Could be an important ruling....

[[AK]Hylander]

Supreme Court Will Decide Challenge to District of Columbia Handgun Ban

[[AK]Camelwalk]

"Gun-control advocates say the Second amendment was intended to insure that states could maintain militias, a response to 18th century fears of an all-powerful national government."- AP

Hasnt that happen already, the all powerful gov't. So this would be a great time for all americans to own guns so we can all Wako when they come for us!

[[AK]Nuts]

If D.C.'s anti-gun laws resulted in a sudden drop of murders, then I would say, "Wow, I guess that gun laws work... I was wrong" But until criminals start obeying laws and people all start sing Kum Ba Yah, then I just don't get these type of feel-good laws.

[[AK]Abaddon]

Yeah, that is shaping up to be a significant case. I'm hoping the Supreme Court finds that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. It probably will not have much of an impact on gun owners nationwide unless the ruling goes in favor of the gun grabbers.

[[AK]Sonic Boom]

I would say this will be significantly more than significant, it'll be huge.

This will be the first time ever in the history of the United States that the Supreme Court directly rules on an individual's right to own guns.

This case was handcrafted by the NRA (of which I am a lifetime member) specifically for the Supreme Court and is "the big one" they've been working toward for decades.

Perhaps more interestingly, this throws a hand grenade into the Hillary and Obama camps, who openly oppose guns, and will open up the Democratic side of the election to pro-gun backmarkers like Richardson. On the Republican side, Giuliani and Romney might have some problems, being from Northeastern anti-gun states.

I flatly predict this case will be in the same ballpark as Roe v. Wade huge. This is the wild-card wedge issue that will have a serious impact on the discourse leading up to the election.

Stay tuned, because the fur's gonna fly and both sides are gearing up. Whatever the ruling is, it will be landmark.

[Tokrath]

This is going to be an interesting case no matter how it plays out.

One fact that I think could be used is that all the of rights apply to a "states rights" As DC is not a state but outside all the states it could come into play. I am sure that is part of what was though when they made this law.

[[AK]Sonic Boom]

One fact that I think could be used is that all the of rights apply to a "states rights" As DC is not a state but outside all the states it could come into play. I am sure that is part of what was though when they made this law.

Absolutely. I was reading a blurb from one of the plaintiff's lawyers and he said they picked D.C. specifically so that fourteenth amendment entanglements wouldn't come into play.

[[AK]Hylander]

This case was handcrafted by the NRA (of which I am a lifetime member) specifically for the Supreme Court and is "the big one" that they've been working toward for decades.

Curt.. I didn't realize you could be a member of the NRA and be on the top 10 most wanted list in OFAC / FinCEN / Patriot Act enforcement lists.

[[AK]Bribo]

The fact of the matter is that DC has banned hand gun ownership for 31 years and it has done NOTHING to reduce violent crime in D.C.

That alone speaks volumes.

[[AK]Sonic Boom]

After reading a bit further, I'm ready to make an early prediction that they will uphold the appellate court's ruling that the handgun ban is unconstitutional in D.C. (a purely federal appendage) but doesn't restrict individual state's rights to regulate guns, which would be a national victory for the NRA and essentially maintain the status quo for states rights, which seems to be the tendency of this Court.

If this happens, I'm not sure how it will affect legal precedent at the state or local level but I have a feeling that we won't be seeing any more Clinton-style "assault weapon" bans. It could also affect George H.W. Bush's 1989 banning of all "imported assault weapons," both of which could still possibly be regulated through commerce law.

What it will do, however, is thrust the issue into the national spotlight right in the middle of one of the most important elections of our lives and force all viable candidates to state their position, which can only be a good thing.

[[AK]Abaddon]

Prediction: All of the Dems will lie and say they support gun owner's rights. I watched them all march mindlessly in lockstep to enact the Assault Weapons Ban ... since then, I will NEVER vote for a Democrat.

[[AK]Nuts]

Do guns kill a boat load of people in this country? You bet! Would we probably better off as a society if we didn't have them? Probably.

But to think that the government or any other citizen think that they have a right to determine my own self worth in that I don't have the right to defend my life as I see fit... well, it sickens me.

