M1911Owner
December 1, 2003, 05:57 PM
With Silveira v. Lockyer coming to a close, what is the current status of the CATO lawsuit over the DC gun ban?
That suit seemed to me to have the best strategy for getting recognition of the basic RKBA--squeaky-clean plaintiffs in an exteremely high-crime area, asking only for a basic right to the tools they need to defend themselves. Here, the Court has a very clean choice between no RKBA at all, or recognizing a RKBA that, at a minimum, allows at least for ownership of handguns to defend one's home. I think it very likely that the Court would recognize that there exists at least that much of a RKBA in the 2nd.
Since the Court tends to like to answer just the question asked, without expanding into related areas that aren't being litigated, this avoids questions about limitations on machine guns, assault weapons, and issues of that sort. Those questions can be sorted out later, after we have a basic RKBA enshrined in a Supreme Court precedent.
That suit seemed to me to have the best strategy for getting recognition of the basic RKBA--squeaky-clean plaintiffs in an exteremely high-crime area, asking only for a basic right to the tools they need to defend themselves. Here, the Court has a very clean choice between no RKBA at all, or recognizing a RKBA that, at a minimum, allows at least for ownership of handguns to defend one's home. I think it very likely that the Court would recognize that there exists at least that much of a RKBA in the 2nd.
Since the Court tends to like to answer just the question asked, without expanding into related areas that aren't being litigated, this avoids questions about limitations on machine guns, assault weapons, and issues of that sort. Those questions can be sorted out later, after we have a basic RKBA enshrined in a Supreme Court precedent.