Right to Keep and Bear Arms affirmed by SCOTUS

[poseidon]

Supreme Court finds individual right to own guns | Reuters

This is now law of the land.

[frazzledspice]

Well, the stock market's tanking, but now may be the time to invest in Dupont stock (DD).

Dupont manufactures Kevlar, and the way things are going in this country, it might become the hottest fashion fabric of the 21st Century.

[rmthunter]

I haven't read the decision, but I understand from the commentaries that there is room for local regulation of firearms, short of an outright ban. Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog outlines a good rationale for that:

New Yorkers prefer subway cars and elevators with at least a couple of other people inside, even if the other people are strangers. They stay in well-lit, high-traffic areas.

In short, they insulate themselves from harm with lots of nearby human flesh. Thick crowds of strangers that an Ohioan would find suffocating are comforting to a New Yorker. The thought that somebody in the flesh shield might whip out a gun and start shooting that flesh is more frightening to New Yorkers than the burglaries that worried my neighbors in Ohio.

I’m not personally opposed to gun ownership. If I lived in an isolated cabin in Montana I’d probably keep a loaded shotgun on the wall, too. But in densely populated areas, guns may not be the self-defense tool of choice. This is a point many “heartlanders” cannot grasp.

As an urbanite from the heartland, I get where she's coming from very well -- I don't want people in Chicago running around with guns and no supervision -- half the people in this city are nuts. If I were back on Little Buck Creek in North Carolina, it would be a very different story -- people there are still nuts, but there's not nearly as many of them per square mile, and you can generally see them coming.

[rmthunter]

There's a lot of discussion on the case at Balkinization, not quite so much at Volokh Conspiracy, for those who care to wade through the lawyer talk (actually, there's not so much of that, so it's not really all that scary, although there seems to be as much discussion of the mechanics of the decision as the conceptual bases).

[frazzledspice]

As I understand it, this ruling allows residents of Washington, DC to keep guns in their homes and use guns in their homes for self-defense.

It does not authorize them to carry these guns outside their homes.

In addition, because Washington is a federal district, a ruling that applies to a federal district might not apply to states.

Of course a bunch of lawsuits will be coming up the pike now....

All the more reason why the November election is important.

[rmthunter]

frazzledspice said

All the more reason why the November election is important.

??

Both presidential candidates support the decision, I thought. Or are you talking congressional and local races?

[brian_igo]

I can see Frazz's reasoning, Bob.

A friend of mine on another board is a lawyer and he noted the contrast between Scalia's rhetoric and the factual declarations in the ruling, like the declaration that this ruling did not affect state and local permit laws, prohibitions against guns in some public places, and the direct affirmation that the court was upholding the Miller precedent.

My friend concludes that Scalia had to include that in the ruling to get Kennedy's vote - a pretty reasonable conclusion, I think. The next president is likely to appoint two justices in his first term, and possibly a total of four if he gets a second term. If McCain wins, one replacement will almost certainly be enough to give the hard right faction in the court a majority without Kennedy. Then everything changes.

[rmthunter]

Oh -- Supreme Court appointments. I understand the reasoning, Brian, I just didn't know what the particular point was about November.

[jgibson2[$]]

I think Maryanne believes that if Gore or Kerry had been president, this particular ruling would have gone the other way. I'm pretty sure that if the folks who funded this appeal believed that, they'd never have pushed for a Supreme Court ruling.

[rmthunter]

That's possible, if not terribly likely: I doubt that Gore or Kerry would have been able to get confirmation of the kind of radical ideologues that Bush has been able to ram through, particularly with a Republican-dominated Senate.

[frazzledspice]

We don't have one Supreme Court that rules on abortion cases and another Supreme Court that rules on everything else.

And a lot of really undesirable characteristics come with the self-defined pro-life judges--they are radically pro-business, ruling against the disabled, sensible environmental protections, and workers all the time.

They haven't been that worried about wiretapping or other privacy rights.

They say they don't "legislate from the bench", but I don't know what you'd call redefining a "well-regulated militia" as an "individual homeowner."

rmhunter said: A friend of mine on another board is a lawyer and he noted the contrast between Scalia's rhetoric and the factual declarations in the ruling, like the declaration that this ruling did not affect state and local permit laws, prohibitions against guns in some public places, and the direct affirmation that the court was upholding the Miller precedent.

My friend concludes that Scalia had to include that in the ruling to get Kennedy's vote - a pretty reasonable conclusion, I think. The next president is likely to appoint two justices in his first term, and possibly a total of four if he gets a second term.

Ewww...Scalia makes my skin crawl already, but I thought he'd put in those comments because he had an attack of conscience! Thanks for setting me straight.

[rmthunter]

Actually, Brian said that.

As far as the Second Amendment goes, given the historical context it makes sense to come to the conclusion that the "well-regulated militia" as envisioned by the Founders implies the right of individual citizens to own firearms: this is not a standing army, it is a force of citizen irregulars. If the citizens don't own and maintain their firearms, who is going to? It's another one of those implied rights that litter the document.

Please don't conclude from this that I think guns should be unregulated. I think they must be, just like any other dangerous item, and I think that regulation needs to be left to local governments, since they are best able to respond to the particular needs of their constituents.

As for ideologues on the court, Scalia in particular is a joke: after reading several of his opinions, I can't understand how he came to have the reputation as a legal scholar that he supposedly has: if there's a precedent he doesn't like, he simply ignores it. He's a right-wing hack who will legislate from the bench if it suits him. Frankly, I don't see that Alitto and Roberts are any different in substance, although quite different in style: the Ledbetter case, just to pick a recent decision at random, was a travesty.