The Brady Campaign reacts in a predictable fashion:
“The Chicago case is unlikely to have much practical impact on most gun laws regardless of how the Court rules.  Even if the Court were to hold the Second Amendment applicable to states and localities, such a ruling is unlikely to change the crucial holding by the Supreme Court in Heller that a wide range of reasonable gun laws are presumptively constitutional, and that the Second Amendment right is narrowly limited to guns in the home for self-defense. Since the Heller decision, the gun lobby and criminals have brought at least 170 challenges to gun laws or to block criminal gun prosecutions. With only a handful of exceptions, those challenges have failed.â€
You keep right on reading Heller the way you want to. If all you manage to get is that the government can keep guns out of the hands of criminals, I’m OK with that. The other amusing thing, and you can bet Helmke knows this, it doesn’t matter if desperate defense attorneys with criminal clients and Hail Mary Second Amendment claims fail 100% of the time. All that matters is that we win the right cases. This case the Supreme Court has agreed to take is one of those cases.
The stakes are high. The Brady Campaign is pretending the stakes are low. No reasonable observer can really believe that. By downplaying the significance, it gives you a pretty good idea of what they think their chances are. They are already acting like they lost.
“Since the Heller decision, the gun lobby and criminals have brought at least 170 challenges to gun laws or to block criminal gun prosecutions.”
Interesting thought process there; the gun lobby and criminals are lumped together?
I’m sure it might happen from time to time, but I have a hard time believing that a “criminal” being prosecuted for other crimes is going to become a 2A crusader. In fact, isn’t the status quo generally something like this: “Look, dude, we’ve got your fingerprints and DNA, you plead out on this and we’ll drop the firearms possession, save you 5 years in prison.”
As for the Court taking this on, I’m mildly surprised that it hasn’t happened before now. Of course, you have to time your cases right, and make sure you at least have a halfway ideologicaly friendly bench to deal with. I am pleased to see this being persued, but I am a little leery on the court right now. I know Heller worked out pretty good overall, but I’d be a lot more comfortable with one more firm vote.
Too bad they’re pretty much right. Heller tossed out the window Miller which was never argued setting us back to at least those days. Days when the courts could at least think enough to understand who the militia is and had “standing” , and had the honesty to at least take a case over “militia weapons.” Yeah they played games and stacked the deck long enough to not have to really do much, they screwed the “bad” guys there and ended up screwing the good guys, as Fincher will tell you. Remember that “common use” circular logic in Heller? When they limited automatics and added all the BS taxes and garbage to limit “common use” so they can fall back on keeping those restrictions in place?
Contrast that to the Heller case that was argued and all the crap they let stand in that. They have no balls, it’s all politics and back room deals with no honesty or judging constitutionality. If it were all, that crap would have been struck down. We’ve got (if you happen to reside in DC) an individual right…to register and to buy certain guns they think are OK, and pay fees, and all the other regulations they allowed to stand.
Hell, did they take up the case about a couple sticks and a piece of rope? No? Until they do nothing is settled as the onslaught of ammunition control will continue. Other items will continue to be used to lose those rights to a gun. The rats will nibble at the edges enough to achieve their goals without having to prohibit guns.
Brady bunch knows that they’ll take a little hit but they’re just moving to the flank, not abandoning their assault.
Heller was a big win. Lower District court cases have thrown out safe storage convictions in NY. They assumed incorporation was valid. Just the case made the most gun control towns In Illinois stand down .
NYC is going to quake especially Bloomberg. MAIG is failing but still a sleeper organization. It needs to be staked.
The best thing is that gun rights activists no longer accept almost any compromise proposal and they force the NRA to the same standard.
The standard concept of only criminals have guns has fallen. That concept was important to the gun controllers. The strides that personal courage of various state organizations to convince CCW laws have made most of the difference.
The results have been immeasuarable to the sucess of the gun rights agenda.
Basically it comes down to the fact that society is forced to trust that common folk can have and carry guns without getting all Rambo. That trust is very hard to come by and it has been proven. That is why we come down so hard on those that blow it.
We all knew idiots that screw around , so we all knew that screw ups could occur. Thankfully most have very diligent at being responsible. It is important that we self police ourselves to be able to maintain these rights.
Liberals basic assumption is that people are not trustworthy to govern themselves and need to be policed. The nanny state urge is very strong in moralists. Those that know that people are not capable of doing the supposed right thing without being told.
The current success of many on the OC front to get damages from police when the police hassle them is extremely helpful since the police will assume they are right even if they violate our rights.
NM just awarded one 21K because the officer checked his gun out that he was OC and the man was not arrested or even his gun taken. Just the cop checked his serial number.
These successes in VA, Louisiana, NM have helped to instill a healthy respect for gun carriers. That respect even extended to the WH on the OC at this summers Town Hall and Obama visits.
I think that’s an exceedingly pessimistic outlook. There’s plenty of language in Heller that leaves the door open to a fairly broad right to keep and bear arms. Broader than you ever would have gotten had the Court tried to reconcile Miller.
Many of comments have been very pessimistic. I guess it is perpective I saw gun rights disappear during the 1970’s through the reverses in the 1990’s.
Those that are younger have only experience the restriction not the rush to restrictions over 20 years.
To see the change in attitude of society has been a joy to me.
At my age, the only loss I’ve known is the Assault Weapons Ban and the Brady Act. Most of my adult life, it’s been positive progress, and I was very happy to hear Alan Gura say we can probably get rid of most of the damage that happened during the late 80s and 90s, and even chip away at some of the earlier nonsense.
It’s sadly unlikely Heller can be used to expand gun rights beyond the limits delineated in Heller – i.e. if we are to stick to Heller, machineguns, silencers, short shotguns are explicitly lost to us for now. And our enemies will quote Heller to keep it that way.
MicroBalrog: You don’t get it. Heller was just setting the framework and had nothing to do with silencers or machine guns. That is for another case.
I can read and I can write, DCDC. I have read Heller and I know it *technically* did not rule on anything past the issue involve, *however* the dicta therein will be a powerful weapon against us.
It will also be useful against the other side.