John Richardson has the details on the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Msciandaro case. This was in the 4th Circuit Court of appeals, where a guy got arrested for sleeping in his car on National Park property while having a loaded gun in his car, so he challenged the law under the Second Amendment.
If I had to wager, I’m betting (hoping) the Supreme Court is looking for a clean and well constructed carry case.
(A copy of a comment I just left at John Richardson’s blog, since this is both a mater of law (his focus, I think) and politics (your focus, I think).)
Assuming this guy is not a career criminal type, just someone caught up in a senseless application of the law (since the GW Parkway is pretty much indistinguishable from any other major high traffic, multilane highway in the area, in no way resembling what we think of a National Park) how is this not “clean”?
If it’s an illegitimate criminal conviction based on ignoring a core civil right, why would the Supremes not take the case?
Well, I suppose is could simply be “why bother?”, since it’s not obvious how to use it to create much new president, especially if what he did is no longer illegal. After all, what does it matter that one man’s life is now ruined, absent a Presidential pardon?
Do we have any reason to believe that lower courts’ continuing hostility to the 2nd Amendment will change things on the ground very much except when the Supreme deign to slap them down? I for one am waiting to see if the grant cert on Heller II; if not … well, the Republicans are going to lose one of their arguments for electing a President, hopefully over time the Federal Courts will lose the excessive respect they have, and we’ll return to the pre-2008 status quo of raw political power deciding this issue, where we’re winning anyway.