Posted on 08/11/2003 7:52:00 PM PDT by John Farson
Phoenix, Ariz. The results of a six-year study of Supreme Court gun cases will be released in September and has uncovered scores of forgotten decisions that affect the highly contested Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
Co-written by an attorney who has won three cases before the High Court, along with the research director of a prominent think tank, and a nationally recognized gun-law expert, the researchers conclude from the evidence that the Supreme Court has recognized an individual right to arms for most of the past two centuries.
Among the key findings in "Supreme Court Gun Cases," being released next month by Phoenix-based Bloomfield Press:
- The Court has not been quiet on this subject as previously thought, using some form of the word "gun" in its decisions 2,910 times (gun, rifle, pistol, shotgun, firearm, etc., even Winchester five times) in 92 cases. Three dozen of the cases quote or mention the Second Amendment directly.
- Armed self defense with personally owned firearms is recognized and supported in more than a dozen cases, is a distinct right of American citizens, and an ancient "duty to retreat" is not obligatory.
- The often-cited Miller case from 1939 is inconclusive, which is why gun-rights and gun-control advocates both claim it supports their position. The record shows that the Court actually remanded this case back to the lower court for retrial and a hearing on the evidence, since there was no evidence presented. Because Miller had been murdered by that time and his co-defendant had taken a plea agreement, no retrial or evidentiary hearing was ever held.
- All 92 cases are reproduced to show what the Court has actually said. More than 1,000 interesting quotations are highlighted, and each case includes a plain-English description. A special "descriptive index" reduces each case to the firearms-related question(s) it answers.
Advanced review copies of "Supreme Court Gun Cases" are available to the news media on request. Contact Bloomfield Press at 1-800-996-4020 or SCGC@gunlaws.com.
Travis McGee, posting from off-site, back home tomorrow.
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