Friday - March 09, 2007

DC Gun Ban Struck Down!

Still reading the ruling, but the DC Court of Appeals has ruled that the District’s absolute ban on handguns is bogus.

Here is the ruling itself.

As I read, I find the court’s slapping around of the district pretty enjoyable.  Here’s a sample:

In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee
is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most
important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the
holders of the right—“the people.” That term is found in the
First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has
never been doubted that these provisions were designed to
protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion,
interference, or usurpation.

We also note that the Tenth Amendment—
“The powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”—indicates
that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of
distinguishing between “the people,” on the one hand, and “the
states,” on the other. The natural reading of “the right of the
people” in the Second Amendment would accord with usage
elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.

The District’s argument, on the other hand, asks us to read
“the people” to mean some subset of individuals such as “the
organized militia” or “the people who are engaged in militia
service,” or perhaps not any individuals at all—e.g., “the states.”
See Emerson, 270 F.3d at 227. These strained interpretations of
“the people” simply cannot be squared with the uniform
construction of our other Bill of Rights provisions.

This is big folks.

**Update

Even if “keep” and “bear” are not
read as a unitary term, we are told, the meaning of “keep”
cannot be broader than “bear” because the Second Amendment
only protects the use of arms in the course of militia service. Id.
at 26-27. But this proposition assumes its conclusion, and we do
not take it seriously.

Ouch.

**Update II
Bitchslapping the 9th Circuit

As we noted above, the “Militia” was vast, including all
free, white, able-bodied men who were properly enrolled with
a local militia officer. By contrast, the Ninth Circuit has
recently (and we think erroneously) read “Militia” to mean a
“state-created and state-organized fighting force” that excludes
the unorganized populace.  As Judge Kleinfeld noted, the Ninth Circuit’s
decision entirely ignores Miller’s controlling definition of the militia.

** Update III
The conclusion

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right
existed prior to the formation of the new government under the
Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for
activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being
understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the
depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from
abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the
important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the
citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient
for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to
placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right
facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be
barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth
for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second
Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects
are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s
enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or
intermittent enrollment in the militia.

[snip]

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court
is reversed and the case is remanded. Since there are no
material questions of fact in dispute, the district court is ordered
to grant summary judgment to Heller consistent with the prayer
for relief contained in appellants’ complaint.

Wow.  Just wow.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/09/2007 at 03:41 PM   
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