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11-20-2007, 15:45 PM
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#76 (permalink)
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Lord High Hullabalooster
Senior Contributor
Join Date: 11-23-04
Location: Columbia Heights, MN
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They took the case.
Hel-LO drop in crime rate in DC. 
-dale |
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11-20-2007, 18:02 PM
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#77 (permalink)
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WAB Bartender
Defense Professional
Military Professional
Join Date: 11-24-04
Location: Vacaville, CA.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dalem
They took the case.
Hel-LO drop in crime rate in DC.
-dale |
I heard a lawyer and an expert on the 2nd Amendment say that he believed this is a photo-finish, and that the ruling will come down to the finer legal arguments from both sides.
However, he's an NRA opponent and a friend of the Brady crew, so he may just be whistling past the graveyard. He may be letting the wish be the father of the thought, and perhaps it's not really that close, after all. It seems to me there are five solid votes for the plain reading of the Constitution and the Framers' intent, so if I were making book on the outcome, I'd give no odds, but bet even-up that the lower courts' overturning of the DC ban will be upheld.
Or perhaps I'm the one doing the wishful thinking. After all, look at Kelo. Who could've thought that fine legal niggling could've gotten THAT horror show out of a conservative court?
__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell
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11-20-2007, 20:29 PM
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#78 (permalink)
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Senior Contributor
Join Date: 03-11-07
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From the NYT
Quote:
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Gun Control Case
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Dick Heller, one of six plaintiffs in Heller v. District of Columbia, spoke to reporters outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Supreme Court announced today that it would l decide whether the Constitution grants individuals the right to keep guns in their homes for private use, plunging the justices headlong into a divisive and long-running debate over how to interpret the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
The court accepted a case on the District of Columbia’s 31-year-old prohibition on the ownership of handguns. In adding the case to its calendar, for argument in March with a decision likely in June, the court not only raised the temperature of its current term but inevitably injected the issue of gun control into the presidential campaign.
The federal appeals court here, breaking with the great majority of federal courts to have examined the issue over the decades, ruled last March that the Second Amendment right was an individual one, not tied to service in a militia, and that the District of Columbia’s categorical ban on handguns was therefore unconstitutional.
Both the District of Columbia government and the winning plaintiff, Dick Anthony Heller, a security officer, urged the justices to review the decision. Mr. Heller, who carries a gun while on duty guarding the federal building that houses the administrative offices of the federal court system, wants to be able to keep his gun at home for self-defense.
Mr. Heller was one of six plaintiffs recruited by a wealthy libertarian lawyer, Robert A. Levy, who created and financed the lawsuit for the purpose of getting a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court. The appeals court threw out the other five plaintiffs for lack of standing; only Mr. Heller had actually applied for permission to keep a gun at home and been turned down.
The Supreme Court last looked at the Second Amendment nearly 70 years ago in United States v. Miller, a 1939 decision that suggested, without explicitly deciding, that the right should be understood in connection with service in a militia. The Second Amendment provides: “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.”
The justices chose their own wording for what they want to decide in the new case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The question they posed is whether the provisions of the statute “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.”
The court’s choice of words is almost never inadvertent, and its use of the phrase “state-regulated militia” was somewhat curious. The District of Columbia, of course, is not a state, and one of the arguments its lawyers are making in their appeal is that the Second Amendment simply does not apply to “legislation enacted exclusively for the District of Columbia.”
For that matter, the Supreme Court has never ruled that the Second Amendment even applies to the states, as opposed to the federal government. The court has applied nearly all the other provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, leaving the Second Amendment as the most prominent exception. The justices evidently decided that this case was not the proper vehicle for exploring that issue, because as a nonstate, the District of Columbia is not in a position to argue it one way or another.
Because none of the justices now on the court have ever confronted a Second Amendment case, any prediction about how the court will rule is little more than pure speculation.
Of the hundreds of gun regulations on the books in states and localities around the country, the District of Columbia law is generally regarded as the most strict. Chicago comes the closest, banning the possession of handguns acquired since 1983 and requiring re-registration of older guns every two years. New York City permits handgun ownership with a permit issued by the Police Department.
The District of Columbia law not only bans ownership of handguns, but requires other guns like rifles and shotguns that may legally be kept in the home to be disassembled or kept under a trigger lock. The capital’s newly empowered City Council enacted the law in 1976 as one of its first measures after receiving home-rule authority from Congress.The court’s order today indicated that it would review the handgun ban in light of the provision that permits, with restrictions, the other guns. The opposing sides in the lawsuit presented very different views of how the various provisions interact.
