Post Heller Challenges

Eugene Volokh relays a case where a felon tried to raise a second amendment claim and was shot down.  The Court did us a huge favor by taking this off the table immediately.  This makes it far more likely that the people who raise Second Amendment in courts will generally be more sympathetic individuals, rather than career criminals.

Also, there are already have people raising the machine gun issue, which all the legal experts I’ve talked to agree is a dead end.  As one notable legal expert pointed out to me “We got 5-4 on a .38 revolver.”

Then you have a postal employee challenging the ban on firearms in post offices.  The magistrate dismissed the challenge in this case, arguing that:

Indeed, federal law (OSHA) requires employers to abate workplace hazards and encourages employers to take measures to prevent gun-related injuries. Surely, the United States Postal Service would be remiss if it failed to practice what federal law requires. Without question, § 232.1(1) bolsters the United States Postal Service’s zero tolerance for workplace violence and is a regulation designed to maintain safety and order on postal property.

I don’t agree with this one, but there’s always a political solution to this problem.  Professor Volokh has a lot of worthwhile commentary on this one.

This case just seems like a disaster waiting to happen [Edit 7/17/08 – Linked to the wrong item.  A few weeks later, I don’t remember what I intended to link to here, but will try to find again]  Thankfully, we have some very talented people pursuing other incorporation cases.

But hey, at least we don’t have courts still pretending like Heller doesn’t exist, right?  This should be a wake up call to gun owners that Heller hasn’t really settled much.  We have the fight of our lives ahead of us, and I think we seriously need to face the fact that we can either have McCain picks on the federal courts, who has a chance of being good, or perhaps Deval Patrick.  If the thought of that isn’t enough to get you to hold your nose this fall, I don’t know what is.