Last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time ever on a Second Amendment case. After years of political debate about the true meaning of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” the Court finally and definitively declared that the amendment does indeed guarantee an individual’s right to bear (carry) arms (guns, and in this case, handguns), as opposed to the alternate school of thought that “a well regulated militia” meant, well, the right of a militia—or a collective body, such as an army—to bear arms. The ruling jeopardizes states’ ability to regulate weapons in exactly the ways they see fit according to the types of unique crimes under which they suffer.

The Senate must be thrilled to have five new Republican members among its ranks, because I haven’t seen such a grand example of legislating from the bench in years.  And the hypocrisy! It’s the best example seen of that since Barack We-Need-Change-in-Washington Obama’s flip-flop on eschewing federal funding so he can raise scores more millions of dollars in an already record-breaking presidential campaign. In their decision, these new senators became magically, uniquely enlightened to interpreting the Framers’ intent. And who would have guessed that it just happens to suit their own conservative ideologies?

We’ve heard these same "senators" complain of liberal judges legislating from the bench before. They’ve even accused their own colleagues of doing so, such as when the Court saw in the Constitution a right to bodily privacy and integrity (see Roe v. Wade, granting abortion rights) and the right to relationship privacy, such as the freedom to have sex with whomever you want, gay or straight, without being thrown in jail (see Lawrence v. Kansas, outlawing all remaining sodomy laws, most of which were used to target homosexual activity). Such decisions have been increasingly derided—and cited in Republican political campaigns—as judicial attempts to impose a liberal orthodoxy on the masses. Stop legislating from the bench! Why can’t judges just judge? Why must they carve out specific individual rights at will where no such rights clearly exist in the Constitution? That’s not what our Framers wanted!

Well nowhere in the Second Amendment do you see the words “individual.” And if by “the people” the Framers really meant individuals, wouldn’t they have said just “people,” as the “the” seems to indicate a collective body, like the right of “the Senate” vs. the right of “Senators”?

Sens. Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, and Thomas crafted their opinion in precisely the way they want public policy on gun control and gun rights changed. Legislating from the bench, indeed.