D.C. Files Gun Ban Brief
"D.C. Attorney General Peter J. Nickles said lawyers for the city filed their final brief with the Supreme Court in the city's effort to overturn a lower court ruling tossing out the District's 30-year-old ban on handguns," The Washington Times reports. "Mr. Nickels said at a news conference this morning that he was confident in the District's chances of winning the case and called the city's brief 'the gold standard.'"
The Cato Institute's amicus brief argues: "The English right to bear arms emerged in 1689, and in the century thereafter courts, Blackstone, and other authorities recognized it. They recognized a personal, individual right. It could not have been a federalism provision, and none of them conditioned it on military service -- depredations by the king's militia having provided one reason for it. Pre-existing restrictions fell away as the right developed after 1689, such that by the Second Amendment's adoption Americans had inherited a broadly applicable and robust individual right that had been settled for at least fifty years. This right of course had limits, but they did not intrude on the core right to keep firearms to defend home and family: They confirmed it."
In "Unholster the 2nd Amendment," Cato senior fellow Robert Levy writes: "Significantly, the 2nd Amendment refers explicitly to 'the right of the people,' not the rights of states or the militia. And the Bill of Rights is the section of our Constitution that deals exclusively with individual liberties. That is why there has been an outpouring of legal scholarship -- some from prominent liberals -- that recognizes the 2nd Amendment as securing the right of each individual to keep and bear arms.
"Considering the text, purpose, structure and history of our Constitution, and the clear weight of legal scholarship, it's time for the Supreme Court to revitalize the 2nd Amendment, which has lain dormant for nearly seven decades."
"D.C. Attorney General Peter J. Nickles said lawyers for the city filed their final brief with the Supreme Court in the city's effort to overturn a lower court ruling tossing out the District's 30-year-old ban on handguns," The Washington Times reports. "Mr. Nickels said at a news conference this morning that he was confident in the District's chances of winning the case and called the city's brief 'the gold standard.'"
The Cato Institute's amicus brief argues: "The English right to bear arms emerged in 1689, and in the century thereafter courts, Blackstone, and other authorities recognized it. They recognized a personal, individual right. It could not have been a federalism provision, and none of them conditioned it on military service -- depredations by the king's militia having provided one reason for it. Pre-existing restrictions fell away as the right developed after 1689, such that by the Second Amendment's adoption Americans had inherited a broadly applicable and robust individual right that had been settled for at least fifty years. This right of course had limits, but they did not intrude on the core right to keep firearms to defend home and family: They confirmed it."
In "Unholster the 2nd Amendment," Cato senior fellow Robert Levy writes: "Significantly, the 2nd Amendment refers explicitly to 'the right of the people,' not the rights of states or the militia. And the Bill of Rights is the section of our Constitution that deals exclusively with individual liberties. That is why there has been an outpouring of legal scholarship -- some from prominent liberals -- that recognizes the 2nd Amendment as securing the right of each individual to keep and bear arms.
"Considering the text, purpose, structure and history of our Constitution, and the clear weight of legal scholarship, it's time for the Supreme Court to revitalize the 2nd Amendment, which has lain dormant for nearly seven decades."