Arya, I agree with art of what Burger said. The Second Amendment does not permit individuals unlimited access. That was shown in U.S. v. Miller (1939) (link to the decision in a previous post regarding the defintion of 'militia' in the Second Amendment) and is why individuals are not allowed to own weapons of 'mass destruction', like nuclear weapons. Rights are not unlimited, they are limited when they begin to infringe on the rights of others, hence it is a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech to yell 'Fire' in a theater or to use the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble to incite people to riot. The first part of Burger's statement shows a SEVERE lack of knowledge of U.S. Code, U.S. History, and background and intent of the intent of the founding fathers. He also seems to think that that the U.S. Constitution 'grants' rights to the people, rather than restricting the power of a central govt to restrict individual rights as it was intended. I do not believe Burger to be that stupid and the quote is probably a statement from him as a 'hopeful' opinion. His statement was also made prior to the 1990 Supreme Court ruling that the term 'people' are 'individuals' when it is used in the preamble to the Constitution as well as the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th, and 10th amendments. They determined that each amendment spoke of an individual right. Here is the link to U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990):
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bi...=494&invol=259
Basically it says you can't define the word 'people' one way throughout the entire Constitution and then make a single exception and claim that 'the people' means a 'group' only in the Second Amendment. This is referred to as the 'individual' interpretation as opposed to the 'collective' interpretation. Burger was wrong, but in fairness to him researching the Second Amendment and its intent was not his specialty.
[This message has been edited by Jeff OTMG (edited April 12, 2001).]
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