Supreme Court fight looms over right to carry a gun
Rain
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Found this on yahoo.The next big issue in the national debate over guns whether people have a right to be armed in public is moving closer to Supreme Court review.
A provocative ruling by a panel of federal appeals court judges in Chicago struck down the only statewide ban on carrying concealed weapons, in Illinois. The ruling is somewhat at odds with those of other federal courts that have largely upheld state and local gun laws, including restrictions on concealed weapons, since the Supreme Court's landmark ruling declaring that people have a right to have a gun for self-defense..
In, 2008, the court voted 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller to strike down Washington's ban on handgun ownership and focused mainly on the right to defend one's own home. The court left for another day how broadly the Second Amendment may protect gun rights in other settings..
Legal scholars say the competing appellate rulings mean that day is drawing near for a new high court case on gun rights..
The appeals court ruling in Chicago came early in a week that ended with the mass shooting in Connecticut that left 28 people dead, including 20 children at an elementary school and the presumed gunman..
Laurie Levenson, a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said that along with thorny legal issues, "we have the overlay of these tragedies hitting us on a somewhat regular basis.".
The author of a book that traces the battle over gun control in the U.S. said he thinks Supreme Court intervention is likely in the short-term. "Since the Heller case, the next great question for the Supreme Court to decide was whether there is a right to carry guns in public," said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, whose book "Gunfight" was published last year..
Roughly 40 states make it easy for people to carry a gun in public. But in California, New York and a few other states, local and state regulations make it difficult if not impossible to get a license to carry a weapon. Illinois and the District of Columbia have been the only places to refuse to allow people to be armed in public..
"In some of our most populated states, the right does not exist either because it's completely forbidden or practically forbidden," said Alan Gura, the lawyer who won the Heller case at the Supreme Court..
Gun rights advocates and gun control supporters are as split over the issue of having guns in public as they were over whether the Constitution protected gun ownership at all and along the same lines..
Jonathan Lowy, an attorney with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said, "If law enforcement makes a determination that somebody would increase the danger to the public by carrying a loaded gun on the streets, then that person should not be carrying a loaded gun. Some people in the gun lobby want to tie the hands of law enforcement.".
But Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, said, "Clearly, the individual right under the Constitution does not apply only to your home. People have lives outside their home and the constitutional right applies outside their home.".
Sometimes, LaPierre said, "The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.".
Judge Richard Posner of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals employed similar reasoning in his majority opinion striking down the Illinois law. Posner said that threatening confrontations do not only or even principally occur at home. "A Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower," the judge said..
He homed in on the distinction between inside the home and on the street in his questioning of another recent appeals court ruling that upheld New York's restrictive law on granting people permits to carry concealed weapons. A unanimous panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the requirement that people demonstrate a special need to carry a concealed weapon does not violate the Constitution..
"Our principal reservation about the Second Circuit's analysis is its suggestion that the Second Amendment should have much greater scope inside the home than outside simply because other provisions of the Constitution have been held to make that distinction," including the right to privacy that underlies the high court ruling striking down sodomy laws. "Well of course, the interest in having sex inside one's home is much greater than the interest in having sex on the sidewalk in front of one's home. But the interest in self-protection is as great outside as inside the home," Posner said..
In dissent, Judge Ann Williams said governments have a strong interest in regulating guns on the street. "It is common sense, as the majority recognizes, that a gun is dangerous to more people when carried outside the home. When firearms are carried outside the home, the safety of a broader range of citizens is at issue. The risk of being injured or killed now extends to strangers, law enforcement personnel, and other private citizens who happen to be in the area," Williams said..
Gura represents the challengers to the New York law and he said he will ask the high court to review the 2nd Circuit ruling. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has not yet said whether the state will ask the full 7th Circuit court to reconsider its ruling or appeal to the Supreme Court..
So far, the Supreme Court has turned down appeals asking it to say more about guns. But that reluctance might fade if the court were presented with a split between appeals courts, typically a strong factor in attracting the justices' interest..
