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On Thursday, Dec. 17, Justice Ginsburg spoke at a luncheon of the Harvard Club of Washington, D.C. I was not present at the luncheon, but I have heard, third-hand, that she spoke on the value of dissenting opinions. She said that sometimes a dissent can become the majority of a “future, wiser court.” As an example, she pointed to the dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller.

A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a Wisconsin man barred from owning firearms because of his criminal record, ruling the lifetime prohibition may violate Americans' Second Amendment rights and calling into question the future of a 13-year old gun control law. In a 3-0 decision on Wednesday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a trial judge to take a second look at the evidence that a 1996 federal law prohibiting anyone convicted of a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence" is constitutional in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that emphasized "the individual right...

Alan Gura, who successfully defended the individual right to keep and bear arms under Second Amendment in District of Columbia v. Heller has now filed his brief in the case that seeks to apply that right to the states, McDonald v. City of Chicago. (Cato earlier filed a brief supporting Alan’s cert petition, the background to which you can read about here.) The question presented in this case is: Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses. Remarkably, only 7 of...

Application of Second Amendment to be decided by Supreme Court Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll Lawyer Alan Gura says that owning semi-automatic guns is constitutional. The man who successfully challenged a prohibition against handguns in the District of Columbia before the Supreme Court said last night during a local debate about the Second Amendment that some states have gone too far. That's what happened in the District of Columbia, which required that firearms either be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, said Alan Gura, a lawyer from Alexandria, Va., who argued the Supreme Court case. "If you have a...

Much has been written (including some by myself and other Gun Rights Examiners--see links beneath the photo) about the impending McDonald v. City of Chicago case to be heard by the Supreme Court early next year. In this case, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association are challenging Chicago's handgun ban (the NRA also eventually became involved). Probably the biggest issue that will be decided here is whether or not the Second Amendment is to be incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, and thus apply to state and local governments, as well as to the feds. If SCOTUS...

lredmond@lowellsun.com BOSTON -- As a Billerica gun case heads to the state's highest court next week, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Police Chiefs and other high-profile groups are urging the Supreme Judicial Court to reject the constitutional challenge to the state's safe firearm-storage law. The groups are joining with Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone, who is challenging a Lowell District Court judge's ruling that dismissed a gun-storage case against Richard Runyan, a Billerica man who kept an unlocked semiautomatic hunting rifle under his bed where it could be accessed by his teenage...

I've written recently about how courts in New Jersey and Illinois have concluded that the Second Amendment poses no obstacle to local governments enacting stringent anti-gun laws. Now a Maryland appeals court has followed suit. A three-judge panel ruled last Thursday that the Second Amendment does not interfere with a Maryland law that generally restricts state residents from carrying handguns. That's not much of a surprise. What is remarkable is that Judge Albert Matricciani went out of his way to write that even if the Second Amendment applied to state laws, Maryland's statute would be perfectly constitutional in the wake...

That’s the title of a new article in the Columbia Law Review (the link is just to an abstract, since no PDF is available). The law review asked me whether I could write a commentary for its online supplement (the Sidebar), and I did, here, under the title The First and Second Amendments; the author’s response to my response is here. Here’s the text of my article (for the footnotes, see the version I link to above): I. The Supposed Analogy to Obscenity Analogies between the First Amendment and the Second (and comparable state constitutional protections) are over 200 years...

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is expected to decide whether a state law that requires residents to apply for gun licenses with their local police departments is unconstitutional. The challenge is being brought before the court by Paul W. Patten, a Fall River defense attorney who is representing Nathaniel DePina, 19, a New Bedford man serving a 2-year jail sentence after being convicted last year of illegally carrying a firearm. Patten is appealing DePina's conviction on the grounds that the state gun licensing statute is "vague and overbroad," inconsistent in application and violates an enumerated, fundamental right protected by the...

It was an image that shocked the country. Could a case headed for the Supreme Court overturn gun laws in Chicago? A 16-year-old honor student in Chicago being beaten to death by teenagers. Derrion Albert, a high school sophomore was caught in a mob fight as he was walking to a bus stop. Despite not being part of either of the gangs, he was punched, kicked and struck by a board. And just a week and a half after the fatal incident, as residents demand safer streets, Chicago faces a new battle -- this time over guns. On Monday, the...

