Unexpected consequences of killing the gun ban

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Techdirt | Supreme Court Decision On Guns May Cut Promoting Progress Out Of The Constitution

Again, so whether or not you’re happy with the way the court decided the Heller case, the fact that it has no problem deciding that a clause in the Constitution can be ignored as “preamble” could have very bad consequences for those of us pointing out that dangerous innovation-hindering intellectual property systems are against the Constitution.

A lot has been said about the Supreme Court’s decision that the DC gun ban is unconstitutional, but this is the first time I’ve heard mention of the effects that this precedent might have on other legislation. I don’t much like guns in the house. I don’t want them in my house. I don’t think you should have them in your house, either, but I think you should have a right to have them if you want to. And I don’t think the repeal of the gun ban is going to have a significant effect on the number of guns in the city. My feeling on the constitutionality of the law is that it probably wasn’t. As written, I think you can make a strong argument that the amendment doesn’t say that everyone should be allowed to have a gun. However, it has been interpreted for years to say that it does. Unless we amend the amendment, I think we have to allow people to posses guns. I think we should amend it - not necessarily to ban guns, but to remove the controversy. It should be very clear what the amendment does and doesn’t allow. We’ve been arguing over it long enough. I’m not sure I’d be happy with what the present political climate in the federal government would come up with, though, so maybe we should wait until things are a little more sane. In any event, I hope this doesn’t open the floodgates to picking and choosing which parts of the Constitution are relevant and which aren’t. Awful intellectual property laws are bad, but there are a lot of other parts of the Constitution that we’d all be even sorrier to be without.

Posted in: complaint , dc , harvardstreet , politics