Sunday, April 19, 2009

Chicago Still Argues the 2nd Amendmentment is "Collective"

-----Chicago finally submitted its brief in the lawsuits against it (there were two suits, one brought by the NRA and one by the ISRA, SAF, and four residents of Chicago. The two suits were consolidated, so Chicago's brief addresses both. This is for the federal appellate court; it's likely that whoever loses here will appeal to the Supreme Court.) I'm still slogging through it (hey, I don't get paid for this) but I'm struck by Chicago's decision to open their arguments, more or less, with the assertion that the 2nd Amendment protects a collective right and certainly wasn't intended to enumerate an individual, "deeply rooted" right to keep and bear arms.
"And in fact, the inclusion of the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights says nothing about whether the right it protects--interpreted in Heller as a right to own weapons in common use--is a fundamental personal liberty interest within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Unlike other enumerated rights, the Second Amendment was not codified to protect individual liberty. Rather, although conferring an individually held right, the scope of the Second Amendment's protection is circumscribed by its primary purpose of preventing federal disarmament of the militia."
-----Really, Chicago? Really? That's what you came up with? The Second Amendment "confers" an individual right, but since the individual right it "confers" is connected to a collective purpose, it's really a double secret collective right, and Heller is double plus undone and down the memory hole? I can't wait to read the rest.

4 comments:

Pondering said...

Why does this post remind me of Monty Python? "I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xd_zkMEgkI

Don said...

Is that a Steppenwolf reference, or are you being weirder than that? I can never tell what you right-wing nuts are trying to say.

Anonymous said...

A few days late in reply, but this makes it an inordinately simple case to win.

the Second Amendment's [...] primary purpose of preventing federal disarmament of the militia.Then I point you to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/311.html

"(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia."

Seems pretty freakin' open-shut to me... "This is our argument, the 2nd Amendment protects the militia." "Really? Well, the militia is all males from 17-45..."

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