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Proposed Rules for FantasySCOTUS OT10

September 29th, 2010

I am gearing up to launch FantasySCOTUS OT10. If all goes according to plan, it should be live the first Monday in October. Here are the proposed rules. I am unofficially opening up a notice and comment period for the next few days.

Predictions

For each case, users will predict how each of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court will vote. A Justice can either vote to AFFIRM, REVERSE the lower court, or RECUSE from the case and not cast a vote. Users can make predictions at any point before the case is decided, though predictions will be disabled on all days the Supreme Court announces that opinions will be released. Unlike last year, users will not predict the split and the outcome. These items were often too difficult to determine in split cases and pluralities. The current model is simpler, and allows users to more easily show off their SCOTUS skills.

Leagues

There will be two types of leaagues:

FantasySCOTUS Leagues – these Leagues will be created by FantasySCOTUS and anyone can join

User Created Leagues – Users can also create and join new leagues. We have integrated Facebook connect, so you will be able to invite all of your Facebook friends into your league. Users of these leagues will be eligible for the various league awards.

Users will be ranked within their leagues, as well as within the entire FantasySCOTUS realm.

Points

.For each correct guess, users will receive 10 points. If users correctly guesses the votes all nine Justices, users will receive a perfect score of 90 points.

Admittedly, some cases are difficult to score when a Justice votes to affirm in part and reverse in part. In such cases,

For example, in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Media Association, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that statute barring the sale of violent video games to children was unconstitutional. A user predict that Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito will vote to reverse the Ninth Circuit, and that Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan will vote to affirm, or agree with the Ninth Circuit. Assume the user’s predictions are correct, except for Justice Kennedy, who in fact voted to affirm the lower court.

Roberts Scalia Kennedy Thomas Ginsburg Breyer Alito Sotomayor Kagan
Predicted Vote Reverse Reverse Reverse Reverse Affirm Affirm Reverse Affirm Affirm
Actual Vote Reverse Reverse Affirm Reverse Affirm Affirm Reverse Affirm Affirm
Points 10 10 0 10 10 10 10 10 10

In this case the user will receive a total of 80 points because you correctly predicted 8 out of the 9 Justices (you failed to correctly predict the vote of Justice Kennedy).

We realize that in some cases, a Justice votes to affirm in part and reverse in part. In such cases, it is often hard to characterize whether it is an “affirm” or “reverse” vote. We will make a judgment as to whether the affirm or reverse vote is on a more prominent part of the case. We realize that standard is nebulous, but it is the only fair way to score cases.

If a case is DIG’d (Dismissed as Improvidently Granted), any predictions will receive no points. If, a case that is Vacated and Remanded, it will be treated as a DIG, and predictions will receive no points.

Badges

In addition to points, users can unlock fun badges for accomplishing certain goals within FantasySCOTUS.

The Elect Badges:

These badges are only available to players who participate in “The Elect” league, predict all cases, and score the highest points.

Category Badges:

These badges will be awarded to members of the Least Dangerous League who most accurately predict the cases in each category:

The Justice Badges:

The Justice Badges reward users for correctly predicting the votes of an individual Justice with the highest accuracy

League Badges:

No cash prizes are awarded.

Due Process

We realize that we are dealing with lawyers and law students, so let us explain the due process rights of users. If users disagree with the scoring of a case, an appeal must be filed at our contact page within 24 hours of the scoring update (which may be after the Supreme Court releases its opinion). We will reconsider all of our scoring opinions using an “abuse of discretion standard,” so plead your cases well. All determinations are final.

Last season we had several incidents involving cheating (see here and here). While we have taken numerous steps this season to prevent any and all cheating, if we discover a user is cheating, he will be banished and shunned from FantasySCOTUS. Just play fair.

Guns and Liberty

June 28th, 2010

The dissenting Justices view the right to keep and bear arms as different from all other forms of liberty.

Justice Breyer puts it thusly:

Unlike other forms of substantive liberty, the carrying of arms for that purpose often puts others’ livesat risk. See ante, at 35–37. And the use of arms for pri-vate self-defense does not warrant federal constitutional protection from state regulation. See ante, at 44–51.

Stevens notes that when considering gun rights, there are liberty interests on both sides of the equation–

First, firearms have a fundamentally ambivalent relationship to liberty. …

Hence, in evaluating an asserted right to be free fromparticular gun-control regulations, liberty is on both sidesof the equation. Guns may be useful for self-defense, aswell as for hunting and sport, but they also have a unique potential to facilitate death and destruction and thereby todestabilize ordered liberty. Your interest in keeping andbearing a certain firearm may diminish my interest in being and feeling safe from armed violence. And while granting you the right to own a handgun might make yousafer on any given day—assuming the handgun’s marginalcontribution to self-defense outweighs its marginal contribution to the risk of accident, suicide, and criminal mischief—it may make you and the community you live in less safe overall, owing to the increased number of handguns in circulation. It is at least reasonable for a democratically elected legislature to take such concerns into account in considering what sorts of regulations would best serve the public welfare.

