Guns and the Constitution: "Keep and Bear," Not "Buy and Sell":
In 1989, now-deceased conservative megahero and Amish bearded fucksack Judge Robert Bork said, "I'm not an expert on the Second Amendment, but its intent was to guarantee the right of states to form militia, not for individuals to bear arms." In the same lecture, he added that "assault weapons could be banned under the Constitution," and that other restrictions on guns were constitutional. In 1991, he went at the gun rights' lobby: "[T]he National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks that it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding."

Want more? Bork's 1997 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah, something of a must-read for a great many on the right, has the following line: "The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possibly tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose." Bork was against gun control, but it was up to the people. For most of his life, he thought that the Constitution was no impediment to gun control laws. Later, he would sign onto an amicus brief in the depraved 2008 DC v Heller decision that finally did carve out an individual right to bear arms. Hey, motherfucker saw an opportunity and jumped. Who can blame the old bastard for trying to dick over liberals one last time before he starred in Hell's stage production of Let's Skullfuck Robert Bork with Flaming Demon Cocks? But for most of his life, he was pretty clear: the Second Amendment means what it says.

But let's say it doesn't. Let's say that, like every guntard everywhere, we ignore the first clause, the "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" section that apparently doesn't mean "well-regulated" or "militia" or "security" of the state at all. Let's just say that only the rest of it applies, the part that says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," and that individuals can "keep and bear" guns. Now, the Rude Pundit's no constitutional scholar, but he's pretty sure that there's no contorted stretch of definitions that can make "keep and bear" mean "buy and sell."

That's where Article 1, Section 8 comes in. It's the Commerce Clause, and it gives Congress the power "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes." That pretty clearly says that when it comes to buying and selling, there can be regulations. It's a direct correlation - selling something? That activity can be regulated. The power there is within every limitation one can think of, a power that even Justice John Roberts' opinion on the Commerce Clause as it applies to the Affordable Care Act can't undermine.

The vile Heller decision barely mentions commerce at all. It was about the keeping of arms. In fact, Justice Scalia, whose starring role in the new play in Hell, Antonin Scalia's Ass Is Repeatedly Sodomized by Lucifer Himself, awaits him, wrote in his Heller majority opinion, "[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." So one of the only mentions of the sale of guns in the opinion pretty much says, "Yeah, go ahead and regulate it. That's your fucking jobs."

We don't even need to get into the affirmation of the consitutionality of gun-free zones, like schools.

Congress has all the constitutional tools it needs to do something. National laws, not the patchwork of state regulations. Hell, Democrats, you even have the most conservative judges laying down cover fire while you rush the NRA's walls.

What those regulations should be will be discussed tomorrow.