Bang!

In a mind-boggling and dangerous decision that positively defines the dreaded "judicial activism" and "mind-reading," a federal court has ignored seven decades of law and precedent to strike down a local ban on handguns as

a violation of the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms.

In its 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the amendment's guarantee belongs to individuals and was not a collective right limited to members of militias....

"The amendment does not protect the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms, but rather the right of the people," the majority opinion said. "If the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to imagine that they would have chosen the language they did."

The ruling, which overturns Washington, DC's 30-year old ban on keeping handguns in a home, was

the first time in American history that a Federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds,

according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The Court's logic was truly, well, I was initially thinking "odd" or "bizarre," but I think "ideologically-driven" is more accurate. The Second Amendment reads, in full, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The last time the Supreme Court directly addressed its meaning was in US v. Miller, in 1939. The Court said then that

[w]ith obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted with that end in view. [emphasis added]

Thus, the purpose of the amendment was to insure the ability of states to maintain militias. It is, that is, a collective right, not an individual one, which is what Washington argued in this case. But it must have been "opposite day" in DC, because the majority held that

the first clause was an explanation of the major purpose of the second clause, not a limitation on it.

"We ... take it as an expression of the drafters' view that the people possessed a natural right to keep and bear arms, and that the preservation of the militia was the right's most salient political benefit - and thus the most appropriate to express in a political document," the ruling said.

This reaches so far beyond logic as to become self-parody. The purpose of the reference to a militia was to point out the benefit of the amendment? Excuse me? Can the - ahem - justices of the majority cite one other place in the Constitution where a provision was in essence footnoted to declare the benefit arising from it? (And don't "Preamble" me; that referred to the entire document, not some provision of it.) Even in those cases where there was a specific benefit consciously intended - for example, putting a civilian, the president, in charge of the military - no such reference is made. So why here? Why in this one case?

There is no reason, no reason to expect it, no reason to conclude it - no reason other than ideological claptrap masquerading as judicial sobriety.

Stay tuned for the next case, where the DC Court finds that Uzis, AK-47s, hand grenades, and cyanide bombs are "arms" under the meaning of the Second Amendment.