Category Archives: Second Amendment

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take a case about the boundaries of the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms, by saying it will not review a California self-defense law.

The petitioners in Peruta v. California who asked the Supreme Court to review the case called the controversy "perhaps the single most important unresolved Second Amendment question" left to come before the Supreme Court. The high court's action on Monday will leave that question unresolved.

The question the Supreme Court refused to hear is whether the Second Amendment gives people the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the high court's decision not to take the case, which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined.

"At issue in this case is whether that [Second Amendment] guarantee protects the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense," Thomas wrote. "Neither party disputes that the issue is one of national importance or that the courts of appeals have already weighed in extensively. I would therefore grant the petition for a writ of certiorari."

He added, "For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a state denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it."

California law generally prevents carrying a handgun outside a home, but concealed carry is allowed for those with a license. Applicants for such a license need to demonstrate "good cause" to obtain the license, which several sheriffs have taken to mean including carrying a handgun for self-defense, as the petitioners noted in their brief to the Supreme Court. But in San Diego, the sheriff defined "good cause" as requiring a "particularized" need for self-defense that separates the applicant from an average applicant.

A three-judge panel found the San Diego County Sheriff's policy unconstitutional, but was reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Since the Supreme Court did not take the case, the 9th Circuit's ruling will prevail.

"We should have granted certiorari in this case," Thomas wrote. "The approach taken by the en banc court is indefensible, and the petition raises important questions that this court should address. I see no reason to await another case."

Paul Clement, an attorney who several conservatives hoped to see included on President-elect Trump's Supreme Court short lists when looking to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, is listed as the counsel of record for the petitioners challenging the California policy and 9th Circuit decision.

See more here:
Supreme Court refuses to hear high-stakes Second Amendment handgun case - Washington Examiner

Conservative Review

SCOTUS just made a mockery of biology AND the Second Amendment Conservative Review Over the past few years, we have chronicled a pattern developing in the lower courts on the Second Amendment since the Heller decision. Not that we needed the Supreme Court to affirm the right to self-defense, which predated the Constitution, but the ...

View original post here:
SCOTUS just made a mockery of biology AND the Second Amendment - Conservative Review

The issue revolved aroundBinderup v. the U.S. Attorney General, a case brought by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on behalf ofDaniel Binderup. He pleaded guilty in 1996 to a misdemeanor charge related to a consensual relationship he had with a 17-year-old female employee, receiving three years probation and a $300 fine.Since thecrime could have resulted in jail timeof over one yeartriggering a federal gun law blocks firearms possessionBinderup sought protection of his Second Amendment rights.

The Third Circuit handed down an en banc ruling in Binderups favor and Obamas Department of Justice responded by seeking a Supreme Court review. The result of that review is that the Third Circuit decision stands.

Following SCOTUS announcement, SAF sent a press release to Breitbart News, saying:

The Third Circuit Courts favorableruling combined Binderups case withanother SAF case involvinga man named Julio Suarez. Hewas stopped in 1990 on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.At the time he was carrying a handgun and spare ammunition without a permit.He pleaded guilty in Maryland state court to the charge and received a 180-day suspended sentence and $500 fine. Asa result, he also lost his gun rights because the crime could have resulted in jail timeof more than one year. Neither man was ever incarcerated.

The pro-Second Amendment results ofBinderup v. the U.S. Attorney Generalwere accompanied by news that SCOTUS declined to hearPeruta v. California; a case revolving around Californias good cause requirement for concealed carry license acquisition. On January 12, 2017, Breitbart News reported SCOTUS was petitioned to review Perutain hopes of securing a ruling as to whether the Second Amendment entitles ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in some manner, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law.

For now, the Second Amendment community is cheering the ruling inBinderup but remains pensive overPeruta.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

Read more here:
SCOTUS Lets Ruling Stand Protecting Second Amendment Rights Following Non-Serious Misdemeanors - Breitbart News

Washington Times

Second Amendment violations targeted by criminal code experts Washington Times Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun possession unconstitutionally infringed on Second Amendment rights. Yet a District law prohibiting with few exceptions ammunition in residents' homes lingers on the books.

Continue reading here:
Second Amendment violations targeted by criminal code experts - Washington Times

A Boston-area professor said last week a middle ground exists between protecting the Second Amendment and methods of reducing gun-related violence.

In Broadening the Perspective on Gun Violence: An Examination of the Firearms Industry, 19902015, Boston University School of Public Health professor Dr. Michael Siegel said he wanted to frame gun research in a different context.

Research on firearm violence tends to focus on two elements the host (i.e., victims of firearm violence) and the environment (i.e., gun policies), he said in the articles introduction, published Thursday. But little attention has been paid to the agent (the gun and ammunition) or the vector (firearm manufacturers, dealers, and the industry lobby).

According to federal data, firearms manufacturing in America tripled between 2000 and 2013 the last year Seigel studied.