Does the Second Amendment give one the right to keep and bear arms (even allowing one to invoke that right against the government itself), or is it a freedom only as it concerns the federal government? As Amy Goodman reported on her Democracy Now! program, that question will now be taken up by the United States Supreme Court, and the Court’s decision could have nationwide ramifications. Said Goodman yesterday: The Supreme Court has decided to rule on whether state and local handgun laws violate the Second Amendment right to gun ownership, which it recognized last year, when the Court struck...

Heller lawyer Alan Gura revived the Second Amendment. Can he do the same for the 14th? It has been only a year and a season since the Supreme Court shook the world of Second Amendment jurisprudence with the historical D.C. v. Heller decision. In that case, the court declared for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms against infringement by the federal government — at least commonly used arms, for self-defense in the home. Heller opened the gates for a flood of new lawsuits by gun-rights friendly attorneys and organizations, most prominently the...

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it plans to hear the next major gun rights case, a move that will decide whether the Second Amendment can invalidate state laws and municipal ordinances. A 5-4 Supreme Court decision last year did say that the U.S. Constitution protects an individual right to own a handgun. But the majority opinion never concluded that the Second Amendment applied to states; it didn't say what kind of laws beyond a flat ban are acceptable or unacceptable; it didn't even say what kind of standards lower courts should apply when evaluating anti-gun laws. One...

This week on Uncommon Knowledge, the man who saved the Second Amendment. In 2007, Judge Laurence Silberman, senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, wrote a decision overturning the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. The following year, the Supreme Court agreed with him.

When the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s city-wide gun ban as unconstitutional in the D.C. v. Heller decision of June 2008, it seemed axiomatic that similar gun bans around the country would crumble under the weight of unconstitutionality as well. However, more than a year after the Heller decision, the D.C. city council is making it as difficult as possible to get a gun permit in the nation’s capital, Chicago’s Mayor Daley is fighting to keep his city’s total handgun ban in place, and other mayors, like Seattle’s Greg Nickels, threaten to institute gun bans every time a newsworthy...

Last February I explained how, counter intuitively, the DC City Council's 2008 action to repeal the DC Police Chief's power to issue handgun carry permits made it possible for DC residents to apply by mail for handgun carry permits from Pennsylvania Sherrifs. Such applications can be made by filling out a simple form, no fingerprints, social security numbers, or training required. And these permits are accepted by many states too. . . . So how can DC residents legally acquire guns without jumping through all the hoops erected by the DC City Council? It turns out it's pretty simple -...

Congressman Heller sent this letter to President Obama on September 8, 2009 offering options to help bridge the gap between Republicans and Democrats on health care reform: September 8, 2009 The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C., 20006 Dear Mr. President: Yesterday, you said those critical of your healthcare plan were "trying to scare the American people and preserve the status quo." You rhetorically asked critics "what's your answer? What's your solution?" and asserted that "the truth is, they don't have one. It's do nothing." (Speech before the AFL-CIO, Cincinnati,...

The city of Washington, D.C. is mounting an aggressive legal defense of its ban on carrying handguns, calling it "squarely in the mainstream and eminently reasonable." In a 37-page legal brief filed this week, the District of Columbia says that refusing to grant licenses to its residents to carry handguns in public complies with the Second Amendment. The regulations "serve important goals of public safety, especially here, in the nation's capital," the brief says. If this lawsuit sounds a little familiar, you're right. It was in June 2008 that the U.S. Supreme Court shot down a city ordinance effectively preventing...

