McIlheran exercises individual right

To keep and bear silliness:

Except that individual right, of course.

David Souter is a "fierce defender" of, well, some constitutional rights. And pointedly not others.

Of course? Pointedly? Italics? Sounds conclusive!

Except in District of Columbia v. Heller, the United States Supreme Court unanimously resolved the "individual vs. collective right" controversy by affirming the former. Including Justice David Souter.

So, yes, David Souter has indeed interpreted and defended the Second Amendment as a protection of the rights of individuals.

But I should expect one to have initially located a particular constitutional right before such time as that person might be reasonably criticized for not fiercely defending that same right, no?

What does this other crazy liberal activist have to say:

The text of the [Second] Amendment, whether viewed alone or in light of the concerns that actuated its adoption, creates no right to the private possession of guns for hunting or other sport, or for the defense of person or property. It is doubtful that the Amendment could even be thought to require that members of State militias be allowed to keep weapons in their homes, since that would reduce the militias' effectiveness.

Obama?? Is that you?!

In Kennedy v. Louisiana, a decision handed down shortly before Heller, the Supreme Court held that to execute a person who rapes a child but does not kill her violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment. That was a loose construction that tied the hands of the States and the federal government, and Scalia and the other conservative justices dissented. But in Heller it was the liberal justices who were dissenting from a decision that ties the hands of the federal government, and of the States, too, if the Supreme Court decides that the Second Amendment constrains State as well as federal government action.*

Richard Posner, noting how these things can work both ways.

Incidentally, has McIlheran ever printed a correction?

Better, why not simply say what he meant: 'I think I disagree with Justice Souter's joining in Justice Stevens's exhaustive historical analysis of the Framers' understanding, mostly because they clearly got the better of that guy who I just know is always correct, Scalia.'

Even though Scalia had to pretend the Second Amendment was written in Hebrew and read it from right to left to get there.

* The Ninth Circuit has since determined that the 2A does constrain State action (at least those States within the Ninth Circuit).