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Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well? Through a series of legal decisions handed down over the past century, the Supreme Court has gradually held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights apply to the states via the 14th Amendment, which declares, “No State shall make or enforce...

On November 23, 2009, 210 Representatives signed a McDonald v. Chicago brief, asking the Supreme Court to incorporate the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” under the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby restricting a municipality’s ability to enact local gun control laws. All is not as it appears This brief elicited some interesting responses from both sides of the gun control issue. Two representatives endorsed by the Brady Campaign voted in favor of McDonald: Congressman Michael Arcuri, (NY-24, 2008 NRA grade C-), and Patrick Murphy (PA-8, NRA grade D+). According to Tom King, President of the New York Rifle and...

(AP Photo/Judi Bottoni)The U.S. Supreme Court has set a date to hear the landmark civil liberties case that will determine whether the Second Amendment prohibits state and local governments from enacting stiff anti-gun laws. Oral arguments in the lawsuit, McDonald v. City of Chicago, will be held on the morning of March 2, 2010. A decision is expected by late June or early July. It's also worth noting the amicus briefs that have been filed in the last week or so in support of the Second Amendment Foundation and other groups challenging Chicago's handgun restrictions. There are at least 30...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 State Legislators File Amicus Brief Supporting NRA's Stance in Pivotal Supreme Court Case Monday, November 23, 2009 Fairfax, Va. -- A large bipartisan group of state legislators and other elected officials from all 50 states have signed an amicus curiae, or "friend of the court," brief supporting the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The amicus brief, bearing the signatures of 891 state legislators and other elected officials -- including two governors and three lieutenant governors -- was filed with the U.S. Supreme...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 Bipartisan Majority of U.S. Congress Signs Amicus Brief Supporting NRA's Position in Pivotal Supreme Court Case Monday, November 23, 2009 Fairfax, Va. -- An overwhelming, bipartisan majority of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have signed an amicus curiae, or "friend of the court," brief supporting the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The amicus brief, bearing the signatures of 251 Members of Congress and 58 Senators, was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court today in the case...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 Bipartisan Majority of Attorneys General File Amicus Brief Supporting NRA's Stance in Pivotal Supreme Court Case Monday, November 23, 2009 Fairfax, Va. -- An overwhelming, bipartisan majority of attorneys general have signed an amicus curiae, or "friend of the court," brief supporting the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The amicus brief, prepared by the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and bearing the signatures of attorneys general from 38 states, was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court today in the case...

Our interest in a single Supreme Court case has perhaps never been as high as it is in a case currently being briefed. The issues are fascinating on several levels, and the potential impact of a ruling is big. The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, for which the court granted cert on Sept. 30. The petitioners in the case, a group challenging a gun-control ordinance in Chicago, filed their brief with the court earlier this week. Were the court to adopt their position — something well within the realm of possibility — we could be looking at a...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   NRA Files Brief in McDonald v. Chicago   Tuesday, November 17, 2009   On November 16, the NRA filed its brief with the U.S. Supreme Court as Respondent in Support of Petitioner in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The NRA brief asks the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. In September, the Supreme Court agreed to consider the McDonald case, on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. That court incorrectly claimed that prior...

Alan Gura, who successfully defended the individual right to keep and bear arms under Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller has now filed his brief in the case that seeks to apply that right to the states, McDonald v. City of Chicago. (Cato earlier filed a brief supporting Alan’s cert petition, the background to which you can read about here.) The question presented in this case is: Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses. Remarkably, only 7 of...

Application of Second Amendment to be decided by Supreme Court Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll Lawyer Alan Gura says that owning semi-automatic guns is constitutional. The man who successfully challenged a prohibition against handguns in the District of Columbia before the Supreme Court said last night during a local debate about the Second Amendment that some states have gone too far. That's what happened in the District of Columbia, which required that firearms either be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, said Alan Gura, a lawyer from Alexandria, Va., who argued the Supreme Court case. "If you have a...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Urgent Alert: Ask Your U.S. Senators And Representative To Sign Amicus Brief Supporting Second Amendment Rights In The States!   Friday, November 13, 2009   As a critical Second Amendment case goes before the United States Supreme Court, U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Jon Tester (D-MT), and Congressmen Mike Ross (D-AR) and Mark Souder (R-IN) are gathering signatures for an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief by Members of Congress.  And we need your support for this important effort next week.The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, and it will answer the question of...

