Upshot
The big legal news is the 5-4 opinion stating the Second Amendment confers an individual right of gun ownership. While others discuss the legal ins and outs, let's ask the important question: Good for McCain, or good for Obama?
Sure seems good for Obama. It might take a while to see the actual effect of the decision, but for now the gun supporters are happy, which is not good for McCain. If they were more riled up, he could use his picks for the Court as a voting issue.
He can still try to bang that drum--it's only a one-vote majority, after all--but the argument I won't change the status quo isn't quite as strong as I'll fix the problem.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:12 AM
4 Comments:
I thought the most interesting news was that Obama praised the decision as correct. "Interesting how things change when you go into general election mode vs primary mode," has been the general McCain/media response, but I can't find anywhere in the past where Obama denied that it's an individual right.
You have to have blinders on to see this as anything but a turnaround for Obama. As a politician he's regularly voted for gun control laws and spoke out on behalf of the gun control people. Now those very people don't like this opinion but Obama does? I guess all those millions are too stupid to understand what the Supreme Court is saying, but Obama does.
Did anyone read what he said? He said, as always, I'm for Second Amendment Rights, but I'm also for gun control. Obama had officially supported the DC gun ban and said it was constitutional, and it may seem like he was contradicting himself, but as usual, he was simply playing both sides of the issue. Even the press services said he "straddled" the issue.
Obama is furiously tacking right/center to pick up the independents who might lean to McCain. Obama's point (he first citicised and then issued a clarification- the spinners are clearly calling the shots right now) is that he supported the language that said that gun regulation is consistent with individual rights. [If pressed I think he would have to add that applying the same test as the Court, he would have however come out differently on the DC law.]
As a method for getting the issue off the table, its pretty good politics. As a coherent constitutional philosophy, well...
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