The wake of a violent tragedy is an appropriate time for reflection, investigation, prayer, and the promotion of healing. It is a particularly inappropriate time for political opportunism. After last weekend’s tragedy in Arizona, Congress should put the brakes on any desire to ram through gun-control legislation that will neither solve the perceived problems in federal law nor prevent any future assaults on public officials. Observation teaches us that in the wake of crisis, politicians’ instinctive reaction is to check the legislative box and claim that they have solved a …
After helping to strike down the Chicago handgun ban, the winners in today’s Supreme Court decision promised, in an exclusive interview with the Heritage Foundation, that more such cases would be coming in the next few weeks. Alan Gura, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, promised, “There will be future cases, I will be bringing cases in the days and weeks to come.” When asked about the decisions impact, he said, “We will see laws that serve no useful purpose other than to annoy gun owners struck down and others that …
As the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan got underway at 12:30, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions (R-AL), lost no time getting to the heart of the concerns that are raised by Elena Kagan’s nomination by President Obama to the Supreme Court: Ms. Kagan has less real legal experience of any nominee in at least fifty years. It’s not just that she has never been a judge. She has barely practiced law, and not with the intensity and duration from which real understanding occurs. Ms. Kagan …
Moments ago, the Supreme Court announced that, Yes Virginia, the Second Amendment does in fact apply to the states, and thereby struck down Chicago’s complete ban on handgun possession. But this decision (and the Court’s prior decision in Heller) raises still other questions which will likely have a substantial impact on what that Second Amendment right functionally means. For example, what constitutes a reasonable regulation on firearms under the Second Amendment? Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is wasting no time. Before the Supreme Court even issued its opinion, he said that …
In what is probably the most important Second Amendment case in Supreme Court history, the Court today held that the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” cannot be infringed by the states. In 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court for the first time held that the right to bear arms was an individual right. But that decision, which struck down a virtual ban on handguns and a requirement that rifles and shotguns had to be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger …
In his speech before a Joint Session of Congress yesterday, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico made a bold claim. He asserted that: Just to give you an idea, we have seized 75,000 guns and assault weapons in Mexico in the last three years. And more than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States — from the United States. The media immediately picked up on this claim. As Reuters summarized the President’s remarks: [He] said more than 80 percent of [the guns] came …
Much of the discussion and speculation about Elena Kagan’s legal philosophy is limited by her very thin record of scholarship, along with an almost complete lack of experience in the courtroom or participation in litigation through amicus briefs prior to her appointment last year as solicitor general. So we must parse what evidence exists more closely, and a lack of action — particularly in her current job — can be an important indication of her views on an issue. The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding a landmark …
Elena Kagan may be hostile to the view that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution protects American’s individual right to keep and bear arms. Bloomberg reports today, “Kagan Was ‘Not Sympathetic’ as Law Clerk to Gun-Rights Argument.” With the evidence presented by the Los Angeles Times that Kagan was very active in the gun control agenda during her time as counsel for the President Bill Clinton Administration, a thorough examination of Kagan’s views on the 2nd Amendment is merited. Bloomberg Reports that “Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court …
In a recent meeting of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) told Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division within the Justice Department, that it was “extremely embarrassing that Mexico has been as kind to us.” According to Delegate Norton, the U.S. bears primary responsibility for the armed lawlessness of Mexico’s drug cartels. From the Mexican perspective, Delegate Norton argued the U.S. is “essentially shipping down arms to kill my people”. If she were Mexican, she “would have been …
To correspond with Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings next week, I am launching a new daily feature: highlighting a key activist case and, separately, a notable quote for each day. In light of the renewed interest in Sotomayor’s Second Amendment jurisprudence, it is appropriate to begin with Maloney v. Cuomo. James Maloney was arrested at his New York home and charged with possession of a weapon—in this case, a chuka stick—in violation of New York law. He challenged the weapons prohibition as violating his rights under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. …
