Cases lining up to ask Supreme Court to clarify Second Amendment rights

[jpak]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cases-lining-up-to-ask-supreme-court-to-clarify-second-amendment-rights/2011/08/11/gIQAioihFJ_story.html

A funny thing has happened in the three years since gun-rights activists won their biggest victory at the Supreme Court.

They’ve been on a losing streak in the lower courts.

<snip>

“Three years and more than 400 legal challenges later, courts — so far — have held that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller was narrow and limited, and that the Second Amendment does not interfere with the people’s right to enact legislation protecting families and communities from gun violence,” the center said in a report optimistically titled “Hollow Victory?”

Even those challenging gun restrictions acknowledge that the courts have been unwilling to expand upon the basic right that most people agree Heller bestowed: the ability to keep a handgun in one’s home for self-defense purposes.

<more>

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. The Washington Post quotes the Brady Bunch and we are supposed to take it seriously?

[SteveM]

2. Brady Center? Well you know what that means:

GOP-founded, GOP-led

fail

yup

[We_Have_A_Problem]

3. Heller was limited...

...McDonald, on the other hand, was not. The Supreme Court, in effect, told the lower courts and the states to stop dicking around and trying to do an end run around the obvious.

[DonP]

4. Small cases - not precedent setting

The cases being referred to with great feigned relish by Brady, the Post and other gun control fans are almost exclusively cases where a crime was committed with a firearm years ago and the skanky defense attorneys are trying to use the Heller decision as another excuse for an appeal to try and get their client turned loose, based on an appeal that totally misinterprets the finding of SCOTUS. There's nothing in Heller that protects a criminal using a gun so they are being thrown out or "lost".

There's a reason none of these cases are front page news. They don't matter as to precedent.

Gun control fans are desperate, grasping at any straw that floats by and trying to show some sort of progress or the "backlash" that bans guns in one building as a celebration of their success.

Heller recognized the individual right unanimously by SCOTUS, The President confirmed it, McDonald made it apply to states and municipalities, and the Ezell circuit decision is on the way to giving the 2nd the same level of scrutiny as the 1st.

It's not a happy time for gun control people when the best they have to celebrate is a single building (Wisconsin courthouse IIRC?) or a fairground banning CCW.

Now it's time to focus on Illinois getting CCW so we can join the rest of the free world.