“The fundamental error that men like Scalia make lies in overlooking the basic philosophical reason for declaring that a basic right of the people is off-limits to infringement.”

Scalia is not using faulty logic at all. There are several ways in which the Constitution is a remarkable work, and one of the most notable is the way it incorporates difference forms of checks and balances. Not just between the three branches of the federal government, but between the interests of large states and small, between the federal government and the state governments, etc. Just as an architect wouldn’t build an unbalanced bridge, the Constitution was engineered to embrace balance over giving any party or interest group unchecked power to the point where the quality of life in the young nation would be at risk.

You and your colleagues like to qoute-mine the 2nd Amendment, focusing on “shall not be infringed” while dismissing the “well-regulated” and “militia” parts. The men writing that bill knew exactly what they were doing, though, and used few words to do it because every single word carried meaning.

It’s completely acceptable to have a right while also having that right be regulated in the interest of the common good. Your colleague Felicity Ross complained about the application process to get a gun permit, but she didn’t say it was denied. We have freedom of speech but it does not allow one to incite a riot, even for a just cause. We have freedom of religion, but not where the practice of one’s faith could cause harm to others, including minors brought up in that faith by devout parents.

No reasonable person wants to deny law-abiding citizens the right to keep and bear arms if they choose to do so, but it’s not infringing on overall right to possess deadly force to deny that right to felons or the mentally ill – failure to do so creates a clear and present danger to everyone. To argue that it is better to let the insane carry guns, and then expect everyone else to pack guns and defend ourselves from them in gunfights – all to avoid “infringement” – is antithetical to a culture that values life. That’s Somalia, not America.

Reagan supported an assault weapons ban because he survived a lone, deranged gunman getting close enough to gravely wound innocents who were protected by highly trained security carrying guns of their own. Even if everyone in his Secret Service detail were carrying uzis, John Hinkley still shot first by surprise, and if he was shooting an assault rifle or uzi himself, many more people would have died that day before h’ed have been shot. Reagan believed in the 2nd Amendment, but he never believed that the right to keep and bear deadly force was an unlimited one.

Scalia understands this too, and sees no contradiction between allowing a right to exist and regulating how that right is applied. The 2nd Amendment is unique in that it is the only right that empowers an American citizen with the ability to kill others at will. The ability to defend one’s self and family with deadly force is an essential one, and the Founders saw to that. They also established the context for this right (to enable local, well-regulated militas anywhere in the nation) and chose their words with care.

The right to keep and bear arms will not be infringed, but the nature of the arms one is allowed to bear can be regulated, and anyone unsuitable to the context of a militia (criminals, the mentally ill, and yes, back then slaves as well) would not be allowed to exercise this right. Society benefits from these balancing points, and none of this keeps law-abiding citizens like Ms. Ross, you or me from legally acquiring guns with considerable killing power if we wish to.

Scalia understands this. Reagan understood this. The NRA understood this up until the 1970s. Believing that securing a safe, civil society for all requires all of us to walk around armed and ready to kill strangers in snap decisions is the truly dangerous mindset. I hope you never have cause to have to kill someone in self-defense, but your paranoid distrust of others and desire to walk around with deadly force in hand makes me glad I live in a state that makes it hard to do that.

And please stop with the “we face a tyranny as vicious as that of Adolf Hitler” rhetoric. For someone who cares about Israel as much as you do, it’s sad that you’re equating conditions in America today to life under the Nazis.

Try telling that line of yours to the face of any elderly Jewish survivor of WWII Germany, and be prepared to wipe their spit off your person afterward.

Fair enough, but I was asking where the outrage was over this from the editors at CNAV. You attack Obama over what you think might happen because of what you believe his agenda is, but the available facts are that his executive orders do nothing to disarm anyone.

However, there is a 1960’s precedent for one of the actions that you consider tyrannical, unconstitutional, and worthy of civil disobedience. And yet it was not found to be unconstitutional, the NRA supported it, and there was no civil disobedience over it.

Considering that this took place in our lifetime (well, yours and mine at least), it’s hard to make an effective case for your position, you need to rationalize why it was acceptable for a conservative icon to have enforced more restrictions on 2nd Amendment rights than Obama has ever proposed. Anything less is just hypocrisy.