Make your prediction on DC vs Heller

What will the outcome of DC vs Heller be?

  • Total voters
    89
  • Poll closed .
C

Crosshair

New member
Time to place your bets before the first arguments for DC vs Heller are heard on March 18th. The poll will close in 2 days.

I say 7-2 Individual or better.

As for how they word it, I think the ruling will be worded broadly so that many gun laws in this country will becomes vulnerable to court challenges.

So, what does everyone else think?
 
Individual right with a narrow ruling, resulting in decades of future litigation to flesh out the individual right.
 
It will be very diificult, in my legal novice opinion, to write a credible opinion against individual right. I think 2 justices are without concern for credible anymore however. Any guesses on the 2?
 
I see it this way...

Very likely to support the intent of the founding fathers are:
Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas

Most likely to oppose same and lean towards the "collective" rights theory are:
Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer

Which leaves us with possible wild-cards:
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens

Some of you are surprised that I included Stevens as a wild-card. Stevens, though he has a "liberal" viewpoint on many issues, is the oldest serving Justice and grew up in a world of values much different than we see today. He often invokes patrotism and the ideals we fought for in WW-II into his opinions. I think there is at least a 25-40% chance he may side with a traditional interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
 
8-1 individual right,

I think that the Court will say that restrictions must pass strict scrutiny as with any other fundamental right enumerated in the BoR.

Hopefully, thier decision will make reference to the consistent usage of the phrase: "...the people..." elsewhere in the BoR as describing individual rights.
 
Most likely to oppose same and lean towards the "collective" rights theory are:
Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer
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I believe Ginsburg is on the record in at least one instance as adhering to an interpertation of the second amendment as describing an individual right.

From Muscarello v. United States, 118 S.Ct. 1911 (1998):

That case concerned a 5 year sentencing enhancement for carrying a firearm during commission of a drug crime, and majority held that transporting drugs in a car which had a gun in glove compartment was sufficient.

She dissented, and noted with regard to "carry,"

"Surely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution's Second Amendment ("keep and bear Arms") (emphasis added) and Black's Law Dictionary, at 214, indicate: "wear, bear, or carry ... upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.""
 
probably favorable

I'm just hoping its a favorable decision. However I also realise that if it is favorable the issues will go on and on for years. Like every controversial decision some jerk is going to challange the application of the decision in every possible scenario. We Know the type: a court decision where a judge says its OK to carry a gun in your car and then some yokel arrest a guy for having one in a pick-up truck claiming a truck is not a car. And on and on it goes till enough returns to the court happen to get most people in conformance with the original ruling.
 
The baby will be cut in half. Nothing will change.

After listening to the rhetoric presented by the interested parties, and their various friends briefs, I believe the supreme court will apply a template similar to that expressed in the DUI checkpoint decision, which, if you remember, gutted the fourth amendment.

Namely, that the .gov has a "compelling safety interest" in preventing gun deaths, that trumps the constitutional RKBA.

In other words, much flowery verbage will be offered up in support of the individual intent of the 2nd amendment, but it will end up being worth about as much as a bucket of warm spit. So, obsessing about the split on this question is missing the point, eh?

The "compelling safety interest" will end up justifying every gun control measure now in place, and every wet dream Sarah Brady and Josh Sugarmann can manage to bring before the new receptive dem. administration.

Round about June, when the decision is released, it will just be another Rorschach test, reflecting everyone's predispositions on government and authority in general. Those who normally genuflect to "the rule of law" will hail it as some incarnation of genius, preserving the intent of the constitution, while at the same time rendering it practically meaningless. :confused: They will expound on the nuanced application in states, cities, and districts, as we are reduced to owning only trigger-locked pellet guns in our homes.

Among freedom loving citizens, to quote Lawrence Thayer:

"...there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out."
 
No one will know the SC decision until June anyway. All that you'll hear today are oral arguments and questions from the Justices to clarify fine points. Gotta wait until June. 7-2.:)
 
Pretty much all I do is read cases and study stuff like this and I don't have a clue.

If I had to bet on it, I would put money on a fragmented, incomprehensible opinion that says it's an individual fundamental right, but throws some curveball to maintain the status quo. "This particular right can be infringed if factors X and Y are balanced against public policy concerns A, B, and C." or some such nonsense.

Then everyone will keep arguing about what the heck it means for another century or so.
 
Pretty much all I do is mess about with boats, and I agree with B Lahey.

My vote: 9 will say it's an individual right, but 5 of those will want some standard of review lower than "strict scrutiny." We'll "win" by getting rid of the old militia argument, and this new standard might even be good enough that the DC handgun ban goes away, but it won't apply to machine guns in the end.
 
My vote: 9 will say it's an individual right, but 5 of those will want some standard of review lower than "strict scrutiny." We'll "win" by getting rid of the old militia argument, and this new standard might even be good enough that the DC handgun ban goes away, but it won't apply to machine guns in the end.
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I doubt even the Supreme Court is dumb enough to apply a lower standard of review to "shall not be infringed." That would be almost as absurd as a "collective right" decision.
 
I have no idea how this will be viewed and decided by the Supreme Court but I walk away with two thoughts on the this.

First - The Brady Center has prepared a legal brief to be used during the proceedings. I'm in the process of reading it and it scares the hell out of me. I'm not a lawyer, but I find it interesting and think that everyone should read through it. I find their arguments very alarming.

Here is a link:

http://bradycampaign.org/

Second - I checked out the NRA website and didn't see any thing mentioned. I might have over looked it, but I would think that with today being a large test to the 2nd amendment that it might be in the forefront of the NRA's agenda. As a member, I have to wonder what the NRA is more concerned about than this.
 
What's so alarming about it? Looks at first glance to be the same historically- and grammatically-unsupported piffle that all the other briefs for the appellant have been peddling.

Alan Gura whips the Brady Center's Glenn Reynold's butt thusly:

http://www.fed-soc.org/debates/dbtid.9/default.asp
So we should ignore those parts of the Constitution that do not "establish justice" or "ensure domestic tranquility?" And if a court determines Cornell’s latest book doesn’t "promote progress," will he lose his copyright?Blackstone’s quoted statement about the utility of preambles contains its own preamble: "If words happen to still be dubious. . ." What if words are not dubious? What if they are crystal clear, e.g., "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed?""Bear arms" was frequently used in a non-military context. Just because soldiers can "bear arms" doesn’t mean that all usage of "bear arms" is exclusively military, any more than "wear boots" would be exclusively military because one might find references to soldiers who "wear boots." Rebutting this logical fallacy doesn’t require a hundred examples. One suffices plenty. James Madison, the Second Amendment’s author, introduced a bill in Virginia’s legislature, drafted by Jefferson, that would have punished a game violator if he were to "bear a gun out of his inclosed ground, unless whilst performing military duty." See A Bill for Preservation of Deer (1785), in 2 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 443 (J. Boyd ed.1950-1982).Of course our case has little to do with bearing arms, our clients are interested in keeping them. Is "keep" also an exclusively military term? Prof. Cornell’s reading of Story is strained. Story is plainly stating that individuals should keep private arms to dissuade the government from acting on tyrannical impulses, and resist the government if it does indeed become tyrannical. Story decries a perceived lack of interest in the people keeping guns and practicing with them on a regular basis. He’d be rightly proud of our clients’ efforts. It is spurious to suggest that Story bemoans the lack of government regulation over firearms.
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