We're on. Supreme Court to hear Heller

[4g64loser]

i dun my duty and voted! if all goes well, DC may host a gun show where all their residents buy handguns next year! HAHA wouldnt that be a laugh.

[jpk1md]

Originally Posted by ylfotevoli

Voted.

http://video.nbc4.com/player/?id=187510

I watched the video of the DC officials responding to the decision. The police chief blabbered illegal gun numbers while forgetting basic grammar. I don't think he realizes taking every illegal gun/pistol out of DC is impossible.

How long have handguns been banned??? Any how many was he blabbering about being confiscated??? That shit doesn't work....and the crime rates back it up.

Basically they each got up there and said "Word....what HE said......"

What a bunch of dumb ass (&^*^%%&$!!!

[jpk1md]

LOL the poll is up to:

1972 Overturn Ban
276 Reinstate Ban

88% of the folks that voted oppose the ban....its unbelievable that these asshats continue to assert that DC Residents WANT the ban...the only people that WANT the ban are CRIMINALS so they can assure that their victims are unarmed....

[Spot77]

Originally Posted by 4g64loser

i dun my duty and voted! if all goes well, DC may host a gun show where all their residents buy handguns next year! HAHA wouldnt that be a laugh.

I think the nra should hold their annual convention in DC when this is over....

[coinboy]

Originally Posted by jpk1md

LOL the poll is up to:

1972 Overturn Ban
276 Reinstate Ban

88% of the folks that voted oppose the ban....its unbelievable that these asshats continue to assert that DC Residents WANT the ban...the only people that WANT the ban are CRIMINALS so they can assure that their victims are unarmed....

Don't forget the assheads running the district want it too. No doubt everybody else wants it gone. The only thing is that the Supreme Court can either grant immunity or total kill our rights with the stroke of a pen. It's a nail biter!

[slayr15]

296 uphold 2286 overturn!

[TheTruth]

I voted.

This whole "collective right" argument has always bothered me. The Bill of Rights has always been applied to the individual, ex, 1st, 2nd and so on. How they anti's made this one right that "excludes" the people is a stretch.

Finally, maybe this legal action will set that straight once and for all.

I agree with what I have read, I think that they will affirm that the 2nd is an individual right, but also concede that municipalities are within their legal rights to manage it or some such non-sense.

[Lambo]

As of 11/20/2007, 11:34 EDST,

Choice Votes Percentage of 3316 Votes
Uphold 338 10%
Overturn 2978 90%

[Decoy]

349 10%
3175 90%

[Norton]

Originally Posted by Decoy

349 10%
3175 90%

I love it. Too bad they'll just discount it as the efforts of a vocal minority who are deliberately skewing the results.

[Norton]

Another poll where we are way ahead. You know your duty.

http://www.wjla.com/

[VNVGUNNER]

Should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn D.C.'s handgun ban?

Yes
75%
No
25%

Total: 1318 votes

[Norton]

From the Sun today:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nat...0,322020.story

baltimoresun.com

Court to review gun ban

D.C. law that bars owning handgun to go to Supreme Court

By James Oliphant and Michael J. Higgins

November 21, 2007

WASHINGTON


The Supreme Court again stepped squarely into the culture wars yesterday by agreeing to hear a high-profile gun ban case, one that might make firearm ownership a significant issue in the coming election year.

At stake is a law that prohibits residents of the District of Columbia from owning handguns. The justices will decide sometime next spring whether such a ban violates the Constitution. If they rule that way, it could eventually spell trouble for gun bans in other cities.

The move left gun-rights activists euphoric.

"I'm on cloud nine," said Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, minutes after the court's order accepting the case was released.

Monday was National Ammo Day, a day on which gun devotees such as Gottlieb called on sympathizers to buy 100 rounds of ammunition in support of gun stores and bullet manufacturers.

While gun-control advocates were not cheered by the Supreme Court's agreeing to consider the case, they were consoled that the court could rule on the issue in a relatively narrow way. Only the right to own a handgun in the home will be addressed, not limits on assault rifles or concealed weapons.

Thomas Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said that while his organization supports the right of local governments to limit handguns in the home, its primary concern rests with prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons in public. "I'm not ready to say it's a setback," Mannard said.

Moreover, any decision from the court will apply only to the federal government and not to laws passed by states and cities, because the District of Columbia is a federal entity.

Even so, the court has not ruled on the scope of the Second Amendment since 1939, and the timing might be right for gun-rights supporters given the court's conservative drift and its newest justices, John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. A favorable ruling would be "the building block we've been fighting for 30 years," Gottlieb said.

Last spring, the federal appeals court in Washington struck down the district's 30-year-old handgun ban, moving the city's government to appeal to the Supreme Court. The decision to appeal troubled many gun-control supporters, who worried that the case would finally provide the kind of unstoppable legal weapon that activists such as Gottlieb have long sought.

But lawyers for the city and its mayor, Adrian M. Fenty, said they had no choice but to seek an appeal, saying their responsibility was to the district, not the nation as a whole. The question will be whether the court's ruling will have applicability beyond Washington.

"At a minimum, I think a favorable decision would mean that people have a right to keep functional firearms, including handguns, shotguns and rifles, in their homes for self-defense," said Clark Neily, a D.C. lawyer representing the plaintiffs who filed suit against the gun ban.

Lawrence Rosenthal, a former deputy corporation counsel in Chicago and now a law professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., said, "For localities that have banned handguns, like Chicago, this case is huge."

Throughout the 1990s, gun advocates filed about two legal challenges a year to the city's handgun ban, Rosenthal said. But the city successfully defended its law.

"The gun rights groups have always been hoping to overturn" that decision, Rosenthal said.

Presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani said the justices should strike down the D.C. ban. In a statement, the Republican former mayor of New York City called the appeals court decision "an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean."

But the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he "believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional."

James Oliphant and Michael J. Higgins write for the Chicago Tribune.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

[Norton]

From the op/ed page today:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...,7249545.story

baltimoresun.com

Arms and the court

November 21, 2007


For those in favor of restricting handguns - as we surely are - the agreement by the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider a long-standing handgun ban in the city of Washington would seem to justify a cautious sigh of relief. It raises the hope that the justices will reverse a disastrous federal appeals court ruling invalidating the ban. But it's hard to predict how, or even whether, the justices will ultimately rule.

In March, a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared that Washington's three-decades-old law banning handguns in homes - while allowing rifles or shotguns - was unconstitutional. By finding a personal, private right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment, the federal appeals court for D.C. broke new ground.

The majority opinion was at odds with several other appeals courts that have generally applied the amendment to states and militias, as well as a nearly 70-year-old Supreme Court precedent. In addition, the opinion was a severe blow to sensible community and government efforts to promote public safety in cities such as Washington and Baltimore where gun violence, in the form of fatal and nonfatal shootings, persists.

Those are certainly good reasons for Washington Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to urge the Supreme Court to take the case. Washington's law, passed in 1976, prohibits all handguns unless they were registered before that year. Long a target of anti-gun-control groups, the law has been under legal attack for about four years by six D.C. residents (some of whom have since lost standing to pursue the case), who argued that they should be allowed to keep guns in their homes for self-defense.

It's not unusual for the Supreme Court to try to bring clarity to an issue that has split the lower courts. But the split among the appeals courts on this issue is so - justifiably - lopsided that this would be a good occasion for the court to speak with the unanimous voice that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. indicated during his confirmation hearing he would try to achieve - and thoroughly reject the D.C. federal appeals court's reasoning and ruling.

Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

[Norton]

The CATO Institute weighs in:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...,6765483.story

baltimoresun.com

High court should unholster the 2nd Amendment

By Robert A. Levy

November 21, 2007


The Supreme Court says it will review a lower court's blockbuster opinion in Parker v. District of Columbia, the first federal appellate opinion to overturn a gun control law - Washington, D.C.'s - on the ground that the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals. Oral arguments likely will be held this spring, with a decision expected before June 30. I am co-counsel for the plaintiffs and am one of the attorneys who initiated the lawsuit.

The stakes are immense. Very few legal questions stir the passions like gun control. And this round of the courtroom battle will be fought during the heat of the 2008 election. Further, Washington is home to the federal government, making it an appropriate venue to challenge all federal gun laws. Thus, Parker could have an immediate effect not only on D.C. gun regulations but on federal regulations.

Equally important, if the Supreme Court affirms the D.C. circuit's holding, state gun control laws across the nation could be vulnerable to constitutional attack. But before that happens, two other issues would have to be litigated.

The first is the knotty question of whether the Second Amendment can be invoked against state governments. Until 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. But in the aftermath of the Civil War, much of the Bill of Rights was considered "incorporated" by the 14th Amendment to bind the states as well. Regrettably, the incorporation of the Second Amendment has not yet been settled. And that issue did not arise in Parker because the District of Columbia is a federal enclave, not a state.

The second question is even more complicated: What restrictions on gun possession and use would be permissible? Almost no one argues that Second Amendment rights are absolute. Indeed, the appeals court acknowledged that Washington might be able to justify such things as concealed-carry restrictions, registration requirements and proficiency testing.

But the Constitution does not permit an across-the-board ban on all handguns, in all homes, for all residents, as in the case of the D.C. ban (except current and retired police officers). Somewhere in the middle, regulations will be deemed constitutional even if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court.

Meanwhile, the high court will have to reexamine its 1939 gun case, United States v. Miller. Its core holding, stripped of confusing clutter, was that protected weapons must be "in common use" and must bear "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia."

Parker is entirely compatible with that holding. Pistols, which are banned in D.C., are self-evidently "in common use," and they have been carried into battle by American troops in every conflict since the Revolutionary War. But a proper reading of the Second Amendment should not attempt to link each and every weapon to the militia - except to note that the grand scheme of the amendment was to ensure that people trained in the use of firearms would be ready for militia service.

Significantly, the Second Amendment refers explicitly to "the right of the people," not the rights of states or the militia. And the Bill of Rights is the section of our Constitution that deals exclusively with individual liberties.

That is why there has been an outpouring of legal scholarship - some from prominent liberals - that recognizes the Second Amendment as securing the right of each individual to keep and bear arms.

Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

[smores]

Originally Posted by ylfotevoli

Voted.

http://video.nbc4.com/player/?id=187510

I watched the video of the DC officials responding to the decision. The police chief blabbered illegal gun numbers while forgetting basic grammar. I don't think he realizes taking every illegal gun/pistol out of DC is impossible.

How long have handguns been banned??? Any how many was he blabbering about being confiscated??? That shit doesn't work....and the crime rates back it up.

These people are idiots. I sincerely hope the SCOTUS lays the smackdown on them. Won't it be great, openly carrying on the Mall once it's decided in our favor for the celebration? lol....

yeah right

[Pushrod]

NBC4.com
We are kicking @ss on the pole so far, lets keep it up!

http://www.nbc4.com/index.html

Would you like to see the Supreme Court uphold or overturn D.C.'s gun ban?

[novus collectus]

Originally Posted by Norton

The CATO Institute weighs in:

That is not hte CATO institute, that is just Levy who works with the CATO instittute. Levy has said the institute is not directly involved in the case (or something along those lines), but the institute has supported it from the beginning.