The OK case

[BmorePat87]

(04-05-2017, 01:49 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: It took quite a while for the individual right to own firearms to become the interpretation of the Second by the courts. Changing the interpretation is judicial activism.

Despite not being a gun owner, I am in the camp that the current interpretation of an individual's right is the correct one for the time that we live in, but, yea, the Court's interpretation that it protect's the individual's right, not the States' right from the Federal government, is less than a decade old. The English Bill of Rights clearly defined a right to own guns separate from any discussion of a militia. The 2nd Amendment then purposely added that point of a militia. Older versions of it elaborate on the militia too. Of course, to me, this is a case where we need to stretch the meaning of it for today's time. 

If we're using the definition of judicial activism of merely "overturning laws and previous precedent" then obviously going back to an older precedent would be activism as you're overturning a newer one. One could make the argument that reversing activism is not itself activism but restraint.