Breaking: US Supreme Court Declines to Hear Gun Rights Case (Upholds New York's Gun Control Laws)

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

@BreakingNews: RT @breakingpol: US Supreme Court upholds New York State's gun control laws - @BloombergTV

Supreme Court declines to hear gun rights case

By Lawrence Hurley

Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:57am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Staying out of the raging national debate over guns, the Supreme Court on Monday declined to weigh in on whether gun owners have a constitutional right to carry handguns outside the home.

The court decided not to hear a challenge to a New York state law that requires those who want to carry a concealed handgun to show they have a special reason before they can get a license.

The gun owners challenging the law said that the right to bear arms enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is not limited to the right to keep a handgun at home.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has expanded gun rights, first by finding in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms and then ruling two years later in McDonald v. City of Chicago, that the earlier ruling applied to the states.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE93E0L820130415

[mikeysnot]

1. wow!

Gun nuts go nuts.

[roguevalley]

9. scalia already said he would not support gun nut second amendment views. i am not surprised.

[premium]

2. Nothing in the news so far,

do you have a link?

[Hissyspit]

3. Just the Tweet link

Breakingpol is NBC, I believe.

[premium]

5. Thanks. nt.

[Bolo Boffin]

4. They didn't take up Kalchalsky v Cacace

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kachalsky-v-cacace/

Issue: (1) Whether the Second Amendment secures a right to carry handguns for self-defense outside the home; and (2) whether state officials violate the Second Amendment by denying handgun carry licenses to responsible, law-abiding adults for lack of “proper cause” to bear arms for self-defense.

Very big news today. Heller only applies to having a gun in your home. How about them apples?

ETA: Here's SCOTUSblog on the court denying cert:

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/04/court-avoids-gun-rights-dispute/

[hack89]

7. It appears the SC is waiting for some sort of legal consensus to form

within the Federal court system and at the state level.

Which makes sense - they are usually loath to get to far ahead of the lower courts and prefer to address issues that have percolated for a lengthy time.

[Myrina]

11. Interesting. How do they define "responsible" and "law abiding" ?

... some kind of job & never been charged with murder?
That covers most of the dudes who went on killing sprees in the last 5 years.

[tblue]

19. So true!

Everybody is law-abiding until they're not. And everyone has the potential to snap or have a breakdown, as does everyone who lives in or visits a gun owner's house.

An ex-homicide cop I know told me that most murderers aren't what you'd think of as 'criminals'--they're normal people who just snapped.

[samsingh]

6. if this supreme court supports some gun laws

imagine how reasonable an objective (e.g. not repug) supreme court would be?

[former9thward]

23. There was no such holding.

The SC simply declined to hear the case. The SC did not support or not support the law. The SC only hears about 1% of the cases that are presented to it. There are other cases in the federal courts holding exactly the opposite. The SC has not heard those cases either.

[primavera]

8. Scalia will no doubt be disappointed

He so looks forward to opportunities to advance his pro-gun agenda.

[roguevalley]

10. actually hes on the record otherwise. i would provide the link but im on my phone

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Scalia actually penned the 'reasonable restriction' bit in Heller vs. DC.

So I don't know if that's a valid assumption.

[primavera]

18. Scalia penned the entire opinion...

... finding that the second amendment applied not to militia as the plain language of the amendment stated, but instead to everyone. The inclusion of the "reasonable restriction" bit merely shows the inconsistency in his "logic." Had he actually believed what he wrote, that anyone and everyone was a militia member and thus entitled to keep and bear arms, there would be no reason to deny them access to the military weaponry employed by the very same militias in whose membership Scalia finds justification for a universal right to keep and bear arms in his unique interpretation. Judging from his subsequent public comments about the ruling, stating that he believes that private ownership of military weaponry such as rocket launchers is not beyond the scope of the second amendment's entitlement, I have little doubt that the reasonable restriction bit was offered up as a token compromise to persuade enough justices to sign onto his radical analysis to make it the majority opinion.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. Actually the Heller decision was not that groundbreaking.

