Query for us in the peanut gallery: Why is the rationale different for standing in gun cases as opposed to anything else? How on earth have they been getting away with this for so long?

I wish they would've GVR'ed that.

I'm not an expert here, but I think it goes like this...

The DC circuit held that the 2A didn't protect a right, therefore you didn't have standing to challenge the DC gun laws since there was no right being infringed. You can't go around challenging laws willy-nilly, you need to show you have been personally harmed.

Heller was different because he had PERSONALLY applied for and been denied a permit.

Now that SCOTUS has said the 2A *does* protect a right, I think in effect this will all work itself out.

I am primarly a defense counsel for a, let's say, "large organization" and am constantly amazed by the number of plaintiff's counsel who don't think seriously about jurisdiction and standing until after we have filed our motion to dismiss. I have won a few cases at the D.C. district court on standing, and let me tell you this, Judge Kollar-Kotelly knows a helluva lot more about standing than do I.

I thought Parker et. al. were denied standing under a DC Circuit rule that they couldn't challenge a criminal law unless they had been charged under it. (As David Hardy noted in the original post, this apparently applies only to gun laws.)

The appellate opinion noted that the Supreme Court had announced a policy that when a fundamental right was in question you didn't have to be charged in order to have standing to attack a criminal law, but the appellate panel said that since the full DC Circuit hadn't adopted this position yet, they didn't feel they, as a mere panel, could go against the DC Circuit rule.

This struck me as a pretty clear (and well written) invitation to the Supremes to bring the DC Circuit into line with the rest of the Circuits on this issue, but apparently the Supremes had no more stomach for this fight right now.