1.  COMMENTARY: This case is loaded, no question about it

     Fort Worth Star-Telegram

            http://www.star-telegram.com/212/story/322038.html

     November 25, 2007

     Byline: J.R. Labbe

 

The significance of the Supreme Court's decision last week to hear a case that could give Americans a bright-line ruling on what the Second Amendment means can't be overstated.

 

"Could" because no one on either side of the gun-rights/gun-control debate should try to predict how this court will rule in District of Columbia v. Heller. And regardless of what the justices decide, both camps in this battle are so entrenched that it's doubtful anything the court says will dissuade them from believing that only they know what the Founders meant back in 1789 when the concept of the Bill of Rights was first introduced.

 

That said, this case could set a crucial precedent.

 

Since 1976, folks living in the nation's capital have been denied the right to keep an operable firearm in their homes, much less carry one on their person. That effectively removes the ability of private citizens to defend themselves in a city that historically has had one of the highest murder rates in the nation. An armed security guard, Dick Heller, sued the district after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection.

 

"The case has the potential to be the equivalent of Brown v. the Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. It's that important," said Alan Korwin, who has written three books and co-written seven on gun laws. "The justices are confronting head-on the Second Amendment. They are talking about the rights of individuals in the framing of the question."

 

Specifically, the court agreed to resolve this issue: "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."

 

"While a Supreme Court ruling in this case is likely to be narrow, it has the potential to be huge in that the Heller case will give the court an opportunity to define the Second Amendment as protective of an individual civil right," said Dave Workman, senior editor of Gun Week and co-author with Alan Gottlieb of America Fights Back: Armed Self Defense in a Violent Age. "That's been debated for the past 68 years, despite earlier high court rulings that tended to affirm the Second Amendment does protect a citizen's right to keep and bear arms."

 

Korwin, who has forgotten more about court cases involving firearms than most people will ever take the time to know, agrees.

 

"The court has consistently recognized an individual right," he said. "While this is the first time it is directly addressing the Second Amendment, there are 14 previous self-defense cases that are just mouth-watering.

 

"There is no doubt that a decision against the right to keep and bear arms would overturn almost two centuries of jurisprudence."

Contrary to what is being posited by advocates on both sides of the breach, the Heller case is not the first significant case involving firearms ownership since the oft-cited United States v. Miller case from 1939, which involved the possession of a sawed-off shotgun by a bootlegger.

 

The Supremes have been weighing in on guns and gun rights "since 1820, with 31 cases addressing the subject before Miller and 63 cases" after, said Korwin, whose most recent book is Supreme Court Gun Cases. The man has a pretty firm grasp on the history of this issue in the high court.

 

What makes this case different from the previous 95 is that the argument is not about the firearms that people choose to bear or how they put the guns to use. Heller is about the foundational question of whether an individual right is protected.

 

The justices could use this case to overturn laws at state and federal levels that Second Amendment advocates argue have infringed upon the right to own and possess guns. D.C. isn't the only problematic locale for gun owners. Places such as Morton Grove, Ill., which outlaws handgun ownership within city limits, will be watching what happens.

 

On the other hand, the court could decide that when James Madison penned, "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," he never thought it would be construed to mean that private citizens should be armed.

 

That's what D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is hoping for.

 

Like dang near every other issue in America today, politics could play a role in the outcome of this case, which could receive a hearing as early as March.

 

"One of the key issues to me is, will John Paul Stevens be on the bench next year?" Korwin asked. "Will this Senate let a justice be appointed by this president when a Roe v. Wade-size case on guns is pending?"

 

Stevens, who was appointed to the court in 1975 by President Ford, more often than not votes in ways that make liberals happy and conservatives irate. He celebrated his 87th birthday in April.

 

On the Web: For state and federal gun laws: www.gunlaws.com

 

Supreme Court's petition for writ of certiorari in District of Columbia v. Heller: www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/DC_Final_Petition.pdf

 

* Jill "J.R." Labbe is deputy editorial page editor of the Star-Telegram.  817-390-7599 ; jrlabbe@star-telegram.com

 

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2.  COMMENTARY: Open season on 2nd Amendment

     Chicago Sun-Times

           Editorials; 39

           http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/663979,CST-EDT-HUNT23.article

     November 23, 2007

     Byline: Steve Huntley; columnist for the Sun-Times 

 

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. -- Second Amendment

 

What does that mean? Does an individual have a right to own guns, or is it only a collective privilege linked to military service?

