For those not following the case, here is a summary from wikipedia.

District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, is a case pending before the Supreme Court of the United States. It is an appeal from Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007), a decision in which the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit became the first federal appeals court in the United States to rule that a firearm ban was an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the second to expressly interpret the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to possess firearms for private use.

The stepping stone to the case was a security guard who filed for permission with DC to keep a firearm at home for the purposes of protection. The denial of and subsequent ruling by the DC district court is the impetus to the current Supreme Court review.

On March 18th the Supreme Court heard oral arguments. If you’re at all interested in this case I suggest listening to the audio and/or reading the transcript here.

Here’s where I make an ideological argument, but honestly, I can’t be bothered. It usually just devolves into anecdotes and doctored numbers that purposely ignore all the motivations for violence. In that frame of mind, I’ll just post some anecdotes from some interesting sources, that conveniently support my own view.

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For those not in the know this is the case that will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, beginning this week, to determine the constitutionality of the DC gun ban. Here’s some snippets from the Washington Post in this article.

Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it examines whether the District’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

The nine justices, none of whom has ever ruled directly on the amendment’s meaning, will consider a part of the Bill of Rights that has existed without a definitive interpretation for more than 200 years.

Regardless of your individual position on gun rights, you should read this article to know what is being decided. There are so many arguments for either side in the quesiton of gun rights that I’m not going to comment very much, as it would amount to yelling into the wind.

I believe them to be instruments of equality and revolution, and fundamental to true freedom from oppression in any sense of the word.

God made men, Samuel Colt made men equal.

Tags: gun,guns,law,supreme court
Categories: BJ, Philosophy etc
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