The Capitol Steps : The Second Amendment

Welcome to Talking Justice Sign in | Join | Help

The Capitol Steps began as a group of Senate staffers who set out to satirize the very people and places that employed them. In the years that followed, many of the Steps ignored the conventional wisdom ("Don't quit your day job!"), and although not all of the current members of the Steps are former Capitol Hill staffers, taken together the performers have worked in a total of eighteen Congressional offices and represent 62 years of collective House and Senate staff experience.

The Second Amendment

The Supreme Court's constitutional literalists will have their hands full with the Court's first Second Amendment case since 1939. If the job of the Court is to interpret the text, then why has it spent so much more time on grammatical gems of clarity like the Eighth Amendment and so little on the Second?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Clear enough, right? What part of "Arms" or "Militia" or "people" don't you understand? Some people, of course, have no doubt about what it means.

Gun Nuts Boasting They Can Open Fire

Published Saturday, December 01, 2007 12:00 AM by The Capitol Steps

Filed under: capsteps, supreme court, right to bear arms, second amendment, constitution, capitol steps, guns

Anonymous comments are disabled. Click "Join" at top-right to add comments.

Closed to Comments

Note: Justice Talking ceased production on June 30 of 2008. The Talking Justice blogs and forums are provided as a read-only resource for historical interest only. Commenting on blog posts has been suspended.

All opinions expressed are those of the author. The Annenberg Public Policy Center makes no claim as the the accuracy of claims or continued availability of any third party web links found on this site.