San Francisco Loses Gun Ban Suit

Looks like stupid gun bans are getting costly:

The City of San Francisco itself legally stipulated that its ordinance banning gun possession on county owned or controlled property cannot be applied to the public housing properties, even though Mayor Gavin Newsom announced at a May 2007 press conference that the new city ordinance would ban gun possession there. By excluding the application of the ordinance and removing the lease provision, the right of public housing residents to choose to own a gun to defend themselves or their families has been restored.

The settlements bring a successful conclusion to the lawsuit, filed June 2008. The decision to repeal SFHA’s lease provisions banning firearms came despite initial claims by Mayor Newsom that the lawsuit would be “absolutely defended,” and comes after initial claims by the San Francisco City Attorney that the lawsuit was “frivolous” and that the City would seek sanctions. No sanctions were sought, nor could they have been.

The San Francisco concessions follow similar gun ban repeals by several Illinois towns that also faced NRA lawsuits filed immediately after the Supreme Court confirmed in late June that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.

NRA-ILA and CRPA will continue to pursue other cases to resolve the incorporation issue. In fact, a California case challenging a gun show ban ordinance that has been partially funded by the NRA for years (Nordyke v. Alameda County) was recently argued before the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a decision is forthcoming.

Now that it has firmly established by the "Heller decision" that firearms ownership is an individual right, incoprporation, which applies the complete Bill of Rights to the States is needed to make the cirlce complete. It's good to see tha the NRA is fianlly joining the cause and driving that point home. $800,000 in court costs and attorney's fees is expensive for a losing proposition.

New DOI Rule Lifts Ban On Firearms In National Parks

People with CCW licenses will soon be able to carry concealed, loaded guns in most national parks and wildlife refuges. Other citizens without the papers must still go unarmed. This was a particularly bad limitation in Florida, since there were many main roads which traversed National Parks. The Everglades National Park, one of the most remote, was one of these. It is especially bad out in a boat, since there is no cell phone coverage, and VHF radio does not have the range.

The Bush administration said Friday it is overturning a 25-year-old federal rule that severely restricts loaded guns in national parks.

"If you can carry (a gun) on Main Street, you are allowed to carry in a national park," said Chris Paolino. a spokesman for the Interior Department.

The Interior Department rule overturns a Reagan-era regulation that has restricted loaded guns in parks and wildlife refuges. The previous regulation required that firearms be unloaded and placed somewhere that is not easily accessible, such as in a car trunk.

Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty said the new rule respects a long tradition of states and the federal government working together on natural resource issues.

The regulation allows individuals to carry concealed firearms in federal parks and wildlife refuges to the same extent they can lawfully do so under state law, Laverty said, adding that the approach is in line with rules adopted by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. Those agencies let visitors carry weapons consistent with applicable federal and state laws

Read About It: WashingtonPost.com

Oh yeah, The office of President elect Obama, isn't that name and title just a hoot, hasn't said whether he will overturn the rule. BTW, has Obama ever said the word freedom? No? Ever wonder why?

Obama On Second Amendment

Barak Obama: “If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it. Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress."

Sounds like Obama, like most liberals, does not consider the U.S. Constitution an impediment. Only an inconvenience, in need of a way to be found to get around it's limits on government.

New National Park Rules Proposed

Maybe going down to the sticks in the Everglades National Park may not be as dangerous as it is today, if the new rules make it into the books.

The proposed rule was filed today and will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, and can be found online at: http://federalregister.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2008-09606_PI.pdf. It provides sixty days for public comment.

These new regulations will provide uniformity across our nation’s federal lands and put an end to the patchwork of regulations that governed different lands managed by different federal agencies. In the past, only Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service lands allowed the carrying of firearms, while lands managed by DOI did not.

The current regulations on possession, carry or transportation of loaded or uncased firearms in national parks were proposed in 1982 and finalized in 1983. Similar restrictions apply in national wildlife refuges. The NRA has long held that amendments to those regulations were needed to reflect the changed legal situations with respect to state laws on carrying firearms.

As of the end of 1982, only six states routinely allowed citizens to carry handguns for self-defense. Currently, 48 states have a process for issuing licenses or permits to allow law-abiding citizens to legally carry firearms for self-defense. Two states do not require permits, 38 states have a “shall-issue” permit process, and eight have a discretionary process for issuing permits.

More here.

Supreme Court To Hear DC Gun Ban Case

Fred Thompson weighs in ...

