Posted on 11/09/2007 3:17:09 AM PST by cbkaty
Justices to decide whether to take up case on strict limits approved in D.C.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will discuss gun control today in a private conference that soon could explode publicly.
Behind closed doors, the nine justices will consider taking a case that challenges the District of Columbia's stringent handgun ban. Their ultimate decision will shape how far other cities and states can go with their own gun restrictions.
"If the court decides to take this up, it's very likely it will end up being the most important Second Amendment case in history," said Dennis Henigan, the legal director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Henigan predicted "it's more likely than not" that the necessary four justices will vote to consider the case. The court will announce its decision Tuesday, and oral arguments could be heard next year.
Lawyers are swarming.
Texas, Florida and 11 other states weighed in on behalf of gun owners who are challenging D.C.'s strict gun laws. New York and three other states want the gun restrictions upheld. Pediatricians filed a brief supporting the ban. A Northern California gun dealer, Russell Nordyke, filed a brief opposing it.
From a victim's view: Tom Palmer considers the case a matter of life and death.
Palmer turns 51 this month. He's an openly gay scholar in international relations at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research center, and holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University. He thinks that a handgun saved him years ago in San Jose, Calif., when a gang threatened him.
"A group of young men started yelling at us, 'we're going to kill you' (and) 'they'll never find your bodies,' " Palmer said in a March 2003 declaration. "Fortunately, I was able to pull my handgun out of my backpack, and our assailants backed off."
He and five other plaintiffs named in the original lawsuit challenged Washington's ban on possessing handguns. The District of Columbia permits possession of other firearms, if they're disassembled or stored with trigger locks.
Their broader challenge is to the fundamental meaning of the Second Amendment. Here, commas, clauses and history all matter.
The Second Amendment says, "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."
Gun-control advocates say this means that the government can limit firearms ownership as part of its power to regulate the militia. Gun ownership is cast as a collective right, with the government organizing armed citizens to protect homeland security.
"The Second Amendment permits reasonable regulation of firearms to protect public safety and does not guarantee individuals the absolute right to own the weapons of their choice," New York and the three other states declared in an amicus brief.
Gun-control critics contend that the well-regulated militia is beside the point, and say the Constitution protects an individual's right to possess guns.
Clashing decisions
Last March, a divided appellate court panel sided with the individual-rights interpretation and threw out the D.C. ban.
The ruling clashed with other appellate courts, creating the kind of appellate-circuit split that the Supreme Court likes to resolve. The ruling obviously stung D.C. officials, but it perplexed gun-control advocates.
If D.C. officials tried to salvage their gun-control law by appealing to the Supreme Court — as they then did — they could give the court's conservative majority a chance to undermine gun-control laws nationwide.
STFU you anti-RKBA troll.
Do you imagine every state has identical gun laws?
Read a book.
Actually, my guess is he's a shill for Blagojevich.
Also, note that Nunn would only be valid for militia members acting under orders. Everyone else would have the option to carry openly or concealed as suited their own purposes.
I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned yowling know nothings.
That isn't what the decision says. It must be nice to be able to simply invent "facts" as you go.
Actually, it has. As Nunn prove. And Emerson. And Parker. And dozens of State cases that never even made it to the Federal level to BE over turned.
The only times it has stood up to judicial scrutiny is when some liberal activist judge tries to misapply a judicial power not actually found in the Constitution. One, btw, you have spent thousands of posts defending.
200 years they all agreed to maintain this legal fiction that the second amendment only applies to the federal government?
Actually, that view wasn't used until quite recently. It doesn't appear anywhere until Silviera V Lockyer.
I should put that on my home page.
Nunn held that 2nd Amendment protections don't apply to concealed weapons.
Poor you.
A law which merely inhibits the wearing of certain weapons in a concealed manner is valid. But so far as it cuts off the exercise of the right of the citizen altogether to bear arms, or, under the color of prescribing the mode, renders the right itself useless--it is in conflict with the Constitution, and void. Nunn V State.
From further down in the decision:
Nor is the right involved in this discussion less comprehensive or valuable: "The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed;" The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and hear arms of every description, not merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, reestablished by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta! And Lexington, Concord, Camden, River Raisin, Sandusky, and the laurel-crowned field of New Orleans, plead eloquently for this interpretation! And the acquisition of Texas may be considered the full fruits of this great constitutional right.
Also, note that my position on the ordering of active duty militiamen is perfectly inline with the Constitutions Art 1 Sec 8 powers. However, unless someone is acting AS active duty militia, the government can go get bent as far as my RKBA is concerned.
Read it again. It says that if the legislation stopped at forbidding concealed carry only, it would have been "legal". But that since it forbid all carry, that it was against the Constitutions Second Amendment protections and void.
I'm jealous. And if they're solid, you're golden.
But if they're not, if they waver, if Sarah Brady and her clowns can cause doubt by saying, "You passed those laws because you thought "to bear arms" in the Florida State Constitution included concealed carry and now the highest court in the land says you were wrong to assume that and maybe you should re-think this whole issue", then you're in deep do-do.
Much harder to do than these idiotic incremental laws your scenario allows. It also destroys the equal protection of Laws from State to State.
Still a little fuzzy on the concepts regarding the whole Constitution thingie aren't you?
Where does it say that Nunn would only be valid for militia members acting under orders?
Facts, not smoke.
So Congress may impose a national concerned carry ban pursuant to the 2nd Amendment, by your "logic". No wonder you and Sarah hate state laws so much. They stand in the way of your dream of centralized power imposed by judicial fiat.
Or a Ruth Bader Ginsberg style court to obliterate state laws protecting concealed carry in favor of your dream of nationalized gun laws.
It doesn't. You were trying to paint me as being supportive of laws prohibiting carry... I was defending myself from that absurd accusation. You then brought up Nunn. Which doesn't say what you implied it did.
Technically, yes. But then everyone would be free to open carry. They cannot forbid both. Further, such a concealed carry ban would only apply to those acting as active duty militia under Art 1 Sect 8 duties of Congress.
For everyone not subject to active militia duty, they can Constitutionally carry what they want, when they want, however they want, and be within the 2A's protection.
Getting the courts and various States who have over stepped their legitamate authority is what fighting for Parker/Heller has been all about.
Mojave:
"Where does it say that Nunn would only be valid for militia members acting under orders?"
Dead Corpse:
"It doesn't."
Thank you.
Actually, read the Parker decision. They quote one of her decisions wherein a BoR protected Right was ruled being off limits to both the Feds and the States.
What we have now are 50 different States with hundreds of different standards for what should be an inalienable Right to keep and bear arms. Trash them all for a "shall not be infringed" SCOTUS ruling and all 300 million of us not subject to incarceration or commitment would be restored in our Right.
If the SCOTUS doesn't rule that way, then we still have options.
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense." - John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-88
Quote her.
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