Well today is the day people! For those that have been asleep for the last 6 months or so, a land mark case in the US Supreme Court over the last year relating to the interpretation to the second ammendment of the USA bill of rights. The ammendment is:
“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.”
Now to many Australians, a notion of a right to bear arms seems insane, granted. But the truth is, a majority of natural rights theorists clearly support the right to bear arms as a fundamental right of a liberal democracy. As mentioned here, the oral arguments presented to the Supreme Court were incredibly informative as to the basis of this right. For those that are interested, a transcript can be found on the NRA-ILA website here.
Anyway, moving on, today the Supreme Court made its decision on this all important case and came down on the side of the ‘individual right’. Basically, for the first time in its history, the Supreme Court today ruled that each individual citizen of the United States of America has a fundamental and inalienable right to keep and bear arms. Along with striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban, they also struck down the requirement that guns be stored unloaded and disassembled. From what I could gather from the oral arguments and Justice Scalia’s questioning, the reason for this was that a firearm stored away in such a manner would be useless for its intended purpose of self-defense.
There are numerous reason why this case is interesting in Australia’s context. Australia, especially under Labor, is something of a United Nations devotee. Australia has been an instrumental partner in the United Nations’ efforts to greatly reduce the trade of small arms across the globe. For a long time, one of the key objectives of this program, and that of several international NGOs such as IANSA, has been to get the US to play ball on arms control. If that day had come, it would have been a sad day for liberalism in every way. This programme threatens one of the core checks on government espoused by everyone from James Madison to John Locke. In this age of misguided majoritarian rule, rulings such as the one made today are of spectacularly glaring importance. This is why an uncompromised separation of powers and judicial independance is of such value.
Another reason why this case is of particular importance is that its ruling will carry weight in the Australian judiciary. As many of you know, Australia does not have a bill of rights and any rights we do hold are somewhat malleable common law rights. Recently however, the High Court set something of a dangerous precedent in finding an implied right to “free political communication” in the Australian Constitution. This lead to numerous other similar claims to implied constitutional rights including a “right to free movement” claimed in Kruger v Commonwealth. Now while the latter claim was rejected, the dissenting justices did confirm the right. While it is something of a stretch to suggest a High Court headed by Kirby would ever find an implied to “keep and bear arms”, or even that such a challenge would ever present itself to the court, it is likely that the US Supreme Court decision will hold a degree of influence over the Australian High Court in the future. Again, I would not hold any hopes of such a right ever actually being ‘discovered’ in the Australian Constitution, in fact I shudder to think the complex construction that would need to be made in the attempt.
Regardless, this is a landmark ruling that will have enormous consequences internationally. The US civilian market in many ways legitimises the US arms industry, resulting in greater production, less red tape for and greater exports from the largest small arms producer in the world. The influence of the world’s largest federal liberal democracy should not be underestimated.
Coverage on the DC Gun Case decision can be found below:
SMH, CNN, The Australian, NY Times, Washington Post, The Age.
For a laugh, have a look at the difference between the coverage in the SMH and The Australian. If you want to see bias, there it is…thanks Newscorp for some great ‘impartial’ coverage!
It’s a good day for liberty Seb, great news this eh. But like i posted, i hope they never let their guard down, because i guarantee, the gun grabbers will be back to fight another day. Us bearing arms and looking after ourselves goes against everything they believe in.
As for Australia adopting such rights or being influenced by them, i’m highly skeptical, i think most of us are well and truly suckered in by the gun control crowd.
I’ve been dancing (mentally, anyway - my bunion surgery prevents me from phys. doing it for at least 2 more weeks) in celebration of this decision all around the blogosphere.
MK - p’raps the gun-grabbers will be intimidated by a mass of armed citizens. Just a thought. There’s room in my neighborhood if you want to move to the better-for-guns U.S.