Jim Hryekewicz, in a Sept. 7, column in the Star-Telegram, recounts why the city of Chicago could be the next significant Second Amendment battleground. “Otis McDonald is a great American,” he writes. “In the 1960s, he wore an Army uniform and served with distinction. He then moved home to Chicago were he began a family. Meanwhile, he busied himself during the days with work at his local union. Eventually, he led the effort to integrate his union and ended up as president of the union. “In recent years, McDonald looked around Chicago and decided that he could do something about...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   New York: Sportsmen’s Association for Firearms Education Inc. (S.A.F.E.) 2009 Firearm Civil Rights Conference   Thursday, September 03, 2009   Please join the Sportsmen’s Association for Firearms Education Inc. (S.A.F.E.) for its 2009 Firearm Civil Rights Conference. Sunday, September 13, 2009, 1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M. (doors open at 12:00 noon) Sheraton Long Island Hotel110 Vanderbilt Motor ParkwaySmithtown, NY (631) 231-1100(on Motor Parkway on the North side of LIE between exits 53 & 55)Special guests include Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President; Ron Schmeits, NRA President; Chris Cox, Executive Director of the...

The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, declared that Washington’s 32-year ban on all functional firearms violated the Second Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, however, applied only to possession of guns in the home. The court did not address, and was not asked to address, firearms carried outside the home. That’s the issue posed in a new lawsuit against the District by Tom Palmer (disclosure: my colleague at the Cato Institute) and four other plaintiffs — represented by Alan Gura, the lawyer who successfully argued Heller before the court. After Heller, the District relaxed its ban on...

City council members are expected to consider a proposed assault weapons ban today during a special session on the G-20 Summit As the G-20 Summit nears, Pittsburgh City Council is considering the possibility of instituting an assault weapons ban during the high-profile event. According to our news partners at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, city officials are talking about reviving an old law that would ban those types of weapons. If approved, the ban would likely be in effect until after the G-20 Summit ends. City council members are expected to consider the assault weapons ban today along with many other pieces...

In a veiled attempt to change the country's talking points, the White House decided to announce that a special prosecutor would be named to investigate a dozen CIA interrogations during the Bush administration. Political pundits say this is just another ploy to change the topic from health care... Many questions remain direct and focused on health care issues. A biggie is, "Will the health care reform bill include coverage for those in this country illegally? The president continues to say absolutely not. However, there have been many attempts to add safety measures to ensure illegal aliens do not receive care...

Last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Second Amendment did not, contrary to what you may have heard at the time, resolve very much. Unanswered are questions about carrying firearms in public, gun sales on government property, firearm registration, guns in government housing, handgun restrictions that aren't exactly the same as the District of Columbia's, zoning and gun stores, and so on. And so far, at least, lower courts have been overwhelmingly hostile to gun owners' rights. The latest example is a decision late Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which said that a...

One question left unanswered by the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Second Amendment ruling last year is this: When do law-abiding Americans have the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense? In a lawsuit filed against the city of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation aims to find out. The plaintiffs are four gun owners who were denied licenses to carry firearms in public on their person, which nearly all states permit. All U.S. states except Illinois and Wisconsin grant licenses for concealed carry, and 36 states require local police to issue the licenses unless there's a valid...

BELLEVUE, Wash. - (Business Wire) The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a lawsuit on behalf of three residents of the District of Columbia and a Florida resident, seeking to compel the city to issue carry permits to law-abiding citizens. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Tom Palmer, George Lyon and Amy McVey, all District residents, and Edward Raymond, a New Hampshire resident. SAF and the individual plaintiffs are being represented by attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller case in 2008 that overturned the District’s handgun ban on the...

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals just agreed to host another shootout over gun rights. The court decided Wednesday to review en banc a panel ruling that had significantly broadened Second Amendment protections by applying them to state and local governments. This holding, arrived at by Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, is at odds with other rulings from around the country -- including one penned by 2nd Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The 9th Circuit panel had still upheld an Alameda County, Calif., ordinance that forbids a gun show at a public fairground. Thus neither side had asked for en banc review....

Health care has been at the top of Obama's agenda. The big question is, will illegal immigrants be covered by this plan? A recent Rasmussen poll stated that 80% of Americans would be opposed to extending benefits to illegals. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that there are as many as 15 million uninsured illegals and their children here. Obama recently gave an interview to Katie Couric in which he said, "First of all, I'd like to create a situation where we're dealing with illegal immigration, so that we don't have illegal immigrants. And I want a comprehensive immigration plan...

