The Second Amendment Foundation and Alan Gura are proud to have won another landmark Second Amendment case. Stay tuned as more legal filings are on deck this week. Alan Gottlieb In a message dated 7/6/2011 10:51:57 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
The Seventh Circuit backs the RKBA against Chicago's hysteria. _http://is.gd/3wjwAI_ (http://is.gd/3wjwAI) Labels aside, we can distill this First Amendment doctrine and extrapolate a few general principles to the Second Amendment context. First, a severe burden on the core Second Amendment right of armed self‐defense will require an extremely strong public‐interest justification and a close fit between the government’s means and its end. Second, laws restricting activity lying closer to the margins of the Second Amendment right, laws that merely regulate rather than restrict, and modest burdens on the right may be more easily justified. How much more easily depends on the relative severity of the burden and its proximity to the core of the right. In Skoien we required a “form of strong showing”—a/k/a “intermediate scrutiny”—in a Second Amendment challenge to a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), which prohibits the possession of firearms by persons convicted of a domestic‐violence misdemeanor. 614 F.3d at 641. We held that “logic and data” established a “substantial relation” between dispossessing domestic‐violence misdemeanants and the important governmental goal of “preventing armed mayhem.” Id. at 642. Intermediate scrutiny was appropriate in Skoien because the claim was not made by a “law‐abiding, responsible citizen” as in Heller, 554 U.S. at 635; nor did the case involve the central self‐defense component of the right, Skoien, 614 F.3d at 645. Here, in contrast, the plaintiffs are the “law‐abiding, responsible citizens” whose Second Amendment rights are entitled to full solicitude under Heller, and their claim comes much closer to implicating the core of the Second Amendment right. The City’s firing‐range ban is not merely regulatory; it prohibits the “law‐abiding, responsible citizens” of Chicago from engaging in target practice in the controlled environment of a firing range. This is a serious encroachment on the right to maintain proficiency in firearm use, an important corollary to the meaningful exercise of the core right to possess firearms for self‐defense. That the City conditions gun possession on range training is an additional reason to closely scrutinize the range ban. All this suggests that a more rigorous showing than that applied in Skoien should be required, if not quite “strict scrutiny.” To be appropriately respectful of the individual rights at issue in this case, the City bears the burden of establishing a strong public‐interest justification for its ban on range training: The City must establish a close fit between the range ban and the actual public interests it serves, and also that the public’s interests are strong enough to justify so substantial an encumbrance on individual Second Amendment rights. Stated differently, the City must demonstrate that civilian target practice at a firing range creates such genuine and serious risks to public safety that prohibiting range training throughout the city is justified. **************************************************************************** ************* Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o- 651-523-2142 Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f- 651-523-2236 St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c- 612-865-7956 [email protected] _http://law.hamline.edu/constitutional_law/joseph_olson.html_ (http://law.hamline.edu/constitutional_law/joseph_olson.html) _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
