High court to look at ban on handguns

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would LOVE to see the democrats ban handguns via legislation.

I can’t say for sure, but I think it would trigger a catastrophic backlash against the gun-grabbers that would be unstoppable. Republicans would be swept in with landslide victories and the laws would be overturned almost immediately.

Shades of 1994, IMHO. It would set the gun-grabbers back 50 years.

The way the anti-gun crowd is going about it now has been text-book brilliant. They are incrementally chipping away at gun ownership block by block. Using the ATF to close dealers. Banning guns one at a time, starting with those least popular with the non-gun public. Raising taxes, fees and other costs until guns and ammunition are un-affordable to any but the rich.

A bold, sweeping ban would be the dumbest thing they could possibly do. I welcome it!

It's worse than that. He excuses Federal infringement as well despite his protestation that it is only a check on Fed action. He cites the "penumbras and emanations" from the commerce clause, even though such an idea violates the finding of the SCOTUS from BAILEY v. DREXEL FURNITURE CO. 259 U.S. 20 (1922) that a mere Tax authority cannot be used as a prohibition:
It is defendant on the ground that it is a mere excise tax levied by the Congress of the United States under its broad power of taxation conferred by section 8, article 1, of the federal Constitution. We must construe the law and interpret the intent and meaning of Congress from the language of the act. Does this law impose a tax with only that incidental restraint and regulation which a tax must inevitably involve? Or does it regulate by the use of the so-called tax as a penalty?

This means the closing of the NFA registry moved it from arguably a legitamate TAX, to a prohibition and therefore illegal.

This is just one of MANY tangential arguments bandied about around this issue.

The bottom line is still this:

SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED

End of story...

robertpaulson is an anti-gun whack-job who strives to disrupt the useful discourse we have in discussing these topics. He is completely wrong in his logic, completely wrong in his definitions, completely wrong in his convenient misinterpretation of the law, especially of the Constitution, and completely wrong in his arguments.

The best any and all of us can ever do is to Completely Ignore Him and let his verbal diarrhea simply circle the toilet bowl on the way down. I’m dumbfounded that some folks here still try to engage him in logical discussion. The activity defines the phrase “exercise in futility”.

The smart money is to completely ignore him. He will never go away but ignoring him reduces his disruption on the forum. He strives to destroy every thread on FR about the 2nd amendment, and everyone who posts comments to him, no matter how well intended, only helps him cause more damage than he can cause alone all by himself.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not reply to robertpaulson.

I am begging you please to ignore robertpaulsen.

He is a troll who’s only goal is to disrupt all RKBA posts by hijacking them.

His method, which has worked brilliantly so far, is to make outrageous claims and bait you into wasting your energy trying to convince him and educate him. Which is not possible, since it is not his goal.

His goal is to hijack the threads. He does so successfully anytime people respond to him.

I personally know how hard it is to let such ignorance just go without succumbing to the temptation to educate. But trust me, you only play into his hands when you fall for this temptation.

The only way to prevent him from consistently hijacking these threads is to completely ignore him and to not respond to any of his posts, no matter how outrageous or how badly he gets your goat.