For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation.
Interpretation
The Second Amendment has been historically interpreted as allowing government regulation of firearms.
John Paul Stevens highlights that for over two centuries, the Second Amendment was widely accepted as not restricting the capacity of both federal and state governments to create gun control laws. This indicates that the interpretation of constitutional rights can evolve over time, particularly in relation to societal values and public safety.
In practice
In a debate on gun laws, one might reference Stevens' quote to argue for a historical perspective on the Second Amendment.
It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.
But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.
It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.
I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment.... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
While money is used to finance speech, money is not speech.
But I really think it's a very unfortunate part of our judicial system and I would feel much, much better if more states would really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cases, there is a special potential for error. We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated.
Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.
At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.
If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend.
I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas... cultures... and systems of thought, we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word 'freedom' means than I see much evidence of in America.
Jesus loved the will of His Father. He embraced the limitations, the necessities, the conditions, the very chains of His humanity as He walked and worked here on earth, fulfilling moment by moment His divine commission and the stern demands of His incarnation. Never was there a word or even a look of complaint.
Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
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