As witness the statements of our President-Elect, this is a helpful parallel. Thus Obama on 5 December 2007:
Quote:
There's a Supreme Court case that's going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I've got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably--it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That's what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that's a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families. Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community.
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More guardedly, here is Obama on 15 February 2008:
Quote:
There’s been a longstanding argument among constitutional scholars about whether the Second Amendment referred simply to militias or whether it spoke to an individual right to possess arms. I think the latter is the better argument. There is an individual right to bear arms, but it is subject to common-sense regulation, just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation.
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On the other hand, this antithesis came out on 15 October 2008, in reference to
Roe v. Wade:
Quote:
I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn't be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.
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So there you have it. According to Barack Hussein Obama,
all our Constitutional rights are constrained and bound by the needs of the community, while
most of them are subject to common-sense regulation, even though
many of them shouldn't be subject to popular vote. Anyone who can make heads or tails of it, is a better man that I am.
More on this
here.