WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, advancing a recent trend by the John Roberts-led bench to embrace gun rights.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution's "right to keep and bear arms" could survive legal challenges.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said that the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states."

The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and four liberals opposed. Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority.

Two years ago, the court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess guns, at least for purposes of self-defense in the home.

That ruling applied only to federal laws. It struck down a ban on handguns and a trigger lock requirement for other guns in the District of Columbia, a federal city with unique legal standing. At the same time, the court was careful not to cast doubt on other regulations of firearms here.

Gun rights proponents almost immediately filed a federal lawsuit challenging gun control laws in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill, where handguns have been banned for nearly 30 years. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence says those laws appear to be the last two remaining outright bans.

Lower federal courts upheld the two laws, noting that judges on those benches were bound by Supreme Court precedent and that it would be up to the high court justices to ultimately rule on the true reach of the Second Amendment.

The Supreme Court already has said that most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights serve as a check on state and local, as well as federal, laws.

Monday's decision did not explicitly strike down the Chicago area laws. Instead, it ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling. But it left little doubt that the statutes eventually would fall.

Still, Alito noted that the declaration that the Second Amendment is fully binding on states and cities "limits (but by no means eliminates) their ability to devise solutions to social problems that suit local needs and values."

Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, each wrote a dissent. Stevens, in his final day on the bench after more than 34 years, said that unlike the Washington case, Monday's decision "could prove far more destructive — quite literally — to our nation's communities and to our constitutional structure."

The ruling seemed unlikely to resolve questions and ongoing legal challenges about precisely what sort of gun control laws are permissible.

The response of the District to the court's ruling in 2008 is illustrative of the uncertainty.

Local lawmakers in Washington, D.C. imposed a series of regulations on handgun ownership, including requirements to register weapons and to submit to a multiple-choice test, fingerprinting and a ballistics test. Owners must also show they have gotten classroom instruction on handling a gun and have spent at least an hour on the firing range. Some 800 people have now registered handguns in the city.

Anticipating a similar result in their case, Chicago lawmakers are looking at even more stringent regulations.

But the new regulations themselves are likely to themselves be the subject of lawsuits, a fact noted by the dissenting justices Monday. Already in Washington, Dick Heller, the plaintiff in the original case before the Supreme Court, has sued the city over its new laws.

Heller argues that the stringent restrictions violate the intent of the high court's decision. So far a federal judge has upheld the limitations, but the case has been appealed.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said his politically powerful group "will continue to work at every level to insure that defiant city councils and cynical politicians do not transform this constitutional victory into a practical defeat through Byzantine regulations and restrictions."

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ardent proponent of gun control, said the ruling allows cities "to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists while at the same time respecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens."

___

Associated Press reporter Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.

Thats good news for gun owners!

quote:

Originally posted by don444:
Thats good news for gun owners!

Yeah but it was 5-4 and Sotomayor (or however it's spelled) voted against us. Watch out for Kagan.
Bear in Fairbanks

Bear,

Kagan won't change anything since she would be replacing another liberal justice, Stevens, who voted in the minority.

Until one of the more conservative judges decides to hang it up, the general flavor of 5-4 decisions on such issues will pretty much be same ol', same ol'.

So just hope one of those justices doesn't retire while a Democrat is in the Whitehouse.

Here's bit of a different spin from the NSSF.

NEWTOWN, Conn -- The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) - the trade association for the firearms industry - hailed today's United States Supreme Court 5-4 decision written by Justice Alito that ruled the individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution applies to the states and local government.

"Today's ruling is a victory for freedom and liberty," said NSSF President Stephen L. Sanetti. "All law-abiding Americans, no matter whether they live in a big city like Chicago or in rural Wyoming, have the same Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Constitutional rights don't stop at state or city borders. Cities like Chicago and New York and states like California must now respect the Second Amendment."

The case before the Court, McDonald v. City of Chicago, was filed in 2008 a day after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller -- in which the high court reaffirmed that the Second Amendment protects an "individual" right to keep and bear arms. The Heller decision, however, did not reach the question of whether the Second Amendment also applied to the states.

Immediately after Heller, several Chicago residents including retired maintenance worker Otis McDonald filed a federal lawsuit challenging the city's long-standing gun ban. The Chicago-based federal courts ruled that the Second Amendment did not apply to the states and local governments, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to decide the question it left unanswered in its Heller decision.

