Supreme Court strikes down Chicago handgun ban

[Snarlbuckle]

June 28, 2010
Supreme Court strikes down Chicago handgun ban
Posted: June 28th, 2010 10:16 AM ET

From CNN Supreme Court Producer Bill Mears

ALT TEXT

The justices said local jurisdictions still retain the flexibility to preserve some "reasonable" gun-control measures currently in place nationwide. (Photo Credit: Getty Images/File)

Washington (CNN) – In another dramatic victory for firearm owners, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional Chicago, Illinois' 28-year-old strict ban on handgun ownership, a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons.

A 5-4 conservative majority of justices on Monday reiterated its two-year-old conclusion the Constitution gives individuals equal or greater power than states on the issue of possession of certain firearms for
self-protection.

"It cannot be doubted that the right to bear arms was regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as states legislated in an evenhanded manner," wrote Justice Samuel Alito.

The court grounded that right in the due process section of the 14th Amendment. The justices, however, said local jurisdictions still retain the flexibility to preserve some "reasonable" gun-control measures currently in place nationwide.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer predicated far-reaching implications. "Incorporating the right," he wrote, "may change the law in many of the 50 states. Read in the majority's favor, the historical evidence" for the decision "is at most ambiguous."

He was supported by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

Updated: 10:38 a.m.

Linkage (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/28/supreme-court-strikes-down-chicago-handgun-ban/?fbid=ZnH9QtiOG6Y)

[Clinotus]

YES!

Here is a link to the ruling. (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf)

[Clinotus]

WASHINGTON — The Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in 5-to-4 decision.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

The chambers of the Supreme Court.

The ruling came almost exactly two years after the court first ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns in District of Columbia v. Heller, another 5-4 decision.

But the Heller case addressed only federal laws; it left open the question of whether Second Amendment rights protect gun owners from overreaching by state and local governments.

The ruling is an enormous symbolic victory for supporters of gun rights, but its short-term practical impact is unclear. As in the Heller decision, the justices left for another day the question of just what kinds of gun control laws can be reconciled with Second Amendment protection.

The majority said only that the right to keep handguns for self-protection at home is constitutionally protected. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, reiterated the caveats in the Heller decision, saying the court did not mean to cast doubt on laws prohibiting possession of guns by felons or the mentally ill, those forbidding carrying guns in sensitive places like schools and government buildings or those regulating the commercial sale of firearms.

Justice Alito, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said that the Second Amendment, like other provisions of the Bill of Rights guaranteeing fundamental rights, must be applied to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. They said the Heller decision remains incorrect and added that they would not have extended its protections to state and local laws even had it been correctly decided.

Though the majority agreed on the outcome, its members differed about how to get there.

The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, originally restricted only the power of the federal government. The Supreme Court later ruled that most but not all of the protections of the Bill of Rights applied to the states under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, one of the post-Civil War amendments.

Many constitutional scholars across the ideological spectrum had hoped that the court would used Monday’s case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, to revise its approach to how constitutional protections are applied to, or “incorporated against,” the states.

They argued that that the court should instead rely not on the due process clause but on the 14th Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause, which says that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” There is evidence that the authors of the clause specifically wanted it to apply to allow freed slaves to have guns to defend themselves.

But only Justice Thomas signed on for that project.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/29scotus.html

[MrTwigg]

Finally the CHANGE I've been HOPING for !

[Snarlbuckle]

YES!

Here is a link to the ruling. (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf)

That was actually a very interesting and riveting read. Alito is my new hero.

[Clinotus]

That was actually a very interesting and riveting read. Alito is my new hero.

Few zingers in there from Scalia as well;


JUSTICE STEVENS abhors a system in which “majorities orpowerful interest groups always get their way,” post, at 56, but replaces it with a system in which unelected and lifetenured judges always get their way. That such usurpation is effected unabashedly, see post, at 53—with “the judge’s cards . . . laid on the table,” ibid.—makes it even worse. In a vibrant democracy, usurpation should have to be accomplished in the dark. It is JUSTICE STEVENS’ approach, not the Court’s, that puts democracy in peril.

Ouch.

[Snarlbuckle]

Few zingers in there from Scalia as well;



JUSTICE STEVENS abhors a system in which “majorities orpowerful interest groups always get their way,” post, at 56, but replaces it with a system in which unelected and lifetenured judges always get their way. That such usurpation is effected unabashedly, see post, at 53—with “the judge’s cards . . . laid on the table,” ibid.—makes it even worse. In a vibrant democracy, usurpation should have to be accomplished in the dark. It is JUSTICE STEVENS’ approach, not the Court’s, that puts democracy in peril.


Ouch.

Kids these days have a word for that: PWND

[Danube]

Its scary the comments from those who voted against, the voting line was not surprising but the comments there make me want to get some PVC, some land, and some parchment. We are 2 justices away from being a free people. I dont know what scares me more, the thugs I carry for or those on the bench who with a pen can make me the thug.