Shopstopper
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
7th Circuit (which includes Chicago) strikes a blow for the Second Amendment. Better, but still not correct. The court won’t take the final step because they know it’s the death blow for gun grabbers.
If owning a firearm is a fundamental constitutional right as Heller and McDonald decided, then it’s entitled to Strict Scrutiny the same as religion and speech, not merely ‘some level of heightened scrutiny’ which is the phony category the court set up for sex discrimination cases.
Opinion here:
Joe Doakes
January 27th, 2017 at 6:49 am
JD: The Federal government simply does not have the power to compel cities or states to enforce federal laws on immigration or anything else. This has been established law for a while, but it was most recently in Printz v. United States. Ironically, it was Justice Scalia who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion.
“The Framers rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a system in which the State and Federal Governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people. The Federal Government’s power would be augmented immeasurably and impermissibly if it were able to impress into its service-and at no cost to itself-the police officers of the 50 States.”
Would this also mean that dual sovereignty also prevents the federal government from compelling the states to do other things, such as enforce federal gun control laws?
January 27th, 2017 at 7:15 am
EI
You are wrong. The Feds do have the power; it’s called MONEY.
Since 99% of the cities, especially those run by fiscally ignorant Democrats are dependent on those dollars to fund their boondoggles (read choo choo trains), they will ultimately come to Jesus. Resistance is futile!
January 27th, 2017 at 7:44 am
No. And completely off topic. Stop that.
January 27th, 2017 at 9:03 am
Why in the world would you require that a shooting range be 500 feet from any house of worship? Is target shooting sinful?
January 27th, 2017 at 9:11 am
I love a smell of roasting eTASS in the morning.
January 27th, 2017 at 9:20 am
The upside to strict scrutiny is that it theoretically would elevate the limits on gun control. The downside is that strict scrutiny vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment isn’t doing so hot these days. Just ask bakeries that don’t want to make cakes for gay weddings, or college students handing out copies of the Constitution.
January 27th, 2017 at 10:09 am
On reconsideration, my answer was too short.
The federal government lacks the power to throw the local sheriff in jail should he fail to enforce the 55-mph speed limit, or operates a sanctuary city, or ignores open-air machine gun swap meets. As Boss pointed out, the feds use indirect force to accomplish their ends.
But that’s not what the Chicago case was about. Chicago enacted Jim Crow style restrictions on a fundamental right. The court rightly struck them down but failed to articulate the proper standard of review.
January 27th, 2017 at 10:10 am
I’m hoping our new SCOTUS justice has Strict Scrutiny tattooed on his stomach in Olde English lettering.
January 27th, 2017 at 11:04 am
I’m surprised that the City didn’t try to argue that it’s already filled with shooting ranges with horrible safety records. Over 760 homicides last year alone. They’re just trying to save lives with the nearly complete ban.
January 27th, 2017 at 12:47 pm
“I’m hoping our new SCOTUS justice has Strict Scrutiny tattooed on his stomach in Olde English lettering”
Trump will be disappointed by the Court, no matter whom he picks. Judges decide cases according to the law and non-alternative facts. Sooner or later, Trump will find that awkward.
January 27th, 2017 at 1:04 pm
Yes, EI, because Obama, overturned 9-0 by the court close to a dozen times, never felt that awkward. Honestly…
January 27th, 2017 at 1:15 pm
Judges decide cases according to the law and non-alternative facts.
Apparently you have never read any of justice Ginsberg’s opinions.
That woman will cherry pick her precedent based on how she wants to decide, not on the merit of the precedent. She also seems to think that all religions are like Judaism, i.e., not universalist.
January 27th, 2017 at 2:50 pm
If you want Ginsberg at her finest, reaching for alternative facts, and trying to find a way around the law as written and passed by the peoples’ congress, and signed into law by the executive, check out her dissent from Ledbetter V Goodyear:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/550/618/dissent.html
January 27th, 2017 at 10:03 pm
SmithStCroix for the win! Open air shooting ranges with bystanders as a backstop…
January 28th, 2017 at 9:48 am
MP: It is perhaps noteworthy that a great deal of the time the Court has made decisions with overwhelming majorities. The close decisions, made along ideological lines, get the headlines. But most of the law that the justices make has been and will continue to be noncontroversial — except the handful of people involved in the case. That won’t change.
January 28th, 2017 at 9:38 pm
The SC should avoid making a precedent when there is a legislative remedy. This was the problem with Ginsberg’s dissent from Ledbetter V goodyear.
There was a legislative remedy for people who had suffered wage discrimination outside of the time bounds congress had set. The law was rewritten when the Dems got control of congress after 2006. Voila! That’s the system working.
Ginsberg insisted that the majority opinion was wrong, and an SC precedent should be set that would override past and future legislation. This is what is called “legislating from the bench.” It’s textbook.
If Ginsberg wanted to be a law maker, she could have run for congress. She might have even won.