SCOTUSblog - HELLER - Be there or Be square!

[Eagler]

5 to 4

they are one election away from overturning it .. enjoy your guns while you can or start forming your own militia now ..

[bsdaddict]

5 to 4

they are one election away from overturning it .. enjoy your guns while you can or start forming your own militia now ..

or check this out and get in touch with one of the groups listed there...  not every state is represented so you might want to check their forums for more info...

[DREDIOCK]

Wow! In spite of everything it can be said that Bush saved the constitution, for now. Hooray!

I wouldnt go THAT far

Second ammendment maybe.
But we still have a little thing lurking over our heads called "The Patriot Act"

[Charon]

The consensus is this was a profoundly solid decision in detail and even scope. The clarity of the decision and Scalia's rebuttals of the minority opinions are so focused and footnoted that they make it very difficult for a later court to change it much.

A lot of people support gun control. Fine.

But, as a lot of us have said the framers did not. They were clear on that in their private writing, essays, speeches the Constitutional Convention, the Federalist Papers and even the "confusing" language of the 2nd Amendment itself. The English law they based much of the Constitution on was as clear even. Highly regarded liberal scholars like Tribe have come around, far more so than relics like Ginsburg and Souter and Breyer and Stevens who still feel it is their job to take on activist roles and be the third component of the Legislative branch instead of sticking to their finite responsibilities of Interpreting law against the dicta of the Constitution. Just read their decisions. Even a layman can see lack of Constitutional foundation. As noted, roughly 2/3 of Breyer's separate dissent was modern public policy. Guess what. That's why we elect a President, Representatives and Senators. Not in his job description, and finally there are enough constructionists to keep him from developing NEW law from the bench.

So, if you are unhappy about the 2nd and think it is antiquated and does more harm then good... well. All is not lost. You simply have to amend the Constitution. This ruling simply clarified what was common knowledge up until fairly recent time -- perhaps the late 30s but really the 1960s through 1990s -- the 2nd is an individual right just like the others on the BOR.

Charon

[EDIT: ANOTHER PLUG! TAKE PART IN THE HISTORIC RALLY AT THE THOMPSONG CENTER, DOWNTOWN CHICAGO, 11:00 FRIDAY JULY 11. Show little-big-man Daley, Jesse, Father Phleger and the Chicago Tribune, which had a tantrum on Friday CALLING TO REPEAL THE 2ND, that you are tired of their carp and you aren't going to take it anymore. BE A PART OF HISTORY! There are actually people flying in from out of state for this. BTW, the NRA is not sponsoring the rally -- grassroots.]

[Charon]

The hypocritical Tribune has weighed in on the issue. Their Friday tantrum called to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Not a single, educated SPECIFIC criticism on any specific point in the decision -- just an emotional response for what is a pet, activist issue at this fish wrapper.  It's full of direct statements without substantiation like: "But as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a compelling dissent, the five justices in the majority found no new evidence that the 2nd Amendment was intended to limit the power of government to regulate the use of firearms. They found no new evidence to overturn decades of court precedent."

Try reading the decision, strokes. It does just that and shows how you actually have to consider the previous 150 years as well.

Oh, and this:

"Some view this court decision as an affirmation of individual rights. But the damage in this ruling is that it takes a significant public policy issue out of the hands of citizens. The people of Washington no longer have the authority to decide that, as a matter of public safety, they will prohibit handgun possession within their borders."

DUH -- BILL OF RIGHTS, buttholes! The City of Chicago can't decide that in the interest of quality Journalism the hack Tribune should be banned either.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment

No, we don’t suppose that’s going to happen any time soon. But it should.

The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor.

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 founders had limited themselves to the final 14 words, the amendment would have been an unambiguous declaration of the right to possess firearms. But they didn’t and it isn’t. The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias. The inartful wording has left the amendment open to public debate for more than 200 years. But in its last major decision on gun rights, in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that that was the correct interpretation.

On Tuesday, five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count. (Click here to read the full decision)

In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens.

The majority opinion in the 5-4 decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., ban on handgun possession goes to great lengths to parse the words of the 2nd Amendment. The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, spends 11 1/2 pages just on the meaning of the words "keep and bear arms."

But as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a compelling dissent, the five justices in the majority found no new evidence that the 2nd Amendment was intended to limit the power of government to regulate the use of firearms. They found no new evidence to overturn decades of court precedent.

They have claimed, Stevens wrote, "a far more active judicial role in making vitally important national policy decisions than was envisioned at any time in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries."

It’s a relief that the majority didn’t go further in its policy-making on gun control.

The majority opinion states that the D.C. handgun ban and a requirement for trigger locks violate the 2nd Amendment. By virtue of this decision, Chicago’s 1982 ban on handguns is not likely to survive a court challenge. A lawsuit seeking to overturn the Chicago ordinance was filed on Thursday by the Illinois State Rifle Association.

