Here Comes the Next Big Supreme Court Gun-Rights Case

[djpup]

I wonder if this will happen. Be aware that this is written by a Bloomturd writer.

By Paul M. Barrett


Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, noted recently that the Supreme Court has been ducking gun-rights cases. I’m here to predict the end of that several-year tendency.

In 2008, the Supreme Court for the first time declared that individuals have a Second Amendment right to keep a handgun in the home. The justices expanded on that 5-4 ruling two years later, clarifying that it applied to all states. Then the court became, well, gun-shy.

Professor Winkler, the author of a readable and surprising history of gun control in America, speculated on why the Supreme Court steered clear of the Second Amendment during the 2013-14 term:

It’s long been suspected that [swing Justice Anthony] Kennedy signed on to the earlier Second Amendment rulings by the court only after language was inserted allowing for reasonable restrictions on guns. But the question has lingered: How far would Kennedy allow gun control to go?

That question might well have been on the minds of the other justices when they voted not to hear a Second Amendment case this year. With four justices likely in favor of broad Second Amendment rights and another four likely opposed, the scope of the right to bear arms turns on Kennedy. His views may have been sufficiently unclear that neither side wanted to take a risk of a landmark decision coming out the wrong way.

The hesitancy Winkler has identified, whatever its origins, may soon end. A trial judge’s decision striking down Washington, D.C.’s ban on carrying guns in public—if upheld by an intermediate appellate court—would probably force the justices to return to the ideologically radioactive Second Amendment.

“There is no longer any basis on which this court can conclude that the District of Columbia’s total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny,” federal Judge Frederick J. Scullin ruled in a decision made public over the weekend. “Therefore, the court finds that the District of Columbia’s complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional.”

The Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (PDF), which, as its title indicates, also came from the nation’s capital, left open the question as to whether the Second Amendment precludes not only a ban on gun possession in the home, but also packing heat in the street. A lower-court ruling striking down a state or local law on federal constitutional grounds is the sort of legal collision that often attracts the attention of the Supreme Court.

Judge Scullin’s ruling, therefore, may provide an irresistible opportunity to address the public-carry issue, despite any uncertainty that may exist about Justice Kennedy’s leanings. Given the judiciary’s slow metabolism, the case could reach the justices just in time to become fodder for the fall 2016 presidential campaign.

Barrett is an assistant managing editor and senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles...mpaign_id=yhoo

[Qtrborecrazy]

Logical, you don't hear much from any politician lately either, except the loonies.