“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:” Second Amendment

You might call it judicial activism, this latest decision from the Supreme Court declaring that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own a gun apart from membership in a militia, but what an embarrassment that would be.

Conservatives are supposed to be against judicial activism, and the judges who made the decision are conservatives. Also, the people who applauded them for it are conservatives.

So what’s going on?

In my opinion the five-member majority on the court reached a compromise between ideology and practicality.

Ideology required the declaration of an individual right of gun ownership, never before recognized by any court. Practicality required all kinds of infringements on that right, having no basis in the Constitution or anywhere else.

So under this new decision most of us can keep and bear arms, but felons and the mentally ill cannot.

We cannot keep and bear “dangerous and unusual” weapons, whatever those might be.

We cannot bear arms into “sensitive places,” like schools and government buildings.

The legal basis for these infringements is a mystery, since the Second Amendment clearly says the right shall not be infringed.

So that’s what the decision is: half ideology, half practicality. All of it manufactured in the most judicially active way imaginable.

For a fuller and more entertaining discussion, please see my column in the print edition of the Sunday Gazette, available at your local convenience store.