Manish:

Doesn’t Heller compel the local government of Washington, D.C. an obligation to allow legal gun ownership in some form?

Yes, but as Yu-Ain has suggested, “state or local” in this context is really just a lazy shorthand for “state or part of a state.” A citywide handgun ban anywhere in Puerto Rico or Guam would be vulnerable under Heller. Come to think of it, now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Guantanamo is part of the U.S., I guess they have a right to guns, too. Maybe we should load up the locals on constitutionally protected firearms and then let the lease with Cuba run out.

Oregon State Constitution, Article 1, Section 27

“The people shall have the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state, but the military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power.”

The 2 A is not incororated at this time. If asking for civil right damages under federal stutes then they may not apply.

This was how the Jim Crow laws went down in Ol Virginny, so the Judge in this case doesn’t even know his own State’s judicial history. He is a pinhead.

I’m not registered over there, but I find it necessary to point out here that the 2nd Amendment most certainly does NOT create a right to arms. The 2nd acknowledges a pre-existing inalienable right while protecting said right from government infringement. Scalia got this right in Heller, and we need to keep hammering this point home.

I don’t think they actually are. There are modern cases that offer guidelines for when a right should be incorporated. Namely Duncan v. Louisiana and a few others I can’t think of right now. Once the Second Amendment was declared an individual right by the Supreme Court, I think the pre-incorporation cases could be safely read as dead letter by lower courts, and the modern incorporation cases could be applied.

Did he raise a claim under that? Or did he claim the second amendment? If he claimed the second amendment, the court can’t consider a state right to bear arms claim if it wasn’t asked to.

From the Virginia Constitution:

Section 13. Militia; standing armies; military subordinate to civil power.

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

Judge Morgan is bound by Federal precedent in Cruikshank and Presser where both Supreme Court cases state explicitly that the Second Amendment protections don’t apply to the states. He is bound by that. Only the Supreme Court can overturn the Supreme Court.

And that’s why we have to get an “incorporation” decision IN the Supreme Court.

I’m figuring it will take at least five years to work its way through the system.