The only constitutional right that comes at the annual cost of thousands of human sacrifices

Bill Of Rights Thanks to the judicial activism of the right-wing extremists of the Roberts Court, there is an individual constitutional right to bear arms. That is the current law. That is the current official interpretation of the meaning of the vague words of the small, exclusive and exclusionary group of white Protestant men, some of whom were slave owners, some of whom were monarchists, and none of whom seemed to think women should be allowed to participate in governance, who lived more than two centuries ago but whose words more than two centuries later are considered sacrosanct for guiding us through the modern world. That doesn't mean that the current interpretation of those vague words always will be the law, but it is the law for now. And while those opposed to regulation of guns can take comfort in the judicial activism of those right wing extremists of the Roberts Court, liberals and progressives and people who care about history and precedent and judicial integrity can find at least intellectual coherence and honor in the words of Justice John Paul Stevens, whose dissent to that extremist right wing judicial activism was joined by the Court's three other honest members:

Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;2 we ourselves affirmed it in 1980. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 , n. 8 (1980).3 No new evidence has surfaced since 1980 supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to curtail the power of Congress to regulate civilian use or misuse of weapons. Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses.

The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment's text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions; postenactment commentary that was available to the Court when it decided Miller; and, ultimately, a feeble attempt to distinguish Miller that places more emphasis on the Court's decisional process than on the reasoning in the opinion itself.

Even if the textual and historical arguments on both sides of the issue were evenly balanced, respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on this Court, and for the rule of law itself, see Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600, 636 (1974) (Stewart, J., dissenting), would prevent most jurists from endorsing such a dramatic upheaval in the law.4 As Justice Cardozo observed years ago, the 'labor of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one's own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him.' The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921).

But until a more honest Court reverses this abominable ruling, the law is the law, and the individual right to bear arms is officially sanctioned. It is, for now, a constitutional right. It also is an anomaly in so many ways, not the least of which is that while so many subsequently written constitutions, for nations all around the globe, have been deliberately modeled on the U.S. Bill of Rights, and its encoding such Enlightenment ideals as free speech, freedom of assembly, a free press, and freedom of worship, they somehow have neglected to include the freedom to own and carry firearms. Similarly, while oppressed people from all around the globe dream of being able to escape to or transform their governments into similarly encoding those Englightenment ideals, those oppressed peoples never seem to clamor after the right to own and carry firearms. Similarly, the people of not one nation that has enacted regulations and restrictions on the right to own and carry firearms clamors for repeal of those regulations and restrictions.

The constitutional right to own and carry firearms, now encoded in the United States thanks to the judicial activism of  the right wing extremists of the Roberts Court, is unique among economically developed democratic nations. It stands in bloody contrast to the evolution of humanity, with all other economically developed democracies strictly regulating private ownership of firearms, and in some cases effectively banning it. But for now, in the United States, the individual right to own and carry firearms is a constitutional right. And yet, even in the United States, it is a unique constitutional right. It is an anomaly both among economically developed democracies and it is an anomaly among constitutional rights in the United States. It is, in fact, an abomination. Because this one constitutional right bears an enormous human cost. A staggeringly mind-boggling human cost. A cost of 11,078 homicides and 19,392 suicides in just the last measured year. A cost of more American lives lost than in all wars Americans have fought in, ever, combined. No other constitutional right comes at such a cost in human sacrifice. No other constitutional right would be allowed to stand at such a cost in human sacrifice.

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