If you go back to Miller, recall that he was denied (posthumously) the shotgun because no one introduced evidence before the court that such a short-barreled shotgun was in use by any military in the world.

(A wrong assumption, but since the defense never showed up and introduced any such evidence showing these shotguns were in common use by militaries (trench guns) the SC doesn't do original research, and ruled against his estate.)

[happyslug]

24. Actually, the Court ruled a shotgun was NOT under the 2nd as a matter of law.

You must understand what happened at the trial. Miller had been arrested for possessing a sawed off shotgun, a weapon BANNED under the 1934 Federal Firearms Act. The trial judge, when Miller appeared before him, ruled that the 1934 Federal Firearms Act was unconstitutional for a Shotgun, as a matter of law, was a weapon protected under the Second Amendment for it was a militia weapon.

Please note the Trial Judge made his ruling in a motion for Summary Judgement. In a Summary Judgement motion, ALL findings of facts are presumed to have been determined in the best light of the side opposing the Motion (in the Case of Miller, the Prosecution). The Trial judge ruled, as a Matter of law, that a Sawed off Shotgun was a militia weapon and thus protected under the Second Amendment. From that ruling, the Federal Prosecution appealed. On appeal the rule is the same as in the original finding by the Trial judge, all facts are presumed in the best light for the prosecution (Since this was a ruling against the prosecution).

The US Supreme Court then ruled that the Motion for Summary Judgment was improper, for the simple reason whether a Sawed off Shotgun was a Militia Weapon or not was a finding of fact reserved to a Jury. Thus it was improper for the Trial Judge to rule in a Motion for Summary Judgement that a Sawed off Shotgun was a Militia weapon as a Matter of Law. The case was remanded back to the Trial Judge to hold a trial, where facts as to the Shotgun could be presented to the Jury and the Jury could decide if it was a Militia Weapon or not (In the meantime Miller had got himself killed, so no trial was held).

Thus Miller was simply a ruling that the issue of a weapon being a Militia Weapon was an issue of fact, not law. Facts are to be decided by Juries NOT judges. The Second Amendment only comes into play once a Jury found as an issue of fact that a weapon was a Militia weapon. If the Jury found the weapon was NOT a Militia weapon, then the Second Amendment would NOT apply.

[AtheistCrusader]

25. Interesting.

I sentence myself to remedial re-reading of the Miller decision in light of your response. That wasn't my recollection, and now I wonder if I absorbed some bad data from a questionable source.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. Hallelujah

Sounds like an acknowledgement that disarmament in any small form
is not the worst option to try, and it's a cautious position to take.

If this is what NY state wishes to do, why not?

Sane, sober gun owners are not a problem, especially inside their homes.

[SunSeeker]

13. K&R

[AtheistCrusader]

14. As a 'gun nut'

I'm ok with this. If a state wants to be 'may issue' instead of 'shall issue', that's fine. I don't have a problem with it. Carrying a firearm in public is the one aspect of the 'we license cars why not guns' canard that is valid, because you aren't just having it in your home, you are interfacing with the public, just like using a car on a public road.

So yeah. Training requirements, aptitude tests, legal training to help understand if it is lawful to use deadly force in self defense, all of that is fine. Taking into account non-felony legal problems prior to obtaining a permit, etc.

All good.

[Orsino]

17. Thousands of deaths in the home are a reason to regulate private ownership, too.

Cars rarely kill people in the garage.

[AtheistCrusader]

20. Actually Carbon Monoxide poisoning is a major component of the suffocation suicide metric in the US.

(And guns, while more effective than most suicide means, and used more often, are 2x more likely to be used in a suicide, than an aggressive homicide against another person)

[Orsino]

16. NRA checks must have been late. n/t

[Politicub]

22. All I can say is

[Jefferson23]

26. K&R