LTCRN
NES Member
nation under the gun
By Ty McCormick / As You Were Saying . . .
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Since President George W. Bush appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts has made Second Amendment cases a prominent feature of the docket.
If you’re reading this, you are fairly unlikely to be shot today. That is because Massachusetts has one of the nation’s lowest firearm death rates. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the only people safer than Bay Staters are the hang-loose, luau-lovers of Hawaii.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Massachusetts also has some of the toughest gun laws in the country to thank for that safety. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in McDonald vs. Chicago may be the first step toward loosening those regulations.
In McDonald - which struck down two Chicago-area handgun bans - the Roberts Court ruled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right to bear arms, thereby protecting that right against infringement by the states. Previously, the Second Amendment only protected individuals from federal infringement. As a result, the court’s landmark ruling in D.C. vs. Heller, which heralded an individual right to gun ownership, has been extended to the states.
While the ruling poses no immediate threat to Bay Staters since Massachusetts boasts no outright firearm prohibitions, this does not mean we should shelve our concern. Since President George W. Bush appointed him chief justice in 2005, John G. Roberts has made Second Amendment cases a prominent feature of the Supreme Court docket. In the entirety of the 20th century, the court heard only one case on the right to bear arms, but in Roberts’ brief tenure we have already had two, both of which confirm a fundamental, individual right to gun ownership and use.
Moreover, because the Heller majority ruled that the right to bear arms is rooted in a deeper, inherent right of self-defense, safety laws that render guns inoperable or inaccessible, such as trigger-lock laws or child-access prevention laws, may well become more susceptible to challenge. If I have a fundamental, individual right to defend myself against an attacker, then a regulation requiring me to keep my Glock unloaded and locked with a safety device would seem to be unconstitutional.
Even more startling, the majority’s maddening manifesto in Heller appears to foresee (and welcome) challenges of this nature. In reassuring us that the right to bear arms is not without limitations, Justice Antonin Scalia writes, “The court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”
It says nothing about safety regulations of the type I just mentioned. And for the record, great, I’m glad we can all get together on declining to arm criminals and the mentally disabled. But for those of us who think there ought to be just a few more regulations on obtaining deadly artillery, Heller, and now McDonald, offer only silence.
Most leading legal commentators remain skeptical that the Supreme Court’s pronouncements will have an impact as pervasive as I have predicted, but I wonder how vulnerable they thought inner-city handgun bans were five years ago, before Roberts came aboard.
As a Massachusetts resident, and someone who enjoys competing with the Aloha State on gun safety issues, I think we ought to pay close attention to the litigation that follows in the wake of McDonald. It took all of one day for the petitioners to realize that Heller had provided an avenue to challenge Chicago-area gun laws (they filed suit within 24 hours). I wonder how long it will take the next batch of litigants to seize on the opportunities provided by McDonald.
Ty McCormick is a recent graduate of Stanford University where he worked as a Research Fellow at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. He lives in Boston.
By Ty McCormick / As You Were Saying . . .
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Since President George W. Bush appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court, John G. Roberts has made Second Amendment cases a prominent feature of the docket.
If you’re reading this, you are fairly unlikely to be shot today. That is because Massachusetts has one of the nation’s lowest firearm death rates. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the only people safer than Bay Staters are the hang-loose, luau-lovers of Hawaii.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Massachusetts also has some of the toughest gun laws in the country to thank for that safety. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s recent decision in McDonald vs. Chicago may be the first step toward loosening those regulations.
In McDonald - which struck down two Chicago-area handgun bans - the Roberts Court ruled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right to bear arms, thereby protecting that right against infringement by the states. Previously, the Second Amendment only protected individuals from federal infringement. As a result, the court’s landmark ruling in D.C. vs. Heller, which heralded an individual right to gun ownership, has been extended to the states.
While the ruling poses no immediate threat to Bay Staters since Massachusetts boasts no outright firearm prohibitions, this does not mean we should shelve our concern. Since President George W. Bush appointed him chief justice in 2005, John G. Roberts has made Second Amendment cases a prominent feature of the Supreme Court docket. In the entirety of the 20th century, the court heard only one case on the right to bear arms, but in Roberts’ brief tenure we have already had two, both of which confirm a fundamental, individual right to gun ownership and use.
Moreover, because the Heller majority ruled that the right to bear arms is rooted in a deeper, inherent right of self-defense, safety laws that render guns inoperable or inaccessible, such as trigger-lock laws or child-access prevention laws, may well become more susceptible to challenge. If I have a fundamental, individual right to defend myself against an attacker, then a regulation requiring me to keep my Glock unloaded and locked with a safety device would seem to be unconstitutional.
Even more startling, the majority’s maddening manifesto in Heller appears to foresee (and welcome) challenges of this nature. In reassuring us that the right to bear arms is not without limitations, Justice Antonin Scalia writes, “The court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”
It says nothing about safety regulations of the type I just mentioned. And for the record, great, I’m glad we can all get together on declining to arm criminals and the mentally disabled. But for those of us who think there ought to be just a few more regulations on obtaining deadly artillery, Heller, and now McDonald, offer only silence.
Most leading legal commentators remain skeptical that the Supreme Court’s pronouncements will have an impact as pervasive as I have predicted, but I wonder how vulnerable they thought inner-city handgun bans were five years ago, before Roberts came aboard.
As a Massachusetts resident, and someone who enjoys competing with the Aloha State on gun safety issues, I think we ought to pay close attention to the litigation that follows in the wake of McDonald. It took all of one day for the petitioners to realize that Heller had provided an avenue to challenge Chicago-area gun laws (they filed suit within 24 hours). I wonder how long it will take the next batch of litigants to seize on the opportunities provided by McDonald.
Ty McCormick is a recent graduate of Stanford University where he worked as a Research Fellow at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. He lives in Boston.
![[rolleyes]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/042.gif "Roll Eyes [rolleyes]")
![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
since owning guns makes me 628.38% more likely to go postal. right?![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
![[thinking]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/010.gif "Thinking [thinking]")
