“Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”
This is ominous. The "question" as formulated represents a poison-pill which can be used as a pretext to destroy the Second Amendment. The conflation of the term "well-regulated militia" with "state-regulated militia" is a dangerous sophistry. The terms are not synonymous.
The
scotusblog article commented on that:
Some observers who read the Court’s order closely may suggest that the Court is already inclined toward an “individual rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment. That is because the order asks whether the three provisions of the D.C. gun control law violate “the Second Amendment rights of individuals.” But that phrasing may reveal very little about whether the Amendment embraces an individual right to have a gun for private use. Only individuals, of course, would be serving in the militia, and there is no doubt that the Second Amendment provides those individuals a right to have a gun for that type of service. The question the Court will be deciding is, if there are individuals who want to keep pistols for use at home, does the Second Amendment guarantee them that right. Just because the Second Amendment protects some individual right does not settle the nature of that right.
The other question relates to the third DC Code section cited: whether "any" gun kept in the home had to be disassembled or trigger locked.
The questions the Court posed for themselves could be worse, and there are lots of possible answers.
Thanks for your thoughtful input. This debate will rage through the coming year, here in this forum and in other venues, but I believe we have long since passed the point where reasoned argument can be of any help. This issue can only be ultimately settled by force, just as it was two-hundred years ago.
In any honest analysis of the Second Amendment, whether literally and textually, historically, or grammatically, it is impossible to conclude that it intends anything other than to guarantee the right of free individuals to keep and bear arms.
Unfortunately, those who champion the collectivist arguments are not concerned with honesty, nor with the rights and freedom of their fellow citizens. Their contorted and contrived arguments are merely sophistries intended to advance the power of the State at the expense of the freedom of their fellow men.
In short, they are statists who couldn't care less what the Second Amendment, or any of the others, or the Constitution itself actually says and means, for they mean to simply rule... by whatever means necessary...
That a relatively explicit test case for the Second Amendment should finally be accepted by SCOTUS at this time, after all the decades of tangential obfuscating, avoiding and evading dealing with the issue head-on leads me to believe that the fix is in to finally destroy the Second Amendment and begin the long-desired process of disarming the American people.
I fervently hope I'm wrong about this, but I don't believe I am.