Re:Even Epik says the Texas abortion “whistleblower” site vi...
by bryanlarsen on Thursday September 09, 2021 @05:39PM
(#28474988)
The second amendment is neither clear nor absolute. For example the constitutionality of an assault weapons ban is still unclear. Your point would stand if Massachusetts banned the right to bear arms. However, if they banned everything but single shot rifles, it comes back to precedent. Like the Texas law, it's obviously unconstitutional based on precedent, but not obviously unconstitutional based on the text of the amendment alone.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Even Epik says the Texas abortion “whistleblower” site vi...
by lliamander on Friday September 10, 2021 @03:09PM
(#28485813)
All laws require some interpretation in their enforcement, but this is pretty blatant equivocation.
Aside from some archaic language, the second amendment is actually fairly clear. It is clearly talking about guns, and the phrase "shall not be infringed" is fairly strong, clear language.
On the other hand, the 14th amendment say nothing about abortion, and there's no reason to suggest the authors of that amendment had abortion in mind when they wrote it.
That does not mean that such a right does not exist, or that it needs to be explicitly mentioned in the Constitution to receive protection, but any judge who wants to assert that such a right exists is going to have to do a lot more work than one who wants to assert the existence of an individual right to own guns, even "assault weapons" (which is a largely nonsense category anyway).