This mirrors the arguments respondent made in their reply brief.

Thus, Chicago and Oak Park may reasonably conclude that in their communities, handgun bans or other stringent regulations are the most effective means to reduce fear, violence, injury, and death, therebyenhancing, not detracting from, a system of ordered liberty

Because handguns are so well adapted for the commission of crimes and the infliction of injury and death, stringent handgun regulations, including prohibitions, can be reasonably thought to create the conditions necessary to foster ordered liberty, rather than detracting from it.

I quote from an article I wrote after Heller:

In Heller, he asks “whether that benefit is worth the potential death-related cost. And that is a question without a directly provable answer.”239 Justice Breyer sets up a scale; “Thus, any attempt in theory to apply strict scrutiny to gun regulations will in practice turn into an interest-balancing inquiry, with the interests protected by the Second Amendment on one side and the governmental public-safety concerns on the other, the only question being whether the regulation at issue impermissibly burdens the former in the course of advancing the latter.”240

On one side are the potential costs to life guns can cause. But what is on the other side? What is the “benefit” or “interest” protected? Whereas Justice Breyer spends seven detailed pages, with ample footnotes, discussing the potential death-related costs of his 22-page dissent, he only devotes two sparse 2-pages discussing the benefits of the Second Amendment. . . . So of course, when Justice Breyer weighs an empirical bonanza of studies  discussing the dangerousness of guns against three pathetic interests, it is unsurprising how that scale tilts.

These arguments boil down to one simple question–is the right to keep and bear arms a form of liberty that is worth protecting? The dissenters do not see it as a form of liberty. Being generous, they dissenters see guns as a privilege people can keep when the government thinks its ok. Being realistic, the dissenters see gun ownership as a nuisance that should be eradicated. When you start with these presumptions, it is no surprise that they weigh the benefits from this right against the harm from these rights. They simply see no benefit to being armed, nor do they realize the liberty interest involved.

As I wrote as a wide-eyed 3L:

Even assuming that the pros and cons of gun control are at equipoise; that is, the evidence is not clear whether striking down this law will protect people’s liberty, or cause more violence. Why need the tiebreaker go to the government, when there is an express protection of this liberty in the Bill of Rights.

Since when does the harm a substantive right can produce dictate how we interpret the right?

Breyer made similar points during oral arguments:

Unsurprisingly, Justice Breyer fixated heavily upon the statistics showing the dangers of guns. If the right is incorporated, public safety decisions would be made by judges. If the right is not incorporated, public safety decisions would be made by legislators, who can consider the danger of weapons. Every case involving the second amendment, according to Justice Breyer, considers life versus guns.

To this, Gura replied that the Court should consider the case in the same fashion they considered Heller. Breyer proceeded to disagree with Heller, though he noted that “that was the dissenter’s view.” Justice Scalia retorted that Miranda rule releases dangerous people, and does not save lives. The Courts should not resolve questions on that basis.

Scalia is right. Here is the full transcript:

JUSTICE SCALIA: There is a lot of statistical disagreement on whether the Miranda rule saves lives or not, whether it results in the release of dangerous people who have confessed to their crime but the confession can’t be used. We don’t — we don’t resolve questions like that on the basis of statistics, do we?
MR. GURA: That’s correct, Justice Scalia, and as your opinion -JUSTICE
SCALIA: Well, why would this one be resolved on the basis of statistics? If there is a constitutional right, we find what the minimum constitutional right is and everything above that is up to the States. If you want to have, you know — I think we mentioned in Heller concealed carry laws. I mean, those are — those are matter that we didn’t decide in Heller. And you may have a great deal of divergence
from State to State, and on that I suppose you would do statistics, wouldn’t you? Or the legislature would.

The Court does not consider other rights in the bill of rights based on the harm it could generate. Miranda and the exclusionary rule results in the acquittal of dangerous criminals. Yet we accept those results because of the benefits  criminal procedure protections yield.  Why is this different?