In that year alone, manufacturers produced 4.4 million pistols, 4 million rifles, 1.2 million shotguns, 725,000 revolvers and 495,000 miscellaneous firearms, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Firearms manufacturing dipped 16 percent the following year to just over 9million produced.

[Manufacturers] have reinvented guns not as a recreational sport or tool but as a symbol of freedom and security, Siegel told ABC News Thursday.

Siegel said the increased manufacturing of high-caliber pistols, especially, points to a consumers growing interest in self-defense and a similar need for a new perspective on gun-related violence as a public health issue, not a criminal justice one.

Ultimately, a better understanding of the products on the market may have implications for improving firearms as consumer products, such as fostering changes in design to increase safety or changes in corporate practices to better protect consumers, as has been done for tobacco products, the report concludes.

Siegel said the study, published last week in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, doesnt mean to imply gun owners should lose their right to bear arms, but rather society must create an effective way to weed out those more prone to violent acts.

They are not the enemy in public health, he said. There are ways to reduce gun violence while valuing gun owners values. It has been painted too long as mutually exclusive.

Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, reiterated the organizations long-standing opposition to viewing gun-related violence through a public health lens.

Guns are not a disease, he told ABC News. There is no vaccine or health intervention for the criminal misuse of firearms.

Go here to see the original:
Researcher suggests gun related violence prevention, Second ... - Guns.com

Wait a minute I thought we were supposed to be winning these cases now.

A huge disappointment came out of the Supreme Court today when the justices declined to hear the appeal of the case of Peruta v. California, a potentially game changing case when it comes to the right to carry firearms, particularly concealed, in public. The LA Times has the brief summary, including the fact that there was, unusually, a written dissent to the decision published.

The Supreme Court has rejected a major 2nd Amendment challenge to Californias strict limits on carrying concealed guns in public.

The justices turned away an appeal from gun rights advocates who contended most law-abiding gun owners in San Diego, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area are being wrongly denied permits to carry a weapon when they leave home

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the courts action reflects a distressing trend in the treatment of the 2nd Amendment as a disfavored right. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joined his dissent.

Thomas clearly has it right, since this is once again a case where the courts are allowing the states to regularly impose far greater limitations on Second Amendment rights than virtually any of the others. By declining to hear the appeal, the Supreme Court has a allowed a decision from the 9th Circuit (where else) to stand, supporting those limitations in California.

This was a key case challenging the right of the states to declare that citizens have to show good cause before exercising their natural right to keep and bear arms. California passed a law indicating that concealed carry permits would not be issued to anyone unless they could prove that they faced some level of danger above and beyond that of the average citizen. Earlier this year, William Gore, the Sheriff of San Diego County, wrote an op-ed for the San Diego Union Tribune in which he explained the (heavily flawed, in my opinion) reason for the laws existence.

The good cause requirement is at the heart of the Peruta case. The Sheriffs Department has, since well before my time as sheriff, defined good cause as a set of circumstances that distinguishes the applicant from other members of the general public and causes him or her to be placed in harms way.

The issue in the Peruta lawsuit is really whether Californias good cause requirement can be satisfied by an applicant who simply states that he or she wants to carry a concealed firearm for self-defense, without providing anything more to the issuing agency.

The federal district court held that the San Diego County Sheriffs Departments interpretation of good cause under California law was not unconstitutional and dismissed the applicants case.

The applicants then appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the state of California eventually stepped in to defend the constitutionality of its concealed licensing statutes.

Todays result throws Heller and a number of other decisions into reverse gear, at least potentially. The Peruta decision seems to apply specifically to concealed carry, but if youre going to release the good cause genie out of the bottle, who knows where that train ride ends? Openly carrying a firearm actually only allows you slightly faster access to it if the need for self-defense arises. This hands an incredible amount of dangerous power to states and municipalities since they can now make themselves the arbiters of what qualifies as good cause for virtually any request. Will you have to be someone who has already been attacked once in order to qualify in the cities and more liberal states? And what if you were only attacked with fists or a knife or a bat? Perhaps such assaults wouldnt qualify either.

If you live in a neighborhood with a high crime rate and regular assaults, I suppose that wont make any difference either. After all, as the Sheriff said, you need to be able to distinguish yourself from other members of the general public in terms of being placed in harms way. If everyone on the West Side of Baltimore is equally liable to be murdered there on any given night, then nobody is particularly distinguishable as being at more risk than anyone else, right?

We need to turn over a number of additional of seats on this court. I have little more to say than this is a disgusting result.

Read the original post:
SCOTUS deals a blow to Second Amendment in Peruta v. California - Hot Air

The Supreme Court will not intervene in a lower courts decision that the Second Amendment does not protect the right to carry a concealed weapon in public.

Gun-rights advocates had asked the court to review a California law that gives local sheriffs power to require that those seeking concealed-carry permits show a particular need, such as a threat.

Whether the Second Amendment secures an individual right to bear arms for self-defense outside the home is the perhaps the single most important unresolved Second Amendment question, said a brief filed by the California Rifle and Pistol Association Foundation.

