Posted on 12/02/2003 12:59:42 PM PST by tpaine
High Court Won't Review Ban on Assault Weapons
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to review a ruling that upheld California's ban on assault weapons and declared there was no constitutional right for individuals to own a gun.
Without comment, the justices let stand the ruling by a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco that the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms.
The ruling differed from the position taken by the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft, who changed the government's long-standing policy, and by a federal appeals court in New Orleans that ruled that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms.
California enacted the nation's most sweeping assault weapons ban in 1999, amending legislation adopted 10 years earlier. The state legislature amended the law to ban assault weapons based on a host of features, instead of specific makes and models.
A group of individuals who own assault weapons or want to buy them challenged the law, saying it violated the Second Amendment and other constitutional rights.
A federal judge dismissed the constitutional claims, and the appeals court agreed in upholding the law.
The appeals court said the Second Amendment protected the gun rights of militias, not individuals. The Second Amendment states: "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." Gary Gorski, an attorney for those challenging the law, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms without the threat of state confiscation or compulsory registration.
The National Rifle Association supported the appeal.
Nor do I, not a bit, a byte or a word.
There will be no 2nd civil war. What is more likely to happen is envisioned by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and written about in Neil Postmans book, 'Amusing Ourselves to Death'.
This is the foreward from the book...
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Recommended Reading.
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/post_2.html
I disagree. That case is predicated on the DC police stance of not allowing others to register their guns, yet registration is mandatory there, hence, there is a de facto ban except for grandfathered guns, registered before a cutoff many years in the past.
But the NRA and Republican congressmen, for example Orrin Hatch, are pushing a law that would force DC to accept new registrations, which would end the de facto ban. It would be very easy for SCOTUS to simply say, "We see that the legislature is working on the problem and so there is no need for us to hear Parker, et al.. But, thanks for playing."
Not really but I get your point. When do we march?
April 19, of course.
Just below you say that the "ruling is the law in those states within it's jurisdiction". --- Which is it? You can't have it both ways, can you?
I should have said "Supreme Court" in the first statement. The second referred to the Circuit Court, provided the opinion was issued "en banc", that is by the entire court, rather than a 3 judge panel. As I understand it, the ruling of a 3 judge ciruit court panel, like those in both Silveria and Emerson, does not bind another such panel, which means that it really only applies to the case at hand. However an "en banc" opinion binds that circuit court and is "good law" in the area of it's jurisdiction. The power of precedence is understandable, you have to know what the law is, and if ever time a court ruled, especially the Supreme Court, or a Circuit Court, the law changed, you'd have a harder time keeping up than you do now. However there doesn't seem to be any provision for the Supreme Court to just say that an earlier Supreme Court ruled wrongly, and overturn it. They have to put some new twist on the case. Thus the Supreme Court really didn't overule itself on the sodomy ruling, even though in effect it did. Somehow they are stragely reluctant to overrule the earliest cases that addressed the 14th amendment making the BoR applicable to the states. Instead they came up the (IMHO) doctrine of "incorporation", usually via the Due Process clause of the 14th, because that first case said that "priveleges and immunities of citizens of the United States" meant only those unique to national citizenship, such as the right to travel between states, and not those rights not created by the Constitution, but only protected by it. Now the SC incorporates rights they like, and pretty judge ignores those they don't, like they did in the Silveria case.
Hard to say, but if they, that is the Federal Government, starts going to door to door (trying to) forcibly collect guns, that will start it. The citizens of some states may put up with that shiite, but not most Texans, nor folks in a bunch of other states either.
I realy wonder if the Court understands that it is walking on bottles of nitroglycerine?
Remember it was the colonial government's marching British Redcoats out to Concord to seize the arms of the American militia that was the spark that touched off the Revolution, in spite of all the rhetoric about "Taxation Without Representation" and "Intolerable Acts" and such as that.
Bovine Scat. The whole purpose of the 14th amendment was to "incorporate" the first 8 amendments of the Bill of Rights against the states, along with certain other protections of individual rights containe within the main body of the constitution, the "Privelge of the Writ of Habeas Corpus" and the prohibition on Bills of Attainder and ex post facto laws. The first case the Supreme Court heard on the matter, the Slaughter House Case, they ruled that "priveleges and immunities" in the 14th amendment, meant only those that are unique attributes of National Citizenship, despite the use of the word "privelege" in the Constitution when referring to the "great writ". They furthermore relied on pre-14th amendment precedent in forming that argument (Barron vs. Baltimore for example).
Such was not the intent of the authors of the 14th, nor the understanding of both supporters and opponents in Congress, as recorded during the Congressional proceedings on the matter. The records of the Congress at that time are much more complete than those from the time the BoR was written and passed and this is not a disputable matter, although some courts have ruled that it doesn't matter what the authors intended, nor what those who voted to approve the Amendment understood, it matters what the court says the words meant. (And read the Slaughter House decision, if you want to seem some Clintonian like torturing of words. (Warning PDF file)
Politically, and except for differing opinions in other cirucuits, practically, yes. But legally not. Lower courts cannot cite the failure to overturn as precedence to support similar rulings. However since, AFAIK, only a single 3 judge panel of the fifth circuit has ruled that the right is individual (and the whole cirucuit hasn't ruled on the matter) for the rest of the country, (outside TX, LA, and MS) there is no individual right to keep and bear arms as far as the federal courts are concerned.
And then be offerred as a floor amendment to some "must pass" bill, probably in the Senate and likely adopted by "unanamous consent" at 1 AM with a handfull of Senators present. Some representative democracy we've got left, isn't it?
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