Missouri_Mike
Diamond Member
- Nov 5, 2012
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You know we had background checks back in the day that I think you would agree with. It was the no indians can have a gun background check. I'm sure you are familiar with that one and I'm sure you understand the results.However, if we read Justice Antonin Scalias opinion, we find that Second Amendment rights are not unlimited. Heres what the court said:
Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever, and for whatever purpose. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of arms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."
We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller [a 1939 ruling allowing restrictions upon sawed-off shotguns] said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those in common use at the time.
Those who contend that the amendment prohibits background checks, or control of military-type weapons, just havent read the case.
More: The Second Amendment: Case law doesn't preclude background checks | StarTribune.com