This Just In: Dept of Justice Can Read
by Joe Pulcinella
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Council has come down on the side of the individual's right to keep and bear arms as stated in the Second Amendment. You can read the hefty tome yourself (WHETHER THE SECOND AMENDMENT SECURES AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT) or just the last paragraph which kinda sums it up:
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep and to bear arms. Current case law leaves open and unsettled the question of whose right is secured by the Amendment. Although we do not address the scope of the right, our examination of the original meaning of the Amendment provides extensive reasons to conclude that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, and no persuasive basis for either the collective-right or quasi-collective-right views. The text of the Amendment's operative clause, setting out a "right of the people to keep and bear Arms," is clear and is reinforced by the Constitution's structure. The Amendment's prefatory clause, properly understood, is fully consistent with this interpretation. The broader history of the Anglo-American right of individuals to have and use arms, from England's Revolution of 1688-1689 to the ratification of the Second Amendment a hundred years later, leads to the same conclusion. Finally, the first hundred years of interpretations of the Amendment, and especially the commentaries and case law in the pre-Civil War period closest to the Amendment's ratification, confirm what the text and history of the Second Amendment require.
Glad to see that hundreds of years of precedent have some weight in this matter and that the DoJ isn't working in a vacuum (at least not on this day).