The Urban Shooter Show

This is breaking news for both DC residents and Chicago. Don’t go downtown yet to get your handgun permit yet. Details and what all this hoopla is really about to come!

Kenn

BREAKING NEWS -- Divided three-judge D.C. Circuit holds that the District of Columbia's guncontrol laws violate individuals' Second Amendment rights:

According to the majority opinion, "[T]he phrase 'the right of the people,' when read intratextually and in light of Supreme Courtprecedent, leads us to conclude that the right in question is  individual." The majority opinion sums up its holding on this pointas follows:

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an  individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior tothe formation of the new government under the Constitution and was  premised on the private use of arms for activities such as huntingand self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either  private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government(or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear  arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping topreserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political  expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, inpart, to placate their anti-federalist opponents. The individual right  facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not bebarred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for  militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civicpurpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to  militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the rightcontingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in  the militia.

The majority opinion also rejects the argument that the Second  Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia because it isnot a State. And the majority opinion concludes, "Section 7-2507.02,like the bar on carrying a pistol within the home, amounts to a  complete prohibition on the lawful use of handguns for self-defense.As such, we hold it unconstitutional."

Senior Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote the majority opinion, in which Circuit Judge Thomas B. Griffith <http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo? jid=3090> joined. Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=1023> dissented.

Judge Henderson's dissenting opinion makes clear that she would  conclude that the Second Amendment does not bestow an individualright. But her other main point is that the majority's assertion to  the contrary constitutes nothing more than dicta because the SecondAmendment's protections, whatever the entail, do not extend to the  District of Columbia, because it is not a State.

http://howappealing.law.com/030907.html#023153

For the full opinion, see: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf.