Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by kellory
The Right to Bare Arms predates the Bill of Rights. It is a guarantee that government can not take that Right away, and that the Right EXISTS as a stated fact.


I hate to rain on your parade but the foregoing statement is hopelessly naive. Personal convictions, opinions, and wishful thinking aside, the government and courts ultimately define what "rights" exist under the Constitution, depending on which way the political winds happen to be blowing at any particular moment. The government and courts can (and routinely do) decide whether a purportedly "immutable" Constitutional right exists and, if so, to what extent. Consequently, neither the 2nd Amendment, nor any other provision of the Constitution, is secure from abrogation by the government.

My unhappy observation is based on practicing law for thirty years.

That's not the understanding of the Framers of that document. To them, governments are powerless to alter our preexisting rights (that to keep and bear arms being one), even if they come to wrongfully possess the power to suppress those rights by suppressing the liberty to exercise them. All doing so accomplishes, however, is to negate the legitimacy of the government that does it.