BackInTex wrote: By what definition of "infringed" do they get there?
From the majority opinion (quoting from the
Heller decision written by Justice Scalia):
Relying on the phrase “shall not be infringed,” the Court in Heller viewed the Amendment as having “codified a preexisting right.” Id. at 592 (emphasis in original). The Court
focused on the history leading to the adoption of the Amendment, and on the common understanding of the Amendment in the years following its adoption. The Court concluded that the “pre-existing right” to keep and bear arms preserved by the Second Amendment was in part an individual right to personal self-defense, not confined to the purpose of maintaining a well-regulated militia. The Court struck down the challenged statute, concluding that the Amendment preserves the right of members of the general public to keep and bear arms in their homes for the purpose of self-defense: “[W]e hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate selfdefense.”
The Court in Heller was careful to limit the scope of its holding. Of particular interest here, the Court noted that the Second Amendment has not been generally understood to
protect the right to carry concealed firearms. The Court wrote: "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues."
In analyzing the meaning of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald treated its historical analysis as determinative. The Court in Heller held that the Second Amendment, as originally adopted, “codified a preexisting right,” 554 U.S. at 592 (emphasis omitted), a “right inherited from our English ancestors,” id. at 599 (internal
quotation marks omitted). The Court in McDonald held, further, that this “pre-existing right” was incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, based in substantial part on the
importance attached to the right by a “clear majority” of the states. In determining whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a concealed weapon in public, we
engage in the same historical inquiry as Heller and McDonald. As will be seen, the history relevant to both the Second Amendment and its incorporation by the Fourteenth
Amendment lead to the same conclusion: The right of a member of the general public to carry a concealed firearm in public is not, and never has been, protected by the Second
Amendment.
