Chicago Gun Ban Ruled Unconstitutional

I know this case had been talked about in other threads, but thought it was important enough to warrant it’s own.

[quote]From Reason.com: Today the Supreme Court ruled that Chicago’s handgun ban violates the right to keep and bear arms. The 5-to-4 decision confirms that the Second Amendment binds state and local governments as well as federal domains such as the District of Columbia, which had a similar gun law that the Court overturned in the landmark 2008 case D.C. v. Heller.

The Court ruled that the Second Amendment, like most other protections in the Bill of Rights, applies to the states by way of the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. It rejected an invitation to revive the amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, a more plausible basis for incorporation.[/quote]

This was a narrow win for all freedom loving citizens of this country, and for the constitution itself. I can’t wait to hear all the gun hating libs crying about this one.

5-4 what a fucking joke.

Great day for individual liberty!!

Sadly, they will probably do like DC did and combat the Supreme Court ruling with enough local red tape to choke a moose. Yeah you can have a gun, if you jump thru enough hoops.

if you like reading, that is. . . .

[quote]dk44 wrote:
5-4 what a fucking joke.[/quote]

This one should have been 9-0.

[quote]dmaddox wrote:

[quote]dk44 wrote:
5-4 what a fucking joke.[/quote]

This one should have been 9-0.[/quote]

Agreed. Truly sad that there’s four justices sitting on the court right now that don’t think you have the right to own a firearm.

[quote]dmaddox wrote:

[quote]dk44 wrote:
5-4 what a fucking joke.[/quote]

This one should have been 9-0.[/quote]

Shows how far we have fallen.

The coming legal battles in some states should be interesting.

Scalia rips the dissenter’s POV to shreds! It’s an awesome read - legal beeyatch slap!

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Scalia rips the dissenter’s POV to shreds! It’s an awesome read - legal beeyatch slap![/quote]

Do you have a page number?

There had been some discussion on this site regarding the appropriate route for incorporation. Would someone be able to better explain the issues at hand for a (reasonably) intelligent layman?

[quote]From Reason.com : …Justice Antonin Scalia, an outspoken critic of substantive due process, has this to say in his concurring opinion:

Despite my misgivings about Substantive Due Process as an original matter, I have acquiesced in the Court's incorporation of certain guarantees in the Bill of Rights "because it is both long established and narrowly limited." This case does not require me to reconsider that view, since straightforward application of settled doctrine suffices to decide it.

In his concurring opinion, by contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas makes the case for enforcing the Privileges or Immunities Clause:

Applying what is now a well-settled test, the plurality opinion concludes that the right to keep and bear arms applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause because it is "fundamental" to the American "scheme of ordered liberty"...and "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.'"...I agree with that description of the right. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to "process." Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause....

This Court's substantive due process framework fails to account for both the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the history that led to its adoption, filling that gap with a jurisprudence devoid of a guiding principle. I believe the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment offers a superior alternative, and that a return to that meaning would allow this Court to enforce the rights the Fourteenth Amendment is designed to protect with greater clarity and predictability than the substantive due process framework has so far managed.[/quote]

Gee I wonder which way Kagan would have voted…

Hopefully this is the first step towards nationwide constitutional carry.

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
Scalia rips the dissenter’s POV to shreds! It’s an awesome read - legal beeyatch slap![/quote]

Do you have a page number?[/quote]

I’d have to look back - I think it was between pages 40-50. I’ll check in a minute

Pangloss— I think Scalia’s opinion is about 46 pages in. Directly after Alito’s opinion.

Just finished reading Scalia’s opinion and the dissenting. Fuck me, Scalia is a razor. No matter what you think of his individual positions, his legal and historical mind is razor sharp, and it’s for that reason that he is so respected as a Justice, even by his many detractors.

Fantastic opinion, and it pretty much sums up my problems with those legal dissents.

Scalia–"

JUSTICE STEVENS moves on to the “most basic” con-
straint on subjectivity his theory offers: that he would
"esche[w] attempts to provide any all-purpose, top-down,
totalizing theory of “liberty.” " Post, at 22. The notion that
the absence of a coherent theory of the Due Process Clause
will somehow curtail judicial caprice is at war with reason.
Indeterminacy means opportunity for courts to impose
whatever rule they like; it is the problem, not the solution.
The idea that interpretive pluralism would reduce courts’
ability to impose their will on the ignorant masses is not
merely naive, but absurd. If there are no right answers,
there are no wrong answers either.

JUSTICE STEVENS also argues that requiring courts to
show “respect for the democratic process” should serve as
a constraint. Post, at 23. That is true, but JUSTICE
STEVENS would have them show respect in an extraordi-
nary manner. In his view, if a right “is already being
given careful consideration in, and subjected to ongoing
calibration by, the States, judicial enforcement may not be
appropriate.” Ibid. In other words, a right, such as the
right to keep and bear arms, that has long been recognized
but on which the States are considering restrictions, ap-
parently deserves less protection, while a privilege the
political branches (instruments of the democratic process)
have withheld entirely and continue to withhold, deserves
more. That topsy-turvy approach conveniently accom-
plishes the objective of ensuring that the rights this Court
held protected in Casey, Lawrence, and other such cases fit
the theory but at the cost of insulting rather than re-
specting the democratic process. "

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Did anyone happen to look at the/a dissenting opinion? How does a justice take the words of the 2nd Amendment and contort them into a pretzel that denies individuals in Chicago the right to keep and bear arms? How?[/quote]

read it twice and still trying to twist my brain into tapioca to figure it out . . .