 

The U.S. Supreme Court is going to tell us next spring, maybe ending a long-running dispute over an individual's right to keep firearms, or maybe lighting a match to a powder keg in the presidential election.

 

While gun control is a popular issue in major urban areas, it riles folks in other places, especially in states in the South, Southwest and West, but also rural areas elsewhere such as Downstate Illinois. National Democrats who once touted gun restrictions on the campaign trail believe that stance cost them elections and now shy away from it. Republicans articulate a strong Second Amendment protectionist position. A high court ruling against an individual's right to bear arms would inject the issue into the campaign and could blow up the Democrats' hopes of reclaiming the White House.

 

A decision in favor of an individual right could defuse a campaign issue but raise fears that gun-control laws could be swept from the books everywhere. But that kind of an impact is not likely.

 

First, the case the court accepted this week involves a gun law in a federal jurisdiction, the District of Columbia, not in a state. Second, interestingly, the amendment on guns is the only one that has not been ruled to apply to the states, notes Randy Barnett, a former Chicago prosecutor who is now a professor of legal theory at Georgetown University. During the Reconstruction Era, Barnett says, southern states seeking to keep arms out of the hands of newly freed African Americans won a court decision to that effect. But surely a success by the pro-gun side would eventually have the high court deciding whether it applied to the states, too.

 

Still, it's alarmist to assert that a decision against the D.C. ban on handguns, if enforced in the states, would spell the end of of all weapon control laws. True, a handgun ban like the one in Chicago would be endangered. But it would be outright prohibition on firearms, not sensible regulation, that would be invalidated by the court. Reasonable gun control measures such as background checks or restrictions on ownership by felons or the mentally ill are perfectly compatible with an individualist ruling.

 

Over the coming months, we will be hearing a lot from legal authorities and historians about the meaning of the Second Amendment and the context in which it was enacted. Why was the issue of possessing arms deemed by the Founders important enough to be incorporated in the Bill of Rights? Why was the militia language included? 

The only time the high court addressed the issue was in 1939, when it said a bootlegger using a sawed-off shotgun was not what the Founders intended in guaranteeing weapons for a militia. In other words, the amendment doesn't protect illegal activity. Asked about that ruling during his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John Roberts took the reasonable position that the court had sidestepped the issue of whether there is an individual right to own a gun.

 

The debate will show some interesting mental gymnastics by the opposing camps. Liberals who have long argued for the most expansive interpretation of the Constitution -- for instance, to find a "right of privacy" allowing abortion, will demand the strictest reading of the Second Amendment. Conservative strict constructionists, on the other hand, will be trying to find a way to minimize the militia language.

 

The proponents of an individual right would seem to have the best argument. The words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" are clearly the meat of the amendment. The militia language comes in a subordinate clause. More fundamentally, the Bill of Rights is about protecting the prerogatives of the individual. Why should this one amendment be the exception?

 

* Steve Huntley is a commentary columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a member of its editorial board.

 

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3.  EDITORIAL: Hot Topic: Guns and the Constitution

     The Wall Street Journal

           Review & Outlook; A10

           http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110010902

     November 24, 2007

 

In recent decades, the Supreme Court has discovered any number of new rights not in the explicit text of the Constitution. Now it has the opportunity to validate a right that resides in plain sight -- "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in the Second Amendment.

 

This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. In March, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declared unconstitutional the District's near-total ban on handgun possession. That 2-1 ruling, written by Judge Laurence Silberman, found that when the Second Amendment spoke of the "right of the people," it meant the right of "individuals," and not some "collective right" held only by state governments or the National Guard.

 

That stirring conclusion was enough to prompt the D.C. government to declare Judge Silberman outside "the mainstream of American jurisprudence" in its petition to the Supreme Court. We've certainly come to an interesting legal place if asserting principles that appear nowhere in the Constitution is considered normal, but it's beyond the pale to interpret the words that are in the Constitution to mean what they say.

