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To: Navy Patriot
A SCOTUS decision upholding an absolute individual right would invalidate a huge amount of gun control legislation in all 50 states.

In your dreams. The Court could uphold an individual right, but all the precident says it's not protected from state infringement. So you'd have to fight for "incorporation" or argue that the RKBA is one of those "privileges and immunities" protected from State infringement by the 14th amendment. However that would also violate precedent, because the Court has already ruled that only those rights unique to federal citizenship are thus protected. They've wiped out those rulings through incorporation under due process for most rights protected by the BoR, but not the second amendment, nor the specifics of the 5th and 7th.

Of course they don't mind overriding precedent when the right in question is not to be found in the Constitution itself, but rather in emanations from its penumbra. (State anti sodomy laws overturned less than a decade after they were upheld by the Court). But not so for a right explicity protected by the Federal Bill of Rights. They haven't even ruled on the federal protection since the 1930s.

74 posted on 06/13/2006 9:37:59 PM PDT by El Gato
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To: El Gato
The Court could uphold an individual right, but all the precedent says it's not protected from state infringement.

That's what precedent says, however it depends on how the decision is written, states rights could be excluded because they are not specifically mentioned in 2A, only "people". Militia, at the time were not under state control, rather they were under citizen control.

I used the wording "absolute individual right" to indicate that the written decision would exclude "rights retained by the States", I see I was ambiguous.

75 posted on 06/14/2006 4:32:18 PM PDT by Navy Patriot (Striving to obtain liberal victim status.)
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