|
One of the country's most liberal United States Circuit Courts has ruled that the Second Amendment of the Constitution is incorporated into the Constitution through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Without too-much legal jargon, the decision essentially means that last year's Heller Decision by the Supreme Court is being accepted and integrated into the interpretation of cases relating for individual firearms ownership questions.
The majority opinion was written by Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, with a concurring opinion from Judge Ronald M. Gould, who wrote, "The right to bear arms is a bulwark against external invasion...That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before more professional forces arrived."
For Russell and Sally Nordyke, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, it might be a bittersweet victory. The court found against them in their lawsuit against Alameda County, California for effectively banning gun shows at the county fairgrounds by making it illegal to bring or possess firearms or ammunition on county property. That regularion was upheld by the Ninth, but the three-judge panel also recognized that an earlier interpretation of the Second Amendment as only a collective right of states had been overturned by the Supreme Court in the Heller Decision.
In the ruling, the Ninth also ruled their earlier position on the Second Amendment was abrogated by the Heller ruling. It also expanded the interpretation of the high court by writing that the Second Amendment was extended to the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause.
The long-term impact of the Ninth's ruling remains to be seen. But it may be one of those decisions that, while lacking the overall importance of the Supreme Court's overturning of the District of Columbia's long-standing gun ban, will have the effect of giving further legal precedent to the individual interpretation. And any additional reinforcement of the individual interpretation weakens the already flimsy arguments advanced by many anti-gun groups in their litigation.
Here is a portion of the Ninth Circuit's interpretation:
We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition." Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the "true palladium of liberty." Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited."
|
