Justice Breyer: 2nd Amendment Doesn't Really Mean What it Says

We don't really want this kind of thinking to end up in the majority on the Supreme Court:

If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court's decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case "D.C. v. Heller."

Breyer wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said historians would side with him in the case because they have concluded that Founding Father James Madison was more worried that the Constitution may not be ratified than he was about granting individuals the right to bear arms.

Madison "was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. 'That can't happen,' said Madison," said Breyer, adding that historians characterize Madison's priority as, "I've got to get this document ratified."

Therefore, Madison included the Second Amendment to appease the states, Breyer said.

"If you're interested in history, and in this one history was important, then I think you do have to pay attention to the story," Breyer said. "If that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right. And I think more of the historians were with us."

That being the case, and particularly since the Founding Fathers did not foresee how modern day would change individual behavior, government bodies can impose regulations on guns, Breyer concluded.

If we're going to play the game about what the Founders could or couldn't foresee in the future, what would Breyer think about how the Founders would have dealt with abortion should they have been able to foresee the killing of millions of unborn babies? Does he think they would have been appalled and would have written restrictions into the Constitution to stop it? I think they would have.

But we have to look at what the Founders actually wrote in the Constitution and judge those words accordingly.  The 2nd Amendment is pretty clear in its wording and intent and justices who refuse to follow it are unworthy of the position.