The Supreme Court has reversed Chicago's gun ban. Per SCOTUS Blog:
...Alito announces McDonald v. Chicago: reversed and remanded
...Gun rights prevail
...The opinion concludes that the 14th Amendment does incorporate the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller to keep and bear arms in self defense
...5-4
...Stevens dissents for himself. Breyer dissents, joined by Ginsburg and Sotomayor.
It looks like due process arguments carried the day, although Thomas favored privileges and immunities.
There will be plenty of reaction and discussion to follow. For now, let's read the opinions.
sc mcdonald 08-1521
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Comments
Its sad that these issues are ignored by lower courts and have to make it to the supreme court. The lower courts count on the average citizen to be unable to pay for the appeals processes. This could be why they are trying to impoverish the people, so they cannot afford to fight tyranny in the courts.
When treason is prosecuted and punished, this will stop, but until then, they will continue with impunity and contempt.
The Supreme Court still respects our Bill of Rights. I'm very pleased.
I've only just started reading the ruling, but in light of what we know about cruikshanks and presser how is it possible that we have 4 justices still dissenting? What possibly word-craft or chicanery are they wielding to come to that conclusion without looking like totally ignorant bigots?
Too bad just last year, Sotomayor said that she thought the 2nd Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms, yet here she is signing the dissent.
Our leaders, all of them, are liars, thieves, and tyrants. The Federal system has failed, it's time for the States to begin administering themselves.
Hmmm. Does this mean that RTKBA a Civil Right that cannot be taxed or regulated?
"When Injustice Becomes Law, Resistance Becomes Duty." Thomas Jefferson
If we are diligent about resistance, (which is our duty as good Americans) we will vote the liars, thieves, and tyrants out of office and replace them with Constitution upholding people. Tyrants need to see that there's no 'up-side' to being tyrannical in public office. Punish them by firing them all.
Not really good news. D.C. v Heller was a very poor decision.
Even though Heller won in the supreme court, they denied his permit for a semi-auto pistol. Supposedly it was a machine gun because it had a removable magazine. The decision said they could do that.
He went again with a revolver and got his permit, but that only means he can have it at home. He can't carry it anywhere. D.C. v Heller said they could do that.
All they've done with this Chicago case is make it so that the states and municipalities are allowed to do what DC does without worry.
So having skimmed the dissenting opinions it looks like they are trying to equate Cruikshank and Presser as all of the RTKBA history.
I'd still be interested to see the next step is to attack registration and licensing as an affront to our 5th amendment right to not being required to self-incrimination.
David
I certainly wish I could share your, and everyone else’s enthusiasm over this decision/opinion, but I just can’t.
Alito’s opinion is the one that really counts, this appears to be an almost carbon copy of Heller with the addition of incorporation. Although Heller said an individual could have a firearm for SD in the home, the many restrictions on guns outside the home has basically still made it very difficult to own a firearm in DC.
Basically, not much has changed in DC. I think the same will happen in Chicago. Lawsuits will happen, but Chicago will be upheld just the same as in DC.
The only way around this is another SC decision saying “Shall Not Be Infringed” in any way whatsoever. No permits needed, either for ownership, or carrying. No registration.
It’s nice to entertain what many consider as the domino effect, but I just don’t think it will happen.
This certainly won’t happen in my lifetime.
Chris - GRE
Alvie D. Zane says:
Hmmm. Does this mean that RTKBA a Civil Right that cannot be taxed or regulated?
That's what it is supposed to mean. Chicago will immediately pass registration laws and other roadblocks to ownership of firearms. Next year they have a chance to oust Daley. The people just need to get out enough votes to out vote the cemeteries.
Typical dishonest awful opinion from the Supreme Court.Try to ignore the Militia component of the Second Amendment and you end up with "reasonable restrictions", defined by the personal whim of any federal judge. Even Presser v. Illinois says "It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the... See More States, and in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the States cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government." The operative phrase is "all citizens capable of bearing arms", the same language used in Miller in 1939. The Second Amendment is not about self defense or duck hunting
This is at least a step in the right direction. Now that the basic right has been affirmed it is up to you and me to be active at the State and Local levels to remove the Still Existing Infringments upon the Second. This Desicion only prohibits out right bans, but it is a start.
