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srothstein wrote:I think many people have missed an important part of this decision, including ELB who actually mentioned it. SCOTUS made it clear that the 2A protects a FUNDAMENTAL right. While this is not as good as a p&I ruling would have been, it is much better than the Heller ruling. Heller said that this was an individual right, but did not mention fundamental.

Referring to the bolded part, I don't believe this is quite correct. In McDonald, the majority opinion states (with some citations omitted for clarity:

"...we must decide whether the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty, ...

...Our decision in Heller points unmistakably to the answer. Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day,15 and in Heller, we held that individual self-defense is “the central component” of the Second Amendment right."

So I think the SCOTUS is saying they found in Heller that the 2A protects a "fundamental" right, even if they didn't use the word "fundamental" at that time. (They did note that a right to arms was a "fundamental" right of English subjects, at one point in history, if not today.... )

But yes I think this drives upward the level of scrutiny required to decide if a law is constitutional or not, from "rational basis" to at least "intermediate scrutiny," if not "strict scrutiny."

Purplehood wrote:I took two things away from the brief read that I made:

- Sotomayor dissented. She now is batting 0-1 in my book. Put me on record.
- There seemed to my uneducated mind to be too many references to the Handgun as the weapon of choice for self-defense. This alarms me. Could it possibly lead to limitations on long guns?
It particularly struck me as wrong as it made reference to Americans in general and by implication throughout our history as preferring them. Yet in reality the use of handguns has only become popular in US culture with the advent of revolvers and then semi-automatics. Prior to that the long gun appeared to be the most common weapon.
Am I reading too much into this?

I read it this way: both Heller and McDonald lawsuits dealt directly with handguns, so the SCOTUS directly addressed handguns. To get to that, they had to decide if the 2A protected the right to self-defense if the individual (not just the right to have a gun for militia duty). The answer was "YES" in both cases - at both federal and state levels. So if the right to self-defense is fundamental, what is the most popular tool for that. Handgun.

Long guns, hi-cap magazines, and all that will still have be hammered out, in some jurisdictions at least, but the foundation is set. The 2A protects a fundamental right that can't be legislated away just because the legislature feels like it, and self-defense in particular is part of that protected fundamental right.

Charles L. Cotton wrote:The Second Amendment won by a 5 to 4 vote with the usual suspects dissenting. ...
Chas.

Thank you again, W. and everyone who voted for him, especially in 2000.

You're right. Added instead of subtracted. Brain glitch I guess. Dang. 9 it is.

Eugene Volokh has the following post up:

Be (Among) the First to Hear About the Court’s Forthcoming Decisions, and to Read Them
Eugene Volokh • June 27, 2010 4:42 pm

SCOTUSblog live-blogs the Supreme Court’s handing down its opinions, and provides both the results and the links to the full opinions pretty much as soon as they are available. This coming Monday, the Court should be handing down opinions in four cases dealing with very significant issue — whether business methods are patentable (Bilski), whether the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments via the Fourteenth Amendment (McDonald), whether the appointment procedure for members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is constitutional (Free Enterprise Fund), and whether public universities may apply their antidiscrimination rules (including bans on discrimination based on religion and sexual orientation) to the officers of religious student groups (Christian Legal Society).

If you must know the results in one or more of these cases with no delay, go to the SCOTUSblog live-blog post at 10 am Eastern, or, if you prefer, a few minutes before. The live-blogging software will post the reports as they come out, with no need for you to reload the page.

http://volokh.com/2010/06/27/be-among-t ... read-them/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Right now, when I hit the second link in Volokh's post, I get "Not Found Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here" but I expect that is because they are not live-blogging right now. You might want to put that link in your favorites and hit it tomorrow (Monday) at 10 a.m. Eastern, which is 9 a.m. Texas time by Beiruty's calculations.