Counting The Minutes

Kevin Ecker over at True North and Eckernet notes that today just might be the big day:

Here is a pretty good roundup of what to expect from this decision, especially since it makes the distinction between upholding the Second Amendment for a number of purposes, most notably civic and personal. The author (Mike O’Shea) is right that there is a general consensus amongst airchair justices that the Second Amendment will in all liklihood be upheld….so the debate comes down to finer distinctions.

I fully expect this decision to essentially tapdance around the Miller 1939 decision, and come down in favor of private rights, leaving the argument for/against civic uses essentially twisting in the wind. Is I wrote previously, SCOTUS made it clear from the start that their decision would be limited to the case at hand, which is an issue of private usage.

Civic usage is likely to remain undecided, allowing states pretty wide latitude to ban “scary guns”. While SCOTUS, due to it’s non-elected state, is theoretically free from having to respond to public whims that may change from day to day, I don’t think most of the Justices want to come forward with a decision of essentially granting everyone the right to a howitzer.

The answer – to those of us who’ve been through this already (in my case, Minnesota’s ten-year-long battle over “shall-issue” carry permitting) is that the courts would do well to leave those decisions to the states; this is a battle that the howitzer-American community (hypothetically) needs to fight in the various legislatures.

This case – presuming the SCOTUS decides properly – will not win “the war”.  If Heller scuppers the District of Columbia’s racist gun ban, it’ll be analogous to getting across Omaha Beach.  It’ll be a signal that one of the most noxious effects of the gun control spree of the sixties and seventies has been reversed. But it’ll also mean that we civil liberties supporters will have to redouble our efforts.  We have a lot of ground yet to win, and  it’ll have to be won the hard way; one legislator, and one voter, at a time, before we can put the last anti-gun orc to the rhetorical sword.

I, for one, can hardly wait.

2 thoughts on “Counting The Minutes

  1. All good points, and very correct. However, I would appreciate if SCOTUS would specifically stated that the civic aspect were the responsibility of the states, rather than just leave it assumed.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.