Because California bans carrying weapons openly in public, the association said the state law can effectively prohibit carrying a gun in any manner outside the home.

In a 7 to 4 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the San Diego sheriffs policy of reserving concealed-carry licenses only for those who can document a special need for self-defense passes constitutional muster.

Based on the overwhelming consensus of historical sources, the court concluded that the protection of the Second Amendment whatever the scope of that protection may be simply does not extend to the carrying of concealed firearms in public by members of the general public.

The Supreme Court has also upheld laws in Maryland and New Jersey that impose such restrictions on concealed-carry permits.

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, said the court should have accepted the case.

The Courts decision to deny certiorari in this case reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right, Thomas wrote, adding. For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.

See the article here:
Supreme Court declines to review California concealed-weapon law - Washington Post

From Mondays opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch), dissenting from denial of certiorari in Peruta v. California:

For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.

Agree with it or disagree, but it strikes me as a powerful articulation of its position. (The Court declined to hear the case, and thus left open the question whether the Second Amendment secures a right of law-abiding adults to carry guns outside the home a subject on which lower courts continue to be split; Thomas and Gorsuch were urging the court to hear the case.)

Visit link:
'For those of us who work in marbled halls the Second Amendment might seem antiquated' - Washington Post

Gun rights advocates gathered outside the Utah State Capitol for Gun Appreciation Day in Salt Lake City in 2013.(Photo: Rick Bowmer, AP)

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refusedMonday to take on the next big battle over the Second Amendment: carrying guns in public.

The justices won'theara challenge to a California law that limits who can carry a concealed gun in public -- a restrictionthat proponents of gun rights consider unconstitutional, but which the high court has yet to decide.

In a related case, the justices also refused to hear the federal government's appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed two men with criminal records to win back their right to possess firearms despite a lifetime federal ban. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the case.

Read more:

Supreme Court declares churches eligible for some public funds

Supreme Court will hear religious liberty challenge to gay weddings

Supreme Court punts on cross-border shooting, two immigration cases

On the guns-in-public case, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented,arguing that a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2008 upholding the right to keep guns at home suggested that the right extends beyond the home.

"I find it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen," Thomas wrote for the pair.

It's been nine years since the court upheld the right to keep handguns at home for self-defense, in what was perhaps the most important opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Two years later, the court extended that right to states and localities.

Since then, however, the court has avoided most Second Amendment cases, including those challenging state and local assault weapons bans, firearms protections, and restrictions on young adults. In 2014, it declined to consider a challenge to a New Jersey law that restricts most residents from carrying guns in public.

Most states currently allow guns outside the home with few restrictions. But in states that do limit carrying guns openly or in concealed fashion --including Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and New York --lower courts have almost always upheld those restrictions.

Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last June upheld the California law by a 7-4 vote, reversing a 2014 ruling from a three-judge panel that had struck down restrictions imposed by two of the state's counties, based on California law.

"We hold that the Second Amendment does not protect, in any degree, the carrying of concealed firearms by members of the general public," Judge William Fletcher wrote for the majority.

California's law, like those ineight other states and the District of Columbia, generally requires citizens to show "good cause" before being granted a concealed-carry license. In other states, licenses are issued to most citizens without felony convictions who are not considered dangerous or mentally unstable.

Judge ConsueloCallahan's main dissent contended that the law's wide berth has the effect of banning any guns in public. "While states may choose between different manners of bearing arms for self-defense, the right must be accommodated," she wrote.

The battle over gun rights pits the National Rifle Association and other firearms proponents against gun-control groups such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, created in the aftermath of the 1981 assassinationattempt on President Ronald Reagan that severely wounded his press secretary, Jim Brady.

The appeals court ruling does not affect states within its jurisdiction that have more liberal gun-totinglaws; it merely allows more liberal states, such as California, to impose tougher restrictions.

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2u8sdZ3

See original here:
Supreme Court won't rule on carrying guns in public - USA TODAY

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to take a case which argued that the Second Amendment entitles ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in some manner, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law.

The justices turned away an appeal from gun rights advocates who argued that most law-abiding gun owners in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay area are wrongly denied permits to carry a weapon when they leave home.

The refusal to hear the case upholds a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which held last year that the "Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public."

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court's action "reflects a distressing trend" in the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch also dissented.

Shares of major gun firms including American Outdoor Brands ( AOBC) andSturm Ruger & Company ( RGR) were falling over 1% during mid-morning trading on Monday.

What's Hot On TheStreet

Unusual to hear these words: Under Armour's (UAA) founder Kevin Plank has never been one to sound weak in a public setting. Plank is known for his motivational speeches to employees and desire to crush all competition. So, it was odd to hear Plank say rival Nike (NKE) "isn't playing fair" on the Today Show on Sunday -- it sounded like a CEO who after several below plan quarters is finally realizing how challenging it will be to dethrone Nike.

Original post:
Supreme Court Refuses Case Challenging Second Amendment Rights - TheStreet.com