Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Where do you stand on banning guns? [View all]TPaine7
(4,286 posts)It is not discarding the first part of the Second Amendment to interpret it the way the Supreme Court and the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did.
In fact, people in the Founder's time would have found the way many honest people interpret it today strange indeed. Preambles and purpose clauses do not limit the scope of a law unless the operative portion is unclear. Since "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is clear, the purpose clause does not limit its meaning.
The way laws, consitutions and even contracts are interpreted hasn't changed since the Constitution was writen, it's just that writing in that way is much less common today. However, consider a simple analogy.
A father's last will and testament is read. One of the paragraphs reads as follows:
The purpose clause"Since competence in accounting is necessary to the management of an accounting firm and Susan is the only one of my children who is a certified public accountantcontains not a shred of direction.
A court would interpret this exactly as if it read: "I leave my company to {Susan} provided that she must take a salary of no more than $150,000 per annum adjusted for inflation and share the profits equally with her siblings." The court would not be ignoring the first part, it would be reading it exactly as it was written. It would be enforcing every instruction that the first clause contained; it is not the court's problem that the first clause contained no instruction whatsoever. If the clause contains no instruction, one cannot be created by the court and injected to avoid "ignoring" the clause.
Now let's say that Susan's brother Jim went to school and got his CPA. Let's say he went to a better school than the one Susan attended and got better grades. Let's say he then wanted to take over the company, or at least to share control with her.
He could argue that the first part of the sentencethe purpose clauseis no longer true. He would be right. He could also argue that since the first part is no longer rightSusan is no longer the only one of his father's children who is a CPAthe operative clause is no longer binding. But that logic would not work in court.
The purpose clause cannot overule or change the scope of a clear directive.