The Right to Bear Rocket Launchers?
Say what? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia raised some eyebrows when he suggested on Fox News Sunday that hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes might be protected under the Second Amendment.
Say what? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia raised some eyebrows when he suggested on Fox News Sunday that hand-held rocket launchers might be protected under the Second Amendment. (The use of cannons, however, not so much.)
Scalia made the comment when he was asked by Chris Wallace about the recent Colorado movie theater massacre and what type of limitations on gun rights would be acceptable under the Second Amendment.
“Obviously, the amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and ‘bear,’ so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose here are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes. That will have to be decided,” Scalia said, adding, “My starting point and probably my ending point will be what limitations are within the understood limitations that the society had at the time.” And by that last point, he means the society that existed when the Constitution was written.
— Posted by Tracy Bloom.
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Courts & Law
If you want to deepen your understanding of the differences between “originalism” and “living constitutionalism” as competing theories of constitutional law and interpretation, there’s no better place to begin than with the 2006 debate between the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the recently retired liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.
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