Originally Posted by Cyrano  I don't know about the politicians, wun, but we do have one thing going for us you Brits didn't concerning gun ownership. The United States Constitution exists in written form. If you go to the Library of Congress, you can even see the original, hand-written document.
The British Constitution, as I understand it, exists in the minds of lawyers and politicians. It's not written down; merely the precedents the barristers and the government have established concerning it over the years. That in turn means that the British Consitution says whatever the party in powers wants it to say. Shades of George Orwell!
As you just saw, when the US Supreme Court was called upon to rule on just what the Second Amendment means they did not get to pick and choose what it said, or to rewrite the Second Amendment. They had to rule on the written words ratified in 1789. And that was what they did. We were fortunate that five of the nine justices did not have their heads up their asses and understood that their role in the American system of government is not to make law; it is to decide if a given law is in compliance with the US Constitution, as written and amended by the people themselves. (Because you're not a US citizen, you might not know that the supporters of a Consitutional amendment must obtain a 2/3rds majority of states voting yea to incorporate a proposed amendment into the Constitution, and they only have a few years - seven, if memory serves - to obtain that many states voting for the amendment. And it sometimes galls the supporters of a particular amendment that the vote from a place like Montana or Wisconsin, which has more deer than people, or a tiny state like Rhode Island, has just as equal a vote as a heavily populated state like New York or a big state like California.)
While it's true we've had "legislation from the Bench," e.g., the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized a woman's right to have an abortion if she wants one, as a group the American people don't hold with that kind of judicial activism. The want the Congress to make the laws, the President to enforce them, and the Supreme Court to decide if the laws are constitutional. Checks and balances; and mostly it works.
The DC v. Heller decision that affirmed the right to keep and bear arms in the United States is an absolute, individual right the government may not infringe upon, saving only that certain restrictions may be permitted at the state level based on a person's record; and that you must have a special license to own full-auto firearms. In essence, it preserved the status quo, but cut the ground out from under the antigunners. They will have a much harder time in the future trying to pass new antigun laws. And the existing unreasonable ones are open to legal challenge.
We would not be in this position today if the Constitution was not a written document. What you gunowners in the UK need to do is lobby your Members of Parliament for a law requring the British Constitution to be written down, voted on by the subjects of the British Crown, and thereafter require the laws passed by Parliament conform to it. It would give the House of Lords something to do, since with the reforms that took control of the budget out of their hands they are essentially superfluous. Make them the arbiters, a job equivalent to the Supreme Court here, and it might work for you, as I don't think the UK has a Supreme Court equivalent, save the Queen herself. What do you think? |
07-12-2008, 07:09 PM
