The Law of Unintended Consequences

The New Second Amendment: A Bark Worse Than Its Right

In June, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on the Second Amendment right to bear arms, D.C. v. Heller. For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias, like the National Guard. In a long-awaited victory for the gun rights movement, the Court reversed course and held that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to own guns for personal self-defense.

So far, the victory hasn't turned out exactly as the gun rights folks had hoped.

As many legal scholars predicted, the Supreme Court's decision led to a tidal wave of Second Amendment challenges to gun control. Every person charged with a gun crime saw the Supreme Court's decision as a Get Out of Jail Free Card.

To date, the lower federal courts have ruled in over 60 different cases on the constitutionality of a wide variety of gun control laws. There have been suits against laws banning possession of firearms by felons, drug addicts, illegal aliens, and individuals convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. The courts have ruled on the constitutionality of laws prohibiting particular types of weapons, including sawed-off shotguns and machine guns, and specific weapons attachments. Defendants have challenged laws barring guns in school zones and post offices, and laws outlawing "straw" purchases, the carrying of concealed weapons, possession of an unregistered firearm, and particular types of ammunition. The courts have upheld every one of these laws.

Since Heller, its Gun Control: 60, Individual Right: 0.

... there's more on HuffPo after the click.

My comment: Another case of "be careful what you wish for".

Anyway, this suggests some questions to me ... and I pass them along to you.

1.) Is this a case of "activist judges" that the right is so ... um ... up in arms about? And if it is, given the historic precedents (to wit: "For over 70 years, the federal courts had read that amendment to protect only a state's right to organize militias"), is it the lower court judges who are being "activists" by upholding the history of precedents or the hand picked and packed right wing Supreme Court, bucking the precedents that represent the dreaded "activism"?

2.) Or could this just be another of those right-wing despised situations of trial lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits that waste the court's time and public's resources?