The Second Amendment talks about "the right to keep and bear arms and it's as if some courts want to take giant eraser to the words 'and bear' and pretend that they're not there," said David Thompson, managing partner of the Cooper and Kirk law firm in Washington. Thompson represented some plaintiffs in the Illinois case..
Northwestern University law professor Eugene Kontrovich said the difference between the New York and Chicago courts over what it means to bear arms could be enough to persuade the Supreme Court to intervene..
Winkler, the UCLA professor, said he thinks the Illinois statute would fall if it were to put to a test at the Supreme Court, probably by the same 5-4 vote as in Heller. But it is hard to predict how the Supreme Court might rule on restrictions that fall short of an outright ban on the right to carry a loaded weapon in public for self-defense, he said..
"Public possession is a different issue than having a gun in your home," Winkler said.http://news.yahoo.com/high-court-fight-looms-over-carry-gun-100107234.html
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And how to pay for it ??? How about using the money sent to foreign countries to help them protect theirselves be kept here at home in the USA until we can figure out how to protect our own kids and citizens before worrying about another countrys .
and in regards to having an armed guard on duty,, I wouldnt have any issues with a guy or gal policing the campus (plain clothes) while classes were in session and him or her hangin out in hisor her car during lunch hour recess or hanging out in the faculty lunch room.
y2pascoe police officers are already in place in high schools and some middle schools in NC . They are called "school resorce officers " . I respect your opinion but if they are " steps toward a police state " then we have already taken those steps here . Let me if I may , present something else to think about . These school resorce officers are not all decked out in black and armed with 18 different weapons and a one man wrecking crew which I think some may envision them as being . They are uniformed police officers but they are also our neighbors , our friends , our relatives , some good men and women who actually interact quite well with the kids and build relationships and friendships that sometimes last forever . The kids as a whole see them as part of school and nothing to be alarmed about and as a safty net if they witness something they would like to report . The kids also learn a good deal about respect - of everyone - from the officers and that cops are not just someone to be avoided or if your talking to one you must be in trouble . I'm not sure if I'm getting my point across but bottom line is the kids learn they are just like any other human being . They laugh , they help , they teach , they play , they cry , they are just like ... US . No disrespect at all to your opinion brother but I love having them there !!!
I don't for a moment expect it to happen. It is so contrary to everything we have come to embody. You will never hear this from a modern Liberal. But. Perhaps it is time to admit that habitually busted homes, children raised by daycare, a society whose central themes are greed and fornication, where the only difference between right and wrong is what you can get away with, where constant undeclared war is habitual, a society which insists on public atheism and constant denigration of father figures and abolishing punishment and undermining responsibility, which accepts foul mouthed angry chanted doggerel as music, bloodbaths as movies, hideous carnage as video games, which tolerates unethical businessmen, crooked politicians, egoistic media heroes... the whole incessant fetid drum beat ... is no way to inculcate good character. Character is key. Without civilized people things get uncivilized. There is a reason why traditional values became tradition.
Garbage in = garbage out.
No, Character & Integrity are the answer. Now, how?
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
This is an excerpt from a statement Joe Scarborough made on Morning Joe regarding the shooting in Newtown. I would highly recomend that anyone interested read the entire text.
The violence we see spreading from shopping malls in Oregon, to movie theaters in Colorado, to college campuses in Virginia, to elementary schools in Connecticut, is being spawned by the toxic brew of a violent pop culture, a growing mental health crisis and the proliferation of combat-styled guns.
Though entrenched special interests will try to muddy the issues, the cause of these sickening mass shootings is no longer a mystery to common-sense Americans. And blessedly, there are more common-sense Americans than there are special interests, even if it doesnt always seem that way. Good luck to the gun lobbyist or Hollywood lawyer who tries to blunt the righteous anger of ten million parents by hiding behind a twisted reading of our Bill of Rights.
I am a conservative Republican who received the NRAs highest ratings over 4 terms in Congress. I saw the debate over guns as a powerful, symbolic struggle between individual rights and government control. In the years after Waco and Ruby Ridge, the symbolism of that debate seemed even more powerful to my colleagues and me.