"Today's decision marks the beginning of a new era of civil rights litigation as laws and regulations that infringe upon and violate the individual right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, protected by the Second Amendment, are challenged," said NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Lawrence G. Keane. "As the trade association for America's firearms industry, our members make the products through which our Second Amendment rights are realized. Just as the First Amendment protects and shields newspapers and media, the Second Amendment secures constitutional protections for our industry."

NSSF filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of McDonald.

For more information and commentary on today's ruling, please visit: WWW.NSSF.ORG.

And some background:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court appears poised to issue a ruling that will expand to the states the high court's historic 2008 ruling that individuals have a federally protected right to keep and bear arms, following an hour-long argument Tuesday. If so, the decision would mark another hallmark victory for gun rights advocates and likely strike down Chicago's handgun ban that is similar to the Washington D.C. law already invalidated by the justices.

Tuesday's lively arguments featured lawyer Alan Gura, the same man who argued and won D.C. v. Heller in 2008. He now represents Otis McDonald who believes Chicago's handgun ban doesn't allow him to adequately protect himself. Gura argued the Heller decision which only applied to Washington D.C. and other areas of federal control should equally apply to Chicago and the rest of the country.

"In 1868, our nation made a promise to the McDonald family that they and their descendants would henceforth be American citizens, and with American citizenship came the guarantee enshrined in our Constitution that no State could make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of American citizenship," Gura told the Court.

He argued the language of the Constitution's 14th Amendment forces the states to protect the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The Bill of Rights, which was adopted in the late 18th Century, was then commonly viewed as only offering protections from the federal government.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that the Supreme Court in a piecemeal fashion began to apply--or incorporate--parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. It has used the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause to incorporate most of the Constitution's first amendments but has not yet done so for the Second Amendment. Gura argued that another part of the 14th Amendment would be a better vehicle for the justices to make their ruling but there didn't appear to be enough support from the bench on that front.

Chief Justice John Roberts was the most vocal advocate of using the Due Process Clause to extend the Second Amendment rights to the states. "I don't see how you can read -- I don't see how you can read Heller and not take away from it the notion that the Second Amendment...was extremely important to the framers in their view of what liberty meant."

The discussion over "liberty" was a major philosophical theme of the arguments. Gura and National Rifle Association lawyer Paul Clement argued that the rights articulated in the Second Amendment are fundamental freedoms and would exist to all Americans even if there was no law specifically saying so.

James Feldman, lawyer for the City of Chicago, defended his city's handgun ban and argued why the Heller decision's Second Amendment guarantee doesn't comport with the view that it represents a vital protection of liberty that needs to be expanded to the states.

"The right it protects is not implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Feldman said. "States and local governments have been the primary locus of firearms regulation in this country for the last 220 years. Firearms unlike anything else that is the subject of a provision of the Bill of Rights are designed to injure and kill."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in Heller and wondered why the right to bear arms was necessary to extend to the states. "If the notion is that these are principles that any free society would adopt, well, a lot of free societies have rejected the right to keep and bear arms."

Later in the arguments Roberts disputed that notion. "I do think the focus is our system of ordered liberty, not any abstract system of ordered liberty. You can say Japan is a free country, but it doesn't have the right to trial by -- by jury."

Roberts was part of the five member majority in Heller and there's a good chance Tuesday's case will result in a similar 5-4 outcome. All of the members of the Heller majority are still on the Court and at least one of them would have to rule against extending the Second Amendment protection in order for the opposing side to prevail.

***********************************

All we needed was the majority of 5, Alito probably could have got Breyer to vote for it if he had watered down the decision to allow for a low level of scrutiny but since he wrote it as a fundamental right, Breyer just couldn't get himself to vote for it.

Even if the court changes, SCOTUS ie really reluctent to overturn past SCOTUS decisions no matter how evil that they were (re. Slaughterhouse). If you read the decision you can see how Alito wanted badly to overturn Slaughterhouse and even though Thomas basically came out and said that he would overturn Slaughterhouse, Alito just couldn't get a majority to do it.

I continue to be amazed that there are 4 morons on the Supreme Court who voted against the Second Amendment.