 

However, it is true that, despite our vitriolic policy fights over gun control, the Supreme Court has rarely ruled on the Second Amendment. The Court last spoke in detail in 1939, in U.S. v. Miller, involving a bootlegger who claimed the right to transport an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. That opinion was sufficiently complicated that both sides now claim it as a precedent.

 

The dispute arises from the first four words of the Second Amendment, the full text of which reads: "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." If the first two clauses were omitted, there would be no room for ambiguity. But part of the legal controversy has centered around what a "well regulated militia" means.

 

Judge Silberman's opinion argued, with convincing historical evidence, that the "militia" the Framers had in mind was not the National Guard of the present, but referred to all able-bodied male citizens who might be called upon to defend their country. The notion that the average American urbanite might today go to his gun locker, grab his rifle and sidearm and rush, Minuteman-like, to his nation's defense might seem quaint. But at stake is whether the "militia" of the Second Amendment is some small, discreet group of people acting under government control, or all of us.

 

The phrase "the right of the people" or some variation of it appears repeatedly in the Bill of Rights, and nowhere does it actually mean "the right of the government." When the Bill of Rights was written and adopted, the rights that mattered politically were of one sort -- an individual's, or a minority's, right to be free from interference from the state. Today, rights are most often thought of as an entitlement to receive something from the state, as opposed to a freedom from interference by the state. The Second Amendment is, in our view, clearly a right of the latter sort. 

As a practical matter on the Court, the outcome in D.C. v. Heller might well be decided by one man: Anthony Kennedy, the most protean of Justices. However, in recent years he has also been one of the most aggressive Justices in asserting any number of other rights to justify his opinions on various social issues. It would seriously harm the Court's credibility if Justice Kennedy and the Court's liberal wing now turned around and declared the right "to keep and bear arms" a dead letter because it didn't comport with their current policy views on gun control. This potential contradiction may explain why no less a liberal legal theorist than Harvard's Laurence Tribe has come around to an "individual rights" understanding of the Second Amendment.

 

By the way, a victory for gun rights in Heller would not ban all gun regulation, any more than the Court's support for the First Amendment bars every restraint on free speech. The Supreme Court has allowed limits on speech inciting violence or disrupting civil order. In the same way, a judgment that the Second Amendment is an individual right could allow reasonable limits on gun use, such as to protect public safety.

 

Here's hoping the Justices will put aside today's gun control passions and look to the plain language of the Bill of Rights for instruction in this case, as Judge Silberman had the courage to do.

 

Copyright (c) 2007, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

 

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4.  EDITORIAL: U.S. high court to scrutinize 2nd Amendment

     Alexandria Daily Town Talk (LA)

           Opinion; Our view; C5

              http://www.thetowntalk.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071123/OPINION/711220304/1014/NEWS17

     November 23, 2007

 

The Second Amendment, which pertains to a citizen's right to bear arms, is about to become the burning civil rights issue of the new year, and possibly the decade, as the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case of the District of Columbia v. Heller regarding the constitutionality of a long-standing handgun ban in that city.

 

The argument is whether or not the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms -- beyond membership in a militia. The high court's decision could be a watershed moment in this nation's history.

 

New Orleans citizens, who stayed to protect their property in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, have already had to defend their right to bear arms. New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III announced after the August 2005 storm that all privately owned firearms would be seized.

 

What followed was the disarming of private citizens, leaving them defenseless against looters and other armed criminals. Compass never had the power to make that decision. Still, police officers and National Guard personnel searched empty houses for firearms and went door-to-door confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens.

 

The National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation challenged the order in federal court. On Sept. 12, 2005, the court issued a restraining order against the New Orleans Police Department. No more guns could be confiscated, but the guns that had already been confiscated were not returned to their rightful owners.

 

"The gun-confiscation program in New Orleans may be an ominous indication of how governments will react to a future catastrophe, either natural or man-made," John Hay Rabb wrote in "Hard Times In The Big Easy," an article published in Guns & Ammo magazine last year.

