What would a narrow, pro-individual right finding in Heller mean?

Future litigation – I see suits in Chicago and New York. New York will be very important because although there is a complete ban on handguns, New York has “may issue” licensing. This will test the applicability of the ruling to states, as well as another test of the limits of restrictions. At the very least I would love to be involved in a suit challenging the legality of charging for the license, as SCOTUS has already ruled that government cannot charge a fee for the exercise of a right (340 bucks every three years in NYC just to possess!!)



Politics – that’s easy...anyone running for office can simply throw up their hands and say, "hey, the Supreme Court says it’s a right...not me." It basically absolves politicians from having to take a side. They can take a, “I’ll defend your rights no matter what they are” stance. Remember...if given a chance to avoid an issue, a politician will take it.



Gun control orgs – They won’t stop. They will say it’s more important than ever for hillary/Obama to win so that “sensible” judges can be appointed to the Supreme Court and have Heller overturned. They will push even harder to have any weapon banned that doesn’t meet some soon-to-be-invented criteria of appropriateness to home defense. I can see them lobbying to have small guns that are difficult to aim banned (such as my NAA pocket pistol.) I also see them pushing even harder for laws requiring “personalized” guns and fines for stolen guns. It will be business as usual for them.

I'll put my climatoligist's cap on and make some Al Gore style predictions:

1. Select litigation in Chicago, NYC, and California to incorporate and pluck low hanging fruit.

2. Gun control becomes more of a pariah in politics - however a real right to arms allows a couple of obvious compromises that give the hopolophobes some things they want in return for repairing some really frightening federal laws so that the pro side doesn't have to litigate them.

3.Anti .orgs are going to have a lot of support sucked out of them. The big question will be whether the Joyce Foundation will blink and realize they're backing a loser. If they do and I'd give them about an 80% chance of realizing that - the anti groups may shrink to one - and a not well funded one at that. That's also caught in the downdraft of 1...

-Gene

Legally:
I expected a narrow ruling going into this. A narrow ruling will actually be huge because most of the circuits out there have been resting on collective rights theories that were too weak even for the weakest Heller amicus. Nearly any decision the supreme court is likely to hand down is going to force the courts to revisit nearly all their 2nd amendment jurisprudence from the ground up.

Their will be litigation like crazy in CA, IL, NY, MA, HI, NJ and yeah, probably DC. DC is probably the best place to challenge a machine gun ban because of their alice in wonderland definition of machine gun (any semiauto that holds more than 12 bullets is a machine gun in DC). If I know my 9th circuit, these cases will inevitably cause circuit splits which will provide for more opportunities for the supremes to take the issue up again.

Politically:
I expect it will bring the gun issue back to the forefront again and it will make judges and guns a more important issue in this election than it otherwise would be. This is good for McCain and bad for Obama.

Long term, there is still a ton of work ahead of us, so I don't see the NRA falling into an NAACP style irrelevancy anytime soon. I also think the antis will continue low grade harassment as long as the money keeps coming in from the billionaires.

Gun control orgs:
Heller is just one more nail in their already closed and partly nailed coffin.

Outright gun control is going to be off the menu entirely soon IMO. They'll probably continue with indirect measures to harm the shooting industry like microstamping, more difficult registration and licensing requirements, etc etc. Anything to make our lives difficult. But we are talking mosquito vs tiger in terms of threat level.

I think overseas gun control will be more in play, especially in places like the UK that have recently punted the left wing from power. A massive failure of gun control in the US will not go unnoticed overseas.

Overall I think things are looking good for gun rights.

The antis have already made it clear what they plan to do, shift strategy to personal liability and environmental (lead) issues.

I don't know about anything else, but I feel sure the anti's will never give up and will continue to wear down gun rights by nibbling at the edges. Heller will mean little to them except to instill a larger sense of martydom. After all, it's a world-wide religion for them - with world-wide bankrolling.

My guess would be that the next case you see would be over the constitutionality of the 1986 MG ban, most likely in the DC Circuit Court. The interesting part is what the actual physical results would be from a successful 2A decision with that yet-to-be filed case.

Yes, new US-made receivers could be then manufactured and registered under NFA, as was the case before May 1986. But soon enough someone is going to say, for example, "What is the constitutional difference between a US-made PK receiver, and an original Soviet one?" Well, there is none. (Is there any difference between books printed in the US and overseas, as far as 1A protections are delineated? No.) Which would lead to the obvious result of the 1968 import ban being struck down.

The upper limit of what is constitutional is where the fight is heading. We've been fighting for decades the other side of that argument--how far can a ban go--but a pro-individual 2A will reverse that argument 180 degrees. Which from a 2A and firearms enthusiast position is not a bad place to be...

And remember, the only constitutional limit on the upper end is found in Art. 1, Sec. 10, about Congress having the power to regulate a state's possession of "Ships of War." Everything else in between is okay, as far as the Founding Fathers thought.

