former Chief Justice Burger - individual right to bear arms was “one of the greatest pieces of

[farminator3000]

69. certainly!

it isn't the Times, look at the link. its says books. new york review of books.

the quote is from paragraph #7 from that link, i'm sure you didn't bother reading it:
Until that time, legal precedent and conventional wisdom held that the Second Amendment protected only a state’s right to maintain a militia, and not an individual’s right to bear arms independent of the state’s need for a militia. (The amendment provides, somewhat awkwardly and ambiguously, that “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.”) In 1991, former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative Republican, said that the idea that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to bear arms was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Yet just seventeen years later, in Heller, five justices proclaimed that the Framers had intended to protect an individual right to bear arms.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/sep/27/our-romance-guns/?pagination=false

does that look familiar? it is also in the OP.

those 2 meaningless words are NOT and BURGER, meaning it is not Burger, it is from the link below it.

that was followed by 3 questions, the first two serious, and the next humorous.

The author of the column claims that Burger said that. If true, where's the source?

see paragraph #7

In contrast, the actual reasoning of the Supreme Court can actually be found in the Heller opinion.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf
In the Heller case, if the District of Columbia had a quote from Burger claiming that the individual-right argument was based upon a fraud, did the Dist of Columbia use it? Somehow, that doesn't seem to be mentioned. Where in the opinion, if any place, can that be found?

if you expect me to believe you read past the 1st page (of 157 pages), show me.
i've never really heard a lawyer say in court "well, so and so said something in an interview"- that would be a bad lawyer, and they don't usually hang out in the SC.

burger gave his opinion on the nra to a reporter. i agree with him.

did you catch this part from your link? it's in the middle somewhere:

"Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.26"