The Future of the Privileges or Immunities Clause after McDonald v. Chicago

June 28th, 2010

McDonald v. Chicago has set the stage for the future of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. For the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, a Justice found that an essential liberty is protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

This case presents a 4-1-4 split, something I predicted months ago. We have 4 votes to incorporate through the due process clause, 1 vote to incorporate through the privileges or immunities clause, and 4 votes to not incorporate. Under the most narrow interpretation, we have 5 votes to incorporate the 2nd amendment, though there is no majority vote for the rationale. Regardless, the gun ban will fall.

But on a deeper level, we have a tacit endorsement of Privileges or Immunities. Here is the breakdown. One vote–Justice Thomas–found that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects certain rights. Seven votes–Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Kennedy, as well as Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor–were not willing to revisit the Privileges or Immunities Clause, but did not criticize it. Only Justice Stevens criticized the history behind the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

This is extremely favorable for the future of P or I. As I predicted in Pandora’s Box.

Here are the relevant quotes on P or I from the 4 opinions.

The Plurality on the Privileges or Immunities Clause

Although the Supreme Court did not adopt Justice Thomas’s approach, Justice Alito was very careful not to disparage it. They simply “declined to disturb” it.

Petitioners argue,however, that we should overrule those decisions and hold that the right to keep and bear arms is one of the “privi-leges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” In petitioners’ view, the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects all of the rights set out in the Bill of Rights, as well as some others, see Brief for Petitioners 10, 14, 15–21, but petitioners are unable to identify the Clause’s fullscope, Tr. of Oral Arg. 5–6, 8–11. Nor is there any consen-sus on that question among the scholars who agree that the Slaughter-House Cases’ interpretation is flawed. See Saenz, supra, at 522, n. 1 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).

We see no need to reconsider that interpretation here. For many decades, the question of the rights protected bythe Fourteenth Amendment against state infringement has been analyzed under the Due Process Clause of that Amendment and not under the Privileges or Immunities Clause. We therefore decline to disturb the Slaughter-House holding.

The Court was simply not willing to revisit the Privileges or Immunities Clause in this case.

Justice Thomas on the Privileges or Immunities Clause

I agree with the Court that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the right to keep and bear arms set forth in the Second Amendment “fully applicable to the States.” Ante, at 1. I write separately because I believe there is a more straightforward path to this conclusion, one that is morefaithful to the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and history.
Applying what is now a well-settled test, the plurality opinion concludes that the right to keep and bear armsapplies to the States through the Fourteenth Amend-ment’s Due Process Clause because it is “fundamental” to the American “scheme of ordered liberty,” ante, at 19 (citing Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 149 (1968)), and “‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradi-tion,’” ante, at 19 (quoting Washington v. Glucksberg, 521
U. S. 702, 721 (1997)). I agree with that description of theright. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to “process.” Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States throughthe Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.

I cannot accept a theory of constitutional interpretation that rests on such tenuous footing. This Court’s substan-tive due process framework fails to account for both thetext of the Fourteenth Amendment and the history that led to its adoption, filling that gap with a jurisprudencedevoid of a guiding principle. I believe the original mean-ing of the Fourteenth Amendment offers a superior alter-native, and that a return to that meaning would allow thisCourt to enforce the rights the Fourteenth Amendment isdesigned to protect with greater clarity and predictability than the substantive due process framework has so far managed.

Justice Stevens on the Privileges or Immunities Clause

Justice Stevens was more critical than the Plurality, and argues that the history is not as clear as they think.

I agree with the plurality’s refusal to accept petitioners’ primary submission. Ante, at 10. Their briefs marshal an impressive amount of historical evidence for their argument that the Court interpreted the Privileges or Immunities Clause too narrowly in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36 (1873). But the original meaning of the Clause isnot as clear as they suggest2—and not nearly as clear as it would need to be to dislodge 137 years of precedent. The burden is severe for those who seek radical change in such an established body of constitutional doctrine.3

However, this view was not taken by the Breyer, joined by Ginsburg, and Sotomayor in dissent.

Breyer’s Dissent

Breyer devotes but a single sentence to the privileges or immunities:

First, the Court today properly declines to revisit ourinterpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

Update: At Volokh, Ilya Somin characterizes the plurality’s decision to not discuss the privileges or immunities clause thusly:

Why did the plurality make this choice? They cite two reasons — the failure of the petitioners to explain the exact scope of the rights protected by the Privileges or Immunities Clause, and longstanding precedent:

I see neither reason as saying much about the future.

The passage from the transcript the majority cites is here:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: But — just tell us the dimensions of what it is. I mean, we have the eight amendments, so I know you say that’s included. Keep and bear arms would be included even absent the Second Amendment. What unenumerated rights would we be declaring privileges and immunities under your conception of it?

MR. GURA: Although it’s impossible to give a full list of all the unenumerated rights that might be protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause, just as it’s impossible to do so under the Due Process Clause, at least with respect to the Privileges and Immunities Clause we have wonderful historical guideposts. There are —

This discussion deals only with unenumerated rights. Not enumerated rights. That section begins with “Petitioners argue,however, that we should overrule those decisions and hold that the right to keep and bear arms is one of the “privi-leges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

If the Court wanted to find that the privileges or immunities protects enumerated rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms embodied in the 2nd amendment, the fears of unenumerated rights were unnecessary.

Although petitioners sought to protect certain unenumerated rights, as Justice Thomas noted, the only issue before the court was an enumerated right–the second amendment. Certainly the Court could have decided this on narrower grounds, without reducing an entire clause of the Constitution to a nullity.

The second argument, longstanding precedent, is not much of a barrier. When the Court wants to ignore stare decisis, they have no hesitancy doing so.

In short, the Court could have ruled on narrower grounds. They could have said the privileges or immunities clause only protects enumerated rights. Or they could have ruled on broader grounds, and said the privileges or immunities clause protects nothing. Instead, they did neither. They argued that the petitioner failed to address their concerns, scholars are conflicted, and precedents stand in their way.

The exact same argument could have been made about DC v. Heller. Petitioner did not address concerns about bans on the exact scope of gun control regulations. There had been decades of debate among scholars about the history of the second amendment. And the Court reversed over a century of precedents.

But if the Supreme Court wishes to give the Privileges or Immunities Clause more teeth in the future, I hardly see this opinion as standing in the way.

Update 2: I reply to Ilya Somin’s comment and Volokh, and cross post here:

Ilya Somin: Ilya, I have a more optimistic spin on McDonald. The majority simply declined to address the Privileges or Immunities Clause. They did not criticize it, or disparage it, though they could have. Scalia did not mention it in his opinion at all.I very much disagree. The plurality opinion’s reasons for not applying the P or I Clause in this case — precedent and vagueness — apply just as strongly to any reasonably conceivable future case as to this one.

Ilya, vagueness and precedent have not stopped the Supreme Court before. In fact, the Court routinely deals with vagaries in, and routinely overrules long-standing precedents, when they want to. As for the vagueness, the Court identifies two rationales. The Court discusses conflicts among scholars. As important as scholars think their work is, Courts are free to ignore it, even when they are in tension. See the majority and dissenting opinions in Heller. Second, the court notes that the petitioner failed to narrow the scope of the rights protected by P or I. If you check the transcription (see https://joshblackman.com/?p=4744), the discussion talks about the scope unenumerated rights, and not enumerated rights. Granted, there are not that many more enumerated rights that could be enumerated. But the Court did not reject the Clause outright.

As for precedent, the Court follows precedent unless they don’t want to. I really don’t see that as a major obstacle if five votes want it.

It wasn’t a resounding victory for Privileges or Immunities, but this opinion could have been much, much worse. The Court could have spent more than a few paragraphs excoriating the right–think of Scalia’s discussion of substantive due process in Stop the Beach. Additionally, Breyer’s dissent did not address it either. For an issue that was so significant, you would think the Court would spend more than a few paragraphs on it. This tells me, simply, they could not agree on how to treat it, and just let it alone.

Instant Analysis: McDonald v. Chicago

June 28th, 2010

Please refresh this page often. I will be adding my instant analysis of McDonald v. Chicago as soon as the opinions is released.

The opinion is available here. The opinion is 214 pages long!

Writing for the majority, Justice Alito finds that the Second Amendment is incorporated through the Due Process Clause. Joining in judgment only, Justice Thomas writes that the Second Amendment should be incorporated through the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer dissented.

This presents a 4-1-4 split, something I predicted months ago.

Here is the thrust of Alito’s argument:

The Court must decide whether that right is fundamental tothe Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty, Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 149, or, as the Court has said in a related context, whether it is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” Washing-ton v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 721. Heller points unmistakably to the answer. Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present, and the Heller Court held that individual self-defense is “the central component” of the SecondAmendment right. 554 U. S., at ___, ___. Explaining that “the needfor defense of self, family, and property is most acute” in the home, ibid., the Court found that this right applies to handguns because they are “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” id., at ___, ___–___. It thus concluded that citizens must be permitted “to use [handguns] for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.” Id., at ___. Heller also clarifies that this right is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradi-tions,” Glucksberg, supra, at 721. Heller explored the right’s origins in English law and noted the esteem with which the right was re-garded during the colonial era and at the time of the ratification ofthe Bill of Rights. This is powerful evidence that the right was re-garded as fundamental in the sense relevant here. That understand-ing persisted in the years immediately following the Bill of Rights’ratification and is confirmed by the state constitutions of that era,which protected the right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 19–22.
A survey of the contemporaneous history also demonstratesclearly that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Framers and ratifiers counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamentalrights necessary to the Nation’s system of ordered liberty.

However, Justice Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, and Kennedy, rejected the Privileges or Immunities Analysis.

A survey of the contemporaneous history also demonstratesclearly that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Framers and ratifiers counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamentalrights necessary to the Nation’s system of ordered liberty.

Justice Thomas took a different path,and would rely on the privileges or immunities clause.

JUSTICE THOMAS agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms that was recog-nized in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___, fully applicable to the States. However, he asserted, there is a path to this conclusion that is more straightforward and more faithful to the Second Amendment’s text and history…

Thomas actually knocks down substantive due process, and argues that this right should be protected by the privileges or immunities clause.

But the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which speaks only to “process,” cannot imposethe type of substantive restraint on state legislation that the Court asserts. Rather, the right to keep and bear arms is enforceable against the States because it is a privilege of American citizenship recognized by §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment

Thomas also proposes a purely originalist test for determining whether a right is a privilege or immunity

The objective of this inquiry is to discern what “ordi-nary citizens” at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratificationwould have understood that Amendment’s Privileges or ImmunitiesClause to mean. Ibid. A survey of contemporary legal authorities plainly shows that, at that time, the ratifying public understood the Clause to protect constitutionally enumerated rights, including the right to keep and bear arms.

Lots more after the jump.
(more…)

Awesome HD Video for McDonald v. Chicago – Lightning Strikes Chicago Skyline in Slow Motion

June 27th, 2010

Please refresh this page often. I will be adding my instant analysis of McDonald v. Chicago as soon as the opinions is released.

The opinion is available here. The opinion is 214 pages long!

Writing for the majority, Justice Alito finds that the Second Amendment is incorporated through the Due Process Clause. Joining in judgment only, Justice Thomas writes that the Second Amendment should be incorporated through the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Justice Stevens and Justice Breyer dissented.

This presents a 4-1-4 split, something I predicted months ago.

Here is the thrust of Alito’s argument:


The Court must decide whether that right is fundamental tothe Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty, Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 149, or, as the Court has said in a related context, whether it is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” Washing-ton v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 721. Heller points unmistakably to the answer. Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present, and the Heller Court held that individual self-defense is “the central component” of the SecondAmendment right. 554 U. S., at ___, ___. Explaining that “the needfor defense of self, family, and property is most acute” in the home, ibid., the Court found that this right applies to handguns because they are “the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,” id., at ___, ___–___. It thus concluded that citizens must be permitted “to use [handguns] for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.” Id., at ___. Heller also clarifies that this right is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradi-tions,” Glucksberg, supra, at 721. Heller explored the right’s origins in English law and noted the esteem with which the right was re-garded during the colonial era and at the time of the ratification ofthe Bill of Rights. This is powerful evidence that the right was re-garded as fundamental in the sense relevant here. That understand-ing persisted in the years immediately following the Bill of Rights’ratification and is confirmed by the state constitutions of that era,which protected the right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 19–22.
A survey of the contemporaneous history also demonstratesclearly that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Framers and ratifiers counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamentalrights necessary to the Nation’s system of ordered liberty.

However, Justice Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, and Kennedy, rejected the Privileges or Immunities Analysis.


A survey of the contemporaneous history also demonstratesclearly that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Framers and ratifiers counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamentalrights necessary to the Nation’s system of ordered liberty.

Justice Thomas took a different path,and would rely on the privileges or immunities clause.

JUSTICE THOMAS agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms that was recog-nized in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___, fully applicable to the States. However, he asserted, there is a path to this conclusion that is more straightforward and more faithful to the Second Amendment’s text and history…

Thomas actually knocks down substantive due process, and argues that this right should be protected by the privileges or immunities clause.

But the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which speaks only to “process,” cannot imposethe type of substantive restraint on state legislation that the Court asserts. Rather, the right to keep and bear arms is enforceable against the States because it is a privilege of American citizenship recognized by §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment

Thomas also proposes a purely originalist test for determining whether a right is a privilege or immunity

The objective of this inquiry is to discern what “ordi-nary citizens” at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratificationwould have understood that Amendment’s Privileges or ImmunitiesClause to mean. Ibid. A survey of contemporary legal authorities plainly shows that, at that time, the ratifying public understood the Clause to protect constitutionally enumerated rights, including the right to keep and bear arms.

Lots more after the jump.
(more…)