My impression is that a ruling on this will NOT be all inclusive on the legitimacy of the Second Ammendment. Maybe I'm missing something, but if appears that the brief is very narrowly defined only as to the right to legally possess a firearm in the HOME:
"Respondent Dick Anthony Heller successfully challenged the Nation’s three most draconian infringements of Second Amendment rights. D.C. Code section 7-2502.02(a)(4) forbids registration of handguns, thereby effecting a ban on the possession of handguns within the home.
Respondent challenges this provision only as it relates to his home".
Am I missing something??? Care to 'splain?
repealing egregious violations of the BOR through SCOTUS works via baby steps
Brown v BOE never would have happened without the Plessy case, which resulted from a couple of other cases that escape me right now.
the history of Brown is an interesting read and gives good insight on how you crack the door before you blast it wide open...
SCOTUS isn’t the only party interested in keeping this very narrow. Mr. Heller et al goes to great length to keep this whole thing down to a single issue: he wants to keep a loaded, assembled, unlocked handgun in his home for self defense - PERIOD. All the other related issues only serve to obfuscate the issue at this point, which is why I believe we haven’t seen any other case get this far (if the case gets too broad and/or has too many overlapping technically-unrelated issues, SCOTUS doesn’t want to get involved as it’s already hard enough to get a clean verdict on a simple case).
The case is brought to refute the idea that no one has the right to a functional firearm at all: if it is won, we can then argue where one has that right.
DC law prevents the right to a functional firearm in your own home.
Hence, the case argues that this most restrictive standard, if upheld, means that the 2A means nothing.
...in which case, the constitution means nothing...
...in which case, the government has no legitimate authority...
Maybe I'm missing something, but if appears that the brief is very narrowly defined only as to the right to legally possess a firearm in the HOMENope. That is what the brief addresses, because that is the question at issue, and that's the question at issue because that's the way the case was intentionally structured.
They aren't asking SCOTUS to overturn the entire history of federal gun control legislation, they are asking for a ruling on a very narrow point - so as to make it as difficult as possible for SCOTUS to find anything other than the 2nd protects an individual right.
One step at a time...