Federal Judge Rules Second Amendment Protects an Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms

In the most clear and unambiguous language Judge Sam R. Cummings has issued the following ruling -- complete with supporting arguments, legal history and current legal scholarship -- that states that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms. Following are some key quotes from the decision.


"In retrospect, the framers designed the Second Amendment to guarantee an individual's right to arms for self-defense. Such an individual right was the legacy of the English Bill of Rights. American colonial practice, the constitutional ratification debates, and state proposals over the amendment all bear this out. Id. at 162. The American Second Amendment also expanded upon the English Bill of Rights' protection; while English law allowed weapons "suitable to a person's condition" "as allowed by law", the American right forbade any "infringement" upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Id.

"Justice Scalia concludes by stating that "[i]t is very likely that modern Americans no longer look contemptuously, as Madison did, upon the governments of Europe that 'are afraid to trust the people with arms,' The Federalist No. 46; and the . . . Constitution that Professor Tribe espouses will probably give effect to that new sentiment by effectively eliminating the Second Amendment. But there is no need to deceive ourselves as to what the original Second Amendment said and meant. Of course, properly understood, it is no limitation upon arms control by the states." Id.

Thus, concerns about the social costs of enforcing the Second Amendment must be outweighed by considering the lengths to which the federal courts have gone to uphold other rights in the Constitution. The rights of the Second Amendment should be as zealously guarded as the other individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights."


"The structure of the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights proves that the right to bear arms is an individual right, rather than a collective one. The collective rights' idea that the Second Amendment can only be viewed in terms of state or federal power "ignores the implication that might be drawn from the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments: the citizenry itself can be viewed as an important third component of republican governance as far as it stands ready to defend republican liberty against the depredations of the other two structures, however futile that might appear as a practical matter." Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 YALE L.J. 637, 651 (1989)."


"It is absurd that a boilerplate state court divorce order can collaterally and automatically extinguish a law-abiding citizen's Second Amendment rights, particularly when neither the judge issuing the order, nor the parties nor their attorneys are aware of the federal criminal penalties arising from firearm possession after entry of the restraining order. That such a routine civil order has such extensive consequences totally attenuated from divorce proceedings makes the statute unconstitutional. There must be a limit to government regulation on lawful firearm possession. This statute exceeds that limit, and therefore it is unconstitutional."

Read the decision at:

[url]http://www.nraila.org/FactSheets.asp?FormMode=Detail&ID=45[/url]

Excuse me, but isn't this old news?  We're waiting on the results of the APPEAL.  This is the original ruling from 1999.

[V]

Thats the Federal District Court ruling, not the Circuit Court.  The NRA sure screwed up that article by not indicating which level it was from.

Kharn

Got me too.  However, Judge Cummings' decision is an excellent read, and I highly recommend it to everyone.  I know it got Sara's panties in a twist.