 

Although not expected, should the Supreme Court ruling, which may come around the middle of next year, say that the Second Amendment is not protective of an individual right to bear arms, government will need no disaster or catastrophe to confiscate firearms from individuals.

 

Regardless of whether the firearms are registered or in the hands of someone legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon, they could be confiscated following a city or parish government's passing of a gun ban similar to the District of Columbia's.

 

Gun-control proponents will welcome the disarming of America one city at a time.

 

Voters must pin down candidates in the upcoming presidential and congressional races, all the way down to state and local contests, on where they stand on gun rights.

 

In New Orleans after Katrina, neighbors in the Garden District and in Algiers banded together, armed themselves and protected their communities while chaos reigned. Yet they never fired a shot.

 

This right is not just about national defense, it is about community and self-defense.

Court of Appeals March 2007 decision: http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/gun070309.htm

 

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5.  EDITORIAL: Gun Rights: Supreme Court should reverse D.C. gun ban

     The Paducah Sun (KY)

           http://www.paducahsun.com

     November 24, 2007

 

The U.S. Supreme Court has been given an opportunity to decide whether the words of the Constitution mean what they say.

 

Not that some justices care. Five decades of activist courts dating back to Earl Warren have been discovering all sorts of hidden constitutional rights -- and restrictions -- that went unnoticed for the two centuries prior. The court has handed down decision after decision based not on the Constitution but on changing popular opinion, ill-reasoned precedent, intuition and even European law.

 

But the current court is more inclined than any in recent history to think it matters what the founders meant in penning the words of the document that forms the foundation of our law, and uphold the plain meaning of the text. Which is why we expect the court to uphold a federal appeals court ruling that the handgun ban in the nation's capital is unconstitutional. The court has agreed to hear the case in 2008.

 

D.C. officials argue that the handgun ban that has been in effect 31 years keeps the city safer. They say this despite spikes in violent crime after the law went into effect. Within 15 years of enacting the handgun ban in 1975, Washington became known as the murder capital of the United States. The city of 600,000 saw 482 homicides in 1992, double the number in the year the law was enacted.

 

D.C. Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry, who has supported the ban since its inception, nevertheless predicted back then, "What we are doing today will not take one gun out of the hands of one criminal." But the council did it anyway.

 

Supporters of the ban speculate that the city would have suffered even more violent crime without the ban. The city attorney said, "One of the difficult things is, you can't measure what didn't happen. You can't measure how many guns didn't come into the District because we have this law. You can't measure all the crimes that we know were prevented from happening."

 

But gun rights advocates don't have to speculate; crime skyrocketed after the ban was enacted. Barry proved to be a prophet.

 

Gun control advocates ignore the evidence, holding doggedly to their belief that the mere presence of guns increases the likelihood of crime. The result of the D.C. law is to turn law-abiding citizens into sitting ducks for criminals to whom the ban means nothing.

 

The founders understood this. That's why the right to bear arms is second in the Bill of Rights, behind only the First Amendment with its free speech guarantees.

 

The Second Amendment states: "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 gun control crowd has attempted to say this merely gives states the right to maintain armed militias. We'd love to know how those gun opponents feel about the militias that currently train in secret at remote locations throughout the United States. But that's a side issue. The central point is this: The Bill of Rights enumerates rights of the people, not the states. The Second Amendment says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It could not be any clearer.

 

In 1988, a liberal syndicated columnist and opponent of private gun ownership got a chance to test his convictions. When he caught a teen-ager trespassing in his back yard, the late Carl T. Rowan drew an illegally held, unregistered handgun and fired at the intruder who had jumped the fence to take a swim in his pool, striking the youth in the wrist. Rowan was not charged with the shooting but with possessing an unregistered weapon.

 

Under the District of Columbia's schizophrenic laws, possessing a handgun is illegal but using it is not.

 

Ask a simple question: If an armed thug has a choice between breaking into a house where the homeowner is known to possess weapons or one where the homeowner is known to be unarmed, which will he choose? The answer is too easy.

 

But note, one part of the scenario above doesn't change: Regardless of the law, the thug is always armed.

 

Distributed by McClatchy - Tribune Information Services.

