SAS ANNOUNCES AMICUS BRIEF IN HELLER

FROM THE SECOND AMENDMENT SISTERS
900 R.R. 620 S
Suite C101, Box 228
Lakeway, TX 78734
World Wide Web: http://www.2asisters.org
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 11/20/07
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For additional information contact:
Genie Jennings, SAS Spokesperson
Phone: 877-271-6216
E-mail: saspress@2asisters.org
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Lakeway, TX –

Second Amendment Sisters is pleased and proud to announce that we are joining South East Legal Foundation in filing an amicus brief in the Supreme Court hearing of Washington, D.C. v. Heller. We are particularly interested in the benefits of firearms in self-defense for women, the elderly and the disabled.

SAS has watched this case closely, since it was originally prepared as Parker v. Washington, D.C. The successful outcome of that case in the lower court was heartening to all who believe in the Second Amendment and in the basic human right of self-defense.

The city’s 1975 handgun ban has made it impossible for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves and their families within the confines of their own domiciles. If this prohibitive law is found unconstitutional, for the first time in three decades residents of the nation’s capitol will be allowed to have an effective means of protection within their homes.

This case does not address carrying a firearm, either concealed or openly, on the streets of the city. It does not address the legality of the city to control the use of firearms in the city. It addresses the constitutionality of the city to override the Second Amendment rights of individuals to keep and bear arms.

Second Amendment Sisters believes that self-defense is a basic human right. We have a right to life; we have a right to defend that right and the rights of those around us; we have a right to the means to do so.

If we are denied the means to defend our life, we are effectively denied our right to life. For over thirty years the citizens of Washington, D.C. have been denied the right to a means of protecting their lives, and thereby denied their basic human right to life.

We are confident in a positive outcome to the Supreme Court hearing. Individual rights are important to both conservative and liberal judges.

Second Amendment Sisters is a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving the individual basic human right to self-defense.

Dr. Suzanna Gratia, Killeen massacre survivor who watched as her parents were murdered because she obeyed Texas law and left her handgun locked in her car.

Well not quite. As I've heard her say, in person, she left the gun in the vehicle (a CAR In Copperrus Cove Texas, surely you jest. :) ) because she was afraid of getting *caught* disobeying the law. It was just as illegal to have it in the glove box or console of her vehicle as it would have been in her purse, but the chances of getting caught, for an attractive Red Headed Lady chiropractor, with it in her vehicle in Central Texas were slim. Not so a firearm in a purse, perhaps especially that of an atrractive young unmarried lady (at the time)

So she skirted the law, and her parents, and others, are dead because she didn't want to risk losing her license to practice her profession.

Although I didn't at the time, I now live in Killeen, and the Lubys is now a Chinese restaurant. I like Chinese, but I can't bring myself to go in to that one.

Sadly she is no longer a Texas State representative. I think she'd done what she set out to do, and now has significant family obligations. A coworker took his CHL renewal class with her husband.

I agree, but if it was argued briliantly in the Circuit Court, then it should not have been accepted by the Supreme Court to review at all when the ruling there was appealed...

The only way any of this will be beaten back enough will be when un-Constitutional legislation at any level in government is voted on and approved and signed, that those elected officials, regardless of political affiliation are held legally in jeopardy, put into prison and punished for these blatant infringements on our freedoms (any freedom, not just the right to keep and bear arms) nothing will change...

In the meantime, I and many others will still have the means to resist the tyrrany of good intentions, however stupid those people are...

Many would like to nip it in the bud before it got too bad, but it looks like the stoopid people believe no one has the resolve to resist...

So throw out the dare...I’m sure not afraid to pick up the gauntlet...As an individual I’ll lose, but as a group, everyone wins!

But thats way down the road...I hope I am wrong...

Y’all might be interested in this

From Mike Stollenwerk of opencarry.org

The press is not reporting the authorities correctly.

The SU Supreme Court has repeatedly spoke to the Second Amendment as securing an individual right to bear arms.

In modern times: U.S. v. Miller (appearing to hold that if an arm was in common use and suitable for militia duty it was exempt from federal tax stamp requirements; United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez & Johnson v. Eisentrager (analogizing to the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment as belonging to the people like all the other rights in there Bill of Rights).
—
Ginsberg and Stevens **concurred** in the result of United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990) (analogizing that the meaning of the term “people” in the 4th Amendment to was like that of the Second Amendment - Scalia and Kennedy joined the opinion writing this text;

See http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=494&page=259:

SNIP
The Fourth Amendment provides:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That text, by contrast with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, extends its reach only to “the people.” Contrary to the suggestion of amici curiae that the Framers used this phrase “simply to avoid [an] awkward rhetorical redundancy,” Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 12, n. 4, “the people” seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by “the people of the United States.” The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to “the people.” See also U.S. Const., Amdt. 1 (”Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble”) (emphasis added); Art. I, 2, cl. 1 (”The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the people of the several States”) (emphasis added). While this textual exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that “the people” protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.
—

The Supreme Court said the same thing earlier in Johnson_v._Eisentrager, see http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=339&page=763:

SNIP

If the Fifth Amendment confers its rights on all the world except Americans engaged in defending it, the same must be true of the companion civil-rights Amendments, for none of them is limited by its express terms, territorially or as to persons. Such a construction would mean that during military occupation irreconcilable enemy elements, guerrilla fighters, and “werewolves” could require the American Judiciary to assure them freedoms of speech, press, and assembly as in the First Amendment, right to bear arms as in the Second, security against “unreasonable” searches and seizures as in the Fourth, as well as rights to jury trial as in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

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