Much has been written (including some by myself and other Gun Rights Examiners--see links beneath the photo) about the impending McDonald v. City of Chicago case to be heard by the Supreme Court early next year. In this case, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association are challenging Chicago's handgun ban (the NRA also eventually became involved). Probably the biggest issue that will be decided here is whether or not the Second Amendment is to be incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, and thus apply to state and local governments, as well as to the feds. If SCOTUS...

As the U.S. Supreme Court makes its stately way into the new term, a case over the horizon promises to hit the 20,000 gun control laws in this country with the impact of a 9mm round. The prep work came last year in District of Columbia vs. Heller. A narrow 5-4 majority struck down the gun control law in the nation's capital, and for the moment settled an argument over just what the Second Amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights, actually means. The Second Amendment reads, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of...

Cordray weighs in on McDonald v. Chicago by Keith Loria October 16, 2009 01:33 PM. Now that the United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the Second Amendment is back in the spotlight. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who will join arguments in the case, believes that the people's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and cannot be denied by state and local governments. He outlined his perspective in an exclusive interview with Public Nuisance Wire. PNW: The Second Amendment has become a hot topic of late....

Two pro-gun rights senators are wading into a lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court that could further expand the Second Amendment and restrict governments’ ability to police the flow of firearms. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) are joining Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) in filing a joint amicus brief before the Supreme Court — repeating an effort they first made last year in the District of Columbia’s gun-rights case. The lawmakers say they plan to ask justices to apply the Second Amendment more forcibly to states, siding with the National Rifle Association in seeking to overturn the...

Just 39% of Americans now say the United States needs stricter gun control, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to review the constitutionality of state and local anti-gun laws. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% are opposed to stricter gun control laws, and 11% are not sure. In March, 43% favored stricter gun control laws. In previous surveys, voters have been narrowly divided on the question. Men by 23 points oppose stricter gun control laws. Women are evenly divided. Sixty-five percent (65%) of Democrats favor tighter control of guns, but 69% of Republicans and 62% of...

Our friend the Welshman from The Liberty Sphere has an excellent analysis of the Chicago 2nd Amendment Incorporation Case. The comments section offers some further intriguing thoughts. Stop by and add your two cents. Tantalizing Excerpt: Rationality, it would seem, would dictate that it is a no-brainer that the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights automatically extend to all of the state and local governments. What good is free speech or a free press, for example, if the Constitution is meant only to restrict Congress from encroaching on those rights but leaves state and local governments with the power...

In the 1856 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the idea that Africans and their descendants in the United States could be "entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens." To emphasize how absurd that notion was, Chief Justice Roger Taney noted that, among other things, those "privileges and immunities" would allow members of "the unhappy black race" to "keep and carry arms wherever they went." The 14th Amendment, approved in the wake of the Civil War, repudiated Taney's view of the Constitution, declaring that "no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it would decide whether state and local gun control laws may be challenged under the Second Amendment. The court also agreed to hear nine other cases from among those that had piled up over its summer break, including one concerning the constitutionality of an antiterrorism law that is a favorite tool of federal prosecutors. The Second Amendment case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, addresses a question that was left open last year when the court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms rather than a collective...

Down here in West Texas, I keep a handgun in my car and usually one somewhere on my person. My habits are not novel: For I live among people who understand and value our inherent right to keep and bear arms, as well as our right to self-defense. Yet in many parts of the country, like Chicago, where handgun ownership was banned in 1982, the norm is quite different. In the Windy City, men like Otis McDonald, a 76 year-old retiree, tell stories of being prisoners in their own homes: unable to defend either their property or their lives because...

Freedom New Mexico 2009-10-01 23:14:06 A year after its landmark ruling that the Second Amendment secures an individual, not collective, right to possess firearms, the Supreme Court signaled Wednesday it will accompany it with another historic decision — whether that right applies to states and localities.In June 2008, the court ruled 5-4 in D.C. v. Heller that the District of Columbia’s ban on private handgun ownership infringed on the constitutional right to bear arms. In doing so, the court affirmed for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, thus disposing of the argument often made by...

