Will McDonald v. Chicago affect CCW or Open Carry

Not directly. Incorporation of the Second Amendment against the States would, dependent upon level of scrutiny assigned by the court, allow for court challenges of current or future laws.

An example would be the current situation in Illinois where carrying a firearm openly or concealed, except where the firearm is unloaded and fully enclosed in a case, is illegal. This is something that could, and would be challenged.

Another example would be situations, like those that exist in States such as California and New York, where permit issuing could be described as discriminatory at best.

Assuming the case results in 100% incorporation - probably - eventually - after the 100 or so years it takes to sort out what infringed means, and bear means.

MacDonald will open up a writhing snake pit of possible law suits that may or may not end up being pro gun. All I can say for sure is a lot of lawyers are going to make a lot of money sorting it all out.

Wolfman,

Assuming the case results in 100% incorporation - probably - eventually - after the 100 or so years it takes to sort out what infringed means, and bear means.

MacDonald will open up a writhing snake pit of possible law suits that may or may not end up being pro gun. All I can say for sure is a lot of lawyers are going to make a lot of money sorting it all out.

The question the court will answer is if the 2nd is incorporated via the 14th or DP. It is either going to be incorporated or not. Judging by the current make up of the court, the recent decision in Heller, the fact that they agreed to hear McDonald and the question that they chose, I think it is pretty safe to say it is going to be incorporated. The question is how will they do it and what will they set the level of scrutiny at?

We need to know what the new playing field is going to look like before we decided how best to play the game.

CCW is NOT covered by 2A and Heller/McDonald, CCW is generally seen as a privilege extended to individuals, at the state level.

Arguably "Open Carry" could be, as part of the "Bear" part of RKBA.

What is likely to come out of McDonald and subsequent cases is that for those states (NJ, NY, CA etc) where CCW is "officially" available but in actuality not, CCW will be challenged as arbitrary and subjective and the state, to avoid expensive complication, will remove it from the corpus.

This personal view brought to you via the Internet, IMHO, YMMV, opinion worth what you paid for it....

I believe Heller directly implicates this issue, and more importantly, so does Gura.

Essentially Gura's argument, advance in the US District Court within the 9th Circ, asserts that government can not ban the carrying of weapons but can regulate the manner in which they are worn. The government can ban open carry, or can ban concealed carry, but it can not ban both. He also concedes the validity of objective criteria for the issuance of a permit... basically shall issue requirements involving skill tests, safety tests and background checks.

The reason why I say Heller implicates this issue is beacause of the treatment of the "bear arms" language in the Heller opinion. Scalia cites a string of cases covering the issue all of which stand for the proposition that the government may regulate the manner in which a person can bear arms, but may not ban them. The case Gura is pursuing is Sykes, et al. v. McGinness, et al., US District Court for the Eastern District of California.

As I understand it the case is basically on hold pending resolution of the incorporation issue.

Btw, you folks are missing a particular case, and that is United States v. Skoien.

IllinoisCarry.org thread on this issue, posted originally by me

Strict Scrutiny now is in effect in the 7th Circuit of Appeals (which includes illinois) for "self defense". As the firearm was his truck rather than the house, you can see that the court in Skoien wasn't engaging in wholesale fraud that some district courts are doing in order to write the "bear" out of the RKBA.

The only problem is that at this time, it only applies to the US government. Post McDonald, even if SCOTUS decides to not enunciate a scrutiny level, strict scrutiny already applies to the 7th Circuit, it's just that McDonald will formalize it's application to the states.

It'll take another federal lawsuit, but the Illinois UUW/AUUW law, and the 1000 foot school zones/vehicle case unloaded law in Wisconsin, will essentially be toast as soon as the first suit is filed against it.

Indirectly McDonald will hopefully put an end to the practice in New Jersey and other tyrannical states where the issuance of a carry permit is at the discretion of Law Enforcement and the Courts. If the 2nd Amendment applies to the States the next case to hit the Supreme Court will hopefully hold that government cannot deny the right to bear arms except under the most extreme circumstances (for example, insanity or prior conviction of a violent felony). Currently it is at the whim of government officials.

<...political comment...>

Using the democratic process to put reasonable legislative restrictions on the exercise of a right within the bounds of what the Consitution allows is the essence of our system of Ordered Liberty.

Putting the exercise of a right at the discretion of a government official is the essence of Tyranny and the denial of Due Process.

The Palmer case currently pending in the D.C. District Court is sort of about the right to carry. It is all about freedom from the unreasonable restriction of Constitutional Rights and Liberty, which is why it has the Liberals apoplectic.

Read Gura's Palmer brief here:

http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.dcd.137887/gov.uscourts.dcd.137887.5.1.pdf