@Chris - GRE
None of DC's gun laws have been upheld by SCOTUS. Not registration, or licensing, or training. As far as SCOTUS is concerned, all laws are constitutional until they say otherwise, and they weren't (in Heller) asked to rule on registration, licensing, one-gun-a-month, training, insurance, etc. They simply made it clear that they weren't considering any other gun control issues other than the question presented in Heller, namely handgun possession for self-defense in the home.
Now, with McDonald, the Second Amendment right applies everywhere in the U.S., not just in DC. Now that we have standing everywhere, we can begin to consider suits that will flesh out the full scope of the right protected by the Second Amendment.
I suspect that most gun control will (eventually) not pass constitutional muster (registration, licensing (for purchase/possession), insurance, excessive taxes/fees), but some will (proving you're not a felon, prohibiting courthouse carry, etc).
If an individual has a right to self-defense by bearing arms upon what legitimate authority does that right disappear when he/she walks out their front door.
If I have a fundamental right to defend my gift of life or my property (vehicle, money in my wallet or whatever), my right does not end when I walk off my own property or get out of or off my mode of transportation.
Correction citizenjohn: ONLY 5 of the 9 Supreme Court justices respect our Bill of Rights - and then ONLY to SOME DEGREE!
sent you and email with a partial analysis. hope you like. hope you agree. let me know. You know where i live. :)
Mark A. Taff,
I disagree. SCOTUS did uphold DC via Heller. It’s because of the diabolical wording in Heller that the lower courts upheld DC.
I fear the same with McDonald, even with incorporation.
The only thing new in McDonald is incorporation. The states, cities and towns still have the same wiggle room as DC has in Heller.
David, my post immediately below is a dup. Delete if you wish.
Chris,
Do you have a link for the opinion in the case when SCOTUS ruled in favor of DC? They ruled against DC in Heller. The second Heller case hasn't made it to SCOTUS yet, that I'm aware of. Did I miss something?
As for "The only thing new in McDonald is incorporation", that was the point of the suit, and it was the question SCOTUS agreed to decide ("Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is incorporated as against the States by the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities or Due Process Clauses.").
I'm certain Daley will be just as creative (or moreso) as DC was in trying to circumvent SCOTUS. But those will have to be questions for SCOTUS to address another day.
The next question will be standard of review, and as McDonald was filled with determinations that it is a 'fundamental right', I suspect strict-scrutiny (or some new, but similar formulation) will ultimately be the standard of review.
Mark,
The link you are looking for is the entire Heller opinion. SCOTUS found for Heller, WITHIN his home. No more.
SCOTUS also essentially found for DC in the diabolical wording of Heller. Lower courts have upheld DC based on the wording in Heller.
McDonald is just Heller with incorporation. So we now have incorporation. That’s good, but what good is incorporation going to do us? As I said, we now have Heller, with incorporation in McDonald. While that is VERY good for McDonald in that he can have a handgun for SD within his home, don’t look for anything else substantial because the SCOTUS has made that impossible.
Let's distinguish the quality of effect today's decision had on local laws with the effect it had on public opinion. What happened today is exactly the opposite of the CDC's Mark Rosenberg's wish to "do with guns in the minds of the people what we did with cigarettes—make them dirty, deadly, and banned." Instead, today, big nanny government said, "It's OK for you to own a gun, dearie." All of a sudden, in the eyes of good liberals, Dick Daley stops looking so much like FDR and starts looking like George Wallace throwing roadblocks up against federal progress. After decisions on racial desegregation, abortion, interracial marriage, and Miranda, and given all the attempts to get the Supreme Court to add gay marriage to that list, you had better believe that the liberal voter will almost automatically accept whatever the Court says is a constitutional right, and even the "professional" hard-line liberal pols will have a hard, hard time claiming SCOTUS was "wrong this time."
David- You are THE "go-to-guy" for this type of story. Thanks.
As for the court decision: as the courts always do, they affirm the right (in order to avoid a bloody revolution) yet they turn it from a right into a privilege with so many "buts" that it is utterly meaningless- in order that their co-conspirators can still get away with "gun control" (victim disarmament). Someday that will stop working for them. Soon, I hope.
Please show me the section in the Constitution that grants the SCOTUS the authority and/or power to interpret the very document that purposely restricts its authority ?
No legalistic mumbo jumbo.. just quote the section..