But the symbols of that ideological struggle have since been shattered by the harvest sown from violent, mind-numbing video games and gruesome Hollywood movies that dangerously desensitizes those who struggle with mental health challenges. Add military-styled weapons and high capacity magazines to that equation and tragedy can never be too far behind. There is no easy ideological way forward. If it were only so simple as to blame Hollywood or the NRA, then our task could be completed in no time. But I come to you this morning with a heavy heart and no easy answers. Still, I have spent the past few days grasping for solutions and struggling for answers, while daring to question my long held beliefs on these subjects.
I have always taken a libertarians approach to Hollywoods 1st Amendment rights and gun collectors 2nd Amendment rights. I stood by those libertarian beliefs after Columbine, Aurora and Arizona. Those young men who slaughtered innocents were crazy, after all, and they would have found another way to kill their victims if their guns of choice were not available.
But last Friday a chilling thought crossed my mind as I saw the Times Square ticker over ABC spit out the news of yet another tragic shooting in yet another tortured town by yet another twisted son of that community.
How could it be that I knew within seconds of reading that scrolling headline that the shooter would be an isolated middle class white male who spent his days on his computer playing video games? How did I know that it was far more likely that he had a mental condition than a rational motive? And how did I know the end of this news story before the reporting even began?
I knew the ending of that story because Ive seen it all too often before. I also knew that day that the ideologies of my past career were no longer relevant to the future that I want for my children.
Friday changed everything. It must change everything. We All must begin anew and demand that Washingtons old way of doing business is no longer acceptable. Entertainment moguls do not have an absolute right to glorify murder while spreading mayhem in young minds across America.
And our Bill of Rights does not guarantee gun manufacturers the absolute right to sell military-styled high-caliber semi-automatic combat assault rifles with high capacity magazines to whoever the hell they want.
One, this quoted text is a completely meaningless statement. What is military-styled? It's like the old "Assault Rifle" designation. I put a thumb stock on my varmit rifle, and now it is an illegal assault weapon? Any gun can kill. That is what they are made to do. That is the primary purpose of any weapon, to make anything at the wrong end of it dead. Trying to parse firearms with loaded words like Assault Weapon or Military Styled or Bushmaster MK2 Babykiller is just an attempt to create acceptable targets.
Two, it's not the video games, just like it wasn't the rap before that, or the violent movies before that, or the hard rock before that, or the comic books before that, or the jazz before that and so on and so on. A 20 something that plays video games? Color me shocked. We have had violence in our culture before we even had a culture. Some argue there is even more violence around in media today... and yet crime rates are down. Yes, people do terrible things. But the reason it seems everywhere is our exposure to news is everywhere. Not because our culture has suddenly gone back to our head clubbing ways of old.
Third, and I will be as brief as I can with this. Gun ownership in the US has been trending upward while the violent crime rate has trended downward since the 90s. Conversely, gun ownership in the UK has been trending downward while the violent crime rate has continued to go up. This is a mere correlation, and does not prove a causation either way, but it strongly indicates that decreased gun presence does not lead to decreases in violent crime or vice versa.
Personally, I think a lot of what happens in tragedies like this is grief so overwhelms us and we so desire to find someone to blame, something to rally against, anything to reassure us that humans cannot be such monsters, that they were influenced by some outside force... That fall into the trap of 'fixing' issues that don't exist instead of grieving and supporting those that were hurt.
First, mental illness is too big a problem here. There are many reasons for this and you can point to inferior health care all you want, but in the end it's mostly that people need to start keeping score again. Kids need to lose, they need to fail. So that their first loss isn't a highschool breakup and their first failure isn't on a college essay assignment. People can't handle that. They break.
Next, we need to stop legislating everyone based on the needs of the handicapped, and I mean that in a very broad way. Just because some people would eat trans fats at every meal doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to treat myself now and then. Just because some people would lose their life savings doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to gamble responsibly.