Forgive the spelling, please. My proofreading stinks!

i might take on massachusetts for the $100 licensing "fee," unless someone beats me to it. but, i'd donate to them.

what would be even better would be people thinking, "well, if the founding fathers were right about firearms, maybe we should hang a question mark on a few other things, too..."

There are all kinds of predictions from "no changes" to repeal of the NFA. I'm positive it will be somewhere in the middle, leaning towards "very little difference." Regarding pro- vs. anti- organizations, I think this gives both sides more ammo.

Clearly, the pro-gun-rights lawsuits will be filed in the near future. My biggest concern is that the anti-rights orgs will be able to honestly say, "there is an individual right to own guns, so these little things like registration and licensing are ok... the supreme court ruled that slippery slope doesn't exist."

I think a lot of gun rights advocates lean heavily on the concept of a "slippery slope", because well, its absolutely true. However, a good ruling in by SCOTUS will likely change how that argument is made.

"registration and licensing" of Constitutional rights are already contrary to settled law.

"A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution... The power to impose a license tax on the exercise of these freedoms is indeed as potent as the power of censorship which this Court has repeatedly struck down... a person cannot be compelled 'to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution."
— MURDOCK V. PENNSYLVANIA 319 US 105 (1942)

Given current judicial practice that may not be enough. We'll have to see.

Remember the nfa wasn't enacted b/c a lot of people had MG's. It was b/c criminals were using them against the woefully underarmed state. The tax stamp was to ensnare criminals who wouldn't register the transfer - for obvious reasons - when the state had no other recourse.

You cans see similar in income tax evasion and rico prosecutions.

As I think about it all of these ostensibly well intentioned laws have been outrageously misused by the state against innocents they just don't like.

tom

Some people never quit or learn, so you can figure the gun-ban types may be further marginalized, but plenty of them will continue their cause.

For some, pure ideology, for others, ego and power, for some...how else are they going to make some money and get to see worthies like Mike Bloomberg? What is Sarah Brady without her Bunch? Paul Helmke? Not much.

Where would Al Sharpton be if we were really liberated of the race issue? REALLY unable to pay his back taxes...

See also http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=293749. Thread on the Firing Line entitled "Why Ban Guns?"

"Is it possible that they simply refuse to recognize that criminals, by definition, are breaking those laws without a moment's hesitation?"

Harry,

It is of my opinion that there seems to be nothing else that the law makers can do but pass ineffective laws that show that at least they are trying to make an impact on crime. The reality of these laws make no sense to law abiding citizens that wants to continue their sport without loopholes that turn them into potential criminals just for enjoying the sport they have come to love and enjoy.

This is why people have to continue their support of the 2nd, and the NRA as well, to voice this concern.

I have in the past legally owned a firearm that was declared illegal to own afterwards. It was not because of anything that me or the firearm did. Just some ineffective law that was passed.

Previous posters have pretty well covered the range of possibilities.

On our side, the big fight will be to get incorporation. Winning Heller doesn't mean much until the 2nd Amendment is made binding on the states.

The second fight will be over Section 922(o)...the ban on the manufacture of machine guns for sale. This will spark a fight within the pro-2nd Amendment community. On one side, you will have a lot of people who want to gradually roll back repressive laws in reverse order...newest laws first. On the other side, you will have the NFA enthusiasts who feel they have always been uesd as the sacrificial goat and are no longer willing to wait. I hope that some sort of compromise can be worked out, because I can see this blowing up.

Our opponents will shift their emphasis to ammunition and ranges. There is already a hysteria over lead, and an eagerness to shut down ranges over noise considerations. Watch for these to be increased. Also watch for "safety" rules that effectively constitute wide-ranging gun bans.

From the tenor of the Court's questions at oral argument, it seems several Justices are concerned about the collateral ramifications of an individual rights ruling on the NFA and §922(o). I suspect the Court may well attempt to define an individual RKBA in a way that pretty clearly preserves current machinegun regulations, in addition to less controversial statutes like felon-in-possession laws.

There are at least two ways the Court could do this: (1) adopt the Solicitor General's invitation to articulate and adopt an intermediate standard of review, and/or (2) explicitly abrogate the Miller "military usefulness" test, at least as applied to the non-militia RKBA question posed in the Court's cert. grant. Either approach, if carefully articulated, could accomplish this feat of Constitutional baby-splitting.

But such a holding will require some theoretical gymnastics. And at least Justice Roberts (who will assign the majority opinion drafting) sounds like he may push a minimalist outcome in Heller that doesn't give guidance on issues not directly before the Court, so it's perhaps at least as likely that the Court will let further line-drawing exercises await the outcome of follow-on litigation.

The worst pro-Second Amendment outcome from a doctrinal certainty standpoint would be a bare holding that there is an individual RKBA coupled with a remand to the lower courts to determine the extent to which D.C.'s regulations actually infringe that right. Then we get to see evidentiary hearings with dualing experts on questions like the time it takes to remove trigger locks, and the relative advantages of shotguns versus handguns for home defense. Which would get awfully messy, if not become a total farce...