Keep your powder dry...

quote:

Originally posted by rcamuglia:
I continue to be amazed that there are 4 morons on the Supreme Court who voted against the Second Amendment.

Keep your powder dry...

Ain't it the truth!

It's gonna be a continual fight. Chicago is going to modify it's requirements for handgun ownership but they'll still make it nearly impossible to own one. Fingerprinting, required classes, etc, etc. Same crap over & over. Then it's back thru the courts again ad nauseum.
The only way around it is to vote those self serving scum bags out of office. The problem with that is that the "have nots" can vote what the "haves" have. There's no end to the fight.
Bear in Fairbanks

quote:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in Heller and wondered why the right to bear arms was necessary to extend to the states. "If the notion is that these are principles that any free society would adopt, well, a lot of free societies have rejected the right to keep and bear arms."

So we have a SCOTUS judge who looks to other countries for guidance on our Constitution???

By the reasoning that the minority holds, all of our constitutional rights are not equal and as members of the Supreme Court they believe they alone should be allowed to limit specific rights through "constructional" decision making.
They think some should apply everywhere, like free speech, and some should not, like the second amendment.

IMHO there should be no "vote" ever concerning the Bill of Rights..ever! It's what "we the people" constructed to form this nation. Let these liberal tyrants continue and we'll become "home of the slaves!"
LDK

You'd think that these 4 SCOTUS idiots could figure out the meaning of "shall not be". Seems pretty simple to me. Another example of "Cracker Jack" diplomas.

Don't relax! They are coming. Just wait until NObama gets the rest of his socialist financial agenda in place. We will see the "assault weapon" ban back in place before you can blink. They are already targeting "sniper" rifles, aka any scoped rifle. Remember, NObama supports banning handguns period.

Anyone voting democrat this fall is, at best, an ignorant fool, at worst, well.........

IMHO

Bob

David:
It's good news -maybe.(We need only one vacancy among the conservatives -and Obama making an appointment to change things around) You live in a free gun carrying state (the kind I thought I lived in when I was a boy and young man). I can promise you that my own state and states like California and Illinois (with strict handgun laws)will make sure that handguns will be nearly impossible to obtain legally. My own NYPD has had arcane rules to see to that long before this Supreme Court decision. (Curiously,however, movie and rock stars always seemed to get permits -ostensibly just for "premises" (meaning never leave the house or store)-very loosely interpreted. (I held a full carrying permit once issued in upstate NY in my youth (19-in those days a carrying permit could be held at age 18) and was a member of the NY National Guard -yet, it took me nearly four years to get consent of the NYC Police Commissioner to be allowed to carry a pistol (in a case and unloaded)to my Armory for my pistol team in NYC. I hope the decision will influence the NYPD -but I doubt it. Police in big cities would be delighted if nobody could own a handgun -and, you know what? - I fully agree with them! Fact. But why do I and all other honest people have to suffer for that? I don't want any police officer to face danger because of a bad guy carrying a pistol and any way to keep pistols out of the hands of bad guys is what we all want -but requiring permits doesn't seem to work. My state has the "Sullivan Law" -at the time it was enacted in 1911 the strictest handgun law in the country - Funny, I don't seem to remember, as a native New Yorker, that we had a non existent murder rate because we had forbidden anyone without a permit from carrying a pistol - In fact, I saw a statistic once that said that more murders were committed in NY and Chicago than were committed in all the Western states put together. I must be reading something wrong! It's a good decision - I hope -but I do wish I was living in Tennessee!

I am very disapointed in the vote....I expected it but am disappointed none the less. How the four dissenters could vote AGAINST the Bill of Rights is against me.

Godless people voting against a God given right!

god bless the USA
wouldn't want to have been born anywhere else
but i'm having trouble understanding how those other folks think.
and why is there an "other opinion" about this?

Look how the Libtards reacted when McCain-Feingold was overturned by SCOTUS (thank goodness)

That law violated the 1st Amendment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From yesterday's OUTDOOR WIRE:

Second Supreme Court Decision Kicks Off Next Round of Lawsuits

When Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation tells me something is a "call to action" in the future, I'm going to go ahead and get on my feet. He's marching, and everyone with him had better be ready to move.

On Monday, the SAF filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, seeking a permanent injunction against North Carolina's governor, local officials and local governments from declaring states of emergency under which private citizens would be prohibited from exercising their right to bear arms.

