HELLER V. DC, SCOTUS ARGUMENTS LIVE!!

The Supreme Court does not allow cameras into the courtroom.

We should save this thread to see how close you are to the actual decision when it comes down.

I'm listening to this argument, and I've heard it before. Anyone who argues that Amendment II does not grant an individual's right to bear and keep arms is willfully ignorant and/or dishonest.

You can argue that that right is improper and shouldn't be granted, but don't like between your teeth.

The ultimate authority of any state is the people, and as such, the people have the right to the defense against tyranny of the state. Did we not have the right to rebel and defend ourselves against the Crown, or did the Crown have the right to protect us against foreign powers?

The answer is both, and if you can't see that, you're blind.

I'm reasonably certain the SCOTUS sets their own policy in regards to their courtroom.

I wouldn't really be shocked if the Supreme Court directly strikes down portions of the D.C. law, even though I don't particularly expect it. However, if the Court does so it won't announce an easily applicable standard that will offer good guidance to lower courts in deciding whether various regulations are permissible. We'll end up with tens of thousands of cases making their way through the courts at all levels, with all kinds of contradictory results, until the Supreme Court takes another gun case and punts again.

In short, while I'm not overly confident in the specifics of my prediction, I'd bet heavily on a decision that no one ends up liking.

Personally, my feelings on this case probably agree with no one else's. I think that the claim that the Second Amendment protects an individual right is based in really bad and dangerous legal reasoning--any argument of first impression that's nearly universally laughed at for 200 years before people start to take it seriously counts as really bad legal reasoning IMO when the adoption of the argument isn't based on a significant change in circumstances; the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment is a complete denial of the common law style evolution of constitutional reasoning that has been the biggest single factor allowing the Constitution to work for so long--and it's unfortunate that the claim hasn't been just laughed out of court. On the other hand, I'm a big believer in the virtues of the Ninth Amendment and of substantive Due Process, and I'd be more than happy to see the D.C. law and similar laws struck down on Fifth/Ninth/Fourteenth Amendment grounds just because of being so manifestly ineffective and silly that they can't pass the muster of even rational basis scrutiny, much less a more appropriate standard that would, IMO, fall somewhere between rational basis and intermediate scrutiny.

Apparently you haven't seen the original proposed text of the second amendment, where gun ownership was not a right but rather a duty.

I have seen it, but apparently you haven't:

There's no duty to own guns in the originally proposed text, except as implicit in the duty to military service. The main difference between the original proposal and what we ended up with was the striking of a conscientious objector clause, a clause that even more clearly indicates how the amendment was intended to be tied closely to military and militia service.

In any event, you're being nonresponsive. We still have nearly 200 years in which no court or academic took the idea of an individual right seriously, 200 years of laws restricting gun ownership in ways that would contradict an individual right, and a Fourteenth Amendment--the tool through which such a right would be extended as against the states-- passed by people who had just quite explicitly warred to disarm Americans and didn't believe in an individual right to bear arms. Tossing out that history is a very dangerous precedent that you'd be utterly appalled by in any other context, and it's also completely unnecessary for finding just about any gun control law to be unconstitutional.

Second Amendment fetishism results in bad law and dangerous precedent, where an incremental broadening of Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights could result in the same laws being struck down without the hideous rejection of the relevance of history and of the text of the militia clause. The only reason to strike down the D.C. law and similar laws through the Second Amendment rather than through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments is because of a desire to turn back the clock on Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections.

I'm sensing they'll come up with a rule - probably rational basis, or intermediate scrutiny - can't imagine Strict Scrutiny - remand it to the district court for failing to make the factual finding necessary to rule on the newly minted rule and in 2 years we may have a specific decision.

Liet, what is the militia comprised of?

We really need a new amendment to clear up this issue.

Don't encourage them. They've already depopulated us with abortion.

Away with ye!

Arrrr.... matey?

We have laws that restrict gun ownership being an individual right?

Wow, that's interesting, cause I own 3 guns.

Also, in that text you submitted, which is the original wording of the proposed second amendment, had something very important in it.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, but no one interprets that one literally either. Textualism isn't the end all be all of the Constitution.

He's gonna argue that the phrase "the people" means all of us as a whole. Not us as individuals.

It's an argument we've seen before.

Oh, so the rights in the 4th amendment aren't individual rights either?

Good to know.

He's saying that the courts have had a history of interperating the 2nd Amendment as a collective right as opposed to an individual one....

...and like it or not, he's right.

There's no reason they can't be both.

I'm talking about what the courts have consistently been ruling...not whether it's correct or not.

The fourth amendment is also "the right of the people" and I don't think anyone argues that's a "collective" right.

That's simply not true.

This from my post in the TBBS Heller thread:

Look. I'm not saying that the past 60+ years of precident that says the 2nd Amendment is a collective right is correct. I'm just saying that that's what it is...and that's EXACTLY what it is.

There's what the 2nd Amendment says, and then there's what SCOTUS says that the 2nd Amendment says.

The day the "right of the people" is interpreted into the "power of the state" is the day this country dies.

[action=Forbin]gets his bugle ready to play taps.[/action]

Then it's already dead. We're justliving through the death throes.

When hillary and/or Obamalammadingdong get elected, it'll be time to hole up in that Montana stronghold where Storm disappeared to.

How did you come to that conclusion? You've never answers that.

See the same thread at TBBS. He explains himself better there.