Second Amendment case headed to Court
UPDATE Tuesday a.m. Attorneys for the D.C. citizens who challenged the local handgun control law said Tuesday they will join in urging the Supreme Court to hear the city’s appeal. They will oppose an extension of time to file the city’s petition, however.
Local government officials in Washington, D.C., announced Monday they will appeal to the Supreme Court in a major test case on the meaning of the Second Amendment. The key issue in the coming petition will be whether the Amendment protects an individual right to have guns in one’s home — an issue on which there is now a clear conflict among federal Circuit Courts. The city will be defending the constitutionality of a local handgun control law that is regarded as the strictest in the nation.
The petition would have been due Aug. 7, but city officials said Monday that they would ask Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., for a 30-day extension of time to file the case. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and city Attorney General Linda Singer disclosed the appeal plan at a press conference, along with local Police Chief Cathy Lanier. (A news release announcing the action can be found here ) The Mayor said: “We have made the determination that this law can and should be defended and we are willing to take our case to the highest court in the land to protect the city’s residents. Our handgun law has saved countless lives — keeping guns out of the hands of those who would hurt others or themselves.”
The D.C. Circuit Court ruled on March 9 that the Second Amendment does guarantee an individual right to possess a gun — at least within one’s own home. The ruling was the first by a federal appeals court to strike down a gun control law based on that view of the Amendment’s reach. The case is Parker, et al., v. District of Columbia (Circuit docket 04-7041). On May 8, the Circuit Court refused by a 6-4 vote to rehear the case en banc. The mandate is scheduled to be issued Aug. 7, but will be withheld after the city files its Supreme Court petition. Thus, the existing gun law would remain in effect temporarily.
In an earlier filling in the D.C. Circuit, city officials said their appeal to the Supreme Court would present some variation of these questions: “(1) whether the panel majority’s decision conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), as Judge [Karen LeCraft] Henderson concluded in dissenting from the panel majority’s decision; (2) whether the Second Amendment protects firearms possession or use that is not associated with service in a State militia; (3) whether the Amendment applies differently to the District because of its constitutional status, as Judge Henderson also concluded; and (4) whether the challenged laws represent reasonable regulation of whatever rights the Amendment protects.” The city noted that the panel had acknowledged that its ruling conflicts with decisions “of most other federal courts of appeals, many State courts, and the highest local court in this jurisdiction, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.”
The Circuit Court majority found that one of the six Washington residents who filed the challenge to the local gun control law had a right to bring the lawsuit. That individual is Dick Anthony Heller, a special police officer who works at the Federal Judicial Center (home of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts) near Capitol Hill in Washington. He is licensed to carry a handgun on his job, but he applied for permission to have a pistol in his home; he was denied a license under the local law. Heller has said in court papers that he lives in a high-crime neighborhood in the city.
Heller, according to the Circuit Court, had standing to sue to challenge the gun registration provisions of the local law, as well as the clause that bars anyone from carrying a pistol without a license and a provision requiring all owners of licensed guns to keep them disassembled or with a trigger lock engaged when not in use.
The D.C. law has been in effect for nearly 31 years — since September 1976. The lawsuit to strike it down was filed in February 2003.
I belive that as a u.s. citizen, that each person has the costitutional right to carry a firearm on them for protection in any situation that includes themselves and others when needed.
Comment by daniel kenneth jacobs — November 12, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
To those of you who don’t believe in the right for an individual to keep and bear arms, I ask you these questions.
Do you enjoy attending whatever church you wish?
Do you enjoy shopping at what ever store you wish?
Do you enjoy living in what ever state, county or town you wish to live in?
Do you enjoy having your child attend whatever school he is enrolled in and not have to have him or her attend somewhere else do to race, origin or for what ever reason someone can pit against you and label you as different.
Well if you enjoy these freedoms you can thank the people who owned and possessed firearms.
Yes the may be our forefathers. But the banned together and did so within a minutes notice prepared to fight for the freedom you all enjoy today, thus giving them the name “Minuet Men”
Our for fathers saw it necessary that we are never prevented from bearing arms and it was not just to for the purpose to protect you from criminal but to protect you from your own government. We are expected to learn history in education to learn about our nations past and most important because history repeats itself.
Compare for instance Julius Ceasar to John F. Kennedy Both killed by their own. Look at the time from Ceasar till now and how the same things occur even today. Way too many died over many years to fight for our constitutional rights, and we have those who want to give those rights away. If you feel that the right to bear arms is not important, ask anyone older who can recall the Jewish being slaughtered by Nazi’s under Hitler’s control. Can you honestly believe that over six million Jewish people walked to their own deaths in concentration camps would they have had the ability to fight for their lives let alone their freedom. In case you didn’t know the first thing Hitler did was to take all of the guns from the civilians. If you don’t think the right to bear arms is important, ask those people or ask the people who defended their homes in business during the Rodney King riots when the police could not come to their aid. Or how about those in New Orleans. I say “I will not give up my gun(s) unless its pried from my cold dead hand”. If your a law abiding citizen you should have every right to own a firearm and when I refer to the right to bear arms that includes pistols as well as rifles and shotguns, after all the Minute Men carried and used them all and included them all in the constitution by saying “The Right to bear arms”
F.Y.I. I am an 18 Yr. Veteran Police officer and see crime and violence every day. The answer is not in gun laws the real answer is in punishment, in which we never seem to be able to enforce. When I was a child and did wrong I got wacked on the hind end and it hurt. I learned not to do what ever I did to get wacked, because it hurt and I knew there was repercussions for doing wrong. Today we send kids to their room for time out, or punish some people for crimes with nothing more than papers, ouch I’ll bet that hurts and will make be never forget what I did was wrong…LOL.
Wake up Americans, Don’t be so quick to give away what we fought so hard and long for with many lives lost.; Our Constitutional Rights. If you want to take a bite out of crime, take it out on your legislators when you vote, for not seeing it through that people are truly held accountable and punished for their wrong doing in society when the break the laws that we already have.
Comment by Sam Piccinini — November 21, 2007 @ 5:34 pm