In 2009, a proposal was in the final stages of acceptance on Capitol Hill. The District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 (H.R. 157 and S. 160) had passed the Senate. Democrats controlled the House.
But the Senate bill had passed with an amendment striking down DC’s most-restrictive-in-the-nation gun laws.
Now it’s 2014, and the city has lost a lawsuit concerning the constitutionality of their gun laws. All indications are they’re going to end up without those laws anyway. And no voting rights bill, to boot.
Resolved: Norton’s 2009 decision was a huge mistake.
You don’t say. Another DC politician who is more concerned with getting their name in headlines than actually getting anything done (I’m looking at you too-mayor-for-life).
After living at the edge of the District for well over a decade now, I’m of the belief that sometimes you get the representation you deserve. And if they keep voting for these knuckleheads (I’m looking at you too-mayor-for-life) then you are self-screwing and have no sympathy for you.
Well, it works both ways. Remember, a politicians primary interest isn’t his/her constituents but her re-election. Holmes - and I know little about the situation other than knowing Holmes and living in the DC area for a hell of a long time - may have felt that shoring up her base to make sure she was never primaried was more important that getting the actual bill through.
I don’t think you can say her decision at the time was a mistake with the set of information she had when making those decisions. Her choices illustrate that having an absolute prohibition on guns was more valuable to her than voting representation. She couldn’t have known her position would have been mooted 5 years later.
Actually, she could have. The DC gun law was not a certainty to be struck down, but it was likely to have been so. She bet with a losing hand. Perhaps she lives in too much of a bubble to realize that, but then that’s still a problem on her part.
I’m not so sure about that. Palmer could have gone the other way, or DC could have mooted Palmer and adopted a Maryland style licensing scheme where no one gets carry permits. Perhaps she knew the chances of Palmer being defeated were slim, but based on her weighted values it was worth the risk.
I think taking a risk for something you believe in and not succeeding doesn’t necessarily mean the choice you made was a mistake.
Hold on now – didn’t Heller say that governments could make “reasonable” restrictions on the use or ownership of firearms, and then left a big question mark as to what reasonable means in this context?
So the latest court decision – which I understand has been put on hold today while DC figures out whether it wishes to appeal – is one judge’s interpretation of what “reasonable” gun control measures mean. It could well be that his judgment is not upheld by higher courts. So, from Norton’s point of view, the question of whether DC not allowing open carry is, in fact, a question that will most likely continue to be litigated. More importantly, the judge’s ruling in this case allows for DC residents to legally possess an unregistered firearm. To the contrary, the plaintiff in the case asked that DC government be compelled to issue carry licences to any person “who [has] satisfied the existing requirements… for the registration of a handgun.” (See page 3 of 19, link.)
In contrast, had Democrats voted to approve the DC voting rights bill, the amendment offered by Senator Ensign specifically would have legalized the possession of unregistered firearms.
Therefore, Bricker is wrong. Voting for the DC voting rights bill would have rolled back even more gun laws – such as eliminating the penalties for possessing an unregistered weapon – than the judge did. How would that bill have been a better deal for DC?
What if she thought the voting rights portion was unlikely to be upheld? Maybe, to her, passage of the bill only represented a 10% chance of getting voting rights for the District.
There is a lot of incorrect information in your post.
Heller was silent on the “bear” portion of the 2nd as that was not part of the question posed. The Palmer case directly addresses what it means to ‘bear arms’.
No, this isn’t quite right. The case in question was whether an absolute prohibition on any form of carry (bear arms) was permissible. It was not a question of gun control in general. Heller defined the phrase “bear arms” as in ‘carry in case of confrontation’. This is the meaning of that part of the amendment. The scope of that right has not been addressed at SCOTUS.
This wasn’t about open carry specifically. It was about some form of carry, open or concealed.
Not so. The ruling does not impact the prohibition on the possession of an unregistered firearm by DC residents. Anyone found to be in possession of an unregistered firearm is still guilty of a crime in DC after this ruling, stay or no stay.
Part of the plantiff’s request for was that those who own registered firearms be issued a carry license. Note the “registered” in that part of the proposed relief.
I am embarrassed because I made a serious error in that statement. Somehow in my editing I mangled two thoughts irreparably. In the words of Gov Perry, “Oops.”
The point I was trying to make is that under the judge’s ruling, unregistered firearms are still illegal in DC. Under the Ensign amendment, they would be legal. Therefore, if one thinks that possession of unregistered firearms should be illegal, the judge’s ruling is preferable to the Ensign amendment.