To the plaintiffs, the restrictions on the conditions under which rifles and shotguns may be kept means that homeowners are denied the right to possess “functional” weapons for self-defense. To the District of Columbia, the fact that these other guns are permitted shows that the law is nuanced and sensitive to gun owners’ needs. It takes about one minute to disengage a trigger lock.
In any event, a Supreme Court decision that finds the District of Columbia law unconstitutional would not necessarily invalidate other, more modest restrictions, such as those that permit handgun ownership for those who pass a background check and obtain a license. Since the only claim in the case is that law-abiding people have the right to keep a gun at home, the court will not have occasion to address restrictions on carrying guns.
In fact, lawyers on both sides of the case agreed today that a victory for the plaintiff in this case would amount to the opening chapter in an examination of the constitutionality of gun control rather than anything close to the final word.
“This is just the beginning,” said Alan Gura, the lead counsel for the plaintiff. He said in an interview that “gun laws that make sense,” such as those requiring background checks, would survive the legal attack, which he said was limited to “laws that do no good other than disarm law-abiding citizens.”
Whether the handgun ban has reduced crime in a city surrounded by less restrictive jurisdictions is a matter of heated dispute. Crime in the District of Columbia has mirrored trends in the rest of the country, dropping quite sharply during the 1990s but now experiencing some increase.
In striking down the District of Columbia law, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that an individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment would still permit “reasonable regulations,” but that a flat ban was not reasonable.
Denis Henigan, a lawyer at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates strict gun control, said that if the justices agree with the appeals court, an important question for future cases will be “what legal standard the court will eventually adopt for evaluating other gun regulations.”
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Seems to me the stars are aligned for clear ruling in favor of the 2nd amendment.
(Ron Paul) |
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11-20-2007, 23:22 PM
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#79 (permalink)
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Military Professional
Join Date: 03-02-07
Location: Ningbo, China
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I think they'll most likely rule against D.C. because the issue is clean-cut: the constitution couldn't be more clear -and the liberal whiners who would support an anti-gun ruling know that.
__________________
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
- Thomas Jefferson
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11-20-2007, 23:28 PM
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#80 (permalink)
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Senior Contributor
Join Date: 01-27-06
Location: DPRK, Democratik People's Republik of Kalifornia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ExNavyAmerican
I think they'll most likely rule against D.C. because the issue is clean-cut: the constitution couldn't be more clear -and the liberal whiners who would support an anti-gun ruling know that.
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Oh I don't know about that. Somehow the liberals found the right of a woman to have an abortion in the constitution somewhere. I couldn't find that clause.
__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
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11-21-2007, 00:46 AM
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#81 (permalink)
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Lord High Hullabalooster
Senior Contributor
Join Date: 11-23-04
Location: Columbia Heights, MN
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That article calls into question my assertion that lower courts have generally ruled in favor of the individual right to keep and bear arms. I'll have to check my sources and their wording.
Regardless, as this link shows, the majority of states have articles in their state constitutions regarding the right to keep and bear arms, and they are almost without exception VERY explicit about the right being an INDIVIDUAL right.
I don't know much about Con Law, but if state constitutions and precedent make a difference, the case is already over.
-dale |
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11-23-2007, 19:15 PM
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#82 (permalink)
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Lord High Hullabalooster
Senior Contributor
Join Date: 11-23-04
Location: Columbia Heights, MN
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Link to transcript of Hugh Hewitt's show.
Every week Hugh has 2 law professors, one from the left and one from the right, on his show for a few segments to discuss relevant topics. This is a transcript from Wednesday's segment, which apparently (I haven't even read it yet, will do so right after I post this) deals with the 2nd Amendment case.
-dale
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11-25-2007, 22:50 PM
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#83 (permalink)
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Regular
Join Date: 07-16-07
Location: St. Louis, MO
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Quote:
Originally Posted by donnie
a country of armed citizens is meant to give government pause. Im no gun rights activist, and dont believe I will ever own one, but something scares me about the government telling you that you cant own a gun. Like our forefathers were looking into the future, and they knew something we dont.
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Same. That's my main argument for keeping guns legal. And I can't see myself owning one. |
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11-26-2007, 13:31 PM
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#84 (permalink)
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Banished
Join Date: 11-19-07
Location: Palm Coast, Fl.
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sirpuddingfoot...
Just one quick point on gun control. I have a carry permit, which I use whenever I take my wife out. Why am I against gun control? Because at my age I cannot properly defend my wife in particular and myself.
I believe that anyone who is mentally stable and a citizen should be able to own guns. I think this was the way it was written in the constitution, to all intents and purposes.
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