Free Republic

BALTIMORE - Maryland's highest court has ruled the state's handgun laws are still constitutional despite a 2008 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that gutted gun statutes in D.C. In an opinion issued Wednesday, the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed a gun possession charge levied in Prince George's County against Charles F. Williams, Jr. Williams said the state's gun regulations violated his right to "keep and carry arms" under the Second Amendment, and based his argument in part on the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. The high court in that case said barring a person from...

If the title isn't the understatement of the day, please show it to me. The universal right to self defense as recognized by an individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment depended on Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 5 - 4 decision. I was disappoined in Ginsburg and Souter considering their opinions in Muscarello.It was a clean decision. Fears that it would create new infringements were proven unfounded. All of D.C.'s infringemnts at issue were declared infringements, nothing more, nothing less, and struck down. D.C. was told to deal with it. "We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals....

Interpreting the Second Amendment broadly, a federal appeals court in Washington yesterday struck down a gun control law in the District of Columbia that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes. The decision was the first from a federal appeals court to hold a gun control law unconstitutional on the ground that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals, as opposed to the collective rights of state militias. Nine other federal appeals courts around the nation have rejected that interpretation. Linda Singer, the District’s acting attorney general, said the decision was “a huge setback.” “We’ve been making progress...

There is a case working its way to the Supreme Court that might settle one of the biggest unanswered questions in constitutional law: Does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to own a gun? Whether or not you own a gun, this is a case you should care about. I’m not just saying that because I’m the immediate past president of the National Rifle Association. (Last month I completed my two-year term as president and nine years as an officer of the NRA.) I’m also saying it as an attorney who’s been arguing cases in federal court for more...

PLANTATION — He kissed and told. She kissed and said it was him. Then she wasn't sure. They drifted apart. Over the years, the memory of a shared national moment bound them. And now she is gone. Edith Shain, 91, the nurse in the iconic "kissing sailor" photograph, the Times Square clinch marking the end of World War II, died Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. Carl Muscarello, 83, a retired New York police detective who lives in Plantation, says he remembers that day well, and not just for its historic significance.