You can because it doesnt exist.. SCOTUS has no legal power to define or interpret the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Was great to see something actually go our way in Washington.
The SCOTUS has been corrupt since John Marshall was chief justice and directed the decisions in Marbury vs. Madison and McCulloch vs. Maryland, even to the point of his explaining how he knew more about the Constitution than Madison did.
Until we rid ourselves of a court with this kind of power, we'll just get more of the same.
Chris,
The only question SCOTUS considered in Heller was "Whether the following provisions - D.C. Code §§ 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 - violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes".
The never said that was the limit of the scope of the right secured by the Second Amendment.
Also, SCOTUS specifically considered whether only that portion of the right considered in Heller would be applied to the states, or whether the entire Second Amendment would be. They ruled that as a fundamental right, the entire Second Amendment is incorporated against the States.
Of course anti-gun courts will continue to rule against gun owners to the extent possible, but the decision of a district court is not a SCOTUS decision. Further, the District Court's decision in Heller II is now in conflict with McDonald.
The NY Times ( not a very reputable source ) reports the following. Can anyone provide that statistical evidence for parsing?
Crackdown on Illegal Gun Trade
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University and joined in an amicus brief in McDonald v. Chicago.
His blog, Crime & Punishment, deals with criminal behavior and the justice system.
In its decision today, the U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmed the Second Amendment right of private gun ownership for defending home and family against assailants and intruders. The irony of this ruling is that the now-moribund Chicago handgun ban had, according to statistical evidence presented in an amicus brief submitted to the court, resulted in as many as 1,000 fewer homicides since it was enacted in 1983, especially those occurring in the home and involving family members.
Chicago, and other cities, should continue to pursue strategies to regulate and monitor the s
"Spitnyri says:
Please show me the section in the Constitution that grants the SCOTUS the authority and/or power to interpret the very document that purposely restricts its authority ?
No legalistic mumbo jumbo.. just quote the section.."
Hi Spitnyri - it's in Article III, Sections 1 & 2 :-)
Hi HB - I hope it goes that way, but most liberals just aren't that smart. They've been lied to & brain washed all their lives & they just don't get it. When the MSM tells them that McDonald was wrongly decided, they'll believe it. It's all Bush's fault :-)
Don K
This is the left you're dealing with here. They have an agenda and a goal and they have not deviated from their course one half of one degree...
Nothing they say matters because they don't mean it. They intend to have this country and all it's people for their property and firstly, they need their minds. Guess what, they have those minds! Do you think that was an accident or a plan?
They will never go away. They don't have to. They are protected, immune, above, superior, better and more. They will never go away until they win all they desire, and then they will have no incentive to leave (metaphorically) and will hold on to power until they are forced to depart, using the same means as their soviet brothers and sisters.
They will never go away. They will have to be removed and the only question is how that will happen and when. 80 plus years, and countless victims in the soviet union.
Be sure to wish the badge in your computer a happy 4th.
David this is a win but personally I’m not jumping up and down.
They way I read the decision “we have a Right but it can be regulated or infringed”
I’ve read most of the opinions and my opinion of Justice Thomas has just gone up big time.
Justice Thomas apparently argued for immunities and privileges and more importantly addressed the history behind the right to keep and bear arms as a pre-existing right.
To me personally that’s Big!!! I wish other justices had a similar view.
I’m also upset the NRA is trying to take credit for the work that the SAF and the ISRA did in this case.
I just had a guy say he was sending the NRA more money because they took the case to the Supreme Court and won
I may be critical of the ISRA at times when they cut deals but this time they desire the credit for a win
"This is the left you're dealing with here. They have an agenda and a goal and they have not deviated from their course one half of one degree..."
BOTH right and left are corrupt beyond belief, where have you been? Oh yea, brainwashed by the MSM into falling for the divide and conquer technique. They work together, only one feigns dissent when in the minority so you keep bouncing back and forth in their controlled 2 ring circus. Be american, not a dem or repub. They are both two wings of the sae bird...wake up shmuck, its this kind of stupidity that keeps the left/right paradyme alive and the 'elites' thank you for doing teir work for them. Not trying to insult you, but give you a nudge. If we throw away the division tools they use, we as a people can unite and take back control of our government. Unless there is a constitutional convention and the 2nd amendment changed, all laws contrary are null and void and unenforceable without assault on it.
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