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DC v Heller Decision

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 2008-06-28 08:22.

As you've likely read everywhere, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, June 26, 2008 on DC v Heller. They held the decision of the lower court, commanding DC to give Mr. Heller a permit to possess his pistol in his house, assuming he hadn't lost his right to do so due to a felony or mental illness. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion for the 5-4 majority. Justice Stevens wrote the dissent. I skimmed the opinion, but not the dissent. The general philosophy there was good. We have an individual right to keep and bear arms (properly defined as possessing and carrying around), which predates and is protected by the Second Amendment. But, and it's a big but, the state may restrict this right with licensing and registration, and concealed carry may be restricted. Typical narrow ruling that really only forces "shall issue" for DC's licenses, but will likely eventually force all state licensing to be "shall issue". It might also make it difficult to ban open carry. Scalia also forbade the banning of whole classes of generally-used weapons, but whether this will be found to forbid so-called "assault weapons" bans remains to be seen.

Bottom line: They won't be coming door to door to collect our guns any time soon, so there shouldn't be a need for a shooting war on that account. Had the decision gone with the minority, I would be expecting the war to begin soon.

Here are a bunch of links I collected:

( categories: RKBA )

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