More on the second amendment and supreme court
In an update to the New Orleans gun lawsuit going forward, Reason Engaged:
On the surface, it doesn’t look like gun owners have much to gain by having a 2A case come before the Supremes. Unless you think about what might happen if enough people got riled up about number two…
August 18th, 2006 at 1:27 am
I agree with his assessment that going through the courts now is risky. But this might be as good as it ever gets on that front, unfortunately. If the NO case goes before The Court, and we got a positive ruling, expect the circuit courts to declare that anything short of a broad confiscation is totally outside the scope of second amendment protections, and that virtually everything else is just peachy, as long as it fulfills a legitimate “state interest”. If we win in the courts, it’s not the end, but only the beginning. We’d have to keep the pressure on double, and contineu to win a lot of legislative victories.
I really think this is an issue we have to win in the legislatures first. Not much will be accomplished with the courts.
August 18th, 2006 at 9:20 am
And who, pray tell, is actually fighting to have laws REPEALED in the legislature? Not the NRA, who dance around singing “enforce existing laws”.
August 18th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Reason, you’re wrong. Search Uncle’s archives, you’ll find multiple posts about the NRA engaging Congress to repeal D.C.’s ban – and other knee-jerk NRA bashers attacking them for that. To say that the NRA is damned if they do and damned if they don’t is an understatment. Apparently, if they do they are still damned because they don’t.
August 18th, 2006 at 10:29 am
Xrlq, I agree they are working on some but not man. I will point out that my sooper seekrit sources tell me the NRA is working on the sporting purpose language. But I’m not sure to what extent.
August 18th, 2006 at 10:41 am
What would you say the focus of the NRA is? Do you hear about them fighting for the repeal of Lautenberg, the GCA, etc? I know none of my NRA legislative alerts have anything to do with efforts to actually repeal restrictions that apply to all of us.
Look, I’m a life member and I think the NRA is important by virtue of being the biggest. However, I would NOT look to them to pioneer the way to true second ammendment freedom.
The whole point of my original comment was that we’ll be waiting a long time if we expect “to win in the legislatures first”. If we had 4 million JPFO members in stead of NRA members, that’d be a different story.
August 18th, 2006 at 10:49 am
In the end, nothing will happen (legislatively or judicially or any other way) until there are a lot more people educated and thusly outraged about the government restrictions on all our lives. Personally, I think what we need most is our own system of “evangelism” – taking a neighbor or co-worker to the range and that kind of thing. We’re in a race against the public schools and the media to win adherents, and the cost of losing is tyranny.
August 18th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Indeed it would, but not necessarily a better one. Groups like JPFO are like the Libertarian Party; it’s easy to be “pure” if your only goal is to complain rather than to get anything done substantively. The NRA knows this, and focuses on the possible, thereby enraging gun owners who’d rather see them bet the farm on the desirable.
August 18th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Well I guess we’re back to the absolutist vs incrementalist debate.
I think that saying their goal is to complain is unfair, to say the least.