Supreme Court decides to review 2d Amendment incorporation case
We've discussed this before, and the Supremes have granted cert. to review the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding the Chicago handgun ban.
Keep your fingers crossed.
PS: It's really good this happened today. We were WAY overdue for a gun thread.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court says it will take up a challenge to Chicago's ban on handguns, opening the way for a ruling that could set off a vigorous new campaign to roll back state and local gun controls across the nation.
Victory for gun-rights proponents in the Chicago case is considered likely, even by supporters of gun control, in the latest battle in the nation's long and often bitter dispute over the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. A ruling against the city's outright ban could lead to legal challenges to less-restrictive laws across the country that limit who can own guns, whether firearms must be registered and how they should be stored.
The case is to be argued early next year.
Last year, the justices struck down a prohibition on handguns in the District of Columbia, a city with unique federal status, as a violation of the Second Amendment. Now the court will decide whether that ruling should apply to local and state laws as well.
The court has previously said that most, but not all, rights laid out in the Constitution's Bill of Rights serve as checks on state as well as federal restrictions. Separately, 44 state constitutions already enshrine gun rights.
Though faced with potential limits from the high court on their ability to enact laws and regulations in this area, 34 states weighed in on the gun- rights side before the justices agreed to take the case Wednesday, an indication of the enduring strength of the National Rifle Association and its allies.
The gun case was among several the court added to its docket for the term that begins Monday. Others include:
- A challenge to part of a law that makes it a crime to provide financial and other aid to any group designated a terrorist organization.
- A dispute over when new, harsher penalties can be given to sex offenders who don't register with state sex offender databases.
- Whether to throw out a human rights lawsuit against a former prime minister of Somalia who is accused of overseeing killings and other atrocities. The issue is whether a federal law gives the former official, Mohamed Ali Samantar, immunity from lawsuits in U.S. courts.
In the gun case, outright handgun bans appear to be limited to Chicago and suburban Oak Park, Ill. But a ruling against those ordinances probably would "open up all the gun regulations in the country to constitutional scrutiny, of which there are quite a few," said Mark Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor whose recent book "Out of Range" explores the often bitter national debate over guns.
Already, Alan Gura, who led the legal challenge to the Washington law and represents the plaintiff in Chicago, is suing to overturn the District of Columbia's prohibition on carrying firearms outside a person's home. Illinois and Wisconsin have similar restrictions.
In voiding Washington's handgun ban last year, Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that gun rights, like the right to speech, are limited and that many gun control measures could remain in place.
Ultimately, said Tushnet, the court will have to decide, possibly restriction by restriction, which limits are reasonable.
"It's very hard to know where this court would draw the line between reasonable and unreasonable," he said.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said he hopes the court rules that "core fundamental freedoms like speech, religion and, we believe, the right to keep and bear arms are intended to apply to every individual in the country."
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the court's decision to take up the new case was unsurprising in light of last year's ruling.
These cases should "take the extremes off the table," Helmke said, referring to bans on guns and unlimited gun rights. "What's critical for us is how the court goes about fleshing out what the limits are."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, which under state law requires handgun permits and a safety course, said he hopes the court brings clarity to gun laws. "My hope is that they will decide that reasonable restrictions, which I think is the way most reasonable people in this country think, are appropriate," Bloomberg said.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago had upheld the gun bans as legitimate expressions of local and state rights.
Judge Frank Easterbrook, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, wrote in the ruling that "the Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are to be cherished as elements of liberty rather than extirpated in order to produce a single, nationally applicable rule."
"Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon," Easterbrook wrote.
Evaluating arguments over the extension of the Second Amendment is a job "for the justices rather than a court of appeals," he said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then an appeals court judge, was part of a three-judge panel in New York that reached a similar conclusion in January.
The high court took the suggestion Wednesday.
Judges on both courts - Republican nominees in Chicago and Democratic nominees in New York - said only the Supreme Court could decide whether to extend last year's ruling throughout the country.
The New York ruling also has been challenged, but the court did not act on it Wednesday. Sotomayor would have to sit out any case involving decisions she was part of on the appeals court. Although the issue is the same in the Chicago case, there is no ethical bar to her participation in its consideration by the Supreme Court.
She replaced Justice David Souter, who dissented in the 5-4 Washington case, so the five-justice majority remains intact.
Several Republican senators cited the Sotomayor gun ruling, as well as her reticence on the topic at her confirmation hearing, in explaining their decision to oppose her confirmation to the high court.
The case is McDonald v. Chicago, 08-1521.
__________________
"Once I make someone die, and they see me....they can't change their mind." -- God
Originally posted by matt00iconoclast:
"there are variables outside of physics that will affect the flight of the ball"
You would think any intelligent person would see that the second amendment is tied with the first amendment as our most essential liberty as citizens in this country and that breaches of it should never be acceptable.Yet, because there are stupid people in this country who make decisions based on irrationality and emotion, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
States must abide by the Constitution at all costs.
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1987 Nissan 200SX SE
PS: It's really good this happened today. We were WAY overdue for a gun thread.
so true
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I don't believe it should be incorporated. If it is that important to the citizens in the state, amend the state constitution. That is what it is there for.