Washington, DC - -(AmmoLand.com)- In Congressional testimony, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer claimed she couldn’t think of a self-defense case having come before the Supreme Court, adding, “I could be wrong, but I can’t think of one.” Independent research shows that fourteen separate Supreme Court cases, from 1895 to 1985, addressed every basic aspect of personal self defense. All of them held that self defense is a valid, justifiable and long-standing tenet of American law. The Bloomfield Press book “Supreme Court Gun Cases” (Kopel, Halbrook, Korwin), released in 2003 and in the Supreme Court’s library, covers the 92 High Court...

Other than declaring war, neither house of Congress has a more solemn responsibility than the Senate's role in confirming justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. As the Senate considers the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Americans have been watching to see whether this nominee - if confirmed - would respect the Second Amendment or side with those who have declared war on the rights of America's 80 million gun owners. From the outset, the National Rifle Association has respected the confirmation process and hoped for mainstream answers to bedrock questions. Unfortunately, Judge Sotomayor's judicial record and testimony clearly demonstrate a...

...On Wednesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin implied that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to uphold the Second Amendment was revolutionary: “When I was in law school...the idea that you had a Second Amendment right to a gun was considered preposterous....But the Supreme Court [in Heller]...said that...individuals have a personal right to bear arms.”...Anchor Wolf Blitzer raised the Second Amendment issue with Toobin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the others on their panel analyzing the hearings.... [and] asked...what were the nominee’s “positions, specifically on the federal obligation to support the Second Amendment, as opposed to local communities..?” The CNN...analyst...

Damon W. Root | July 9, 2009, 4:49pm Writing in the Virginia Law Review last fall, conservative federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III took aim at the Supreme Court's landmark gun rights opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. According to Wilkinson, "Heller encourages Americans to do what conservative jurists warned for years they should not do: bypass the ballot and seek to press their political agenda in the courts." In fact, Wilkinson went so far as to compare Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion in Heller with the Supreme Court's famous abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade,...

Mineola, NY – June 17, 2009 – An important new ruling from a New York intermediate appellate court found that the fundamental right to possess a handgun applies in New York. On this point, the court relied on the decision in Chwick v. Mulvey, the lawsuit that challenged Nassau County’s ban on the possession of handguns mislabeled as “deceptively colored.” People v. Perkins, a decision of the Supreme Court Appellate Division, Third Department, cites Chwick for the proposition that the United States Supreme Court’s Heller decision, which held that the right to possess a handgun is a fundamental right, applies...

Last week was the first anniversary of the District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Supreme Court for the first time declared that the Second Amendment indeed protects an individual right to own guns in the home for self-defense. It was a great victory for individual rights, but by no means a final one. The lawyer who successfully argued that case, Alan Gura, has remained a dedicated opponent of all sorts of gun regulations that still stand post-Heller. Senior Editor Brian Doherty talked to Gura by phone earlier this week about the various legal challenges Gura is fighting against state...

In parts one and two, we looked in detail at the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States. In this third part, we will examine the dissenting opinions. Dissenting opinions hold no rule of law, but are oftentimes cited as persuasive authority by those who wish to change laws or file additional lawsuits. They can even be used by a future court to overturn a previous decision. While we won in this case and SCOTUS affirmed that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is indeed an individual right and that the DC gun ban is unconstitutional, we...

Middlesex District Attorney Gerry LeoneThere are a few social issues in this country that, if judged by the output of so called mainstream media outlets, seem to be driven by pure emotion rather than logic and the laws of our republic. One could, I believe, argue that the top two issues falling into that category are those of abortion and gun control. I believe that despite the constant flow of emotional rhetoric and lack of facts from these sources Americans can and will ultimately insist that logic and the law prevail, but not unlike the dreadful Dred Scott decision these...

The state’s highest court plans to review the constitutionality of a recently challenged state law that requires gun owners to lock their weapons, making it the first test in Massachusetts of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that Americans have the constitutional right to own guns and stow them as they see fit. The SJC decided to review the law less than a year after a Lowell District Court judge dismissed firearms charges against a Billerica man whose handicapped son was accused of shooting a BB gun at a neighbor and who then showed police officers where his father kept...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Second Amendment/Right To Arms Self-Defense is a Basic Human Right   As the Supreme Court deliberates whether or not the District of Columbia’s 30-year-old gun ban is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, a deep background look is critical to understanding what is at stake in terms of our personal liberties and the rights that ensure them.This case--District of Columbia v. Heller--is about whether the Second Amendment is an individual right. And it is about whether such an individual right can be abrogated by government to render it meaningless in word and...

