U.S. Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to NRA's Extremist View of the Second Amendment
Court Denies Review of Key Gun Case
Washington, D.C. - This morning, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a Second Amendment challenge to California's strongest-in-the-nation Assault Weapons Ban. The High Court's action leaves undisturbed an earlier ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Silveira v. Lockyer, upholding the California statute and ruling that the Second Amendment confers a right to possess and use firearms only in connection with state militia activities. The National Rifle Association had filed a "friend of the court" brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Silveira decision, but the Court has declined.
"The action of the United States Supreme Court today in denying review of the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Silveira v. Lockyer repudiates the extremist gun lobby and others who view the Second Amendment as a weapon against reasonable gun laws," said Dennis Henigan, Director of the Brady Center's Legal Action Project. "It remains true that never in our nation's history has a federal court struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds."
Since a panel of the Fifth Circuit broke from precedent two years ago in United States v. Emerson, to rule that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to firearms ownership, every federal district and appellate court ruling - more than 20 in all - has rejected its reasoning and the NRA's view, and has held that the Second Amendment does not provide individuals with a right to possess firearms absent a relationship with a state militia. Even the Fifth Circuit in the Emerson case, despite endorsing the individual rights view, upheld the particular gun law under attack. "With today's actions by the Supreme Court, the gun lobby continues its unbroken string of defeats in Second Amendment challenges to gun laws," Henigan added. "There is no more settled area of constitutional law."
The Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case comes as debate intensifies in the U.S. Congress over the expiration, in November of next year, of the federal Assault Weapon Ban. Due to a 10-year sunset provision in the federal statute, it will come to an end unless Congress acts to renew it. Said Mr. Henigan: "It is now settled that there is no constitutional right to own UZIs and AK-47s. The NRA's distortion of constitutional principles has been exposed for the fraud that it is."
The Silveira decision also marks the sixth defeat for legal challenges to California's Assault Weapons Ban, originally passed in 1989 and strengthened since. The NRA first challenged the Assault Weapon Act on Second Amendment grounds in 1989, shortly after the law was enacted following a massacre on a Stockton schoolyard in which 34 children were shot. The NRA's lawsuit, Fresno Rifle and Pistol Club v. Van de Kamp, was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Although the NRA used the promise of a legal challenge to the law to raise money in mass fundraising appeals, the NRA simply dropped the case in 1992 rather than appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since its inception in 1989, the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center has filed amicus curiae briefs in state and federal courts across the nation, defending gun laws and exposing the gun lobby's constitutional distortions. For more information about the Second Amendment, legal challenges to gun laws, and the Silviera case, visit the Legal Action Project's web site at
http://www.gunlawsuits.org/
