SCOTUS to Determine Scope of Second Amendment
Kennesaw , GA –-(AmmoLand.com)- On Nov. 16, 2009, the NRA filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court as Respondent in Support of Petitioner in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The NRA brief asks the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment.
The McDonald case is one of several that were filed immediately after last year’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court upheld the Second Amendment as an individual right and invalidated Washington, D.C.’s ban on handgun possession, as well as the city’s ban on keeping loaded, operable firearms for self-defense in the home.
In September, the Supreme Court agreed to consider the McDonald case, on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. That court incorrectly claimed that prior Supreme Court precedent prevented it from holding in favor of incorporation of the Second Amendment. As the NRA argued at the time, the Seventh Circuit should have followed the lead of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Nordyke v. King, which found that Supreme Court precedent does not prevent the Second Amendment from applying to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
Support for incorporation of the Second Amendment is very strong, and numerous additional briefs have recently been filed and signed by both federal and state officials.
Recently, an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate signed an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief supporting the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The amicus brief bears the signatures of a record 251 Members of Congress and 58 Senators—the most signers of a congressional amicus brief in the history of the Supreme Court.
In addition to the federal brief, a large bipartisan group of state legislators and other elected officials from all 50 states, along with more than three-fourths of state attorney generals also filed amicus curiae briefs in the McDonald case this week. They, too, are supporting the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
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