There is that possibility, but much more likely is the idea that the Supreme Court ducked the issue for 80 years. There’s no reason to believe that there weren’t cases that were appealed to the Supreme Court in those 80 years. Hell, there are thousands of BoR cases that the Supreme Court is asked to hear every single year. Yet in 80 years they didn’t hear a single 2nd Amendment case? The Court was ducking it. There’s no doubt in my mind, anyway.
You could be right, Doors. I don’t remember hearing of cert being refused on interesting cases, but I’d be interested to see if it was. This is obviously horribly anecdotal and all, but I do remember hearing in discussion that the NRA for one was notoriously reluctant to back cases for fear of getting precedent it did not like.
That is true. In fact, they didn’t back Heller initially, going so far as to try to lobby the DC City Council into changing the law and mooting the lawsuit.
Still, NRA backing isn’t required, and in any case the NRA in its current form didn’t exist until 1977, 38 years after Miller was decided.
What’s your point? If it’s that someone couldn’t carry one, ready to use, in a vehicle, or conceal one under something as light as a spring windbreaker jacket, then you’re extraordinarily ignorant.
I was wondering about something: remember that full-automatic firearms aren’t actually illegal under the NFA of 1934, just required to be registered. The registry for them is currently closed to new additions thanks to the Hayes amendment. Since the McDonald decision mentions the Chicago practice of requiring registration and then refusing to allow it, do you suppose the Hayes amendment might be struck down on similar grounds?
I think the Supreme Court got it right. I’m not a lawyer, but the 2nd Amendment is more linguistically clear to me than the 14th, for example. It bothers me that people have such issue with American gun ownership. If you don’t want your neighbor to have guns, move to any other place on the planet where gun ownership is illegal like Mexico, Canada, Europe, China, etc etc OR start a campaign to repeal the 2nd Amendment. It’s easy.
All of those places have gun ownership, except perhaps China. Mexico has their own version of the 2nd Amendment, although they don’t have the same issue here because theirs allows exemption. Gun ownership is very common in rural Canada, the main difference being pistols are almost impossible to get. Europe ranges from strict England to pretty liberal Switzerland.
I checked the status of Mexican gun laws. Yeah, Mexicans have a “right” to keep and bear arms except… Holy Guacamole! It’s pretty clear that Mexicans have only those guns that the government magnaminously permits them to have, and that’s written in at the Constitutional level.
As has been posted in previous threads, saying that many other countries “have gun ownership” doesn’t mean a hell of a lot when in practice that means that the government, at it’s discretion, allows a few sporting weapons with heavy restrictions.
It’s actually the Hughes Amendment, and yes, this discussion has come up. Will it happen? We’ll see. Remember, in spite of all the rhetoric that gets bandied about with regard to “nukes” and “missiles” and the like, the Supreme Court left in their decision a statement about “reasonable regulation” being permissible. The closing of the registry may stand on that basis alone. I can guarantee that it will be challenged, though, and probably soon.
Look…I’m highly pro-gun, as you might have noticed, but don’t you think that statement from the county AG is a bit unusual? I’ve read a lot of AG memorandums and statements on topics as I research things, and this one seems really…well, I want to say “unprofessional” but it’s not that bad…not in keeping with the office?
I would have expected a factual-only, dry statement of “as a result of our review, we believe that these laws are not Constitutional…” Just saying.
Maybe if we had a better press corps to explain this ruling properly to people, stuff like this wouldn’t happen.
Saying the 2nd Amendment has been incorporated is a bit of a misnomer. The Court did not decide that the 2nd Amendment prevents the States from barring citizens from keeping a handgun in the home for self defense; it’s the 14th Amendment that protects this right. Just because it protects the same right that was outlined in Heller doesn’t mean that the right to bear arms under A14 will be exactly the same as the right to bear arms under A2.
It’s going to take lots of litigation to fully hash out the parameters of the right. This district attorney isn’t doing his job.
