legal news, national news

Ginsburg: 2nd Amendment is ‘outdated’

2 Comments

Some of the weapons collected in Wednesday's Los Angeles Gun Buyback event are showcased Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012 during a news conference at the LAPD headquarters in Los Angeles. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office says the weapons collected Wednesday included 901 handguns, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns and 75 assault weapons. The buyback is usually held in May but was moved up in response to the Dec. 14 massacre of students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

This came across my radar screen this afternoon.

I offer it here without comment. The thoughts belong to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed to the court in 1993 by President Clinton.

She said:Ā “The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia … Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. And the states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment.”

Then she said:Ā “When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function, its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own. So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So … the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.”

She said more in an interview:

http://www.wnyc.org/story/second-amendment-outdated-justice-ginsburg-says/

I’m wondering about Justice Ginsburg’s argument on the Second Amendment.

If what she says is true, thatĀ the amendmentĀ “has become obsolete,” is she making a “strict constructionist” argument for interpreting the U.S. Constitution?

Your thoughts?

2 thoughts on “Ginsburg: 2nd Amendment is ‘outdated’”

  1. If you are willing to interpret the intent of the second amendment, you may note that the founders were wary of a tyrannical government. The high handed ways of the current administration give pause to anyone who values the freedoms that remain to us. Disarming the American people would simply streamline the descent of our society via one of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” Rather than legislating from the bench, there is a constitutionally acceptable means of eliminating “outdated” law, called the constitutional amendment.

    1. Thanks for your comment. I always am intrigued, though, by the use of the “disarm” when this subject comes up. I don’t recall Justice Ginsburg advocating we take guns away from those of us who own them. As for Saul Alinsky, he’s nowhere near the mainstream. Thanks again.

Comments are closed.