Restoring the Second Amendment
Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:14 pm
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Restoring the Second Amendment
Why state and local governments should respect the right to bear arms
Damon W. Root | October 7, 2008
For nearly 10 years, the case of Nordyke v. King has been winding its way through the California courts. At issue is a 1999 Alameda County ordinance banning the possession of firearms on county-owned property, a law enacted primarily to keep gun shows out of the county fairground. To date, the case has been heard by the district court, the California Supreme Court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where gun show promoters Russell and Sallie Nordyke have so far proven unsuccessful in their fight to overturn the law.
But that was before District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, the Second Amendment protects the right "to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense." One question Heller did not answer, however, is whether the Second Amendment applies just to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.) or to state and local governments as well.
Nordyke, it now appears, might help with the answer. Last week, four preeminent legal scholars—Michael Kent Curtis, Richard Aynes, Michael Lawrence, and William W. Van Alstyne—filed a friend of the court brief arguing that the 14th Amendment "and specifically its privileges or immunities clause were designed to forbid states from abridging fundamental rights of citizens, including those rights in the Bill of Rights." The Second Amendment, of course, is right there on that list.
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