Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Breyer: Founding Fathers Would Have Allowed Restrictions on Guns Read more: htt

If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court's decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case "D.C. v. Heller."

Breyer wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said historians would side with him in the case because they have concluded that Founding Father James Madison was more worried that the Constitution may not be ratified than he was about granting individuals the right to bear arms.

Madison "was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. 'That can't happen,' said Madison," said Breyer, adding that historians characterize Madison's priority as, "I've got to get this document ratified."

Therefore, Madison included the Second Amendment to appease the states, Breyer said.

"If you're interested in history, and in this one history was important, then I think you do have to pay attention to the story," Breyer said. "If that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right. And I think more of the historians were with us."

That being the case, and particularly since the Founding Fathers did not foresee how modern day would change individual behavior, government bodies can impose regulations on guns, Breyer concluded.

In July 2008, the concurring opinion in "D.C. v. Heller" written by Justice Antonin Scalia and shared by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. found that the district's ban on handgun possession at home "violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense."

The ruling raised concerns by dissenters like Breyer that gun laws nationwide would be thrown out. That has not happened yet.

Breyer, who just published "Making Our Democracy Work," a book about the role of the court in American life, outlined his judicial philosophy as one in which the court must take a pragmatic approach in which it "should regard the Constitution as containing unwavering values that must be applied flexibly to ever-changing circumstances."

Since the Founding Fathers could not foresee the impact of modern day communications and technology, the only option is to take the values of the Founding Fathers and apply them to today's challenges.

"The difficult job in open cases where there is no clear answer is to take those values in this document, which all Americans hold, which do not change, and to apply them to a world that is ever changing," Breyer said. "It's not a matter of policy. It is a matter of what those framers intended."

He suggested that those values and intentions mean that the Second Amendment allows for restrictions on the individual, including an all-out ban on handguns in the nation's capital.

"We're acting as judges. If we're going to decide everything on the basis of history -- by the way, what is the scope of the right to keep and bear arms? Machine guns? Torpedoes? Handguns?" he asked. "Are you a sportsman? Do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland. There is no problem, I don't think, for anyone who really wants to have a gun."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...allowed-restrictions-guns/#ixzz17wO5GGJm

What a freakin AZZHAT!

"Breyer: Founding Fathers Would Have Allowed Restrictions on Guns"

LOL a total spin based on BS.

regardless of Madison's motives for inclusion of the 2nd amendment, the amendment was included...

to presume that such an amendment is not valid, or does not mean what it says, because of any motive of the authors, is to say that anyone who, in the course of proceedings, makes a promise while having personal reservations may nullify such promise at will, according to how he wished the proceeding had gone...

perhaps the states would not have ratified the constitution without the 2nd... i applaud their foresight...

From watching a couple of Breyer's interviews it seems that his ideology sometimes blinds him as to what the Constitution really says.

I live in fear that Obama will get to appoint another SC justice.

uppity little bastards, aren't those States???

and now hussein has added two more to the Court that reflect that view as well. Thank God they replaced other liberals.

The tipping point will be his next appointment. Don't be surprised to see hussein get his gun control agenda with that.

[bleep] the idiots that said that hussein was not anti gun, and that he would not seek a ban.

Justice Breyer suffers from a common Liberal ailment:

Terminal Anal/Cranial Inversion.

I saw the interview. He had a copy of the constitution and actually held it up and said "the answeres aren't written on these pages, but we have to look at what they would have done today" when talking about the 1st amendment etc....

If he isn't getting the answers from what is written in the constitution it's time to go.

What would they have done today? Started a new Revolution to oust thier azzes!

Breyer is another liberal elitist who subscribes to the notion that the Constitution is not a foundation, but a "living document" that must morph with the times. That strained line of thinking is simply a rationalization that allows the far left to try to fit their Marxist paradigm into a decidedly anti Marxist founding document.

With this as a base for his thoughts, he is incapable of objective thought, like may other of his liberal brethern. He sees only what he wants to see, hears only what he wants to hear, and reads not the words to discren meaning but reads his own meaning into those words.

This kind of indivudual is not capable ever admitting a contary view. This kind of thinking is what gives us "situational ethics", where there is never any right or wrong, only shades of gray.

Notice that he focuses on a tortured analysis of what he says was Madison's objection to the Second, rather than putting Madison's commentary into the proper perspective of being mere dicta in Madison's primary comments involving getting the Constitution ratified.

Breyer should have kept his mouth shut. Better to sit silently and let people think you the fool, than open your mouth and dispel all doubt.

I agree Breyer is not interpreting the constitution, he his interjecting his political agenda

Translation - He knows that the founders intentions of the constitution for it to be concrete, forever, but he would still like to play ala carte and as he feels needed.

"unwavering values that must be applied flexibly"

That'd be like me saying "water is always wet unless I prefer it to be dry at times."

He has one thing right. The bill of rights was added in order to garner support for acceptance of the constitution. However he can't just decide that in modern society things are different so we need to change how we interpretation it. If that was true then why have any constitution? If the constitution needs to be changed then there is a method to amend it.

Breyer is rearguing the losing side of Heller.....his living constitution spiel doesn't convince anybody but other liberals.


you can google up the video of Scalia debating him on this, and he gets his ass handed to him every time they do it.

Maybe we need some States to begin declaring all taxpayers and State property owners militia, .

That might lead to complications of enforcing Federal tax levies though,......... circa the 1860's! The Supreme Court wasn't much help with resolving that problem either, IRC!

What a dink.
Making our DEMOCRACY work? It's a freaking REPUBLIC YOU MORON.

And you should watch in interview. What a twit:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4456313/justice-stephen-breyer-on-fns/?playlist_id=86858

So in he doesn't say that Madison didn't believe the second should be in the bill of rights, nor did he believe that people don't have a natural right to arms, but just that he thought the amendment would hinder passage.


Of course the argument of arms ownership is not only under the 2nd, it can also be made under the 9th. The people have both a natural right to self protection, and to throw off an oppressive government. They must have the means to effect that right. To say that they have the right, but to debar them the means to exercise that right, renders the right moot. Much the same as having freedom of the press, but outlawing any writing or printing instrument. Or, worse yet, licensing those instruments only to those that pass some test, or who agree with the government.

Even after Heller, the Libs are STILL trying to argue the "militia" BS when it comes to the 2nd Amendment.

Look, do most of you guys think the 1st Amendment was written so that Larry Flynt could publish porn or rap/rock stars could use the F-word in their music??? Hell no it wasn't. It was put there to protect political speech against the government, not speech for "entertainment" purposes. Despite this, the 1st Amendment still protects this kind of "speech".

Now the libs want to change the rules when it comes to interpreting the 2nd Amendment vs. how they intrpret the 1st Amendment. They say it's only to protect arms for "militia purposes". Why the hell should it matter??? I don't care if you own guns for self-defense, militia purposes, hunting, or just because you like them. The right to own them should still be protected, no matter what the reason. By the same token, speech is protected, whether it is for political, artistic, or entertainment reasons.