SCOTUS Takes Up 2nd Amendment Case

Cross your fingers.

The Supreme Court says it will take up a challenge to Chicago’s ban on handguns, opening the way for a ruling that could set off a vigorous new campaign to roll back state and local gun controls across the nation.

1. I am pretty excited to see the outcome. I find it thoroughly satisfying to see The Court changing course on the Second Amendment. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms…” is clearly and individual right, and it is time that the States and municipalities began to respect it.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 01, 2009 at 0659 hrs




2. The Chicago video could not have come at a better time. If only one bystander had been armed, the life of that young honor student could have been saved.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 01, 2009 at 0931 hrs




3. Even more importantly, the cert grant specifically discusses the Privileges & Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment.  This clause was widely seen to be a rebuttal to the language in the Dred Scott decision that slaves could never attain the privileges & immunities of citizenship.  Unfortunately, the P&I clause was gutted by a still-racist Court in The Slaughterhouse Cases in the mid-1870s.  Overturning Slaughterhouse (as some are speculating will happen) would be a massive shift in civil rights law and would eliminate all of the tortured analyses of “due process” that underlie all civil rights law since Slaughterhouse.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on October 01, 2009 at 1008 hrs