We’re Going Back to the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the incorporation case:

The Court had three cases from which to choose on the Second Amendment issue — two cases involving a Chicago gun ban, and one case on a New York ban on a martial-arts weapon.  It chose one of the Chicago cases — McDonald v. Chicago (08-1521) — a case brought to it by Alan Gura, the Alexandria, VA. lawyer who won the 2008 decision for the first time recognizing a constitutional right to have a gun for personal use, at least in self-defense in the home (District of Columbia v. Heller).

Congratulations to Alan Gura, who will be going back before the Court. Let’s hope this works out, but I suspect it will. I think the Supreme Court wouldn’t have taken the case if they didn’t have five votes.

A lot of what we’re seeing from the gun control crowd now, with Bloomberg heading up MAIG, is honestly panic. No New York Mayor has been as big of a pit bull in going after the Second Amendment, but no New York Mayor has ever been faced with the prospect of his own citizens being able to sue to get their civil rights back.

MAIG might be attacking in Pennsylvania, on our home territory, but that’s because Bloomberg knows we will likely soon be attacking the New York City gun control regime, and overturning it. The last time Pennsylvania was invaded, it didn’t work out too well to help preserve the institution that was being fought over. Let’s hope Bloomberg’s luck is about as good as Jeff Davis’.

14 thoughts on “We’re Going Back to the Supreme Court”

  1. Looks like well get to see how wise our new judge really is.

    Looks like Mr. Gura’s building up quite a resume.

  2. For some reason I thought these cases were being combined. In a way I was hoping the would, because if the NY case was included, then it would put pressure on Sotomayor to recuse herself.

  3. This case is ripe for incorporation under the 14th amendment. The 2nd amendment like the 1st amendment is a fundamental right. Heller only decided whether it was an individual right and for a federal enclave like DC.

    The 9th Circuit Ct refused to make a decision since they felt it was better to wait for Supreme Ct to decide this issue. The 2nd Circuit Ct Maloney case is also up for cert and word is that it will be merged into the Chicago case.

    The newest judge, Sotamayor said she would recuse herself if the Supreme Ct takes up the Maloney case.

    Obviously the Supreme Ct could no longer wait with both the 7th and the 9th refusing to make any decisions until Supreme Court decided incorporation.

    I fully expect the 2nd amendment to be incorporated. The definition of a freeman was also the right to be armed. The post civil war attempts to restrict the rights of black Americans to own and bear arms have been rampant. This was especially true is cities with growing black populations like DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and NYC.

    The rationalization was that with gun restrictions to the citizens that crime would be reduced. The exact opposite has happened in that crime has been extremely high in cities with restrictive gun control. The most obvious victims have been the urban poor blacks who are prevented by legally protecting themselves with firearms. Most crime is perpetuated on urban blacks and they are being denied the rights of free man be the denial of the right to keep and bear arms.

  4. SCOTUS had a plethora of cases. Maybe they like Alan Gura. He does good research and the incorporation in Cruikshank should be overturned. I hope that he is less timid about advocating that.

  5. She ruled against Incorporation by basically saying it wasn’t her job at the District Court level to do so; it was up to the Supremes.

    She doesn’t have that “out” now. Either she recuses or she comes up with an actual -argument- against Incorporation.

    1. That is true, Matthew. But does anyone who actually listened to her dance around all questions about the Second Amendment actually believe her opinion will change? Although I would also add that she doesn’t actually have to come up with an argument. Most likely she will just sign her name to someone else’s opinion. I tend to doubt she’d want to make waves on this issue as a leader since it was such a huge debate in her hearing.

  6. I thought she made it pretty clear in her opinion that the RKBA was not a fundamental right, which would be a key substantive argument against incorporation, rather than a mere “sure it should be incorporated but we’re the wrong court to do that” technicality. Be that as it may, she replaced David Souter, who effectively opined that the Second Amendment doesn’t mean anything at all, so I don’t see her hurting the overall situation on balance. Just not helping.

    That said, I’m cautiously optimistic that at least one of the three Heller nullificationists still on the court will be (wo-)man enough to say “OK, so we don’t agree with how the Heller court ruled on the basic meaning of the Second Amendment, but whatever the hell it means, of course that applies to the states!” Barring that, another 5-4 victory would still be a victory.

  7. Bitter – I don’t see why she would care about making waves? She has reached the pinacle of her career.

    1. Because her first term will be one for the history books. There are going to be a number of huge Constitutional questions before the Court this session – First Amendment (on both speech & religion), Second Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment. In fact, given her background as an assistant DA, she might make a good candidate to write for either side of the Eighth Amendment case. For most folks, gun issues are hardly what they want to make a name for themselves on – on either side. Like it not, most people just don’t care that much. She took a lot of heat for whether or not it would even be appropriate for her to hear these challenges, so I tend to doubt that of all of the potential cases to write and opinion for, this will rank highly on her list of preferences. Maybe she’s a Dennis Henigan in disguise and would love to attach her name as boldly as possible to every single gun control question to ever come up before the Court, but I tend to doubt it. There are very few Dennis Henigan-level believers out there, thank goodness.

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