NYT: A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Helps Sway Judiciary

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?ex=1179028800&en=82560036cf1b26a3&ei=5043&partner=EXCITE

A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Helps Sway Judiciary

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 6, 2007

In March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been unimaginable.

There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

In those two decades, breakneck speed by the standards of constitutional law, they have helped to reshape the debate over gun rights in the United States. Their work culminated in the March decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, and it will doubtless play a major role should the case reach the United States Supreme Court.

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right.

“My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,” Professor Tribe said. “I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control.”

The first two editions of Professor Tribe’s influential treatise on constitutional law, in 1978 and 1988, endorsed the collective rights view. The latest, published in 2000, sets out his current interpretation.

FULL story at link.

[sandnsea]

1. It really doesn't matter

"If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued, liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second Amendment. And just as the First Amendment’s protection of the right to free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the government, though only for good reason."

All the majority of people ever wanted were reasonable limits to begin with. If pornography can be regulated, so can rockets and machine guns. The entire Bill of Rights has limitations and most of them are cheered by the same people who refuse to budge on the 2nd Amendment. I don't think the right really extends to the individual, but it doesn't matter because it's already established law that individual rights can be limited anyway.

[Solo_in_MD]

2. The problem is that the Brady Bunch want excessive curtailment

If they would go away and allow the rationale people to work the issue, we could have workable and effective legistlation that does not infringe on peoples rights.

[sandnsea]

3. No, it's the other way around

The NRA objects to absolutely everything, they don't even want to discuss a reasonable solution to keeping guns away from terrorists.

[Solo_in_MD]

4. I for one am a fan of due process, I would hope the ACLU and the NRA join on the terrorist list BS

You support restricting right because a name is on a list that can not be seen or reviewed by anyone outside DHS like the travel list? Real progressive their bucko.

NYT has an article today point out that even liberal law professors are now supporting the 2nd amendment as pertaining to individuals.

The Brady Bunch needs to start dealing with facts not hyperbole if it wants to remain relevant.

[sandnsea]

5. Support a FISA Court like process then

Do something constructive about a gun problem and prove that you are willing to be rational about threats from guns.

[Solo_in_MD]

8. The pending legislation is purely based on the AG, FISA has nothing to do with it.

The real threat from firearms is caused mostly by non-enforcement of existing Federal gun laws coupled with excessive restriction in places like NYC and DC.

Enforce what is there well and get rid of the ones that are purely stopping non-felons and the poor from having a viable means of self defense.

Private ownership of firearms is a progressive value and the true indicator of a free people.





Note that FISA courts are little than the current AG...the administration, whomever it is, will get whatever outcome it wants.

[benEzra]

6. Rockets and machine guns ARE tightly regulated.

All the majority of people ever wanted were reasonable limits to begin with. If pornography can be regulated, so can rockets and machine guns.

Rockets and machine guns ARE tightly regulated. Possession of either outside police/military duty is a 10-year Federal felony, unless you have Federal authorization (BATFE Form 4).

NOBODY is talking about rockets and machineguns. The Brady Campaign/VPC want to ban protruding rifle handgrips, guns with post-Civil-War magazine capacities, most handguns, and the most popular small-caliber target rifles in the United States. That is a big difference, and it is because of crap like that the U.S. gun-control lobby is now in the sorry shape it's in.

You are right, speech IS regulated around the edges. So are guns, and to an even greater degree.

Please at least acknowledge the many restrictions that ARE in places, that gun owners by and large are OK with (tight controls on automatic weapons, over-.50 nonhunting guns, grenade launchers, armor-piercing ammunition, sound-suppressed weapons, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, etc.). Otherwise, you are arguing a straw man.

[Prophet 451]

7. The problem here

is that, like several other issues, the debate is entirely controlled by the extremes of either side. If we could grab, say, half a dozen reasonably sensible politicians from either side, this thing would be solved in a couple of hours but right now, you've got one side wanting all guns banned or at least, regulated into near-banning and the other side shouts that you can have their guns when you pry them from their "cold, dead hands". The reasonable person somewhere in the middle doesn't get much attention in such a debate.

I like to think I'm a reasonable person. I'm a target shooter and sometime hunter. Competative target shooters tend not to want or need full-auto weapons. Hell, we'd be happy with single shot rifles if the gun industry hadn't poured all their research into semi-autos for years thus making semi-autos far more accurate and target shooters (including myself, for my sins) tend to be obsessive about accuracy. As a hunter, I reserve the right to take the piss out of you if you need a semi-auto rifle for hunting but that's personal opinion, not a matter for law.

[Solo_in_MD]

9. Additionally, the best guns for self defense for most people is a semiauto handgun

which the Brady Bunch refuses to realize

[Prophet 451]

11. Depends on the situation

In an open area, like a street or ranch, that's true. However, if you're apartment-bound in the 'Burbs, your round will go through a modern lathe-and-plaster wall like a hot ballbearing through butter and while I think it's perfectly acceptable to shoot a burglar, missing and accidently perforating your next-door neighbour's kid isn't. For home defence in an apartment, the shotgun loaded with birdshot or something similar is probably your best bet. Unlikely to pass through a wall but devestating at close range.

[Wolfetone]

10. The second ammendment blatantly grants

the individual a right to bear arms. Those who argue it doesn't are either blinded by their ideology or lying to themselves and others in order to promote what they believe is the greater good. An excellent case can be made that severely restricting guns will help protect society, unfortunately the second amendment stands in the way, so the only recourse, IMO, is to change the second amendment.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

The amendment clearly states that keeping and bearing arms is a right that belongs to the people. It doesn't say that it is a right of the militia or the Texas Rangers, it clearly unambiguously states that it is a right of the people. It constantly astounds me that people can argue it is a collective right when there are no contemporaneous writings of any of the founding fathers to oppose the individual interpretation and numerous writings that support the individual interpretation.

[Prophet 451]

12. Doesn't say what kind of arms

I can see your point but the state of the art weapon in the Founders time was the flintlock (or is my timescale out?), I doubt they could have envisiged modern weaponry and if we follow that to it's logical conclusion, you'd find it difficult to regulate any weapons at all.

I reckon you could solve it just by inserting the word "small" before the word "arms".