(Corrected) Gun Control: In a case headed for the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel rules Chicago's gun ban constitutional since the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to states and cities. High court nominee Sonia Sotomayor concurs.Those Pennsylvania townsfolk bitterly clinging to their guns may have been premature in celebrating the decision in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.

President Obama thinks he has thrown the pro-life movement a curve ball by nominating a politically-correct relatively unknown minor judge as a candidate for the Supreme Court. Putting the name of Sonia Sotomayor forward for this office is really the equivalent of an affirmative action plan for the highest court of our land, and it is just not what we need for our judicial system. As a Hispanic female judge, she apparently has the credentials suited to Obama's highly politicized view of the Constitution, but Sotomayor is far from the most qualified person for the office. More importantly, she is...

WASHINGTON - The National Rifle Association is asking the Supreme Court to strike down strict gun control laws in the Chicago area, setting the stage for another high court battle over Second Amendment protections for gun owners.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. appeals court in Chicago upheld the strict gun-control ordinances in Chicago and suburban Oak Park on Tuesday, setting the stage for a Supreme Court battle over whether the 2nd Amendment and its protection for gun owners extends to state and municipal laws. In a 3-0 decision, the 7th Circuit judges said they were bound by legal precedents that held the 2nd Amendment applies only to federal laws.The latest ruling also may undercut a criticism leveled at Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. In January, she joined a three-judge ruling in New York...

The law-abiding weren't the problem in the nation's capital About a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down 30 years of social experimentation in Washington, D.C., by declaring that the district's de facto ban on gun ownership is unconstitutional. The city's gun laws were so strict that a security guard could not get the permission to own a gun, hence the lawsuit on the constitutionality of the district's statutes. Disarming the law-abiding populace left them at the mercy of criminals. Violence escalated, with homicides at one point more than doubling the pre-ban numbers. With the ban gone, Mayor Adrian...

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that the District of Columbia's law barring residents from keeping loaded handguns at home violated the Second Amendment, gun-ownership advocates had reason to celebrate. But the high court's decision could serve to bolster the other side because of its narrow reasoning, which leaves states broad authority to enact strict gun-control measures, two BU School of Public Health professors assert in the May 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Gun-control advocates need to have a full appreciation of what the Court did and did not do" in the D.C. case,...

WASHINGTON - Historically, when the economy heads south, crime rates go up. But in this recession, things are different in the District. The murder rate is at its lowest in nearly thirty years. With more on this, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 National Rifle Association Files Suit Against Restrictive San Francisco Gun Ordinance Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Fairfax, Va. --- The National Rifle Association, the San Francisco Retired Police Officers Association, and a group of San Francisco residents filed a Second Amendment lawsuit in federal court last Friday seeking to invalidate the San Francisco ordinance that requires all residents to store their handguns in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock. “Time and again, we see city governments attempt to strip their citizens of basic self-defense rights, and NRA will work tirelessly...

In a peculiar but not unprecedented turn of events, an anti-gun control plaintiff lost his case, last month's Nordyke v. King(pdf), but nonetheless managed to elicit a groundbreaking pro-gun rights declaration from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.In deciding that it was OK for California’s Alameda County to bar the possession of guns on county property—a law that quashed a gun show that had long been held on county fairgrounds—the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the Second Amendment does control state and local actions as well as federal ones. That was a step farther than last year's decision in District of...

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Second Amendment Foundation today applauded the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for ruling that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states and local governments. The majority opinion was written by Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, with a concurring opinion from Judge Ronald M. Gould, who wrote, “The right to bear arms is a bulwark against external invasion…That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before more...

Dane von Breichenruchardt and Dick Heller are going to be on The Micro Effect radio show today at 3 pm EST to discuss the next Heller case. You can listen live at the site.