I don't care if you're a criminal or a law abiding citizen... if you are threatening my life than I will take any means necessary to stop you. And if there are tools that allow me to stop you first, then I'm going to use them. If a Mossberg 500 has a better chance of stopping you than a .22, then I'm going to chose the shotgun. And if the AK-47 will keep you at a safer distance and prevent you from shooting me first, then I'm going to use it.

The right of self preservation supersedes all other 'constitutional" rights in my book. I think it was Ted Nugent that said that it doesn't take a piece of paper or a law passed by men that allows him the right to defend himself. And no piece of paper can stop me.

Any person that would deny me that right does not value my life and thus doesn't earn my respect.

[[AK]Clay]

After reading a bit further, I'm ready to make an early prediction that they will uphold the appellate court's ruling that the handgun ban is unconstitutional in D.C. (a purely federal appendage) but doesn't restrict individual state's rights to regulate guns, which would be a national victory for the NRA and essentially maintain the status quo for states rights, which seems to be the tendency of this Court.

If this happens, I'm not sure how it will affect legal precedent at the state or local level but I have a feeling that we won't be seeing any more Clinton-style "assault weapon" bans. It could also affect George H.W. Bush's 1989 banning of all "imported assault weapons," both of which could still possibly be regulated through commerce law.

What it will do, however, is thrust the issue into the national spotlight right in the middle of one of the most important elections of our lives and force all viable candidates to state their position, which can only be a good thing.

Probably so. The Supreme Court is great at taking on cases and coming out with some 400 page ruling that is basically confusing and doesn't really change much.

[[AK]Hylander]

Via PowerLine.com


Hypocrisy and Incompetence

That's a fair characterization of Wednesday's editorial in the New York Times on the 2nd Amendment case that will be decided next term by the Supreme Court. The hypocrisy lies in the Times' seeming horror that the case is going to the Supreme Court at all:

By agreeing yesterday to rule on whether provisions of the District of Columbia’s stringent gun control law violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court has inserted itself into a roiling public controversy with large ramifications for public safety.

But when has the Times ever objected to the Supreme Court "inserting itself into a roiling public controversy"? Certainly not when the "roiling public controversy" involved abortion, school prayer, busing in the public schools, criminal procedure, etc.--not as long as the Court's majority was reliably liberal. Moreover, that is a silly description of the case at hand, District of Columbia v. Heller, which squarely poses the question whether the 2nd Amendment confers gun rights on individual citizens. Far from "inserting itself," the Court has agreed to review a D.C. Court of Appeals decision that found an individual right to keep and bear arms, and therefore ruled the D.C. gun control law unconstitutional.

The Court hasn't issued an opinion on the 2nd Amendment in 70 years. Far from being an artifact of "hard-right ideology," as the Times calls it, the idea that individuals have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms is widely supported by judges and scholars, including Larry Tribe, the foremost liberal student of the Constitution.

The editorialists' incompetence lies in their inability to get straight even the most elementary facts about the Court of Appeals' decision in Heller. The Times wrote:

At issue is a 2-to-1 ruling last March by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that found unconstitutional a law barring handguns in homes and requiring that shotguns and rifles be stored with trigger locks or disassembled. The ruling upheld a radical decision by a federal trial judge, who struck down the 31-year-old gun control law on spurious grounds that conform with the agenda of the anti-gun control lobby but cry out for rejection by the Supreme Court.

Oops. The Times got the history of the case wrong, as it admitted in a

Sadly, the Times' partisan tone on the 2nd Amendment and the Heller case isn't limited to the paper's editorial section; it extends to its news coverage as well. Take, for example, this swipe at the plaintiff in the case by the Times' liberal Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse:

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.

As Ms. Greenhouse knows very well, countless plaintiffs in Supreme Court cases have been recruited and financed by the ACLU and other liberal interest groups. I doubt whether litigation costs in a single one of the Court's iconic liberal decisions were paid by the nominal plaintiff. But that is different, apparently; I don't recall Ms. Greenhouse casting aspersions on those who "created and financed" the cases so revered by the Left.