Court Of Appeals Says Drop Dead Second Amendment

**larrymeyer** · February 11th, 2009, 07:02 PM

Worth the read

http://reason.com/blog/show/131610.html

**lexington86** · February 11th, 2009, 09:14 PM

Very interesting; I did not know about this.

I'd be interested in whether prior case law would still be held in such regard in the opposite situation: e.g. the federal government repeals the second amendment and then bans firearms; would state constitutions (like ours here in PA) then preempt the federal ban? I'm led to believe that this actually works in the favor of gun ownership for those of us lucky enough to live in "free" states like Montana or Pennsylvania (knock on wood). The verbiage in PA's constitution takes a much more explicit stance on private gun ownership than the U.S. constitution (in my opinion).

Of course the cynic in me immediately says that the people who support state preemption of the second amendment (i.e. gun bans) would instantly change their tune if faced with with the situation I presented above.

**tl_3237** · February 11th, 2009, 09:53 PM

Unfortunately Heller was a Federal issue (DC) and, as such, narrowed the scope of the issue to the 2A as it applied to Federal entities.

Inclusion under the 14th was not addressed by SCOTUS since it was not argued. As it now stands Heller can arguably be claimed as non-binding on state/local laws. This is one of the issues being raised on the Chicago ban suit but, as we all know, will take some time before it reaches SCOTUS where the inclusion issue will be directly addressed once and for all.

There is another case http://www.reason.com/news/show/129309.html to read that might trigger a sooner decision. Current at US Court of Appeals, 9th circuit

IANAL but that's my take on it.