TriggerFinger advocates contacting members of the Judiciary Committee, noting Gun Owners of America supports Alito. Like me, Publicola also isn’t too sure about Alito’s stance on guns:

His dissent clearly expresses that if congressional findings were included, even from a referring committee then he’d view the case in a different light. He also felt that a jurisdictional element (usually a simple little phrase such as “being used or having been used in interstate commerce” inserted into the operative part of a law) would have made the law acceptable. But as it was he felt Lopez demanded a striking of the law as it exceeded the Interstate Commerce Clause powers conferred by the constitution as reasoned in Lopez.

He also went on to say that states are not prohibited from banning simple possession of machine guns. That would indicate that he does not think that the 2nd amendment can be applied to the states via the 14th amendment, but whether that’s his read of the constitution or merely his being bound by precedent is not clear.

Matt sort of disagrees, noting:

It’s true that Alito was silent on the 2nd Amendment question, and this does not necessarily bode well. However, it’s my considered opinion that the Supreme Court is going to need to be where 2nd Amendment cases start winning; there is so much established precedent against that most judges probably figure the Supreme Court would have corrected it if it was wrong.

I suppose being not-hostile to the second amendment is the best some of us can hope for.

Posted in uncategorized on November 7th, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |