Gunreference1
09-15-2010, 08:59 AM
You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby
The Second Amendment finally applies to the states. Now the fight over gun rights really begins.
Brian Doherty from the October 2010 issue
It was the morning of June 26, 2008, and Alan Gura had just won the first case he’d ever argued in front of the Supreme Court. Before taking a media victory lap to celebrate his historic vindication of the Second Amendment in D.C. v. Heller, Gura headed to the Court’s public information office for a moment of privacy. He called an old buddy from law school, the Chicago attorney David Sigale. “File it,” Gura said.
“It” became, almost exactly two years later, Gura’s second victory before the Supreme Court, McDonald v. Chicago. That case—decided, like the first one, by a narrow 5-4 majority—established that the gun rights recognized in the District of Columbia because of Heller must also be respected by states and cities outside the purview of the federal government. The Second Amendment’s protection now applies not just to D.C.’s 600,000 residents but to more than 300 million people across the country.
The magnitude and reach of this earthquake in American law, which has touched off slow-motion aftershocks throughout the 50 states, are still uncertain. But whatever the future holds, Americans’ ability to own guns has, at long last, taken its place among the other individual rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights.
To read the rest of the story click the link below.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/13/youve-come-a-long-way-baby
Steve
The Second Amendment finally applies to the states. Now the fight over gun rights really begins.
Brian Doherty from the October 2010 issue
It was the morning of June 26, 2008, and Alan Gura had just won the first case he’d ever argued in front of the Supreme Court. Before taking a media victory lap to celebrate his historic vindication of the Second Amendment in D.C. v. Heller, Gura headed to the Court’s public information office for a moment of privacy. He called an old buddy from law school, the Chicago attorney David Sigale. “File it,” Gura said.
“It” became, almost exactly two years later, Gura’s second victory before the Supreme Court, McDonald v. Chicago. That case—decided, like the first one, by a narrow 5-4 majority—established that the gun rights recognized in the District of Columbia because of Heller must also be respected by states and cities outside the purview of the federal government. The Second Amendment’s protection now applies not just to D.C.’s 600,000 residents but to more than 300 million people across the country.
The magnitude and reach of this earthquake in American law, which has touched off slow-motion aftershocks throughout the 50 states, are still uncertain. But whatever the future holds, Americans’ ability to own guns has, at long last, taken its place among the other individual rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights.
To read the rest of the story click the link below.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/09/13/youve-come-a-long-way-baby
Steve