Al --
That is a great summary of how and why we have advanced to where we are now with glimpses of our future road. I want to emphasize a point you made:
Quote:
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It goes to the strategy of being very selective at picking the "low hanging fruit" to achieve specific wins and creating the proper precedent for future battles.
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I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to bring the right case with the right facts at the right time. I'll give you an example of the wrong case with bad facts.
A few years ago, a public defender challenged a Kentucky state law prohibiting possession of a firearm by a felon on the basis that it violated the state constitution.
Posey v. Commonwealth, 185 S.W.3d 170 (Ky. 2006). The majority of the state supreme court used a rational basis test to uphold the law when there were other avenues they could have used. From a RKBA perspective, the case was not properly briefed, IMO (the public defender was trying to advocate for his client and I cannot criticize him for doing so). I felt so disgusted with the opinion that I titled a thread about it:
End of Right to Bear Arms in Ky.?.
Wrong case with bad facts. Very few people get worked up about felons not having guns but that case allows the legislature to practically pass any law they want in Kentucky restricting firearms ownership/use.
Given the subsequent opinions in
Heller and
McDonald, it might be possible to convince the state court to re-evaluate the rational basis test it employed but it has to be the
right case with good facts.
Excuse the thread drift.