Court guns down history. (Correction, Please!).

ITEM: "A federal appeals court, upholding California's assault-weapons ban, decided that the Second Amendment does not guarantee individuals the right to bear arms," reported an AP dispatch in the San Francisco Chronicle for December 6th. "The decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the amendment's right to bear arms is intended to maintain effective state militias and is not an individual right. 'The historical record makes it equally plain that the amendment was not adopted in order to afford rights to individuals with respect to private gun ownership or possession,' Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote."

CORRECTION: This decision conflicts with established jurisprudence and any common-sense reading of the Second Amendment. Moreover, Judge Reinhardt's version of history is just plain wrong.

The Second Amendment does acknowledge an individual right, as even liberal academics such as Harvard's Lawrence Tribe have admitted. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, certainly realized this. Americans have, said Madison, "the advantage of being armed-funlike citizens of other countries whose governments are ...