The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will decide whether the District of Columbia's ban on handguns violates the Constitution, putting the justices at the center of the controversy over the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years.The court's decision could have broad implications for gun-control measures locally and across the country, and will raise a hot political issue just in time for the 2008 elections.
The court will hear the case after the first of the year. A decision likely would come before it adjourns at the end of June.
For years, legal scholars, historians and grammarians have debated the meaning of the amendment because of its enigmatic wording and odd punctuation:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Yes, it has been debated, but that debate has arisen for one reason -- socialist do-gooders who pull interpretations of the Constitution out of their fourth point of contact. If there's any hope for our Constitutional Republic, this debate will be settled once and for all in favor of individual rights and the socialist nanny-state would-be totalitarians will no longer be able to throw the American people's natural rights to the wolves just because they think it makes for good social policy. I'd bet we have at least four solid votes in Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Thomas, but then there's Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and Stevens on the other side. I'm betting it's probably going to end up 5-4 one way or the other, as I don't really know enough about Justice Anthony Kennedy's voting record to comment. But it should be fun to see what happens in the nation's gun stores during the next 9 months or so, as Heller's case is debated and voted on. What I would love to have seen in the Post's write-up of this is Gura & Possessky's response to D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer's ludicrous comment that "Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees, it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die" (Page 29 of their response to D.C.'s petition for certiorari):
Yet the city consistently fights to secure its right to stand by while its citizens are victimized by crime. For example, the city has successfully defended its right to “stand by while its citizens” are raped, kidnapped from their homes, and further abused. Warren 30 v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. 1981) (en banc). The city has likewise successfully defended its right to “stand by” in the face of the worst urban rioting in our nation’s history. Westminster Investing Co. v. G.C. Murphy Co., 434 F.2d 521 (D.C. Cir. 1970).But I guess that would have too balanced for the Washington Post and their not-so-hidden anti-gun agenda. In any event, I couldnt have said it much better than Joe Lemire at Cold Fury did:
The city has even defended its right to “stand by while its citizens die” when the perpetrator is a police officer. Morgan v. District of Columbia, 468 A.2d 1306 (D.C. 1983) (en banc). Indeed, the city has asserted its right to “stand by while its citizens die” in the course of volunteering their assistance to the police.
...This is our birthright, and something sixteen generations of my family have defended. We don’t much care what you overpaid, supposedly “public servants” in D.C. think of that.A-yep. Or, as my Texican brethren told their would-be Mexican overlords back in 1835 at Gonzales...
But if the Supreme Court wants to pretend that “shall not be infringed” doesn’t mean exactly what it says, us Carolina boys will be glad to re-enact the burning of D.C. for ya. I’m pretty sure the decendants of the Green Mountain boys will want to help, too, and we might even find some of Sam’s kin with an itch to set you straight. There’s plenty of us decended from the founders still around, you know. And we have a message for you:
From our cold, dead hands, motherfuckers.
"Come and Take It."
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