I’m so damn happy!!!!!!!!!
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06 ... etire.html
KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge, dissenting: The Second Amendment to the Constitution provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment confers “an individual right to keep and bear arms.” 554 U.S. 570, 595 (2008). In McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court added that the right to keep and bear arms is a “fundamental” constitutional right implicit in our scheme of ordered liberty and “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036, 3042 (2010).
In Heller, the Court ruled that the District of Columbia’s ban on the possession of handguns violated the Second Amendment. 554 U.S. at 635. In the wake of Heller, the District of Columbia enacted a new gun law. As relevant here, D.C. bans possession of most semi-automatic rifles and requires registration of all guns possessed in the District of Columbia. See D.C. Code §§ 7-2501.01(3A)(A)(i), 7-2502.01-.10.
In this case, we are called upon to assess those provisions of D.C.’s law under Heller. In so doing, we are of course aware of the longstanding problem of gun violence in the District of Columbia. In part for that reason, Heller has engendered substantial controversy. See, e.g., J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law, 95 VA. L. REV. 253 (2009); Richard A. Posner, In Defense of Looseness, THE NEW REPUBLIC, Aug. 27, 2008, at 32. As a lower court, however, it is not our role to re-litigate Heller or to bend it in any particular direction. Our sole job is to faithfully apply Heller and the approach it set forth for analyzing gun bans and regulations.
In my judgment, both D.C.’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its gun registration requirement are unconstitutional under Heller.
In Heller, the Supreme Court held that handguns – the vast majority of which today are semi-automatic – are constitutionally protected because they have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens. There is no meaningful or persuasive constitutional distinction between semi-automatic handguns and semi-automatic rifles. Semi-automatic rifles, like semi-automatic handguns, have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting, and other lawful uses. Moreover, semi-automatic handguns are used in connection with violent crimes far more than semi-automatic rifles are. It follows from Heller’s protection of semi-automatic handguns that semi-automatic rifles are also constitutionally protected and that D.C.’s ban on them is unconstitutional. (By contrast, fully automatic weapons, also known as machine guns, have traditionally been banned and may continue to be banned after Heller.)
D.C.’s registration requirement, which is significantly more stringent than any other federal or state gun law in the United States, is likewise unconstitutional. Heller and later McDonald said that regulations on the sale, possession, or use of guns are permissible if they are within the class of traditional, “longstanding” gun regulations in the United States. Registration of all lawfully possessed guns – as distinct from licensing of gun owners or mandatory recordkeeping by gun sellers – has not traditionally been required in the United States and even today remains highly unusual. Under Heller’s history- and tradition-based test, D.C.’s registration requirement is therefore unconstitutional.
It bears emphasis that Heller, while enormously significant jurisprudentially, was not revolutionary in terms of its immediate real-world effects on American gun regulation. Indeed, Heller largely preserved the status quo of gun regulation in the United States. Heller established that traditional and common gun laws in the United States remain constitutionally permissible. The Supreme Court simply pushed back against an outlier local law – D.C.’s handgun ban – that went far beyond the traditional line of gun regulation. As Heller emphasized: “Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District’s” law. 554 U.S. at 629.
After Heller, however, D.C. seemed not to heed the Supreme Court’s message. Instead, D.C. appeared to push the envelope again, with its new ban on semi-automatic rifles and its broad gun registration requirement. D.C.’s public safety motivation in enacting these laws is worthy of great respect. But the means D.C. has chosen are again constitutionally problematic. The D.C. gun provisions at issue here, like the ban at issue in Heller, are outliers that are not traditional or common in the United States. As with D.C.’s handgun ban, therefore, holding these D.C. laws unconstitutional would not lead to nationwide tumult. Rather, such a holding would maintain the balance historically and traditionally struck in the United States between public safety and the individual right to keep arms – a history and tradition that Heller affirmed and adopted as determining the scope of the Second Amendment right.
Randygmn wrote:Trump confirmed he will pick from his existing public list of 25 candidates. McConnel already stated the new Justice will be confirmed and ready for the next SC session starting on October 1st BEFORE the midterms. There is no way for the democrats to stop this. The only possible obstacle could be defecting Republicans. Little chance of that happening.
And now we wait for Ruth.
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