Quoted:
That Sucks!
I had hoped we might get somewhere with Emerson - but as usual, the upper courts duck the issue.
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[url]http://www.nraila.org/FactSheets.asp?FormMode=Detail&ID=45[/url]
uh......we did. The court did a reasonable job.
[size=4][b]U.S. Appeals Court Ruling In U.S. v. Emerson:" An Individual Right"[/size=4][/b]
In October 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in U.S. v. Emerson that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Most of the 40,000-word decision, written by Fifth Circuit Senior Judge, William L. Garwood, is devoted to Second Amendment issues and finds entirely in favor of its conventional, individual rights interpretation. In summary, the court said:
"We have found no historical evidence that the Second Amendment was intended to convey militia power to the states . . . or applies only to members of a select militia. . . . All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans. We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training. We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment. We hold, consistent with [U.S. v.] Miller, that it protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms. . . ."
Further, the three-judge panel unanimously agreed that the right to arms may be subject to only "limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions for particular cases that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country." As examples of such exceptions, the court noted that "felons, infants, and those of unsound mind may be prohibited from possessing firearms." Notably, under the court's definition of "reasonable" restrictions, many intrusive, prohibitionist measures which anti-gun groups advocate as "reasonable" would be impermissible.