[NonValueAdded]

A little context might be helpful in the future.

03-51 SILVEIRA, SEAN, ET AL. V. LOCKYER, ATT'Y GEN. OF CA

This is 9th Circuit case #01-15098 opinion which SCOTUS has declined to review [empahsis added]:

OPINION
REINHARDT, Circuit Judge:

In 1999, the State of California enacted amendments to its gun control laws that significantly strengthened the state’s restrictions on the possession, use, and transfer of the semiautomatic weapons popularly known as “assault weapons.” Plaintiffs, California residents who either own assault weapons, seek to acquire such weapons, or both, brought this challenge to the gun control statute, asserting that the law, as amended, violates the Second Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and a host of other constitutional provisions. The district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims. Because the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms, we affirm the dismissal of all claims brought pursuant to that constitutional provision. As to the Equal Protection claims, we conclude that there is no constitutional infirmity in the statute’s provisions regarding active peace officers. We find, however, no rational basis for the establishment of a statutory exception with respect to retired peace officers, and hold that the retired officers’ exception fails even the most deferential level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. Finally, we conclude that each of the three additional constitutional claims asserted by plaintiffs on appeal is without merit.

[Dead Corpse]

A little MORE context.

One can never have too much context, can they?

[CFW]

"Because the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms, we affirm the dismissal of all claims brought pursuant to that constitutional provision."

They call THAT "declining to review".???????????

[RogueIsland]

Because the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms, we affirm the dismissal of all claims brought pursuant to that constitutional provision.

Oh, I expect you'll be seeing that 9th Circuit line in quite a few anti-gun rulings over the next few years. Without the USSC hearing it, it stands. I'm sure the VPC crowd is orgasmic. They're probably typing that line into their letterhead as I write this.

[pogo101]

As Alex Kozinski wrote in dissenting from the 9th Circus's decision not to reconsider the 3-judge panel's decision:

[After discussing why the slave states understood the importance of denying blacks a right to bear arms, lest the blacks rightly revolt:]
All too many of the other great tragedies of history- Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few-were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed-where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel's mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion-the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text-refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it-and is just as likely to succeed.