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“The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government” - Thomas Jefferson
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Closed-bolt, because I can.
Repetition and Ridicule, the biggest tools of the Liberal.
Interesting, but I'd love to know what he has done that has led the Right to label him as "anti-gun". I suspect that, to the author, "anti-gun" refers to anyone who disagrees with the author on any gun issues.
In reality, "Anti-gun" is in the eye of the beholder and certainly not black and white. Even if he promotes an AWB or a handgun ban doesn't make him a hypocrite if he shot an intruder with a hunting rifle or a shotgun.
Before you call someone a hypocrite, maybe you should take some time to understand what exactly it is they claim to believe.
__________________
"Once I make someone die, and they see me....they can't change their mind." -- God
Originally posted by matt00iconoclast:
"there are variables outside of physics that will affect the flight of the ball"
Interesting, but I'd love to know what he has done that has led the Right to label him as "anti-gun". I suspect that, to the author, "anti-gun" refers to anyone who disagrees with the author on any gun issues.
In reality, "Anti-gun" is in the eye of the beholder and certainly not black and white. Even if he promotes an AWB or a handgun ban doesn't make him a hypocrite if he shot an intruder with a hunting rifle or a shotgun.
Before you call someone a hypocrite, maybe you should take some time to understand what exactly it is they claim to believe.
According to grnc.org, Soles got one star, out of four, for his views on Gun Control. Apparently it's a North Carolina organization that rates politicians on their gun views;
Quote:
GRNC's "Remember in November" project estimates candidates' views on "assault weapons," concealed handguns, gun storage laws, gun rationing, and the Second Amendment. THE EVALUATIONS HEREIN ARE NOT ENDORSEMENTS. We issued surveys first to a control group of gun owners and then to candidates. Next, we measured how closely each candidate's views and voting record (if available) agree with the control group. Pay more attention to voting records than survey results unless, of course, you believe politicians never lie.
Interesting, but I'd love to know what he has done that has led the Right to label him as "anti-gun". I suspect that, to the author, "anti-gun" refers to anyone who disagrees with the author on any gun issues.
In reality, "Anti-gun" is in the eye of the beholder and certainly not black and white. Even if he promotes an AWB or a handgun ban doesn't make him a hypocrite if he shot an intruder with a hunting rifle or a shotgun.
Before you call someone a hypocrite, maybe you should take some time to understand what exactly it is they claim to believe.
2008 Based on lifetime voting records on gun issues and the results of a questionnaire sent to all candidates in 2008, the National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund assigned Senator Soles a grade of A (with grades ranging from a high of A+ to a low of F).
apunkjunkie - "Sorry to burst your bubble, but less than 1% of the southern citizens owned slaves and out of that, most were treated fairly well. So no, slavery wasn't a big issue."
According to grnc.org, Soles got one star, out of four, for his views on Gun Control. Apparently it's a North Carolina organization that rates politicians on their gun views;
I looked at his voting record going back to 2000, and here's what I found:
1. He voted in favor of concealed carry permit reciprocity.
2. He voted in favor of allowing CCP holders to buy handguns without obtaining the otherwise required handgun purchase license.
3. He voted in favor of allowing the carrying of weapons for hunting purposes on a specific nature preserve.
4. He voted in favor of an amendment to a state preemption law that prohibits local municipalities from filing lawsuits against gun makers or sellers.
5. He voted in favor of an amendment to a state preemption law that added a declaration that the sale and use of firearms is not a nuisuance per se, but that it is only when they are used illegally that they become a nuisance.
The only vote I could find that could arguably be labeled anti-gun was for a law that increased the penalty for illegally discharging a firearm on school property.
You have to be one hell of an idealogue to thing that such a law is "anti-gun".
But let's assume for a moment that he actually voted in favor of:
an AWB,
stricter licensing/registration requirements for handguns,
a one-gun-a month law,
requiring guns to be sold with trigger locks, and
prohibiting people with DUI offenses from purchasing firearms, and in favor of a law.
Is he a hypocrite for owning and using a gun that would still be legal even if all of his votes were successful?
Of course not. In fact, even if he voted in favor of a handgun ban, and that law failed to go through, I'd still say it is wrong to call him a hypocrite if he then bought a handgun. People who are in favor of things like handgun bans don't usually hold those positions because they don't think anyone should be allowed to own handguns. They usually hold those positions because they believe, rightly or wrongly (actually wrongly), that sacrificing the ability for law abiding citizens to own handguns is worth the possibility that it might reduce the number of them that get into criminal hands. Again, I think this is a wrong thing to believe, but believing it and still owning a handgun while they are legal does not make him a hypocrite, because it has nothing to do with why he has that belief in the first place.
__________________
"Once I make someone die, and they see me....they can't change their mind." -- God
Originally posted by matt00iconoclast:
"there are variables outside of physics that will affect the flight of the ball"
apunkjunkie - "Sorry to burst your bubble, but less than 1% of the southern citizens owned slaves and out of that, most were treated fairly well. So no, slavery wasn't a big issue."
