Originalist Sin 0
At the San Francisco Chronicle, Erwin Chemerinsky and Dennis Aftergut argue that the new-fangled notion of Consititutional Originalism as its being applied applied to the Second Amendment* is killing us. A snippet:
Simply put, there is no constitutional basis for saying that the original meaning of the Second Amendment was to protect the right of 18-to-20- year-olds to purchase a weapon of mass killing that didn’t exist when the amendment was adopted in 1791.
Nor is there the slightest indication that the Second Amendment was meant to invalidate age restrictions on purchasing firearms. This is important because, according to the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, 18-to-20 year olds are responsible for homicides at three times the rate of adults 21 and older. The human brain does take time to mature.
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*Said application is a bunch of mealy-mouthed double-talk. If the persons promoting it were true orginalists, they’d outlaw everything that wasn’t a flintlock musket, but that’s another post.