The Second Amendment does more than guarantee to all Americans an unalienable right to defend one’s self. William Blackstone, the 18th century English legal commentator whose works were well-read and relied on by the Framers of our Constitution, observed that the right to keep and bear firearms arises from “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.” This view, reflected in the Second Amendment, promotes both self-defense and liberty.

Rudy Giuliani weighs in ...

"I strongly believe that Judge Silberman’s decision deserves to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Parker decision is an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean."

Mitt Romney weighs in ...

"It is my hope that the Supreme Court will reaffirm the individual right to keep and bear arms as enshrined in the Bill of Rights and protect law abiding gun owners everywhere. To further guard this fundamental liberty, as President, I will take care to appoint judges who will not legislate from the bench but will instead strictly interpret the Constitution."

More info here.

Here is the way the Court phrased the granted issue:

“Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

The first listed section bars registration of pistols if not registered before Sept. 24, 1976; the second bars carrying an unlicensed pistol, and the third requires that any gun kept at home must be unloaded and disassembled or bound by a lock, such as one that prevents the trigger from operating.

The Court did not mention any other issues that it might address as questions of its jurisdiction to reach the ultimate question: did the one individual who was found to have a right to sue — Dick Anthony Heller, a D.C. resident — have a right to challenge all three of the sections of the local law cited in the Court’s order, and, is the District of Columbia, as a federal enclave, even covered by the Second Amendment. While neither of those issues is posed in the grant order, the Court may have to be satisfied that the answer to both is affirmative before it would move on to the substantive question about the scope of any right protected by the Amendment.

The D.C. Circuit ruled that the Amendment does apply to the District because of its federal status, subject to all provisions of the Constitution. At this point, therefore, it appears that the Court’s review may not reach a major question — does the Second Amendment also protect individual rights against state and local government gun control laws? But a ruling by the Court recognizing an individual right to have a gun almost surely would lead to new test cases on whether to extend the Amendment’s guarantee so that it applied to state and local laws, too. The Court last confronted that issue in Presser v. illinois, in 1886, finding that the Amendment was not binding on the states.

Some observers who read the Court’s order closely may suggest that the Court is already inclined toward an “individual rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment. That is because the order asks whether the three provisions of the D.C. gun control law violate “the Second Amendment rights of individuals.” But that phrasing may reveal very little about whether the Amendment embraces an individual right to have a gun for private use. Only individuals, of course, would be serving in the militia, and there is no doubt that the Second Amendment provides those individuals a right to have a gun for that type of service. The question the Court will be deciding is, if there are individuals who want to keep pistols for use at home, does the Second Amendment guarantee them that right. Just because the Second Amendment protects some individual right does not settle the nature of that right.

One of the interesting subsets of the question the Court will be confronting is whether the 1939 case of U.S. v. Miller is a precedent for what the Second Amendment means — individual or collective right. If that decision did find in favor of a collective right, the current Court would have to decide whether this was a binding precedent, or whether it should be overruled. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., has already taken a stand on that question. At his nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said that “the Miller case sidestepped” the issue of whether the Amendment protected a collective or an individual right. He added: “An argument was made back in 1939 that this provides only a collective right, and the Court didn’t address that….So people try to read into the tea leaves about Miller and what would come out on this issue, but that’s still very much an open issue.”

The local law at issue in Heller has been discussed widely as a sweeping ban on private possession or use of handguns. But the Court order granting review took it a step further: the one section that will be at issue that goes beyond handguns is the provision that requires that any gun kept at home be unloaded and disassembled, or at least be locked. Thus, that provision also applies to rifles and shotguns kept at home, in terms of whether those weapons would remain “functional” in time of emergency if that provision were upheld. That part of the order appeared to widen the inquiry in a way that the local residents who challenged the law had wanted.

NRA, Right All Along?

JONATHAN TURLEY: A liberal's lament: The NRA might be right after all.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press. The statement of a purpose was intended to reaffirm the power of the states and the people against the central government. At the time, many feared the federal government and its national army. Gun ownership was viewed as a deterrent against abuse by the government, which would be less likely to mess with a well-armed populace.

Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right — consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment.

None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the Second Amendment was the dividing line between the enlightenment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that ... here's the really hard part ... the NRA may have been right.

Read the whole thing. And you might want to read my survey of Second Amendment thinking, as well as this piece on what it would mean to take the "states' rights" argument seriously. As Tom Lehrer said, we'll all stay nice and calm, when Alabama gets the bomb.