 

Copyright (c) 2007, The Paducah Sun, Ky.

 

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6.  EDITORIAL: Whose right to bear arms?

     The Hartford Courant (CT)

           Page: A16

           http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-gunsnov23,0,4973092.story

     November 23, 2007

 

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether to hear a case that goes directly to the question of whether owning a gun is an individual right under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution or a collective right of states that maintain militias.

 

We're hopeful the court will agree to take up this case and shed light on a matter that has come to be dangerously misinterpreted.

 

We say "dangerously" because every day in cities and towns around the country, people are being killed or injured in gun-related incidents. Despite the huge societal consequences, the gun industry and other defenders of the right to bear arms trot out the Second Amendment as justification for the status quo.

 

It's as if they read only half of the amendment, the part that says "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." They ignore the first half, which clearly stipulates that the right to bear arms exists in the context of a "well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . ."

 

The appeal to the Supreme Court arises from a case involving the District of Columbia's gun law, which prohibits handgun ownership except by active and retired law enforcement officers. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the law, ruling that the Second Amendment "protects an individual right to keep and bear arms."

 

We think that ruling is a distortion of the Second Amendment. Also, that it reflects the twisted interpretation of the Constitution popularized by the gun lobby, one whose consequences are tragically manifested by the gun-related violence in this country every day.

 

By bringing a dispassionate grasp of the Second Amendment to this issue, the Supreme Court could help stem the tide of violence.

 

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7.  EDITORIAL: High court takes on key gun-law case

     Northwest Florida Daily News (FL)

           http://www.nwfdailynews.com

     November 23, 2007

 

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has sidestepped the issue for 68 years -- and in many ways sidestepped the central issue back in 1939, when it last decided a gun-rights case -- has finally put itself in a position to rule on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right, a collective right, or an individual right conditioned by membership in a state-approved organization.

 

The high court could sidestep the issue again, of course, but it's difficult to believe it accepted the case with that intention.

 

The case in question is District of Columbia v. Heller, which challenged the District of Columbia's sweeping 1976 ban on mere possession of handguns. The D.C. law bars registration of pistols not registered before Sept. 24, 1976; prohibits carrying an unlicensed pistol; and requires that any gun kept in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock. It was challenged by five D.C. residents with no criminal records who wanted to keep guns in their homes for self-protection.

 

The federal appeals court for D.C. ruled, in a tightly reasoned opinion, that the Second Amendment -- "A wellregulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" -- clearly protects an individual right that is not contingent on membership in a state militia.

 

While gun-control advocates have used the "militia" wording to argue that only militia members have the right, every other amendment of the Bill of Rights protects an individual right, and the Founders commonly used "right of the people" to refer to individual rights. To contend otherwise for the Second Amendment, the court argued, is to ignore the clear meaning of the language and the known attitude of those who wrote the amendment.

 

Some federal courts have disagreed, but the most persuasive modern scholarship holds that the Second Amendment clearly protects an individual right. It would be pleasing and proper if the Supreme Court were to uphold that common-sense interpretation.

 

Such a ruling would not necessarily eliminate all guncontrol laws, but it would end most attempts to outright ban legal ownership. It would tell advocates of the most onerous forms of gun control that they must repeal the Second Amendment before getting their way.

 

To be sure, the court could rule that since the District of Columbia is a federal enclave, not a state, the decision does not apply to states and their laws.

 

The case is scheduled to be heard in March and is likely to be decided by the end of June. However it is decided, it should clarify an important clause in the Constitution whose interpretation has been hotly disputed -- which was the idea behind having a Supreme Court in the first place.

 

Distributed by McClatchy - Tribune Information Services

 

Copyright (c) 2007, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach

 

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8.  EDITORIAL: Pistols Answer next year?

     Charleston Gazette (WV)

           http://www.wvgazette.com/section/Opinion/Editorials/200711221

     November 23, 2007

 

TUESDAY, the U.S. Supreme Court took a historic step. It agreed to rule for the first time whether the Constitution's Second Amendment - the right-to-bear-arms guarantee - allows individuals to carry concealed pistols, or whether it authorizes guns only for "a well-regulated militia" as its language implies.

