-By Warner Todd Huston
In a new ruling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit maintained that Americans have a Constitutional right to acquire and sell arms.
The Ninth Circuit Court remanded the case of Teixeira v. County of Alameda back to a lower court informing it the court that the Second Amendment and its history protects the rights of Americans to self-defense including the “right to acquire weapons” as well as own them.
This puts a dent in the city of Alameda’s regulations that practically bans the opening of any gun store in the city.
As 9th Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain explained, “The historical record indicates that Americans continued to believe that such right included the freedom to purchase and to sell weapons. In 1793, Thomas Jefferson noted that ‘[o]ur citizens have always been free to make, vend, and export arms. It is the constant occupation and livelihood of some of them.'”
As to the possibility that a municipality could make rules for gun shops so strict that gun shops are essentially outlawed (or does, indeed, outlaw them outright), the court ruled that the access to guns is covered by the Second Amendment.
If “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is to have any force, the people must have a right to acquire the very firearms they are entitled to keep and to bear. Indeed, where a right depends on subsidiary activity, it would make little sense if the right did not extend, at least partly, to such activity as well. The Supreme Court recognized this principle in very different contexts [citing cases involving the right to use contraceptives and the First Amendment].
Interestingly, as the top judge referenced Thomas Jefferson, our third president also had something else apropos to say that impinges on this subject. In 1792, Jefferson noted that you can’t have a right to a thing unless you are able to have access to the tools and other items in connection with that thing.
In his Report on Navigation of the Mississippi (1792, ME 3:180), Jefferson wrote, “It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end.”
In other words, if Americans have no access to a gun store and cannot buy guns then their right to bear arms is necessarily eliminated.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Federalist Papers, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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