in the public eye mostly keeps it close to their vest, then my comments will be kept to a minimum regarding their viewpoint. There are a huge number of other subjects to get into or people to lambaste.

My background? Well I am an estate planning (wills, trusts, powers of attorney, living wills, probate, etc.) and business law attorney and have been for fourteen years. Prior to that I sold life and health insurance for about fifteen years. So I have been dealing with family and business issues for about three decades. That is important in one respect in that I will be talking a lot about health insurance and our health care system in the United States and I wanted to establish some credentials before I started. We have some serious problems that are simply not being addressed by most of our airheaded and cowardly politicians on both sides of the aisle. (By the way, I will belabor anyone, liberal or conservative, who I feel doesn't step up to the plate to do what I feel they should be doing.) Because they are in power now, conservatives, however, will be in my sights a lot. Especially the Bushies and all of their cohorts.

I have written enough for now as I need to go do what I can to stimulate the economy but I will be back to discuss the gun case now in front of the Supreme Court with a viewpoint I have not yet heard being brought up and I will definitely be talking about our health care system very soon. I have a plan which I can guarantee no one else has introduced and which I (ahem....modestly) believe can solve that problem.

Stay tuned.