Sonia Sotomayor vs the Second Amendment

    It appears as though Sonia Sotomayor is no friend of the second amendment. Earlier this year she ruled that the second amendment of the bill of rights doesn’t guarantee that states have to abide by the constitution and that an individual does not have the right to keep and bear arms.

It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right,” said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, “it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state

  As someone who believes that the federal government has become too strong and that more power needs to be returned to the states I can almost sympathize with this opinion. Almost.  But there are certain rights that are guaranteed to the people of all states and the bill of rights was written to ensure that the rights of the people  could not be taken away.

   The fourteenth amendment of the constitutions states that  “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States … nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

   Sonia Sotomayor conveniently forgot to read the fourteenth amendment of the constitution which basically states that a state cannot take away  the rights of the people that are guaranteed in the constitution.

  Her ruling also is in contrast to the recent Supreme Court ruling in Heller vs District of Columbia which ruled that the right to bear arms was an individual right. She neglected to use Supreme Court precedent in her ruling.

  Here is what the Supreme Court ruled in Heller vs DC:

The Second Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, “guarantee(s) the right of the individual to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’”
 
“There seems to us no doubt,” the Supreme Court said, “that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Is it any wonder that the president is trying to rush Maria Sotomayor’ s confirmation process along? Thankfully Justice Souter was a dissenter in the Heller vs DC second amendment ruling or else we could be on the verge of losing an individuals right to keep and bear arms. The Heller decision was 5-4. One vote in the other direction and the second amendment is gone.

   Judge Sotomayor does not believe that owning firearms is an individual right. This is how close we are to losing the second amendment, not by constitutional amendment but by having it adjudicated from us.

 We are only one Supreme Court justice away from losing the second amendment and Sonia Sotomayor typifies this president’s idea of an ideal Supreme Court justice. This president’s next appointment to the Supreme Court will hold the same beliefs as this one, we just have to hope that the next justice to retire will be either Stevens, Ginsburg, or Breyer. Otherwise the constitution will be null and void.