Conservative jurisprudence on guns has fallen far and fallen fast into the gaping maw of Second Amendment absolutism.
In the majority opinion he authored in 2008′s then-seismic District of Columbia v. Heller ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He added that the freedom there described is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
“Nothing 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.”