It was an image that shocked the country. Could a case headed for the Supreme Court overturn gun laws in Chicago? A 16-year-old honor student in Chicago being beaten to death by teenagers. Derrion Albert, a high school sophomore was caught in a mob fight as he was walking to a bus stop. Despite not being part of either of the gangs, he was punched, kicked and struck by a board. And just a week and a half after the fatal incident, as residents demand safer streets, Chicago faces a new battle -- this time over guns. On Monday, the...

Heller lawyer Alan Gura revived the Second Amendment. Can he do the same for the 14th? It has been only a year and a season since the Supreme Court shook the world of Second Amendment jurisprudence with the historical D.C. v. Heller decision. In that case, the court declared for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms against infringement by the federal government — at least commonly used arms, for self-defense in the home. Heller opened the gates for a flood of new lawsuits by gun-rights friendly attorneys and organizations, most prominently the...

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

(AP ) The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it plans to hear the next major gun rights case, a move that will decide whether the Second Amendment can invalidate state laws and municipal ordinances. A 5-4 Supreme Court decision last year did say that the U.S. Constitution protects an individual right to own a handgun. But the majority opinion never concluded that the Second Amendment applied to states; it didn't say what kind of laws beyond a flat ban are acceptable or unacceptable; it didn't even say what kind of standards lower courts should apply when evaluating anti-gun...

September 30, 2009 BY ABDON M. PALLASCH AND FRAN SPIELMAN Staff Reporters The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to hear a challenge to Chicago’s strictest-in-the-nation handgun ban likely means the other holster is ready to fall on the ban, advocates on both sides of the issue seemed to agree Wednesday. “A year from now there will not be a Chicago handgun ban,” said Alan Gura, the attorney representing the gun owners fighting the ban. The high court’s five-member conservative majority last year threw out Washington, D.C.’s gun ban in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, but stopped short of...

* Last year, when the Supreme Court struck down a ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., some municipalities saw the writing on the wall and repealed similar laws. Chicago, however, chose to fight. On Wednesday, the court set up the final battle by agreeing to decide whether the city's ordinance violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution. For those who favor strict regulation of handguns, that development is not good news. It opens the way for the court to invalidate a 26-year-oldban on weapons that are often used in murders and other crimes.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court could ignite a vigorous new fight over state and local gun controls across the nation when it rules on a challenge to Chicago's handgun ban. The court said Wednesday it will consider a challenge to Chicago's ban, and even gun control supporters believe a victory is likely for gun-rights proponents.

ChicagoGunCase.com Restoring the Second Amendment Sep 30 2009 The Schedule Published by Alan Gura under Uncategorized Here is what we can look forward to in the coming months… Our opening brief is due November 16. The city’s brief is then due December 16. Our reply brief is due January 15. The case is expected to be argued in February, with a decision expected by the end of June, 2010. No responses yet Sep 30 2009 PRESS RELEASE: SUPREME COURT TO HEAR McDONALD CASE Published by Alan Gura under news release Read the the U.S. Supreme Court docket WASHINGTON, D.C. –...

Breaking on WLS Talk Radio. SCOTUS has agreed to hear the NRA case against the Chicago handgun ban.

The Supreme Court has clearly ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution means individuals have a right to own weapons, and the justices have been asked to take up two cases that could broaden that right to include state laws. The court’s decision on whether to take up the cases, National Rifle Association v. Chicago and McDonald v. Chicago, could come this week, before the fall term officially starts Oct. 5. The Second Amendment is one of the most contentious provisions in the Constitution. To many, it is an unqualified guarantee of Americans’ right to defend themselves. Others...

<p>12:08 PM CDT, September 15, 2009 BOSTON (AP) — James S. McDonald, president and chief executive of investment management firm Rockefeller & Co., has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, Massachusetts authorities said Tuesday.</p> <p>McDonald, 56, was found in his vehicle at about 3 p.m. Sunday behind a car dealership in Dartmouth, about 50 miles south of Boston, said Gregg Miliote, a spokesman for the Bristol district attorney's office.</p>

James S. McDonald, head of investment-management firm Rockefeller & Co. and a board member of NYSE Euronext, died on Sunday in Massachusetts, according to people familiar with the matter. He was 56 years old. In a statement Monday night, Barclay McFadden III, who identified himself as a friend of Mr. McDonald's family, said he "took his own life." The family has "no further comments beyond this," the statement added. " Jim McDonald was an exceptional individual who provided strong leadership of Rockefeller & Co. for over eight years," Colin Campbell, Rockefeller & Co. chairman, said in a statement on Monday....

