In my post about the SCOTUS rejecting an appeal regarding the AW ban, there were some interesting comments:

Kathy K writes: Perhaps because they knew that SCOTUS, as it presently stands, is rather hostile to the 2nd Amendment.

I agree with her statement. However, I think that any battle that is important to people should be waged regardless of the position of the current court. Otherwise, separate but equal would still be the law of the land.

Rick writes: While the ban on AW’s is completely moronic, giving the green light to full autos would get the anti-gunners frothing and tune many undecided into anti’s

The AW ban does nothing to regulate full autos. Such regulation is the same as it was in the 1934 Gun Control Act.

Brian writes: I don’t follow gun matters like you do, but I don’t think the Supreme Court has made a strictly Second Amendment ruling in decades. It’s not something the courts have gotten into.

I don’t think the SCOTUS has addressed 2A directly since 1939 (US v. Miller). But a study shows that the SCOTUS has done the following:

– The Court has not been quiet on this subject as previously thought, using some form of the word “gun” in its decisions 2,910 times (gun, rifle, pistol, shotgun, firearm, etc., even Winchester five times) in 92 cases. Three dozen of the cases quote or mention the Second Amendment directly.

– Armed self defense with personally owned firearms is recognized and supported in more than a dozen cases, is a distinct right of American citizens, and an ancient “duty to retreat” is not obligatory.

– The often-cited Miller case from 1939 is inconclusive, which is why gun-rights and gun-control advocates both claim it supports their position. The record shows that the Court actually remanded this case back to the lower court for retrial and a hearing on the evidence, since there was no evidence presented. Because Miller had been murdered by that time and his co-defendant had taken a plea agreement, no retrial or evidentiary hearing was ever held.

– All 92 cases are reproduced to show what the Court has actually said. More than 1,000 interesting quotations are highlighted, and each case includes a plain-English description. A special “descriptive index” reduces each case to the firearms-related question(s) it answers.

And the most important bit: Co-written by an attorney who has won three cases before the High Court, along with the research director of a prominent think tank, and a nationally recognized gun-law expert, the researchers conclude from the evidence that the Supreme Court has recognized an individual right to arms for most of the past two centuries.

Posted in uncategorized on September 5th, 2003 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |