ATF says Tennessee's Firearms Freedom Act has no force in law

Story here. Nice. I hope this really picks a fight. Instapundit says the ATF is on solid legal grounds but that it won't play well.

I know the past 70 years of Federal behavior has been to ignore Washington's limitation to regulating only interstate commerce, so Glenn might be talking about precedent, but I've still got to think the state is the one on solid legal ground by both the meaning and letter of the Constitution. It defends Tennessee's intrastate firearms from Federal regulation.

I say, bring back nullification!

The right of self-defense makes a comeback in Britain

It's small, but it's a start: British subjects who defend themselves from robbery or attack can now have their perspective on the situation taken into account when they're prosecuted. Whoopie. Well, no one thought it would be easy to reverse their statist trend towards a government monopoly on force (even itty bitty force). Glad to see there's some progress, at least. The depressing trend from the early twentieth century up 'til 2004 is chronicled here, in this cringe-inducing article by Joyce Lee Malcom.

D.C. Gun Ban Unconstitutional

Scalia wrote the decision. Says Constitution guarantees an individual right, unconnected to service in a militia. Halleluja. I'd been getting a little ticked off with this session's decisions the last week or so.

Glenn Reynolds has more.

Does Britain need a written constitution?

Fascinating. On the BBC World Service right now, two Englishmen are debating whether Britain needs a written constitution or not. The man arguing the pro side, from a think tank, I believe, is pointing to the fixedness of a written constitution as an advantage. There was something about the EU he brought in, but I didn't catch that. He says that a bill of rights (like in America) is needed, but that itself would be part of a written constitution, and to codify one part of a written one without writing the rest doesn't make sense. (Have they passed a written bill of rights?) Furthermore, the creation of the Welsh and Scottish parliaments (which he agrees with) have put some more aspects of the British constitution in writing.

The man arguing the con side argued for the flexibility of an unwritten constitution as an advantage. He said that, for instance, women didn't get the vote in (Switzerland?) until the 1970s (I think this was true in Italy, but I missed some of what he said), and in America, civil rights for blacks were denied in practice for a century after they were supposedly codified in the Constitution. Furthermore! Those crazy Americans are stuck with (cursed with, really) gun rights, a right that was only meant "for the pioneer days," so you could "shoot a bear" or something. And now this anachronistic "right" is causing all kinds of problems.

Yikes. The man arguing the con side is a "Conservative" MP.

The fundamental misunderstanding of our Second Amendment is disappointing, especially coming from someone I'd expect to have been more favorable to the right it protects. And he's blind to the reality of violent crime in America and Britain—we have lower violent crime rates here, with a right to keep and bear arms, than they do in Britain, where there is an almost total gun ban.

Furthermore, though I don't need to waste too many pixels explaining it to this crowd, the right was never about shooting bears. It was and is, first and foremost, about defense against domestic tyrrany.

Well, I'm intrigued to follow how this debate goes. I believe in written constitutions, because fixedness of government form is something I desire. It better constrains the powers of government. But if the British can get along without it, and maintain a free country, more power to them.

More on the D.C. gun decision

I should have figured: Instapundit is filled with useful commentary on that gun decision today. I hadn't realized the context of the case--the court actually struck down the District's gun ban! That ban has been the butt of criticism from us gun rights supporters for decades, and we've long pointed to it as an example of a law that's clearly unconstitutional. Nice to see the court agreeing!

And here's more from the Volokh Conspiracy. Keep updating Volokh and Instapundit throughout the day; I'm sure they'll both be keeping tabs on this.

A welcome Second Amendment decision

Over at The Corner, K-Lo has posted a D.C. Circuit Court decision regarding the right to keep and bear arms. In part,

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right
existed prior to the formation of the new government under the
Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for
activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being
understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the
depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from
abroad).

[...]

Despite the importance of the Second
Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects
are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s
enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or
intermittent enrollment in the militia.

Wow! "Resistance to...the depredations of a tyrannical government" and "not limited to militia service"! Amen, brothers!

The FAA revokes its collectivist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment

(Via Instapundit) Interesting, and yet, weird. The FAA had issued a regulation against astronauts carrying weapons on board spacecraft. To back this up, they claimed that the Second Amendment is only a vague, collective right. (What--you've got the right to join the National Guard?! Or, the state has the right to bear arms?)

They've now changed the wording of the regulation to remove the collective interpretation of the Amendment. They've kept the regulation, but they're justifying it differently. Well, it's a start, anyway.

The existence of the regulation itself is weird, though. They're apparently worried about the hijacking of commercial, suborbital spacecraft. Maybe they're getting ready for regular commercial manned spaceflight (I hate that "human spaceflight" phrase--"manned" is a better and more natural term, free of the PC clunkiness). At the moment, I think this kind of security issue ought to be up to the company. They're not taking people from off the street, you know.