No reason to celebrate yet as this will probably be overturned in the SCOTUS, but hot damn it’s nice to see Truth, Justice and the American Way (liberty!) back in the news.
ETA: of course, you won’t see much of this in the news unless you search for it. The mainstream media has been reporting on the rising violent crime rates all day today… gee I wonder why today?
Second ETA: excuse my title, but that’s what was on the website. G-d granted us our rights as elaborated by the founding fathers. This court just confirmed them.
QUOTE OF SUMMARY OF MAJORITY OPINION:
To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.
Were SCOTUS to uphold this decision it would make almost every single piece of gun control legislation unconstitutional. (well, they all are, but it would recognize them as such.) Almost as if the second amendment was - gasp - part of the bill of rights!
I think - WECSO law here - that the NFA act would stand as the court gave Congress that right (well, gave them the right to tax and legislate weed, which they extended to machine guns) under the commerce clause and it was since upheld (even though the weed aspect was NOT - for different reasons) that if the ‘thing’ in question is one that travels over state lines (which they decided MG’s do) then it can be controlled and taxed - but not banned, at least under this logic - by the national (don’t say federal) government.
BUT - in this fantasy world where SCOTUS upholds this ruling - it would almost CERTAINLY invalidate the '86 ban on MG’s.
In terms of the state bans and gun laws, I’m not sure. I know that states are not allowed to infringe on any of the other bill-of-rights amendments. This would finally be judicial cognizance that they are all individual rights. You simply cannot violate - legislatively or otherwise - individual rights.
eTA: it’s hitting drudge now. gonna tune into the conservative shows to hear them ignore this.
eta2: here’ s a MIND BOGGLING wikipedia quote from when SCOTUS upheld the MG ban on the basis of the commerce clause (prepare yourself):
The ruling effectively said Congress can use the commerce clause to ban homemade or homegrown artifacts such as marijuana or machine guns, even though none of their components were ever, nor ever will be, transferred, sold, or involved in any sort of commerce transaction.
Well here is the court case that the NRA has been dreading for the past 50 years.
Misquoting a funny but trenchant statement I read several years ago.
If this law (94 awb) were encroaching on the 1st Amendment like it does on the 2A we would be outlawing TV, Radio, Telegraph, and the Internet. As the founding fathers did not have those, so they are not protected by the amendment.
If this goes to SCOTUS, it will be the first time the 2nd Amendment itself will be tested. This case in D.C. is the first time a gun law has been overturned because it was unconstitutional.
“Henderson’s dissent dismisses the majority decision as “superfluity” because, in her view, the Second Amendment applies only to states – not to the District of Columbia.”
Interesting little twist, she must have stayed up all night looking for that!
Considering Washington DC has been ranked as #1 on top 10 lists as the city with the most homicides per capita for the last several decades, I have one statement to make.
Writing for the majority, Senior Circuit Judge Silberman wrote that the Second Amendment is still “subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment.”
Such restrictions might include gun registration to provide the government with information about how many people would be armed if militia service was required, firearms testing to promote public safety or restrictions on gun ownership for criminals or those deemed mentally ill.
Do you want the Supremes signing off on this? What part of “infringe” do they not understand?
Great, “reasonable”. Pretty much everything inherently evil and good in this world has been deemed “reasonable” by whatever party is pushing it. That statement doesn’t even mean anything anymore and I take it with a grain of salt when people make arguments based on “reasonable”. It’s a sliding scale that can fall to either extreme.
I don’t know what history class some of these people are attending today when they claim the Second Amendment is plagued by comma errors and doesn’t grant personal rights. Funny…the framers didn’t screw up or refuse personal rights elsewhere in the Constitution. Funny that all the collective transcripts, speeches, and papers published by the framers blatantly point out that bearing arms is a personal right.
By saying the second amendment should be subject to the same reasonable restrictions as the first amendment, Silberman indicated that gun laws should be subject to strict scrutiny, the standard of review for restrictions to free speech. You do realize that strict scrutiny would likely invalidate most Federal gun control laws starting from the 1934 NFA onward? They say that strict scrutiny is “strict in theory, fatal in fact”.
I read the whole opinion and dissent last night and that line leaped off the page at me.
