Gun Fight (analysis of Parker/Heller DC gun case)

Washington Lawyer (DC Bar Journal) ^ | August 2007 | Joan Indiana Rigdon

[Copernicus]

The number of commas varies depending on which early (and official) copy of the BoR you’re looking at.

Understood.

Which is why I linked TangoFox's excellent analysis of the difference between the PROPOSED version and the RATIFIED version which has only one copy.

Best regards,

[Erik Latranyi]

Best we find out now, rather than after we are disarmed, what the Court thinks of our rights.

When the PARKER case started, Sandra Day was still on the bench and Rhenquist was Chief.

That was the primary reason the NRA did not want to push the case to the SCOTUS.....we did not have the votes.

Right now it is 4 to 4 with one swing vote.

[Erik Latranyi]

What we want is a decision.

A bad decision might cost millions of lives.

[El Gato]

Leading liberal scholars such as Lawrence Tribe and Alan Dershowitcz have written that there is no question that the 2nd amendment gives us an individual right to keep and bear arms

It doesn't give us anything, by it's very terms it assumes a preexisting right which "shall not be infringed".

[El Gato]

Rothstein agrees, for different reasons. Although the Court did take up cases on partial-birth abortion and greenhouse gases, in general, he says, “I think this Court has indicated they want to steer away from the major social issues.

This not a "social issue", it's a clear Constitutional question with some social implications.

However, the wrong decision is likely to have more social implications than the Constitutionally correct one.

[El Gato]

6. If worse comes to worse, move to a state like mine (Pennsylvania) where the state constitution guarantees a right to keep and bear arms. From Pa constitution: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.” theres no militia clause to muddie things up for lawyers and judges.

That's not going to help much if it's the Federales who ban the guns, as 'rats and RINOs will do if this decision goes the wrong way. But they'll do it anyway, just more slowly, if the Court doesn't rule at all.

[El Gato]

Hennigan does not think the Swiss system would ever be welcome here, not even by the NRA. “That’s not something that the NRA would want. This is kind of the contradiction in their position. A true militia, he says, is subject to rule by government.” According to Congress, a militia is controlled by the state. But, “to the NRA, gun ownership is a private, individual right,” Hennigan says. The idea of any government controlling the guns “is anathema to the NRA. So the NRA doesn’t believe in a militia.”

Of course they believe in a militia. But the right does not belong to the miiitia. It is a "right of the people". It's protected in part so that they can come prepared when the government calls up the militia, or when they call themselves up, as the militias of the colonies did less than two decades before the Second Amendment was written.

[RayStacy]

for later

[ctdonath2]

That’s probably a lot fewer than if we don’t get a decision.

And a correct decision will avert both consequences.