Grass Roots North Carolina, the state's primary gun rights organization, and three private citizens are included in the suit. The defendants in the lawsuit read like the organizational tables of North Carolina government: North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue; Reuben Young, secretary of the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety; Stokes County and the City of King.

The basis of the lawsuit? You guessed it. The unconstitutionality of any law that rescinds the right to firearms during a state of emergency. The suit also alleges that a North Carolina law that allows government officials to prohibit the purchase, sale and possession of firearms and ammunition are also unconstitutional because they forbid the exercise of Second Amendment rights as affirmed by Monday's Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago.

As a sidebar, Monday's decision by the Supreme Court did not GRANT a right- it affirmed the existing right. "Rights" are not granted by anyone - neither, the Supreme Court affirmed, may governments- federal, state nor local, rescind a "right".

"Through this lawsuit in North Carolina," says Gottlieb," we intend to show that state emergency powers statutes that allow government officials to suspend fundamental civil rights, including the right to bear arms, are unconstitutional and therefore should be nullified. Citizens do not surrender their civil rights just because of a natural or man-made disaster."

Once again, the highest-profile legal point man on the case will be Alan Gura, the same attorney who has now successfully argued both landmark Second Amendment cases before the high court. Local counsel are Andrew Tripp and Kearns Davis with the firm of Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey & Leonard, LLC in Raleigh.

This lawsuit is likely the first filed following the landmark decision that overturned Chicago's decades-old gun ban, but it is definitely the last. Yesterday, I was told by involved parties that a series of lawsuits challenging - among others- California's myriad gun regulations are on the way. Similarly, other areas can expect gun rights advocates on the local and national level, to move forward with their own challenges.

The affirmation of the Second Amendment's applicability to the states establishes the basis by which anti-gun regulations may be challenged, regardless of the size of the government unit. With the restriction still in place for sensitive locations - government buildings, schools and such - very few defenses remain in place for blanket regulations.

quote:

Originally posted by JTEX:
I am very disapointed in the vote....I expected it but am disappointed none the less. How the four dissenters could vote AGAINST the Bill of Rights is against me.

Godless people voting against a God given right!

I concur. Thank you for saying so.

quote:

[QUOTE] , well, a lot of free societies have rejected the right to keep and bear arms."

I would guess they are not a free society anymore!!!!!!!

David:

I love your incurable Southern optimism -the spirit that kept the Confederacy alive for four years when it was outmanned and outgunned (but never outfought). I want to believe that you are right and that we have a great victory for perfectly normal people who just want to own a handgun for whatever valid reason -but I have my worries that you will be wrong in the long run and that the decision is going to be revresed down the road. For starters -have you noticed that the mayor of Chicago is already out with new "requirements" for getting a handgun in Chicago? What he intends is that people will have to bring a lawsuit -which will take years to work through the judicial system - and Obama is president until (at least) 2012. Supreme Court justices die and get replaced by the likes of Sotomayor and Kagan. (BTW, Sotomayor announced emphatically at her confirmation hearing that she supported the 2nd Amendment - and promptly voted against it in her first "gun" case) David, you "Rebs" (and I say "Reb" affectionately) are romantics - In the unfortunate "real" world of today's America, this decision will not stand -and I really do want the decision to stand. (BTW, notice how Hollywood keeps making movies where the hero uses a handgun -It's just us common folk who can't be trusted with them) And this is the country that produced the first really workable revolver!

If NObama gets to seat one more judge we are in real trouble. We are stuck with Kagan, she is the perfect NObama judge:

Excerpt from GOA Update:

GOA Attorney Testifies Against Kagan Before Sen. Schumer's Committee

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
Friday, July 2, 2010

On Thursday, Gun Owners of America had the important opportunity to testify concerning the Second Amendment views of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

William J. Olson, counsel of record on amicus briefs for GOA in both the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court cases, testified at the hearing that Kagan has demonstrated "visceral hostility" to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Moreover, Olson demonstrated that Elena Kagan's view of rights is tied in directly to her view of Judicial Supremacy, that is, that our rights "are whatever a majority of the Supreme Court rules at a particular time in a particular case."

Sincerely,
The GOA Team

thank god they got this one right...........