Supreme Court to Rule Again on Second Amendment Applicability:
By:  William P. Flinn

The Supreme Court will rule once again on the applicability of the Second Amendment, this time not to just the citizens of the federal enclave of Washington D.C. (D.C. versus Heller), but in the rest of the United States as well.

This was the expected and much anticipated result of the Heller decision.  Immediately after the Supreme Court came out with the Heller decision, the National Rifle Association, National Association for Gun Rights, and several others began the battle to get cases from the states onto the dockets in local courts, hoping to eventually wind up in the Supreme Court, in hopes of getting a decision that the Second Amendment applies to every individual in the United States.  The outright ban on handguns, in fact the ban of ANY guns, must be aggressively challenged.  We have seen in so many cases, in so many other cities in the United States and other countries, that banning guns just does not work.  Banning the tools of self defense denies law abiding citizens of their rights and mostly leads to more violence

So now the battle is on to have the Heller ruling on the Second Amendment apply to the individual states as well.  From the Colorado State Shooting Association:

“The case of McDonald v. City of Chicago challenged the outright handgun ban in Chicago as a violation of McDonald’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, much like last year’s landmark case of D.C. v. Heller.  The Seventh Circuit held that the Heller ruling was inapplicable because Heller was a resident of the District of Columbia, which is subject to federal law only.  This ruling, as well as the one in the Second Circuit in which Sonja Sotomayor was a participant, flies in the face of decades-old constitutional doctrine that states cannot set lower standards of governmental restraint than those set forth in the U.S. Constitution.  Very nearly all of the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights have been held applicable to the individual states over the past several decades, including the rights set forth in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments.

McDonald was supported in his suit and appeal by the NRA and its state association, the Illinois State Rifle Association.  CSSA joined in an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief filed on behalf of NRA state associations nationwide encouraging the Supreme Court to review the Seventh Circuit decision."

I want to repeat something that I stated in another article that I wrote back when the Heller ruling was made:  One of the primary reasons the Supreme Court was deciding the D.C. versus Heller case was that we as individuals have a right to protect ourselves and our families.  I will go farther and say that we have the responsibility to do so.  Even the Supreme Court has ruled that police departments and the government do not have the responsibility to protect individuals, as ruled in cases such as Castle Rock versus Gonzales, and Warren versus The District of Columbia. 

Time after time, we see confirmation that states and cities which choose to deny citizens the right to arm themselves in defense of their families, self, and property experience higher rates of violent crime.  What more does it take to help law makers realize that law abiding citizens have the right and the responsibility to be able to protect themselves?

Once Again: our individual right to own firearms was confirmed in the D.C. versus Heller Supreme Court decision, but the battle didn’t end there.  We are faced with another crucial decision which could change the face of gun rights and the gun control landscape for years to come.  Several organizations, including the NRA, NAGR and others are filing briefs with SCOTUS even as I write this.  It is important for all of us to get involved and let our representation in Washington D.C. know how we feel about this as well, and urge them to co-sign a pro-Second Amendment amicus curiae (Friend of the Court) brief before the Supreme Court in the McDonald v. Chicago case  to the Supreme Court supporting a favorable outcome for the law abiding gun owners of this country.  

 

About The Author:  "The Gonz" is an NRA Certified Firearms Instructor (Pistol, PPiTH, RTBAV), US Concealed Carry Association Affiliate Instructor, and an NRA Certified Range Safety Officer.  Additionally, he a trained and certified Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) member, with several years of training in the Incident Command System (ICS) procedures and practices.