In short, Scalia believed the 2nd can and should be infringed.
He was wrong. The Second Amendment explicitly and absolutely forbids any such infringement.
Never mind the fact that the laws against felons, etc, having guns does not infringe on the right to arms because these people do not have the right to arms.
Where does the second say felons don't have a right to arms?
Felons also lose their 4th amendment rights when on parole, they lose most 1st amendment rights when incarcerated, they are immune from the restriction on servitude.
Why is that?
As long as one is under sentence for a crime, it is appropriate and allowable under the Fifth Amendment to impose whatever restrictions are necessary on his liberty. Once he's completed his sentence—
“paid his debt to society”—his liberty should be restored. Certainly, someone who has that in his past is still one of
“the people” mentioned in the Second Amendment, and elsewhere in the Bill of Rights, and every bit as entitled to his basic Constitutional rights as any other one of
“the people”.
The Second Amendment is absolutely clear, that the right which it affirms belongs to
“the people”, and that government is to keep its filthy hands off of that right.
At the time the Bill of Rights was enacted, and for at least a century afterward, there was no question about dangerous criminals and this right. Anyone whose criminality rose to such a level that they could not be trusted with this right ended up serving his sentence at the end of a rope, after which the question of whether he should be allowed his rights under the Second Amendment was rendered moot.
Since then, we've grown much softer on genuine,dangerous criminals, while, at the same time, expanding the scope of our laws so that even honest citizens are at risk of getting caught in in crimes that they didn't even know they were committing. Once upon a time, to commit a felony, you had to take an action that intentionally caused significant harm to another person. You had to know what you were doing, know that it was seriously wrong, and have the intent to do it anyway. Now, according to one author,
the average American unwittingly commits three felonies a day.
In accordance with the precedent that allows convicted felons to be stripped of their Second Amendment rights, this provides ample opportunity for corrupt government to strip anyone of these rights. All they need to do is find out which obscure law that person has unwittingly violated, and prosecute him for that.
Mental illness is another excuse. On the surface, it's easy to paint a picture of a violently-insane person, and make the case that you don't want that person to be armed. On that basis, we get the broad notion that anyone who is mentally-ill should not be allowed to have guns. But even among those legitimately and credibly diagnosed with mental illness, the vast majority are not dangerous or violent; and there is far too much room to define mental illness to include just about anyone. Who among us does not have some characteristic that someone else might claim is mental illness? We've already had one prominent senator make the argument that all combat veterans ought to be denied the right to own guns, on the basis that they are likely to suffer from PTSD or other psychological trauma as a result of their experience in combat. The Soviet Union was big on the use of claims of mental illness as an excuse for suppressing and abusing dissidents, and we can already see the seeds for this being planted in our own society, as those on the
left wrong increasingly embrace all forms of sexual deviance, immorality, and perversion, and condemn as
“bigots” anyone who declines to play along. Mark my words: If the current trends are not reversed,
“bigotry” (meaning anyone who refuses to play along with extreme wrong-wing immorality) will come to be established and defined as a form of mental illness, and used as an excuse to deny good people their Second Amendment rights.
