If you think the District of Columbia's ban on all functional firearms in all homes is a reasonable regulation under the Second Amendment, you'll love the friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Bush administration in D.C. v. Heller, now before the Supreme Court.
The Department of Justice's (DOJ) previously stated position is that the Second Amendment secures a right of individuals not restricted to militia service. But astonishingly, the Justice Department now recommends an elastic standard for determining whether a handgun ban is reasonable. According to the DOJ, the courts should consider the nature and functional adequacy of available alternatives. That may sound sensible at first blush, but it could be fatal to the Heller litigation.
Here's the rub: The Justice Department says the Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the D.C. ban might cast doubt on the constitutionality of existing federal legislation, including machine-gun regulations. So the administration urged that Heller be returned to the lower courts for appropriate fact-finding to determine whether rifles and shotguns in the home, as permitted by the D.C. Code, are an adequate substitute for handguns.
That came as quite a shock to those of us who believed the administration's professed fealty to gunowners' rights. What we got instead was a recommendation that could be the death knell for the only Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court in nearly 70 years.
Read the rest at the link, please.
This is serious business. If you are a gun owner living anywhere in the US you need to keep on top of this case. This could open the door to the very fear that most, if not all, gun owners have. This could mean the loss of our right to keep and bear arms. Should this not go our way it will, at the very least, be used to attack our gun rights for years to come.
Go here to check deeper into this. And while you are there, sign up.
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