Spectre’s Sayings

Glenn Reynolds penned a piece about the Supreme Court’s options in reviewing D.C.’s gun ban. Of the three (non-ducking) options he laid out, the second is somewhat startling to contemplate:

It can find that the Second Amendment doesn’t grant individual rights, but only protects the right of states to arm their militias (or “state armies,” as some gun-control advocates put it). This would make the DC case go away, but at some cost: If states have a constitutional right, as against the federal government, to arm their militias as they see fit, then states that don’t like federal gun-control laws could just enroll every law-abiding citizen in the state militia and authorize those citizens to possess machine guns, tanks and other military gear.

Other consequences of “state armies” seem even more drastic. As Tom Lehrer put it:

We’ll try to stay serene and calm /
When Alabama gets the bomb.

RTWT.