9th Circuit upholds gun restrictions - Says individuals have limited weapons rights (more info)

The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals on Thursday unanimously upheld most aspects of a California law restricting sales and ownership of semiautomatic firearms sometimes called assault weapons.

The San Francisco-based court rejected a challenge to the law based on recent interpretations of the Second Amendment by another federal appeals court and by the Justice Department.

The weapons law, enacted in 1989 and broadened in 1999, was challenged by nine Californians who owned or wanted to buy such firearms.

The decision is significant, legal experts said, not for its outcome, which was largely required by earlier decisions of the court, but for its extended rebuttal of more recent interpretations of the Second Amendment.

In 2001, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, found that the Second Amendment broadly protects the rights of individuals to own guns. The decision on Thursday took the contrary view, that the amendment protects only a collective right to organize state militias.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for two members of a three-judge panel, said that a rebuttal was warranted because, except for the 2001 decision, "there exists no thorough judicial examination of the amendment's meaning."

The Supreme Court's most extensive treatment of the question, in 1939, was, Reinhardt wrote, "somewhat cryptic." Courts have generally interpreted the decision to support, though obliquely, the collective-rights model.

In footnotes in two filings with the Supreme Court in May, the Justice Department, reversed a view it had espoused for decades. The filings said the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals "to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions."

Reinhardt, generally considered to be one of the nation's most liberal jurists, concluded that the text and history of the Second Amendment and judicial decisions interpreting it all support the view that the amendment protects only "the right of the people to maintain effective militias."

The three-judge panel did strike down as irrational an aspect of the law that allowed retired law enforcement officers to retain assault weapons.

A visiting federal appeals court judge, Frank J. Magill, joined in the result, but declined to join in the majority's discussion of the Second Amendment.

He wrote instead that, in light of precedent in the 9th Circuit, "it is unnecessary and improper to reach the merits of the Second Amendment claims or to explore the contours of the Second Amendment debate."

"From an organizational standpoint, for 131 years we've been standing steadfastly to protect the freedoms of all law abiding Americans and stand steadfastly that the Second Amendment is an individual right and will continue to do so," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

He said "it was too early to tell" what ramification, if any, the court's decision would have and whether the decision would usher in calls for a fresh wave of gun control laws.

Attorneys for the suing gun owners were not immediately available to comment on whether they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weapons owners challenged 1999 amendments to the 1989 law that originally outlawed 75 high-powered weapons that have rapid-fire capabilities. The Legislature passed the nation's first law banning such weapons after a gunman, Patrick Purdy, fired a semiautomatic weapon into a Stockton school yard, killing five children and injuring 30.

Following California's lead, several states and the federal government passed similar or even stricter bans.

In 1999, the California Legislature redrafted the law to ban copycat weapons with similar features to the banned weapons. Lawmakers adopted a provision that bans assault weapons based on a host of features instead of makes and models - a move that made illegal hundreds of so-called copycat weapons not clearly defined in the law.

Liberal courts are destroying the nation. That these idiots on the 9'th circuit could be taken seriously and be allowed to stay on the bench without being impeached shows that the system for checks and balances went out the window decades ago. But, now they are threatening to turn the streets red. If we pretend for one moment that this ruling was allowed to stand and tomorrow the California legislature attempts to pass law and outlaw guns, than hundreds of thousands of law enforcement would either ignore it or die in the process of trying to enforce it as well as protect legislaturors from the unintended consequences.

Why would the nation wait for 226 years to say that individuals can not own their own weapons? Why didn't they confiscate weapons from all non militia members or soldiers after the Revolutionary war? Why not after the Civil War when militias were called up and than disbanded? Why now? Because the second amendment is not about hunting or target shooting but about individual freedom and protection from the power of an out of control government trampling upon individual God given rights.

The time is long overdue for the SCOTUS to settle this issue now and stop the lunacy.

My question for dicussion:

If the USSC overturns this 9th circuit decision, by finding that the 2nd is a right of individuals, can they rule in a manner that narrowly restores the rights of Californians without also overruling the various import bans, the 1986 law that halted production of civilian-ownable machine guns, and even the NFA of 1934?

Or is there a way that the supremes could overrule the 9th without going this far?

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