D.C. Guns Press Round-Up
Here’s a companion piece to Jason’s blog Round-Up; we’ve gathered together many of the news articles that cover the Court’s decision to grant cert. in the D.C. Guns case and included them below.
Robert Barnes’ Washington Post article not only offers the background of the case, but also considers what effects a Supreme Court decision might have on gun laws across the country. Linda Greenhouse’s piece for the New York Times, here, includes details on the plaintiff, Dick Heller, and a look at the re-worded question that the Justices will consider. The AP’s coverage, written by Mark Sherman, quotes an attorney for the DC residents, a vice president of the National Rifle Association, Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, the president of the
NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg covered the news for yesterday’s broadcast of All Things Considered. Listen to her piece here.
James Oliphant notes in his report for the Chicago Tribune that the Court’s decision “left gun-rights activists euphoric,” while “gun-control advocates were hardly cheered” by the news. Oliphant also puts a local spin on the news, discussing the possible effects of a Court ruling on
Additionally, David Savage’s LA Times coverage of the grant can be found here. Joan Biskupic reports on the news for USA Today. Jess Bravin’s piece for the Wall Street Journal can be accessed here.
Dahlia Lithwick’s Slate article comments that “the Supreme Court has been the Second Amendment’s Sleeping Beauty, snoozing it up for close to 70 years.”
The Washington Times’ editorial on the news is entitled “Tackling the Gun Debate Head-On.” The New York Times’ editors write that by granting cert yesterday, “the Supreme Court has inserted itself into a roiling public controversy with large ramifications for public safety.” The
“In the Fourteenth Amendment the provision regarding the taking of private property is omitted, and the prohibition against the state is confined to its depriving any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”
“What individual Senators or Representatives may have urged in debate, in regard to the meaning to be given to a proposed constitutional amendment, or bill, or resolution, does not furnish a firm ground for its proper construction, nor is it important”
In Presser v. Illinois – “it was held that the Second Amendment to the Constitution, in regard to the right of the people to bear arms, is a limitation only on the power of Congress and the national government”
This was quoted in KELO,
“We do not sit to determine whether a particular housing project is or is not desirable. The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive… . The values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled. In the present case, the Congress and its authorized agencies have made determinations that take into account a wide variety of values. It is not for us to reappraise them. If those who govern the District of Columbia decide that the Nation’s Capital should be beautiful as well as sanitary, there is nothing in the Fifth Amendment that stands in the way.”
Note… The Supreme court has already determined that the District of Columbia is governed by the Federal Congresses and their authorized agencies. This is why the Supreme court will feel unrestrained to announce in the strongest of terms that the Federal Constitution either, restrains, or condones their authority in this manner. This decision will not effect the States, whatsoever.
Comment by John Merritt Burns — November 23, 2007 @ 3:23 am
In the technical sense, Mr. Burns might be right. But States would be hard pressed to remain enacted any State or municple law that fails the “strict scrutiny” test afforded to individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In their grant, the Supreme Court already referred to the right of the people to keep and bear arms as an individual right – they’re only taking up the question of whether or not the District’s gun ban violates it. The restrictive militia or collective theories of the right of the people did not survive even the petition process. A pro-rights rulling will undoubtedly gut Federal gun control law.
So that leaves us to consider Mr. Burns’ statement, in which we must accept any right of the people to be completely subject to State or municiple law. We can test this idea by asking ourselves a few simple questions: Do we have States banning wholesale free speech? Are there any State courts operating under laws contrary to due process? Individual rights obvioulsy transend State law and are only subject to “reasonable restriction.”
I do agree with Mr. Burns to some degree. The decision will have no effect on any State having restrictions less-than those at the Federal level. New York, Illinois, and Hawaii should expect their laws to come under attack in 2008.
Comment by Robert Conrad — November 23, 2007 @ 11:56 am
I am very glad that Mr. Robert Conrad has found a certain amount of solace within those favorable grants of the Supreme Court. I on the other hand might very well be, just a little skeptical. Be that as it may, I would However like to point out that after the disasters KELO, decision, it could also be said that we have not seen the wholesale taking’s of private property by any given State, though I would consider it to be quite a controversial thing to suggest any further that we have not also seen as this resulting, in some of our States, a progressive continence of disrespectful taking’s, and as it might also be conserved that things have actually gotten better for private property owners in some States as a result, I would also refute this logic by simply congratulating the proprietor of such a statement, as to his successful acquisitions of properties, meaning of course as they must be soundly afforded such considerations from within that very State of his own reference. And as far as I might consider a question on whether or not any State courts are operating under laws contrary to due process, I would rather myself consider this… That Instead of the due process clause being held forth an asylum for those that might be accused, it looks to me that these considerations are now being used as a tool for selecting those of us who are found to be owning properties of their particularized government’s interest. I myself do not propose now to speak for others, but I have found that upon my own circumstances it can well be established that I have expended a heck of a lot more blood sweat and tears, obtaining my home and my land, then I ever did obtaining those very weapons of my own choosing’s, for self defense, and I also do not mean to suggest here that I will define these as useful deterrence’s against any government operated bulldozers.
Comment by John Merritt Burns — November 27, 2007 @ 4:44 am