At 9:04 PM -0600 6/14/04, Clayton E. Cramer wrote:
> The decision is definitely trying to have it both ways about what the Rhode
> Island Constitution's right to keep and bear arms provision protects. First,
> they make the claim--without any supporting evidence--that:
>
> "Article 1, section 22 of the Rhode Island Constitution provides that:
> "[t]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." By
> its express terms, it cannot be denied that art. 1, sec. 22 recognizes some
> form of a right to keep and bear arms. To discern the nature and extent of
> the right, however, we must look beyond the plain text of that provision. It
> seems clear from even a cursory review of the various versions of the right
> to bear arms, as reflected in the Second Amendment to the United States
> Constitution and in several state constitutions, that these provisions
> implicitly, if not explicitly, encompass the concept of "bearing arms" for
> the common defense."
>
> There are a number of state constitutional provisions, some of which, like
> Massachusetts, that refer to "the common defence," but many others that are
> just as unadorned as the Rhode Island provision, which make no reference to
> common defense at all.
This sounds like a variation of the same dance Arizona danced in Rineer.
The court argued that the state RKBA provision was "not absolute" because
it had a single, expressly-stated exception ("maintaining bodies of armed
men".) Then they went on to argue that since it was "not absolute" the
court could invent other exceptions to it out of whole cloth (in this case,
forbidding the carrying of firearms inside a park unless you possessed a
CCW -- this in a state where every citizen has the right to carry openly
without a license).
--
Escape the Rat Race for Peace, Quiet, and Miles of Desert Beauty
Take a Sanity Break at The Bunkhouse at Liberty Haven Ranch
http://libertyhavenranch.com
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