Wednesday, June 25, 2008

District of Columbia vs. Heller

For those of you not keeping up with the news, the Supreme Court has announced that tomorrow they will release their decisions on the final three cases remaining for this session. One of those cases is District of Columbia vs. Heller, which represents a very historical look at the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.

Heller is a security guard who lives in D.C, and went to court to prove that D.C.'s handgun ban was a violation of his 2nd Amendment rights to Keep and Bear Arms. At the moment, the standing ruling from the appeals court is that the District's ban is unconstitutional.

The general consensus is that the Supreme Court will uphold that the 2nd Amendment applies to individuals, and not the state as a collective (the collectivist argument has long been used by anti-gun groups to support strict gun-control). The question that remains at this point is just how far the Supreme Court will go in applying that individual right in light of the thousands upon thousands of gun laws on the books.

Decisions will start being released at 10am Eastern time. Here's to hoping that the Court will stand up and do the right thing for once. Current rumor, however, puts the decision at around 100 pages, which in my opinion doesn't bode well for a decisive ruling.

We'll see.

Current Quote

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." – Thomas Jefferson