Posts Tagged Supreme Court

Do Recent Supreme Court Rulings Threaten Gun Rights?

From Townhall.com:

Those efforts are bound to continue, especially now that the United States Supreme Court appears to be open to reaching decisions based on political considerations and public pressure, as opposed to basing their decisions solely on the U.S. Constitution.

Initially there will probably be regulatory steps implemented to restrict certain types of ammunition purchases, adding excessive amounts of taxes to various calibers or types of ammo so that it becomes cost-prohibitive to buy. You can’t target shoot with an AK-47 if the ammunition is so expensive that you can’t afford to buy it. The same goes for all the other so-called “assault weapons”.

 

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Gun People Are Second Class Citizens

From Huffington Post:

The Court’s widely-noted failure to clarify the scope of Americans’ Second Amendment rights is shocking and inexcusable. Justice Thomas ruefully observed that the Court has granted review in decisions “involving alleged violations of rights it has never previously enforced” and involving rights claims that are “expressly foreclosed by precedent.” And yet, in the Second Amendment context, the Court has refused to give law-abiding citizens seeking to exercise their rights the certain protection they deserve.

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SF Gun Laws Don’t Trump My Safety

From David French of National Review:

If I lived in San Francisco, I would violate that law. San Francisco’s anti-gun ideology is simply not worth risking my family’s safety. I do not have confidence that — even with practice — my wife and older children would be able to unlock a safe as quickly as necessary, under extreme stress (nor am I completely confident that I could do it). In fact, it’s hard to see a clear downside to violating the law. Yes, there are criminal penalties for noncompliance, but San Francisco isn’t doing house-to-house searches for gun safes. It simply doesn’t have the resources to systematically enforce this law, and it never had any intention of systematically enforcing the law. Instead, it’s counting on the least dangerous gun owners in America (the law-abiding cohort) to voluntarily render themselves more vulnerable. I would dissent. In fact, I have dissented in other, similar jurisdictions in years past.

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Supreme Court Declines To Hear San Fran Gun Case

By declining to hear the case the Supreme Court has essentially given the “thumbs up” to this law and signaled to other cities that they may do the same.

From Yahoo News:

By declining to hear an appeal filed by gun owners and the National Rifle Association, the court left intact a March 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the measure.

The regulation, issued in 2007, states that anyone who keeps a handgun at home must either store it in a locked container or disable it with a trigger lock.

 

 

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Supreme Court Debates Taking San Francisco Gun Control Case

From Reason.com:

Will the Supreme Court allow the 9th Circuit to openly flout one of its precedents? We may soon find out. Today the justices are meeting in private conference. Among the items scheduled for consideration is a petition filed by conservative lawyer Paul Clement seeking review of the 9th Circuit’s Jackson opinion. “The decision below is impossible to reconcile with this Court’s decision inHeller,” that petition observes. “The Court of Appeals’ conclusion that San Francisco may venture where this Court forbade the District of Columbia to go is so patently wrong that summary reversal would be appropriate.”

 

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Defending the Second Amendment

From Forbes:

A flurry of such challenges began right after Heller, led to McDonald v. Chicago(2010) and are still ongoing. In an important example, in February 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to carry firearms for self-defense in public. The decision came in Peruta v. San Diego County. The majority opinion in Peruta said, “We are called upon to decide whether a responsible, law-abiding citizen has a right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.”

 

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Next Big Gun Case

From Business Week:

“There is no longer any basis on which this court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny,” federal Judge Frederick Scullin Jr. ruled in a decision made public on July 26. “Therefore, the court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional.” If the ruling is upheld by an intermediate appellate court, the justices (of the Supreme Court) could be forced to return to the radioactive Second Amendment.

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Supreme Court: Any Gun Purchase For Someone Else Is A “Straw” Purchase

If you buy a gun for a friend as a present, that is now illegal.

From GOPUSA:

A divided Supreme Court sided with gun control groups and the Obama administration Monday, ruling that the federal ban on “straw” purchases of guns can be enforced even if the ultimate buyer is legally allowed to own a gun.

The justices ruled 5-4 that the law applied to a Virginia man who bought a gun with the intention of transferring it to a relative in Pennsylvania who was not prohibited from owning firearms.

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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear New Jersey “Justifiable Need” Case

From The Christian Science Monitor:

The court took the action in a one-line order without further comment. It affirms lower court decisions upholding a New Jersey gun permit statute that critics say is too restrictive.

The challenged New Jersey statute prohibits state residents from obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public unless they can demonstrate a “justifiable need” for such a weapon.

Reason.com’s take here.

CATO Institute’s response:

Drake is but the latest in a series of cases that challenge the most restrictive state laws regarding the right to armed self-defense. Although the Supreme Court in Heller declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual constitutional right, lower federal courts with jurisdiction over states like Maryland and New York have been “willfully confused” about the scope of that right, declining to protect it outside Heller’s particular facts (a complete ban on functional firearms in the home). It’s as if the Supreme Court announced that the First Amendment protects an individual right to blog about politics from your home computer, but then some lower courts allowed states to ban political blogging from your local Starbucks.

 

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Second Amendment Cases To Follow

From Reason.com:

The Supreme Court hasn’t taken up any new Second Amendment cases since McDonald, but that doesn’t indicate a lack of interest. The Court receives thousands of petitions for review—or certiorari—each year, but it replies to only a few hundred. It has recently plucked a handful of Second Amendment cases from the submissions pile, asking for responses from the relevant parties.

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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Case On Gun Rights Of 18 to 20-year-olds

From USA Today:

The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider any new cases on gun rights, including the ability of 18- to 20-year-olds to buy guns.

More from Reuters:

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to wade into the politically volatile issue of gun control by leaving intact three court rulings rejecting challenges to federal and state laws.

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Supreme Court May Take Up Several Gun Cases In Next Term

From Detroit Free Press:

…a federal appeals court panel’s divided ruling last week in a California case makes it more likely that the question of guns outside the home will be heading to the high court soon.

To date, the biggest split from that trend involved an Illinois law that was much more restrictive than those in other states. Its ban on carrying concealed weapons in nearly all circumstances was struck down by a 7th Circuit appeals court panel. Rather than appealing to the Supreme Court, however, the state amended the law to allow for public possession, with restrictions.

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Supreme Court Needs To Clarify Second Amendment

From CATO:

While Heller clarified that the Second Amendment secures an individual right, the ruling left many questions about the scope of that right unanswered. Since then, several courts have made clear that they plan to take only as much from Heller as they absolutely have to.

Since Heller struck down D.C.’s ban on functional firearms in the home, recalcitrant courts pretend that the Second Amendment is limited to the right to keep arms and that legislatures can for very little (or no) reason to ignore the right to bear them outside the home.

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Texas “No-Knock” Raid Goes to Supreme Court

From WND.com:

Quinn was targeted by police because his son – who was suspected of possessing drugs – lived in the same home. His son was absent, and police records reveal they knew that fact when officers broke into Quinn’s home in a no-knock, SWAT-team style forced entry.

The state admits the raid was based “solely on the suspicion that there were legally owned firearms in the household.” (emphasis added)

But registration of firearms won’t lead to government abuse of power or confiscation…..

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3 Important Supreme Court Cases

From Reason.com:

Since the 2010 Supreme Court case McDonald v. Chicago, which applied the ruling in the 2008 Heller case (which said the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms) to states and localities, the Court has so far evaded any new case about the limits and meaning of the Second Amendment.

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