All the constitutional scholars on the Haines Borough Assembly, please raise your hands.
Great. Thank you. Now please explain, using simple language the rest of us ignorant plebes might understand as well as your knowledge of the discussions held during the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1789: Was it the intent of the founding fathers that “arms” meant weapons of any kind? Cannons? War ships? AR-15s?
By all means, cite specifics and use appropriate citations and footnotes. As they say in math class, show your work.
We’ll need the advance paperwork because it seems a majority of you stand ready to interpret the Second Amendment for yourselves, based on your expertise in constitutional law, and especially if your informed opinion conflicts with that of the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of, say for example, a citizen’s right to own assault weapons.
Chances are that our Democratic Congress may eventually place some kind of restrictions on ownership of assault weapons as it did when it approved a 10-year ban on them in 1994. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected every challenge to the constitutionality of the ban (which unfortunately expired in 2004 due to a 10-year “sunset” provision written into the legislation), so the court may again let a ban stand.
If the Haines Borough chooses to openly reject such a ban, it should be ready to take on the federal court, its phalanxes of clerks and attorneys, and possibly even the U.S. military.
The federal government gets touchy when folks openly reject its laws and make up their own interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. In 1957, when some southern states tried doing that by disagreeing with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of integrating public schools, President Eisenhower sent in National Guardsmen in to enforce federal law at gunpoint.
So besides notifying Haines Borough attorney Brooks Chandler to press his suit and buy a plane ticket to Washington, D.C., it might be good for the police department to buy some tanks or at least enough firepower to hold off the Alaska National Guard until Brooks gets done working his magic on the Supremes.
No doubt, he’ll rely on some of our previous arguments on such matters, including the one articulated by a member of the Committee for An Honest and Ethical School Board, when the Alaska Supreme Court rejected the group’s 1993 recall of several Haines school board members: “Who is the Alaska Supreme Court, anyway? They don’t live here.”
How could the Supreme Court in faraway Washington decide how many assault weapons we need?
Get ready, you so-called justices. We do our own lawyering around here and we don’t need no fancy diplomas from highfalutin’ universities to do it.
Thankfully, our assembly is a diligent group, including a former school principal, so we’re sure they’ll dot their “i’s” and cross their “t’s.” Maybe they’ll even bring along the Glacier Bear cheerleaders to work the sidelines during proceedings.
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court, get ready to receive a good old-fashioned, country “schooling.”