Posted on 03/21/2016 3:10:53 PM PDT by Yo-Yo
When Justice Antonin Scalia died, court-watchers on the left and right assumed that, once a new liberal took his seat, the court would move quickly to reverse or limit Scalia’s most important decision—District of Columbia v. Heller, which reinterpreted the Second Amendment to provide an individual right to bear arms.
On Monday, however, the Supreme Court issued a brief, unsigned opinion simultaneously reaffirming Heller—and, arguably, even expanding it. Most surprisingly, the decision noted no dissents, meaning the liberal justices presumably endorsed it. This silence from the left doesn’t necessarily mean that the court’s progressive bloc is now embracing an absolutist Second Amendment jurisprudence. But it does suggest, at the very least, that the liberals are waiting for a sympathetic colleague before chipping away at Heller—and may indicate that the progressive justices are hesitant to move against Heller at all.
The decision, Caetano v. Massachusetts, does not quite state that the Second Amendment protects stun guns, but its implications to that effect are pretty obvious. Caetano involved the prosecution of Jaime Caetano, a domestic violence victim who threatened her abuser with a stun gun. Although Caetano succeeded in scaring away her abusive ex-boyfriend, she also broke the law: Massachusetts forbids private possession of “electrical weapon[s].” Inexplicably, the police arrested her, and prosecutors charged her with violating the stun gun ban. (Credit to Second Amendment advocates for finding a test case in which the defendant acted so nobly and the state so idiotically.) Caetano argued that the Constitution shielded her right to own a stun gun, because such weapons qualified as “arms” within the meaning of the Second Amendment.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
SCOTUS.
When will somebody figure out that SCOTUS constitutionally is NOT ALLOWED to make national law? Anyone? States? Any state?
This is good. But Garland should still not be confirmed regardless.
The 2nd Amendment does say ‘arms’ not ‘firearms.’
What I choose to arm myself with should be my choice.
The liberals on the court are not going to challenge Heller in an election year just to see the general election become a referendum on the Second Amendment...a referendum that Hillary is sure to lose.
So you have to get a license just like a gun?
The state court repeatedly framed the question before it as whether a particular weapon was “‘in common use at the time’ of enactment of the Second Amendment.” ... In Heller, we emphatically rejected such a formulation. We found the argument “that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment” not merely wrong, but “bordering on the frivolous.” ... Instead, we held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” ... (emphasis added). It is hard to imagine language speaking more directly to the point. Yet the Supreme Judicial Court did not so much as mention it.
The court did not come “really close”. The decision is much, much broader than “stun guns”.
The court unanimously ruling:
Referring to its landmark 2008 ruling on handguns in the home, the justices said the Second Amendment applies “to all instruments that constitute bearable arms,” even those not in existence at the time of the founding.
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2016/03/supreme-court-rules-that-second.html
The Supreme Judicial Court should be ashamed and embarrassed after reading that quotation. I’m not sure that is possible, but they should be.
Nice to win one, but the fact that it was unamonous RAISES WARNING FLAGS TO ME.
That tells me that they are ‘acting nice’, so as to get the Republicans to buckle and approve the Obama’s leftist on the court.
Liberals NEVER support Constitutional rights, unless they have a greater objective...
Of course the leftists on the court are ok with applying 2A to stunguns. Soon they will support a ban on all firearms based on, “well stunguns are still legal so you 2A types are over reacting.”
The Alito concurrence also addressed that:
The lower court’s ill treatment of Heller cannot stand. The reasoning of the Massachusetts court poses a grave threat to the fundamental right of self-defense. The Supreme Judicial Court suggested that Caetano could have simply gotten a firearm to defend herself. ... But the right to bear other weapons is “no answer” to a ban on the possession of protected arms.
A stun gun would be soooooo far down on my list of preferred weapons that one would never be considered.
That’s beside the point isn’t it?
Ah. Nice. Thanks for the run down.
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