The American Civil Rights Union filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on October 5, urging the Court to take the appeal of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last March holding that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right of citizens to keep and bear arms. The ACRU wants the Court to take the case to affirm and thereby greatly strengthen this landmark ruling.
The American Civil Rights Union filed an amicus curiae brief in the United States Supreme Court on Friday, October 12 in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia urging the Court to grant the requested writ of certiorari on behalf of 5 of the original 6 plaintiffs seeking to strike down the District’s gun control laws as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had found that these 5 plaintiffs did not have standing in the case and dismissed them from the suit.
With all of the debate over the now defunct illegal immigration bill in the Senate and the efforts of liberals to relaunch the so-called Fairness Doctrine – a clear assault on conservative speech on our nation’s air waves – it is easy to lose focus on the many other battles going on to preserve the civil rights for all Americans. One such right is the moral and constitutional right to self-defense.
Last week, a story in Jacksonville, FL, was ignored by the national media, but it should not have been. The story concerns the heroism of Colin Bruley, who came to his neighbor’s […]
I am beginning to think it is quite possible that DC will not appeal the ruling of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in the Parker case. That historic ruling concluded that the Second Amendment really does protect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms and struck down the DC gun control laws as a result.
DC may instead pass a new gun control law that is still quite severe but does not as thoroughly prohibit any right to gun ownership and use in self defense as the old law did. They would argue that this new law meets the requirements of the Parker […]
Building on my last post (“Harvard Study: Gun Control Is Counterproductive”) – I thought it would be instructive to look at one particular table from the aforementioned study published in Spring 2007 in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 30, Number 2:
The table above is taken from page 664 of the issue. It compares the murder rates of various European countries that have banned handguns with those of their neighbors. More significantly, it indicated whether or not handguns are similarly banned in the neighboring countries.
In every case – much like the difference between the state of Virginia, […]
I’ve just learned that Washington, D.C.’s petition for a rehearing of the Parker case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was denied today. This is good news. Readers will recall in this case that the D.C. Circuit overturned the decades-long ban on gun ownership in the nation’s capitol on Second Amendment grounds.
However, as my colleague Peter Ferrara explained in his National Review Online article following the initial decision in March, it looks very likely that the United States Supreme Court will take the case on appeal. When it does so – beyond seriously considering the clear original intent of […]
In today’s America, the United States Constitution is too often treated like the Queen of England – a powerless and non-binding relic of an earlier age. And just as Queen Elizabeth is in the States this week leading up to the 400th anniversary celebration of the settlement of Jamestown colony, the Constitution will occasion the obligatory nod from time to time.
But the Constitution is not like the monarchy, which long ago gave up all real authority. The Constitution, along with its Bill of Rights and other Amendments, remains in effect. Not that you would know that by the way our government leaders […]
Bill Otis, my colleague here at the ACRU blog and the Director of Legal Affairs for the American Civil Rights Union, has written a number of good posts on the subject of gun control in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech, including:
I, too, wrote recently on Ronald Reagan’s views on the subject.
So, I won’t spend much more space making the case for the Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms […]
My thanks to blogger Mark Alexander and his Patriot Post for digging up this great quote from our last truly great president, Ronald Reagan, concerning gun control:
“You won’t get gun control by disarming law-abiding citizens. There’s only one way to get real gun control: Disarm the thugs and the criminals, lock them up and if you don’t actually throw away the key, at least lose it for a long time… It’s a nasty truth, but those who seek to inflict harm are not fazed by gun controllers. I happen to know this from personal experience.”
It seems to me that Reagan would have […]
Scott Johnson, writing yesterday on Power Line, puts yet more skids under the liberal reaction to the murders at Virginia Tech. In particular, Scott quotes Mark Steyn as Steyn laughs out loud at Yale’s reaction to the shootings — a reaction that, in terms of unadulterated nonsense, tops even the calls for yet more gun regulation that the Virginia Tech episode itself proves don’t work. As Scott observes:
Mark Steyn devotes his weekly Sun-Times column to the political and cultural infantilization of American society manifested in events related to the Virginia Tech massacre. He urges us to get “realistic about reality.”…He notes […]