Otis McDonald is a great American. In the 1960s, he wore an Army uniform and served with distinction. He then moved home to Chicago were he began a family. Meanwhile, he busied himself during the days with work at his local union. Eventually, he led the effort to integrate his union and ended up as president of the union. In recent years, McDonald looked around Chicago and decided that he could do something about the shadowy areas of the city outside the bright lights. He went into impoverished, crime-riddled neighborhoods as a community activist. Yet his work inevitably meant he...

Otis McDonald wore an Army uniform and served with distinction. He then moved home to Chicago were he began a family. Meanwhile, he busied himself during the days with work at his local union. Eventually, he led the effort to integrate his union and ended up as president of the union. In recent years, McDonald looked around Chicago and decided that he could do something about the shadowy areas of the city outside the bright lights. He went into impoverished, crime-riddled neighborhoods as a community activist. Yet his work inevitably meant he crossed paths with shady characters — drug dealers...

The Supreme Court will consider two new cases on the scope of individuals’ Second Amendment right to have guns at its first Conference for the new Term, on Sept. 29, according to the Court’s electronic docket.  Both petitions challenge a Seventh Circuit Court ruling that the Amendment does not restrict gun control laws adopted by state, county or city government, but applies only to federal laws. The cases are National Rifle Association v. Chicago (08-1497 [1]) and McDonald v. Chicago (08-1521 [2]).The so-called “incorporation� issue is the most significant sequel issue raised in the wake of the Court’s 2008 decision...

The Obama administration dispatched a senior aide to Richmond Wednesday to urge former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder to get behind state Sen. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, met with Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor, for over two hours in Virginia's capital. But Wilder, in disclosing the meeting in an interview with POLITICO, made it clear that he remained far from endorsing Deeds and was in no hurry to weigh in on the closely watched race — all the while outlining with his typical brutal candor what he thought some...

Mike Cox Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox today threw his support behind the National Rifle Association's challenge of a City of Chicago ordinance banning possession of most handguns by filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court. Cox's amicus brief -- a document filed in court by someone not directly related to a case -- supports the request by the NRA to the Supreme Court for an appeal of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in June favoring the City of Chicago.At least 33 other states support the NRA's request for the court to hear an appeal in...

The Supreme Court already has two cases it could use for a new look at the scope of gun rights under the Second Amendment, another case is on the way, and now, perhaps before long, there could be a fourth. The Ninth Circuit Court has received new briefs strongly urging it not to rehear en banc the case of Nordyke, et al., v. King, et al. (docket 07-15763), and one brief that is lukewarm on the subject, saying only that further — but only partial — review “would be useful.� Each of the cases now at the Court or on the way...

Alan Gura, the Alexandria, Va., attorney who won the historic Supreme Court ruling last year establishing a personal right to have a gun for self-defense at home, started a new challenge in the Supreme Court Tuesday. It seeks to have the Second Amendment right enforced against state, county and city gun control laws. The petition in McDonald, et al., v. City of Chicago, can be downloaded here.(PDF) (A docket number has not yet been assigned.) Last week, the National Rifle Association filed a separate appeal raising the same issue (NRA, et al., v. City of Chicago, docket 08-1497). It is...

June 08, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Bill of Rights, Inc. Could a Second Amendment case establish Fourteenth Amendment originalism? By Will Haun The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided McDonald v. City of Chicago, a challenge to Chicago’s gun ban. The case has major implications for protecting gun rights at the state level, but its importance goes further than that. Depending on what the Supreme Court does, it could make originalism — relying on the text of the Constitution and its amendments as they were understood when enacted — the accepted standard for interpreting the Bill of Rights, rather...

