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.