This should be interesting to follow....

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30252-2002May29.html[/url]

[i]On May 6, in response to Emerson's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson urged the high court not to review the case, saying the government did not think Emerson should be [b]licensed[/b] to have a gun.[/i]

Who said anything about [i]licensing[/i]? IIRC, the issue was whether Emerson should be allowed to [i]own[/i] a gun. I guess to a liberal journalist, one must naturally follow the other...

Very interesting.

Does anyone still doubt there are fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats now?

Would an AG appointed by Al Gore have opened up such a can of worms? No effen-way.


Yep. Just more "objective" journalist's anti-gun bias.

What sticks in my craw is this passage from the article:

[i]The Second Amendment -- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" -- was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939 to apply only to militias and [red]not to individuals.[/red][/i]

[b]WRONG![/b]

SCOTUS said that if the militia doesn't use it (sawed-off shotguns), it's not protected by the 2nd Amendment.

The SCOTUS in [url=http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/wbardwel/public/nfalist/miller.txt]US v Miller[/url] did not (IMO) rule that 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to [u]individuals[/u] - though I'm sure the Washington Post staff writers probably see it that way and would LIKE you to think that they did. - Even more media bias.

The Washingtontrashypost is so anti gun, its not even funny...

You guys ought to go to the forums or discussion board at the Washington Post site.  They have a topic for this story and the anti's are getting their asses handed to them in the discussion.

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36100-2002May30.html[/url]

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The U.S. attorney's office argued yesterday in D.C. Superior Court that the District's ban on handguns should be upheld, brushing aside the Bush administration's new directive that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear firearms.

In the first of at least three cases that challenge the District's prohibition on handguns as unconstitutional, assistant U.S. attorneys filed motions defending the broad statute, citing a 15-year-old D.C. Court of Appeals decision as binding local precedent.

The court arguments take a different position from those made by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson in internal memos or in writings to the U.S. Supreme Court, in which they said the Second Amendment gives individuals a constitutional right to gun ownership.
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One of the guys is charged with carrying a gun, which is slightly different from merely owning a firearm.

This is interesting because DC does not present any so-called "incorporation" problems, since it is run by the feds. The short story: the supremes held back in the 19th century that the bill of rights only prevented the federal government from doing the things listed, not the state governments. The exception were rights that were "incorporated", or that also applied to the states as well as the federal government. The big question is whether the 2nd amendment is an "incorporated" right that prevents the state governments from infringing upon it. But that's irrelevant here, since it's the one place in the US where states rights are irrelevant.