More Gun Regulation Is Inevitable

[Purveyor]

Last edited Tue Apr 26, 2016, 02:04 PM - Edit history (1)

By
Francis Wilkinson

Campaigning for her mother in Maryland last week, Chelsea Clinton said the Supreme Court could issue a "definitive" ruling on gun control in the near future. Clinton didn't define "definitive," let alone "gun control." But with a vacancy on the court following the death of Antonin Scalia, it seems more than plausible that Clinton the Younger was referring to overturning the landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Scalia was the author of Heller, the 2008 ruling that established an individual right to gun possession. Scalia's death -- despite the still uncertain prospects of replacing him -- has raised a question about Heller's durability.

Heller was decided by a 5-4 majority. The dissent, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, was not meek. Stevens basically accused Scalia of throwing out two centuries of legal precedent and reading Scalia's own preferences into the Second Amendment. Scalia, he wrote, all but dismissed the amendment's highly inconvenient preamble placing gun rights within the context of a "well-regulated militia."

Without identifying any language in the text that even mentions civilian uses of firearms, the Court proceeds to “find” its preferred reading in what is at best an ambiguous text, and then concludes that its reading is not foreclosed by the preamble. Perhaps the Court’s approach to the text is acceptable advocacy, but it is surely an unusual approach for judges to follow.

In other words, Scalia, Ye Olde and Venerable Originaliste, was making it up.

more...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjKyfWj_6zMAhWDcT4KHRY2CfEQFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloombergview.com%2Farticles%2F2016-04-26%2Fmore-gun-regulation-is-inevitable&usg=AFQjCNFeitw29EUz81MSGtRLEQmfaUddEA&sig2=UHsOF-GraZ2ImE25cAmMoQ

[jmg257]

1. Cool! So if we goto a strict Miller/militia interpretation, assault weapons

and short-barreled shotguns and rifles will be perfectly legal. We can all have M9s with 15 rounders too. What about M4s? M16s?

Those arms, and their accoutrements such as full-capacity mags, being ideal for militia duty.
Nothing inconvenient about the militias, especially since so many of we, the people are members by law.


BTW - link no work.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. Clinton would love to have Heller overturned, a big victory.

Citizens United is not nearly as high a priority, if at all. She profits greatly from that one.

[flamin lib]

3. Try this link:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-26/more-gun-regulation-is-inevitable

Heller simply hasn't been a big impediment to gun regulation. A series of Supreme Court moves after Heller made it clear that Scalia's majority found much regulation perfectly acceptable. And there was never any risk of the court adopting the gun movement's more exotic premises, such as the notion that gun rights are "God-given," a view handed down by National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre in his colorful sermons.

Yet Heller could end up being overturned anyway. Strategic litigation is commonplace in the U.S. If gun-regulation activists don't pursue it, others outside the fold could. The Heller suit itself was advanced over the resistance of the NRA, which feared the Supreme Court would use it to affirm that gun rights are indeed attached to militia duty.
====
Successful nations eventually figure out ways to stop underwriting failure. The U.S. may continue to allow 100,000 citizens to be killed or injured each year by guns. But not forever. Sooner or later, an increasingly cosmopolitan U.S. will free itself from the extreme gun-rights movement, and the inertia of mass death. A change might be instigated by politicians. It might be instigated by judges. Heller could be the basis of increased gun regulation, or it could be swept aside in favor of a more restrictive ruling. Either is possible. And given the extravagant tragedy of the status quo, either is more likely than no change at all.

[Eleanors38]

4. Ah, yes. The Leading Democrat takes that all-time winning issue. Talk about down ballot.

Democrats in close races, welcome to GC politics.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. "the people" aren't civilians?

[beevul]

6. Hah.

Heller was decided by a 5-4 majority. The dissent, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, was not meek. Stevens basically accused Scalia of throwing out two centuries of legal precedent and reading Scalia's own preferences into the Second Amendment. Scalia, he wrote, all but dismissed the amendment's highly inconvenient preamble placing gun rights within the context of a "well-regulated militia."

Stevens ignored a preamble of his own, so hasn't got much room to talk there:

THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution

http://billofrights.org/

Amendment 2 restricts only government and authorizes nothing. The collective rights argument becomes even more laughable, however, when one takes into account that congress was already granted certain explicit powers over the militia, and disarming it wasn't among them.

Its the right of the PEOPLE, not the right of the militia, sorry collective rights theorists.

[beevul]

7. The link is 404. N/T

[Purveyor]

8. Fixed. Sorry, Bloomberg links are acting strange today for some reason.

[beevul]

9. From the article...

Sooner or later, an increasingly cosmopolitan U.S. will free itself from the extreme gun-rights movement...

Right. The people that want to read the word "arms" as "some firearms that don't offend us" aren't the extremists, gosh no.

[gejohnston]

10. she didn't learn constitutional law or history

in her art history classes.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/04/23/unethical-quote-of-the-week-chelsea-clinton/
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/04/i-force-myself-to-slog-through-mush-of.html

Stevens' dissent was full of shit
http://onsecondopinion.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-district-of-columbia-vs-heller.html