If you conclude that Heller was “silent” on the issue of “bearing” firearms at all, why did the second page of the Court’s decision say this? It’s kind of right up there at the front of the whole decision.
The District of Columbia is organized through acts of Congress, as Congress is ultimately the body responsible for its governance. (Congress has chosen to create an elected city council to deal with things, but that also required an act of Congress.)
Nothing in the holding was controlling relating to “bear”. That statement neither approves or disapproves of any particular thing. It basically says, ‘there are limits, but we’re not talking about what those may be since that discussion is not necessary to decide this case [Heller]’
Heller didn’t talk about reasonable restrictions - essentially they said the DC restrictions were unconstitutional under any form of heightened scrutiny. In Palmer, the district court concluded the same thing - that the prohibition on carrying was unconstitutional under any form of heightened scrutiny.
I see - your argument is that even though the Supreme Court wrote in its decision that the right to bear arms isn’t unlimited, they just didn’t really mean it.
I’m not sure how you are arriving your interpretation of my statement. I acknowledge that there are limits to the 2nd amendment, and that SCOUTS said that the right is not unlimited [meaning there are limits]. They didn’t say what those were in Heller because it was not necessary to decide the case.
There was no discussion about the scope or any limits as it relates to ‘bearing arms’, except to the extent that they acknowledged that some limits exist. From the Palmer case here, and Moore and Peruta in other districts, there is a strong argument that one end of the spectrum, total prohibition on carry, runs afoul of the 2nd amendment. So far there is no comment as to the other end of the spectrum other than to say that there is another end.
What prompted this line of discussion was your statement that Heller said that governments could enact “reasonable restrictions” - there is no discussion of reasonable restrictions in the majority opinion of Heller. Heller specifically disclaims an interest balancing approach.
Scalia doesn’t use the phrase, but he discusses how carrying guns into government buildings isn’t a protected activity under the Second Amendment. Whether or not you wish to call prohibiting guns in government buildings (to use one example) a “reasonable restriction” is splicing hairs to an outrageous degree.
But anyway, I see Bricker hasn’t returned to his thread, which is disappointing, because I also note that the Palmer decision actually allows the District to reform its gun control laws to comply with the decision. This allows local politicians, elected by the people of DC, to figure out how to comply with the judge’s decision in the manner best suited to residents of the city.
Had Norton and others agreed to the Ensign amendment, the people of DC would never have an opportunity to change that law, since it would have been enacted at the Federal level, and could not be amended by the DC City Council.
So, it is clear that Norton and others did NOT trade away their own best interests in opposing the Ensign amendment.
Yes, it does. And that’s certainly how it should be done – local legislation, bounded by the Second Amendment.
I guess I’m suggesting that when you look at the delta – the difference between the version of laws DC would have under the Ensign amendment and the one they’ll end up with now – you don’t find a huge amount of disparity.
You’re right: the Ensign amendment would have allowed unregistered firearms for residents. Now, only non-residents may carry unregistered weapons. So the question is: was losing a House and Senate voting voice for DC worth being able to forbid DC residents, and only DC residents, from carrying unregistered handguns?
You may disagree but I don’t think this is the correct interpretation of Heller. Here is the section in question:
This does not mean that carrying guns into government buildings isn’t a protected activity. That is not a conclusion that is drawn. The converse is also true, that carrying guns into government buildings is a protected activity is also a conclusion that isn’t drawn. This section simply says that the opinion in Heller is silent on those items and that it should not be taken to cast doubt on those existing restrictions. Those were not the question being presented and therefore they do not conclude either way. Saying, “we’re not talking about X” doesn’t translate into “we approve of X” or “X is okay”. It just means, they are not talking about it.
That discussion, the full scope of the 2nd amendment, was not necessary to decide the questions presented.
I do agree with you that Norton didn’t trade anything away, and the situation now is different than if she had went along with Ensign. And without the current state, I still think it’s possible she made a decision that was correct for herself and her constituents if her value set supported the decision at the time.
The footnote to that section about keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill or not allowing guns in government buildings reads: “We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.”
In other words, Scalia wrote that a law prohibiting the carrying of a gun into a government building was “presumptively lawful,” but then he decides not to spend more time on the question. Again, this is a long, looooong way from your assertion that Heller “was silent” on the issue of bearing arms.
Silent in this context does not mean that any mention is absent. It means that the opinion does not draw conclusions on the right to bear. Bearing arms was not part of the questions presented and therefore were not opined upon. Dicta.