The majority, though, did state that the right under the 2nd Amendment "is not unlimited." So what does that mean? The majority left room for state and local governments to restrict the carrying of concealed weapons in public, to prohibit weapons in "sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," and to regulate the sale of firearms. The majority allowed room for the prohibition of "dangerous and unusual weapons." It did not stipulate what weapons are not "dangerous."

Lower courts are going to be mighty busy figuring out all of this.

We can argue about the effectiveness of municipal handgun bans such as those in Washington and Chicago. They have, at best, had limited impact. People don’t have to go far beyond the city borders to buy a weapon that’s prohibited within the city. (Click here for gun-related crime statistics)

But neither are these laws overly restrictive. Citizens have had the right to protect themselves in their homes with other weapons, such as shotguns.

Some view this court decision as an affirmation of individual rights. But the damage in this ruling is that it takes a significant public policy issue out of the hands of citizens. The people of Washington no longer have the authority to decide that, as a matter of public safety, they will prohibit handgun possession within their borders.

Chicago and the nation saw a decline in gun violence over the last decade or so, but recent news has been ominous. The murder rate in Chicago has risen 13 percent this year. Guns are still the weapon of choice for mayhem in the U.S. About 68 percent of all murders in 2006 were committed with a firearms, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment? Yes, it’s an anachronism.

We won’t repeal the amendment, but at least we can have that debate.

Want to debate whether crime-staggered cities should prohibit the possession of handguns? The Supreme Court has just said, forget about it.

Even the LA Times editorial, while policy and sour grapes in flavor, is more educated and moderate:

Guns, yes and no
Individuals have a right to own firearms, the Supreme Court rules. But there can still be limits.
June 27, 2008

Presented with two historically plausible arguments about whether the 2nd Amendment secures an individual right to keep and bear arms, the Supreme Court on Thursday opted for the interpretation less suited to a 21st century America bedeviled by gun crime. That's the disappointing part of the court's long-awaited ruling striking down the District of Columbia's strict gun-control ordinance. Fortunately, even though the decision endorses the individual-right explanation, it may have limited impact.

Gun-rights advocates will focus on what they will see as the magic words in Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion for a 5-4 majority: "There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms." Though a bit wordy for a bumper sticker, in isolation it could have been composed by the National Rifle Assn.

But Scalia immediately added this qualification: "Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the 1st Amendment's right of free speech was not." Elsewhere, Scalia explicitly cited gun-control laws not affected by this ruling, including those prohibiting felons and the mentally ill from possessing firearms, banning guns from schools and other "sensitive places" and, most important, regulating the sale of guns. Finally, Scalia's definition of weapons protected by the amendment -- those in common use "for lawful purposes like self-defense" -- would seem to exclude Uzis and machine guns. (This ruling thus does not provide an excuse for Congress not to reenact a federal ban on assault weapons.)

None of this changes the fact that the majority -- including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who pledged fealty to precedent at his confirmation -- has upended an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that has been the majority view for more than half a century: that the amendment's reference to "a well-regulated" militia limits the right to keep and bear arms to organized military units such as the National Guard.

In his dissent, in which he tellingly traded historical -- and linguistic -- arguments with Scalia, Justice John Paul Stevens offered a spirited defense of the traditional view, one we wish the majority had embraced. But it is a fact that legal historians, some of them supporters of gun control as a matter of policy, increasingly have argued that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right. (For that reason, some of them have advocated repeal of the amendment -- an undesirable option because it would open up the entire Bill of Rights to revision.)

It was probably inevitable that the court would revisit this issue. The district's ordinance, which banned handguns and made it impossible for law-abiding citizens to keep working firearms in their homes, provided an unusually tempting target for justices who wanted to reconsider a constitutional issue that had been absent from their docket for almost 70 years. Thursday's decision needlessly complicated the lives of legislators seeking to bring gun violence under control. But it could have been.

The hacks at the Tribune Company (our "conservative" paper -- HAHA) need to find new jobs. For all their diversity -- the right colors and genders -- there is no cultural diversity at all.

Charon

[lazs2]

the media again proves that it's far left slant is at complete odds with the constitution and the American people...

And they wonder why they are losing money hand over fist.

The articles noted that the Scalia said that the second was indeed and individual right but, like the first, free speech,  was not without restriction.   I will be thrilled if we use the same level of scrutiny and restriction on the second as on the first.. if setting a flag on fire is considered free speech...  How can not allowing concealed carry not be "infringing" on my right to keep and bear arms for hunting and self defense?

lazs

[Toad]

There's a fellow taking orders for these T-shirts over on The High Road.

http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=373307