The Right Kind of Gun Rights

Ingrained in every American citizen is the incomparable desire for liberty; the Bill of Rights was implemented to grant and protect that liberty. 1st amendment court cases are constantly being reviewed, but as explained in a New York Times article for almost 70 years, the 2nd amendment has been interpreted as granting the "well regulated militia" the right to bear arms. Maybe, if the ratifiers had used more explicit punctuation this interpretation wouldn't be in question today, but the ambiguous commas in the Bill of Rights leave the ratifiers' intentions unclear.
Who has the right to bear arms? Only the militia or every individual.

Last year, the Court of Appeals for D.C. used the individual rights rational to strike down D.C's strict gun law. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and on November 20th, the Court accepted Heller v. District of Columbia for review.

Arguing in favor of D.C. is former acting solicitor general, Walter Dellinger. He takes us back to the time of the framers when arms was defined as military equipment. This argument doesn't appeal to 'swing voter' Justice Kennedy who has no problem viewing the amendment's 2 clauses as separate, the 2nd as enshrining a right to bear arms. Only 8 minutes into the argument, the Court held 5 votes to create a fundamental right to bear arms.

Alan Gura, making his debut at the high court, represents D.C. gun owners. Gura ends up conceding that regulations on certain weapons might make sense, but he still views the individual right to bear arms as a fundamental right at stake.

The lawyer in the middle, both figuratively and literally, is Paul Clemens, the solicitor general representing the president. He argues that the case should be revisited by the appeals court, so that the federal ban on machine guns won't be in danger. But, Justice Scalia isn't worried about machine guns and Vice President Dick Cheney even filed a brief urging the Court to affirm the gun-ban as unconstitutional.

Chief Justice John Roberts explained that setting an "all encompassing standard" is necessary since the Court is starting afresh on this topic. But, that doesn't make such a precedent any more predictable. Dellinger refocuses the Court with his rebuttal, reminding the justices that this is a case about local legislation; citizens of urban and rural areas are affected very differently by gun laws. Nevertheless, rather than allowing local legislators to thrash the issue out, the Robert Court's conservative majority (with Kennedy's vote) is creating a new constitutional right.