Keep those eye's open!!
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 30, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it would decide whether state and local gun control laws may be challenged under the Second Amendment.
The court also agreed to hear nine other cases from among the appeals that had piled up over its summer break, including one concerning the constitutionality of an antiterrorism law that is a favorite tool of federal prosecutors. That law makes it a crime to provide some forms of “material support” to organizations said to be engaged in terrorism.
The gun-control case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, addresses a question that was left open last year when the court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms rather than a collective right tied to state militias.
Last year’s decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, concerned only federal laws, and struck down parts of the gun control law in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave. The court ruled that the law violated the Second Amendment by barring law-abiding people from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.
Several Supreme Court decisions, all more than a century old, have said that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, seemed to cast doubt on the continuing validity of those decisions in a footnote, saying that one of them “also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the states,” a view later rejected by the court.
The new case was brought by residents of Chicago who say their city’s handgun ban is identical to the one struck down in Heller. In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, affirmed the dismissal of the new case, saying it was up to the Supreme Court to overrule its own precedents if it wished to do so. Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court, added that it was not certain whether or how the Supreme Court might apply the Second Amendment to the states.
The Supreme Court has ruled that most, but not all, of the protections of the Bill of Rights apply to the states as well as the federal government, because of the due-process clause of Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War. The exceptions include the Fifth Amendment requirement for indictment by a grand jury and the Eighth Amendment ban on excessive bail.
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/us/01scotus.html?hp[/URL]
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 30, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it would decide whether state and local gun control laws may be challenged under the Second Amendment.
The court also agreed to hear nine other cases from among the appeals that had piled up over its summer break, including one concerning the constitutionality of an antiterrorism law that is a favorite tool of federal prosecutors. That law makes it a crime to provide some forms of “material support” to organizations said to be engaged in terrorism.
The gun-control case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, addresses a question that was left open last year when the court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms rather than a collective right tied to state militias.
Last year’s decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, concerned only federal laws, and struck down parts of the gun control law in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave. The court ruled that the law violated the Second Amendment by barring law-abiding people from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.
Several Supreme Court decisions, all more than a century old, have said that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, seemed to cast doubt on the continuing validity of those decisions in a footnote, saying that one of them “also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the states,” a view later rejected by the court.
The new case was brought by residents of Chicago who say their city’s handgun ban is identical to the one struck down in Heller. In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, affirmed the dismissal of the new case, saying it was up to the Supreme Court to overrule its own precedents if it wished to do so. Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court, added that it was not certain whether or how the Supreme Court might apply the Second Amendment to the states.
The Supreme Court has ruled that most, but not all, of the protections of the Bill of Rights apply to the states as well as the federal government, because of the due-process clause of Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War. The exceptions include the Fifth Amendment requirement for indictment by a grand jury and the Eighth Amendment ban on excessive bail.
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/us/01scotus.html?hp[/URL]
