Free In Idaho!

Thanks are due to our Idaho Senators and Representatives, for their support of the Congressional amicus curiae brief filed in the D.C. Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court.  Senator Crapo and Craig, and Representatives Simpson and Sali, joined Vice President Cheney and the 55 Senators and 250 House members who signed the brief favoring the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Congress has historically viewed the Second
Amendment as protecting from infringement the right
of the people at large to keep and bear arms. It has
further regarded ordinary, commonly-possessed rifles,
handguns, and shotguns to be constitutionallyprotected
arms. It has also passed regulations for
engaging in firearms businesses and to require
background checks on firearm transferees, and has
restricted certain dangerous categories of persons from
possession of firearms.99 None of these laws is called
into question by the lower court’s limited holding.

The standard for whether a right is
“fundamental” is whether it is “explicitly or implicitly
protected by the Constitution, thereby requiring strict
judicial scrutiny.” San Antonio Independent School
Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 17 (1973). The right of
the people to keep arms is obviously such a right. Yet
even if this Court applied a lower “reasonableness” test
as the standard of review, the District’s handgun ban
is unreasonable on its face. The lower court’s
categorical approach in holding a prohibition on
handguns to be unconstitutional per se was correct.

Where Congress has sought to restrict certain
firearms, some of which may have other characteristics
which overlap with handguns, it has defined them in
terms of specific categories.   A holding by this Court
that the District’s pistol ban violates the Second
Amendment would not apply to such firearms which
are restricted under other categories.

This case involves nothing more than the right
of law-abiding persons to keep common handguns and
usable firearms for lawful self-defense in the home.
Accordingly, no purpose would be served by remanding
this case for further fact finding or other proceedings.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 7:55 am and is filed under Guns, Freedom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.