Rights hanging on the edge

[ATN082268]

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

OK. Let me put it this way: what if we'd lost Heller? What if the result had been 5-4 that the 2A only protects a right to own firearms in the service of a state-owned militia?

Given the general hostility of the courts towards guns, I don't think it would have mattered much if the U.S. Supreme court ruling in Heller only protected a right to bear arms in service of a state militia (National Guard).

Even if you buy into the belonging to a state militia (National Guard) to have a right in the Bill of Rights to apply to you, there are still a lot of problems with it. Who buys/ owns the guns/ammo? Can you keep stuff like machine guns and anti-tank rockets in your closet? Besides, the National Guard has standardized weaponry and keeps their weapons in an armory. Would the courts rule that your right to bear arms only takes place during official military training/exercises? The National Guard thing seems more of an excuse to deny your 2nd Amendment rights.

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

The very next mass shooting, we'd have seen sweeping bans and confiscation from an administration claiming, "it's constitutional; the Supreme Court said so."

I think we'd see calls for gun bans with or without mass shootings and with or without U.S. Supreme Court rulings that support or don't support gun bans.

[Spats McGee]

Originally Posted by Tom Servo

. . . . 2A litigation has a spotty and questionable history.

Not to mention short & shallow. While the 2A has been around every bit as long as the other 9 BoR Amendments, we need to remember that it wasn't incorporated to the states until at least 2008. That makes its history "short & shallow," in terms of having a body of law to provide guidance. It was incorporated very recently & there just haven't been many cases decided by SCOTUS to flesh out the exact contours of the RKBA.

[Tom Servo]

Not to mention short & shallow.

Not short so much as shallow. We have cases like Nunn v. Georgia going back to the 1840's, but yeah, the history is pretty thin.

That said, we've had plenty of litigation on 2A grounds, but most of those cases were part of a last-ditch smorgasbord of appeals for some criminal who claimed it was unconstitutional for him to be prosecuted for the gun with the filed-off serial number he waved at police.

The NRA knew this. Like it or not, we need a sympathetic plaintiff for such litigation.* We got that with folks like Dick Heller and Otis McDonald, but the odds were still a bit scary in 2007.

* Rosa Parks was not the first person to bring action on the Montgomery county bus issue, but the NAACP realized she was more likely to gain popular support than Claudette Colvin, who was an unwed mother.

[TheGunGeek]

I extended my NRA membership and donated to the 2nd Amendment Foundation today. I believe we all have a fiduciary responsibility to defend the Constitution and it's principles, which have served us well for over 200 years. This includes all of it, not just the 2nd Amendment. The 4th Amendment has been under attack for some time now with mass warrantless data collection. The EFF and others have been instrumental in defending our digital rights. If you have the financial means, now is the time to help defend the principles embodied in our Constitution.