Monday, March 16, 2009
About nine months ago, the Supreme Court breathed new life into the Second Amendment, ruling for the first time that it protects an individual right to own guns. Since then, lower federal courts have decided more than 80 cases interpreting the decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, and it is now possible to make a preliminary assessment of its impact.
So far, Heller is firing blanks.
The courts have upheld federal laws banning gun ownership by people convicted of felonies and some misdemeanors, by illegal aliens and by drug addicts. They have upheld laws banning machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. They have upheld laws making it illegal to carry guns near schools or in post offices. And they have upheld laws concerning concealed and unregistered weapons.
“The Heller case is a landmark decision that has not changed very much at all,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who keeps a running tally of decisions based on the case. “To date, the federal courts have not invalidated a single gun control law on the basis of the Second Amendment since Heller.”
Heller itself struck down parts of the District of Columbia’s gun control law, the strictest in the nation. The case was brought by law-abiding people who wanted to keep guns in their homes for self-defense. The cases that have followed it tend to concern more focused laws and less attractive gun owners.
Harvey C. Jackson IV, for instance, argued that he had a constitutional right to carry a gun while selling drugs in a dangerous neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill. The federal appeals court in Chicago was unimpressed.
REad full article here. [Brooks Holland]