Republican open-borders advocates tirelessly promote the myth that Hispanics will save the American family from the rising tide of illegitimacy and disintegration. None of these myth-makers has spent any time, it would appear, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, undoubtedly the most illegal alien-impacted school district in the county. “Most of the people I used to hang out with when I first came to the school have dropped out,” observed Jackie, a vivacious illegal alien from Guatemala, who is getting her GED at Belmont High School in Los Angeles’s overwhelmingly Hispanic, gang-ridden Rampart district. “Others got kicked out or...

The Supreme Court said Monday it would not review the public corruption conviction of a Los Angeles-area congresswoman's son, who argued that prosecutors put him on trial in a neighboring county to keep blacks off the jury. Roderick Keith McDonald, who is black, said he should have been tried in Los Angeles county instead of Orange County, where the jury pool is less than 2 percent African-American. McDonald, a former municipal official in the Los Angeles area, was convicted in 2004 for his role in extortion schemes involving municipal contracts. His mother is Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif. The U.S. Attorney's...

Cops say McDonald murdered, then went on with life upstairs good worker, boss says Monday, March 07, 2005 By Brian Donohue Newhouse News Service Edward McDonald, 25, was questioned by investigators on Jan. 14, the morning police found his landlord, his wife and their two daughters stabbed to death in their Jersey City Heights home. After the interview, McDonald walked out of the prosecutor's office - and coolly past the brother of the slain woman, Ayman Garas, who was entering the building to meet with detectives. On Friday, McDonald and Hamilton Sanchez, 30, pleaded not guilty to four counts of...

JERSEY CITY - Prosecutors will ask that two men charged with murdering a city family during a botched robbery last January be sentenced to death if found guilty, authorities said Friday. No date has been set for the trial of Edward McDonald, 25, and Hamilton Sanchez, 31, both of whom were formally arraigned on murder charges this month. Both men have pleaded not guilty to the violent slayings of Hossam Armanious, his wife, Amal Garas, and their two young daughters. "Both of them are designated as capital murder cases," said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio. "We're seeking the death penalty."...

NORTHPORT, Ala. - Customers will get more than a burger and fries at the Northport McDonald's where President Reagan chomped down on a Big Mac during a 1984 stop...

 At least since the unthinking attacks on Harvard’s E.O. Wilson in the 1970s, the self-appointed enforcers of political correctness have leveled charges of “racism” at scholars of evolutionary psychology. For the most part, the object of scorn has done little more than challenge unscientific presumptions about the inherent goodness and equality of mankind. Every once in a while, however, even the braying PC brigades get it right.   A case in point is Kevin MacDonald, a tenured professor of psychology at the California State University at Long Beach, who has been denounced as an anti-Semite by, among others, the Southern...

McDonald's Faces Suit After Girl Becomes IllPOSTED: 9:03 pm EST February 18, 2006 WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The parents of a 5-year-old girl have sued McDonald's Corporation claiming its French fries contained a wheat protein that caused their daughter to become seriously ill. Mark and Theresa Chimiak said in the lawsuit filed Friday in Palm Beach Circuit Court that their daughter Annalise had an intolerance to gluten. The Chimiaks said they filed the lawsuit after McDonald's acknowledged earlier in the week that wheat and dairy ingredients were used in cooking oil for French fries. The family's attorney, Brian W....

Sure he looks friendly, with his big smile, colorful jumpsuit and playful repartee. But get ready for some McAttitude. Ronald McDonald -- the iconic character that is not only a corporate mascot but also a global symbol of everything good and bad about America -- is undergoing a makeover that will change his look, sense of humor and role at the fast-food chain. "We're letting Ronald escape from the playpen," said Larry Light, McDonald's global chief marketing officer. "He's been confined to kids. We're repositioning Ronald McDonald. So, Ronnie is going through a retraining program -- taking courses in humor...

Social Security Reform No. 123 Inherent in our political system is the glaring flaw that 535 people can pull the wool over the eyes of 300 million. People don't vote on bills before Congress, they rely on those 535 people.. When those elected minions do the wrong thing, seldom do the people even know about it. That failure is compounded by a MSM dedicated to keeping the truth from the people if it would hurt the Democrat party. So we come to Social Security and the single greatest criminal fraud in the history of man. Try a $1.7 Trillion collateral...