The Second Amendment Battleground: Victories in the Courts and Why They Matter

[billh58]

The Law Center’s latest brochure, The Second Amendment Battleground: Victories in the Courts and Why They Matter, examines trends in Second Amendment litigation since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008. Although the Heller Court held that the Second Amendment protects a responsible, law-abiding citizen’s right to possess an operable handgun in the home for self-defense, the vast majority of courts that have heard Second Amendment challenges since that case have rejected them, upholding a wide variety of gun laws as constitutional.

http://smartgunlaws.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/web-victories-in-the-courts.pdf

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Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, courts across the country have been confronted with an onslaught of costly, time-consuming Second Amendment litigation. In addition to the hundreds of legal challenges raised by indicted and convicted criminals, the gun lobby has also initiated dozens of lawsuits against federal, state, and local governments.

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Despite the gun lobby’s rhetoric about “individual rights,” the breadth and scale of Second Amendment lawsuits filed over the past four years reveal the lobby’s true intent: to overturn all reasonable laws intended to prevent gun violence. So far, thankfully, most of the courts confronted with these important challenges since Heller have affirmed the continued vitality of smart gun laws. Still, the courts remain an active battleground over the meaning of the Second Amendment and the future of sensible gun laws in America.

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Given the inherent dangers posed by guns in public, ten states, including New Jersey, grant law enforcement discretion in issuing permits to carry concealed handguns in public places. In Piszczatoski v. Filko, five plaintiffs who had been denied permits argued that the New Jersey law requiring an applicant to show a justifiable need to get a permit violated the Second Amendment.

Like several other courts across the country, the federal district court upheld the New Jersey law, citing the state legislature’s “reasonable inference that given the obviously dangerous and deadly nature of handguns, requiring a showing of particularized need for a permit to carry one publicly serves the State’s interests in public safety.”

http://smartgunlaws.org/the-second-amendment-battleground-victories-in-the-courts/

The right-wing gun lobby (funded by NRA/ALEC/Koch Brothers) is filing frivolous lawsuits all across the nation in the hopes that their bought-and-paid-for corrupt judges will rule against reason and sanity. The fact is that these lawsuits are establishing precedents which are the opposite of what the NRA and friends had hoped for. As in the New Jersey case above, sensible gun control is being upheld while remaining within the scope of the Second Amendment.

Significant issues before the courts at present include: domestic abusers and gun ownership, availability of military-style assault weapons and large capacity magazines, and carrying a concealed, loaded weapon in public for no compelling reason.

Like all other enumerated civil rights, the Second Amendment can, and should, be regulated in the interest of public health and safety. As Justice Stevens wrote in Heller, "the Second Amendment does not protect a “right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."