Federalist Society hosts 2nd Amendment debate

[samus]

http://www.fed-soc.org/debates/dbtid.9/default.asp


Parker v. District of Columbia: DC Gun Ban Case
August 31, 2007

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in Parker v. District of Columbia that the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 (a local law that effectively bars District residents from owning handguns) violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In doing so, the Court became the first federal appeals court in the United States to strike down a gun control law for reasons based on the Second Amendment, and the second to interpret the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to bear arms (the first was the 5th Circuit 2001 decision, United States v. Emerson). The District has announced that it will seek Supreme Court review, and the plaintiffs who brought the challenge have announced that they will support Supreme Court review as well, which it is widely believed the Supreme Court will grant. A panel of experts including Ohio State professor Saul Cornell, University of Tennessee Law professor Glenn Reynolds, Legal Director of the Brady Center's Campaign to Stop Gun Violence, Dennis Henigan, Executive Director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, Joshua Horwitz, and lawyers for the plantiffs in Parker, Alan Gura (Gura & Possessky, PLLC.), Bob Levy (Cato), and Clark Neily (the Institute for Justice) predict the outcome of the case, and debate about the Second Amendment’s relation to the right to bear arms.

 

[M_Olson]

After we repeatedly pressed Cornell to identify a single contemporaneous source for the militia view of the Second Amendment, he produced what he trumpets as “a good illustration of how Americans in the Founding era viewed the right.” Essentially, the quote states that only “the use of arms in common defense” was constitutionally protected; other purposes, such as self-defense, were subject to interdiction by the state legislature. Was this the declaration of Madison, Hamilton, or another luminary among the Framers? Cornell didn’t say. Well, we checked. The quote is from the estimable [hold your hat] Scribble Scrabble, a newspaper essayist. Was this profound thinker published in a scholarly journal? Not quite: It was the Cumberland Gazette, a newspaper in Portland, Maine. Was Scribble Scrabble opining on the U.S. Constitution? No, he was writing about a provision in the Massachusetts state constitution. Moreover, the article appeared five years before the Second Amendment was ratified.

wow, talk about a scathing conclusion! the anti side being misleading and disingenuous? naaa...