 

Arguments on the controversial question probably will be presented early next year, with a decision expected by summer. It promises to be a landmark ruling with long-lasting effect on America.

 

Never before has the high court addressed this fundamental issue. Its only previous action was a limited ruling in 1939 decreeing that the "right to bear arms" doesn't entitle people to carry sawed-off shotguns.

 

The new case involves the District of Columbia's strong gun-control law that virtually bans pistol ownership and requires long guns to be kept unloaded and secured. A federal circuit court ruled that the D.C. law violates the Second Amendment, and the city appealed.

 

Although the court now is dominated by conservative appointees allied with the Republican Party, which is cozy with the powerful gun lobby, we hope justices finally prescribe a cure for America's pistol madness, a bloodbath not tolerated in other advanced nations.

 

Guns kill about 30,000 Americans yearly - around 12,000 by murder and the rest by accident or suicide. Although most people keep firearms for "protection," a gun in the home makes it 22 times more likely that a family member will be shot to death during domestic violence, drunken fumbling, childish horseplay or other tragic circumstance.

 

It's common for conservatives to say that gun control doesn't work, because the District of Columbia still has hundreds of murders committed with illicit pistols. But this argument is dubious.

 

Gun control works superbly in many foreign countries. While America had 11,624 gun murders in 2004, Sweden had only 37, Australia had 56, England had 73, etc.

 

Ask yourself: Why does America have vastly more gun murders than those nations? Are Americans inherently more violent and cruel? Of course not. The obvious explanation is that other enlightened countries keep pistols out of the wrong hands.

 

That's the issue now before the U.S. Supreme Court: Is America capable of reducing its horrible murder rate? Or will about 12,000 Americans continue being shot to death annually? Sometime in 2008, a long-awaited answer is expected.

 

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9.  COMMENTARY: Second Amendment Case Resolution by Supreme Court Will Be

             Unwelcome to Extremists on Both Sides of 'Gun Debate'

     California Progress Report

           http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/11/second_amendmen.html

     November 24, 2007

     Byline: Bill Cavala

 

At the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, the use of firearms in hunting was far more than a sport. In the West, it was the main source of meat. A rifle was as much a part of the frontiersman's kit as an axe. State militias, not a standing army, served the nascent nation's security (West Point was established later, in 1802). But states provided training, not firearms.

 

As such, it is ridiculous to read the Second Amendment as saying only militia's have the 'right to keep and bear arms'.

 

The only reason to question this view is an obscure and confusing 1939 US Supreme Court seemed to suggest something different, that perhaps only when serving in a militia did Americans have the right to "keep and bear arms".

 

This silly argument has been used as the bugaboo of groups like the N.R.A. for years -- as follows: If the right to own a gun is only collective, limited to militias, then gun control laws could be passed that grab your gun. In fact, every gun control law passed is just a step in the direction of confiscation. So (to twist logic) every gun control law must be resisted to avoid confiscation. Oh, and send us a lot of money for that fight.

 

Now the US Supreme Court has accepted District of Columbia vs. Heller. The District of Columbia outlawed handguns. Heller tested this by attempting to register a handgun he owned in a police capacity. The Heller case tests the constitutionality of that ban. The questions that the litigants posed to the United States Supreme Court were rewritten by the Court to address gun possession in the private home setting. The Supreme Court will decide whether the ban violates "the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep registered handguns and other firearms for private use in their home."

 

Clearly the Court will say the handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

 

The Court has also in effect indicated it will decide whether private possession of firearms protected by the Second Amendment also prevents States from banning the carrying of unlicensed pistols, registration of pistols, and requiring trigger locks and other safety devices. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that struck down the ban upheld registration and a slew of other regulations. In fact, the relief sought was the right to keep a registered gun in one's private abode.

 

It is likely the Court will say that all of these -- and other restrictions -- are the legitimate use of the State's police power. That the elimination of private possession of machine guns and of readily convertible semi-automatic rifles and sawed-off shotguns does not violate any individual right to keep and bear arms -- devices that could not have been contemplated in 1789 or which under the Common Law view were weapons which were completely under the control of the state.