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We have multiple circuits where the courts have never, not once, struck a law down for violating the Second Amendment, and as it happens this court is in one of them, and as it happens these circuits are also home to the most draconian restrictions on the keeping and bearing of arms. IIRC, most (all?) of the other circuits have only found a small handful of laws to violate the Second Amendment, and that only very recently.
This state of affairs can be explained in two ways, it seems to me. One explanation is that the Second Amendment has been routinely ignored and violated in its substance, with only the most marginal protection afforded, and that quite recently. The other explanation is that none of the many, many, many laws restricting firearms use or ownership enacted and enforced in the history of our legal system have ever violated the protections afforded by the Second Amendment in any way that demanded formal response except very recently and in the most marginal sense. If this is your argument, then my response is that the Constitution appears worthless to me, and I am opposed both to appealing to its protection and to assenting to such appeals by others from this point on. As it happens, this latter point is my actual position.
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
There has been no meaningful legal appeal available for much of the nation's history, and there is no observable meaningful legal appeal in large portions of the country even now. Point to the examples of "meaningful legal appeals" to the Second Amendment, compared to, say, the First Amendment.
The second Amendment does not protect my right to keep and bear arms. My arms protect my right to keep and bear arms. I have guns because I and many others have made it clear that if Blues attempt to disarm us, we are plausibly willing to coordinate meanness against them on a level they would prefer not to risk. Amusingly, it appears that this reality is probably easier to export to other countries than the amendment itself, and I both hope it happens and am dedicated to assisting in the process.
Yes. Once one realizes that procedural outcomes can be manipulated, one is free to manipulate them. This is not evidence that procedure is even weakly deterministic. It is possible to create a system where the Law is a whore, and it is good to recognize when one is, as we are, living within such a system.
Are you familiar with the phrase "the check is in the mail"? How would you describe its meaning?
Your statement is compatible with any level of rectification all the way down to none at all. In reality, the slower rectification comes, the less confident we should be that it is coming at all, and the less trust we should place in the systems that purport to provide it. If the efficacy of rectification mechanisms are in doubt, the proper course of action is not to assume everything is fine, it is to begin poking and jostling the machine with increasing fervor until it delivers meaningful results.
On the other hand, if one derives direct benefit from the breakdown of the rectification machine, the obvious course of action is to build a fence around the machine to prevent anyone from inspecting it too closely, to play soothing music for those waiting in line, to put a curtain up around the output so that those in line can't observe what the individuals being served actually receive, and generally to make loud statements that everything is working totally fine and anyone who says differently is a scammer or a troublemaker.
This is a laughable statement. You appear to be claiming that the freest country at any point in time is the maximum level of freedom one can reasonably ask for. I do not think you actually believe this in any consistent way. I do not believe you would apply this logic to, say, England when it debated banning slavery.
My freedom is not granted to me by the state, but rather is innate to me as a human. There is no objective measure of my freedom, only my own reason and prudence. I do not need your permission to conclude that the level of freedom you and your tribe are willing to grant me is unacceptably low, nor to coordinate meanness with my tribe in an effort to secure the level of freedom you seek to deny us. To the extent that many millions of my fellow tribals are persuaded to see things my way and not yours, the question becomes whether you would prefer to grant us the freedom we demand, or accept increasingly severe levels of conflict to preserve your preferred status quo.
Again, I stand by this statement:
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